I have been revisiting a hero of mine from the Episcopal Church’s history, the Rev. Charles P. McIlvaine, the second bishop of Ohio (1832-1873), in the form of a collection of his sermons. Below is one of the included sermons on 1 John 4:8-9:

⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

“God is love.” What an engaging representation of the Most High! How simple, how comprehensive! Where, but in his own inspired word, is there to be found such a declaration of his essential nature? Many other oracles have said, God is almighty, all-wise, infinite in goodness, &c.; but it remained for his own book to say, “God is love.”

This declaration occupies the central position of the text. What precedes, is inferred from it: “He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.” What follows, is its chief manifestation: “In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because God sent his only begotten Son,” &c. We will consider, first, the central truth; secondly, its chief manifestation; and thirdly, the inferences from it.

1. The central declaration of the text— “God is Love.”

It is a comprehensive expression for the whole nature of God; not for a single attribute, but for the sum and harmony of all his attributes. You read in the scriptures, very often, that God is holy, but never that God is holiness; that he is just, but never that he is justice; that he is merciful, but never that he is mercy. Holiness, and justice, and goodness, and mercy, are severally, according to our feeble way of understanding and speaking of, God, the attributes of his nature. Neither of them can stand as a comprehensive expression for his nature itself, in its whole compass and perfectness. But, on the other hand, love is not an attribute of the divine nature, like holiness, wisdom, &c. It is that nature itself. It is the comprehension of all the moral attributes in their harmonious relations to one another.

There is a similar expression in the scriptures: “God is Light.” It is but another aspect of the other. God is Light, as he is Love. The one is figurative, the other the literal. We will employ the one expression to illustrate the other. The truth that God is Light, shall guide us in setting forth the truth that God is Love.

Now, you are well aware, in regard to light, in its pure, original state, as it comes, unchanged, from the face of the sun, that it is perfectly white. But you also know, that the moment you cause its ray to pass through a glass of a certain form, it is separated into seven varieties of color, and the white has all disappeared. You have all the beautiful shades of the rainbow, but nothing of the original aspect of the light. But by causing those several varieties of colored rays to fall upon another surface, you find they all disappear, and the original white is restored. And thus, it is perceived, that the whiteness of the solar ray, in its original state, is not an attribute of light, but is the light; not a mere variety of property which light exhibits, under certain circumstances, like the red, or blue, or violet, of the rainbow; but light itself in its unbroken, primitive perfectness. Broken up and decomposed by the prism, its parts exhibit various colors. Those parts being recomposed, as to make up the ray in its first integrity, there is no color remaining. The several hues which the decomposed light presents to our eyes, are its attributes, as we see it through a certain medium, or under certain conditions of imperfectness. But when light is seen in its purity and integrity, as the face of the sun delivers it, all colors are harmonized, merged, and lost in perfect white. “God is Light.”

But you may justly ask, when does the light which comes from the sun ever descend to our eyes, unchanged? As it passes through the atmosphere, or is reflected from the innumerable surfaces on which it falls — the clouds, the grass, the flowers — it is everywhere in a degree decomposed, so that we are greeted on every side with the various colors which give so much beauty, and often so much terror, to the face of nature. Who, from such various exhibitions of colored light, would imagine that light, in its perfection, has no color? God is Light; and when you contemplate his character, as its several manifestations are given to our imperfect vision, through the glass of his works, his providence, and his word, that which we know is and must be of the most perfect simplicity, appears as if compounded of many qualities, or distinct properties, which we call divine attributes — as justice, goodness, wisdom, holiness, mercy; while to each there seems allotted a separate office in the divine dispensations. Of these attributes, we speak and reason, as if they were not merely aspects in which the divine character appears to our infirm conceptions, who here, more than anywhere else, must “see through a glass darkly;” but as actually distinct properties, found as really in the nature of God, as in the language of man. We have obtained the habit of imagining these several attributes to be, not only real distinctions in God, as well as in our own minds, but so independent one of another, that in his dealings with men, he is sometimes seen in the exercise of a part, while the rest are not concerned; sometimes as a God of justice, but not, at the same time, and in the same act, just as much a God of mercy.

But what are these distinctions of justice, and mercy, and holiness, &c., under which we are obliged to speak and think of God? Do they really belong to him in that separate aspect, or only to our necessarily broken and confused conceptions of his nature? Do they exist in that boundless, uncreated light, as it is in God, or only as the atmosphere, and the clouds, and the several infirmities which hang around our moral vision, present him to our view? Are they not simply the effects of that process, which the revelation of the perfect unity and simplicity of the divine nature undergoes, in being necessarily conveyed through a language, or by manifestations, which man may read and comprehend? Certainly, it needs to argument to prove, that in God’s infinitely simple and perfect nature, to whom there is no succession of time or of counsel, no change of will or thought, there can be no such distinction of attributes; as if sometimes it were an inflexible justice, to the exclusion of mercy, that determined his way, and sometimes it were a tender, compassionate mercy, that put justice aside, and took the reins of sovereignty, and guided his hand. “God is Light.” All those several attributes under which the character of God appears, in being made visible to us, in the several revelations of his works, his providence, and his word, are harmonized and merged in the perfect unity and simplicity of the divine nature. “God is Love.”

But you know, with regard to light, that you cannot produce the pure white of the sun’s ray, without the presence and combination of every one of the several colors of the prism. It is the union of all, that causes all to disappear in a colorless light. Subtract either one of them, and you cannot make the perfect light. It is just as essential to the pure whiteness of the solar ray, that it contain the red of the fearful lightning, as that it shall contain the soft blue of the sky, and the grateful green that carpets the earth. And so it is in God, and his ways towards man. All his attributes—justice as well as mercy, wisdom as well as compassion, holiness as well as goodness, must be associated, and perfectly harmonized, in every procedure of his boundless administration, or else the perfect unity and simplicity of his nature are not preserved. Take away either, in any degree, and God is not Love. One may be manifest to our vision, and another concealed more strongly than another, but all must be there; all in the depths of the divine mind, concurring and harmonized. That which makes it so fearful a thing for an impenitent sinner “to fall into the hands of the living God,” must be there, as well as that which so tenderly invites and encourages the contrite heart to draw near to God, through Jesus Christ, and repose all its sins and sorrows upon his grace; the stern hatred and condemnation of sin, whereby the unquenchable fire has been prepared for the ungodly, which have laid up, in Christ Jesus, the glorious inheritance reserved for the righteous; all must be in God, and all must be present, and concurrent, and harmonized in all his dealings with us, whatever the manifestation to our infirm conceptions, or God is not Love.

2. Let us now consider that special manifestation of this character of God to which the text refers us.

“In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” Thus, the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, that wonderful way of salvation provided in the incarnation of the Son of God in our nature, and in his death on the cross, as a sacrifice for our sins, is that grand manifestation, which, above all his ways and doings, declares that God is Love. 

We are speaking now of the manifestation. God was Love, when he was known only as the Creator and Preserver of all things, as much as he is now, when we have the additional knowledge of him as “He who spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.” But then the manifestation of his character was widely different. As long as God continued to see all things on earth to be “very good,” as his own hand had fashioned it; as long as sin had not entered into the world, defacing, and defiling, and transforming all things; and man still was holy, so that God, the Light of light, beheld his own perfections reflected unchanged in the transparent purity of all created things; then, of course, the attribute of justice, the same that now arms the penalty of his violated law with such fearful strength, was as much a perfection of nis nature, and as much associated in all his works and ways, as it ever has been since. But because there was no sin then to be visited, no violated law to be vindicated, that justice lay all unseen in love, just as when there is no cloud in the firmament, that which at other times colors so deeply the sky, as if it were all a burning flame, lies unseen in the sun’s unbroken rays. Precisely as it was with the justice of God, so was it with all his other attributes. Since there was no since deserving punishment, there was no room for the manifestation of  his mercy. It lay undistinguished in love. So was it with holiness. As there was no sin in man to exhibit the opposite of holiness in God, there was no contrast by which the holiness of God could be manifested. It lay undistinguished in love. There being no want to be relieved, nor suffering to be pitied, there was nothing to exercise the divine compassion. It lay undistinguished in love. And as man was then in the likeness of God, perfectly holy, there was towards him the continual manifestation of the love of God, in which all divine perfections were united, however merged and undistinguished. And because man was “made perfect in love,” and all on earth was unpolluted by sin; heaven and earth, in point of moral atmosphere, were one. Therefore, the light of the countenance of the Creator passed unchanged into the mind of the creature. There was no interposing medium of human infirmities and sinfulness, no cloud of anger between man and his Maker, through which the manifestations of God’s character and will must pass, and by which they must be affected in getting to the view of the creature. Man was love; and thus he was capable of knowing God, and of reflecting in himself the perfect image of God, as he was, and is, and ever shall be—Love. And the garden of Paradise, where we held that perfect communion between man and God, which since the entrance of sin has never been renewed in this world; and where all the varieties of form and color were blended into one harmony of perfect loveliness, was it not a standing manifestation of the glory of God, saying always, “God is Love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.”

But sin perverted all the relations between man and God. It brought guilt on the creature, and wrath from the Creator. Their communion was destroyed; man was alienated; and henceforth he beheld his Maker from the great distance to which sin had banished him, and through the infirmities and corruption of nature which it had entailed upon him. There was not a thick cloud between them and all the manifestations of the character of God were through that cloud; so that, as when the sun shines through the storm and seems as if deprived of all light but that of a frowning tempest, the unchangeable God, as much Love as ever, appeared as if only justice and judgment were the habitation of his throne. But soon as established the covenant of grace. God promised his only begotten Son, through whom the sinner might again approach and hold communion with him, and through whom he would manifest himself to the sinner. Under that covenant we now behold “”the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.” Thus we are enabled to see that God is Love. But still there is so much in the world to call forth his character as just and holy, hating iniquity, and by no means clearing the guilty; a God of judgment, whose terrors we are earnestly exhorted to escape; that men are wont to read many of his doings, as if love were all removed far away from them, and as if their only testimony were to God’s justice and holiness.

How fearful, for example, was his judgment, when in the punishment of the wickedness that overspread the earth, he brought upon its whole population the waters of the deluge, and, with the exception of a single family, buried in one grave all mankind. Think of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; of the commanded extermination of the Canaanitish nations, under the sword of Israel; of the vengeance, which by famine, and pestilence, and sword, desolated the guilty Jerusalem, when the Romans were made God’s instruments of visiting upon the Jews, and the rejection of his Son.

Look at such fearful dispensations without the accompanying light of the scriptures, we may see that God was just and holy; that the Judge of all the earth did right’ but one is apt to feel that we must look elsewhere, if we desire to find the dispensation in which was fulfilled the declaration, “God is Love.” Such, however, is not the aspect in which it is our privilege and duty, under the light of the scriptures, to contemplate those proceedings. And the same with regard to that most appalling of all, the judgment of God upon the wicked in the last day, consigning them to a retribution which is never to end, “where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” Surely, (it may be said,) though God is just in that retribution, you cannot say that he is Love. Yes, it is our privilege under the revelation of his word, to pass in review all the most tremendous visitations of judgment that ever came on the earth; and to survey in anticipation, all that is yet to come upon man, in earth or in hell, and to declare that, not only in his own essential being, but in each of these manifestations, God is Love. Whatever its aspect to the individual recipient, still, in the relations of God to all intelligent beings inhabiting the same universe, angels as well as men, over whom his government is exercised, and before whom it is to be honored; his sternest severity to transgressors, impenitent–the very judgment in which he is most fearfully “a consuming fire,” is that in which could we read it as it is, we should see that he is Love. Did we but see all these footsteps of his power and holiness, not as mere insulated parts of his ways, but in all their connections with the whole dominion of God, we should understand, not only that they are compatible with his character as declared in the text, but that, seeing what this world is, as a rebellious world, they are positively essential to that character.

And what matters it to our full belief of all this, if, while assured of it on the authority of the divine word, we should feel ourselves baffled in our utmost efforts to comprehend how it can be? Can we any better comprehend how all the diversified colorings of nature, from the delicate verdure of the grass of the field, to the glare of the lightning, and the blaze of the devouring fire, are concerned in, and essential to the composition of the light of an unclouded day, as it comes in all its transparent whiteness from the sun? Can we enter into the secrets of the light, any more than into the mysteries of that divine nature of which it is the scriptural similitude? If we believe the truths of philosophy in regard to the one, because we see them, little as we comprehend them; may we not believe the doctrines of the Gospel as to the other, when certified by the Spirit of truth in the holy scriptures? Surely, it is not wonderful that the very love of God to men and angels, should demand just such terrible judgments upon the wicked, and yet that we should be unable to see wherein the dire necessity lies. Consider how little we are capable of discerning the interior of anything; how we are only as children in the nursery, looking out upon the boundless empire of God, through a very little window, and that very obscure; that is it but just a corner of the map of his universal providence that is unrolled to our inspection, so that we see never but “parts of his ways,” and cannot follow out a single line of the chart beyond our own position. In another world, under a more perfect revelation, that chart will be more unrolled. We shall see God as he is, if it be our happiness to inherit the blessedness of his kingdom. All his ways will then be vindicated. Then shall we see perfectly, what we now believe assuredly, how all his judgments, as well as all his mercies, praise him; how all the consuming fire that ever fell on man has praised him; how all the retribution poured upon lost souls in hell praiseth him; and how perfectly all his severest dispensations unite and harmonize with all his most compassionate and merciful, in adoring testimony that God is Love. 

But far beyond all other manifestations of this precious truth, is that wonderful provision for the redemption of sinners, to which we are directed in the text. It is mentioned there as if it were the only manifestation; so far is it beyond all others, in the fullness and glory of its evidence. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.” The praises of the glorified Church in heaven are represented as being intensely concentrated upon that great gift of God’s love, and on the great redemption wrought out by the atoning death of that only begotten Son, as if in its light, the saints “made perfect” were capable of seeing now other manifestation of God. They sing that “new song;” a song always new, because the theme is never exhausted: “Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”

In accomplishing the salvation of sinners, the one great difficulty, if we may so speak, was to preserve the justice, and holiness, and truth, and faithfulness of God from all dishonor and all compromise with sin; to vindicate his violated law to the full exaction of its penalty; to manifest his own infinite holiness as a sin-hating God; and yet to open a way for the going forth of the unsearchable riches of his grace, for the free forgiveness and the everlasting blessedness of the repenting sinner. To provide salvation on any other terms, might have manifested compassion and mercy to the lost; but in such a salvation it could not have been said that God is Love. Such mercy to the guilty would have been anything but love to the whole universe of intelligent and accountable beings. It is infinitely more important to the happiness of the universe, that the law of God shall be honored, and his faithfulness as a righteous Governor sustained, than that sinners should be saved.

In the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, wherein God hath laid on him the iniquities of us all, nothing is lost on his part in order that we may be saved. All the divine perfections are maintained and are glorified; all co-operate in entire harmony in that great salvation; yea, all are manifested and vindicated as never before in the ways of God. Never were his mercy and compassion so seen, as when heaven and earth beheld them in the working out our peace at such cost as the humiliation, and agony, and death of the only begotten Son of God. Never did he appear in such robes of justice and judgment, hating and punishing iniquity; abating not a jot or tittle of its curse; never was his holiness so seen, as when , rather than save sinners at the expense of his law, he saved them at the expense of his own Son, and delivered him up to be “made a curse for us.” Ezekiel saw in a vision “the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord,” and he says it was “as the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain.” John had a similar vision; and says, like Ezekiel, “there was a rainbow about the throne.” It was a vision of the glory of God in the redemption of sinners by Christ, wherein all the divine perfections unite, and co-operate, and blend in beautiful harmony; wherein, while they constitute the most perfect assurance of salvation to every penitent and believing sinner, they all bend, as one, around the throne rendering all honor to the government of Him that sitteth thereon, as being only the more glorified, as the righteous Judge, in providing as a compassionate Father that free salvation.

3. And now let me turn your attention to the inference in the text from the character there given under the name of Love. “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is Love.” In other words, where there is not the love of God in the heart, there is no true knowledge of him. To know him truly, and to love him sincerely, must go together. 

Indeed it is a principle of general application, that we know nothing that is lovely, unless we love it. The absence of love is the absence of true knowledge. To know by the hearing of the ear, or to see, as a matter of fact, that, according to a rule and the ordinary way of estimating things, an object deserves to be loved, is one thing; but it is a very different matter to know its loveliness by our own consciousness, by a personal appreciation and the testimony of our affections. We know not the harmonies of music, however we may learn them as a thing of science, except our ear can receive and enjoy them. We know not the loveliness of a landscape, which the hand of nature had adorned with every beauty and grace, except there be in us that susceptibility, that sympathy of feeling, that love for it, without which we observe it now, and care not for it. We may know that it is lovely, because so it is said to be. But if we do not love it, we show that we do not know it, but by the hearing of the ear. And thus, since God is Love, and infinitely worthy to be loved by us, with all our hearts; if we love him not, there is the most conclusive evidence that we do not even know him. That he is, and something of what he is, we may know., On the assurance of his word, or by the process of an argument, we may be certified, that he hath indeed a most just claim on all the love we have to give. But know him with the only knowledge that is owned as the knowledge of God in the scriptures, we cannot, unless we love him. “God is Light.” The eye sees light, by first receiving it. “God is Love.” The heart knows him, by loving him. With the understanding, we know that he is; but with the affections we know what he is; and especially what he is as “the God of all grace,” manifesting himself in the gift of his only begotten Son, that we might live through him.

Hence, you find the scriptures, that the knowledge and the love of God are spoken of as identical. They whose hearts are not with him, are always described as those who do not know him, no matter now knowing they may be in the doctrine of his word, or how mighty in the exposition of the scriptures. “This is eternal life,” said our Lord, “to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent;” where, you see, the knowledge of God is put for the whole of spiritual life, and thus is inseparably joined with the love of God. And thus, brethren, you see the essential difference between all that mere information concerning God, which, however embraced by the understanding, lies no deeper; and that inward, heart-received, and heart-subduing knowledge, written with the finger of God, upon our deepest and most governing affections. Without the latter, we know not God. All our knowledge of him is blindness. It is seeing, but not perceiving. It is knowledge lodged upon the surface, as good seed lying by the way-side, or upon stony ground, where it has no depth of earth and cannot bear any fruit. It is not seed implanted in the only soil that is prepared for it, and where only it can spring forth and yield the fruits of righteousness. What if we “understand all mysteries and all knowledge,” so as to speak of the things of God “with the tongues of men and of angels,” and have not love! Alas! “It profiteth us nothing;” we are but as “the sounding brass and the tinkling cymbal.” “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is Love.

And now I will conclude this discourse with a few practical lessons arising out of the views we have taken:

1st. We may learn wherein consists the essential nature of true piety. 

True piety is simply likeness to God. Since he is Light, his people are called “Children of Light.” To be in the image of God was the whole of the nature of piety when man was unfallen. To be created anew in that image, by regenerating grace, is the basis and substance of all piety now that fallen man is striving to regain what sin has made him lose. To make that likeness perfect once more, will be the finishing work of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. But God is Love. The sum and substance, therefore, of all true piety is love, in its two aspects, towards God and towards man. All the imperfections of piety is imperfectness of love; and the perfection of the child of God is his being “made perfect in love.” And thus, when St. John repeats in a subsequent verse of the same chapter the declaration of the text, “God is Love,”he adds an inference, “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” “As He is, so are we in this world.”

The law of God is like himself — it is Love. In adaptation to our infirmities, it is broken into many precepts, but all are one commandment – Love. It is a harp of many strings, but all unite in the harmony of love. “Love is the fulfilling of the law,” as it is the perfectness of the Author. The Christian character is made up of many of virtues and aspects of grace, as it exhibits the several features of holiness, of humility, of devotedness to God, of benevolence to man, of patience, of meekness, or prayerfulness, of abhorrence of that which is evil, of zeal for that which is good; but love is the life of all; and just in proportion as the Christian character approaches perfection are all those several aspects seen blended and merged into one controlling, harmonizing, animating, strengthening, love to God and man. 

While the children of God continue in this earthly state, their character will be imperfect; it several parts deficient in proper harmony and proportion; some aspects and influences of piety taking undue precedence of others which should have equal prominence; more faith, perhaps than gentleness; more distrust of self than trust in God; more hope than fear, or more fear than hope; more meekness to submit to affliction than boldness to go forward in duty; more prayerfulness to obtain blessings than thankfulness to acknowledge them. From Christian to Christian, there is great diversity of religious character, even among those who may be considered equally holy; some shining more beautifully in one aspect of piety, some in another. Let us remember, they are “all children of the light.” And where, in all this world of imperfectness, does the purest light find a surface to rest on, without being spoiled thereby of its native proportion of parts, and changed from its original aspect? The child of God never in this life exhibits in himself the image of God without imperfection. All the features are there, but more or less obscure and out of harmony. But he is growing in grace. The likeness is being brought out into more and more fullness, as his Christian character becomes more meet for the heavenly inheritance. The more mature he becomes in “the mind of Christ,” the more will all things within him assume their proper place, and proportion, and symmetry; losing their individual aspects, and combining into one blended harmony of all Christian virtues, like the several precepts of the law uniting and fulfilled in one single commandment. And when the child of God attains the heavenly state and the whole “general assembly and Church of the first born” are there in their fulness and final glory, without spot or blemish,  all in the perfect likeness of God, suppose ye that we shall then contemplate each other’s perfectness in the several separate virtues in which present circumstances draw out the Christian character, any more than we shall then have need to read the one commandment of the law of God, under the several particulars of duty in which it is now presented in the ten? Shall we know one another but as made perfect in love? Will not all the separate aspects of Christian excellence be then merged in the simple perfectness of love, as all hues of the rainbow are lost in the pure white of the perfect light?

2nd The view we have taken of the divine character, under the guidance of the text, suggests considerations most comforting, under the various dispensations of Providence.

It is written that “all things work together for good to them that love God.” “All things!” Nothing is excepted. The whole universe of things is included. All conspire, and all work together, the greatest and the least, the mightiest movements of empires, the least changes in domestic of personal affairs, for the ultimate bringing to pass of the promises of God to his Church, and to every individual child in that great household. But how conflicting oftentimes appear these things; how directly set and prepared by man against all the good of them that love God; with what malice the powers of Satan are continually at work to make all things result in their eternal ruin; so that it often seems as if there were nothing more contradictory to the aspect of all things, than that they can possible be working together for the good of them that love God. But look abroad upon the face of the sky and the surface of the earth! What variety, what contrasts, of colors does the light exhibit! And yet all these work together, all must work together, to form the uncolored light of day. Can you trace their operation to that result? And is there any mystery in the ways of God more inexplicable? Is it any less difficult for us to comprehend that under the power and wisdom of God, those things which seem so conflicting in the events of the world, in regard to his Church, should all be made to co-operate continually in producing its ultimate good, and in proving that towards it, all the ways of God are love? Let us remember that to such children as his people are in this world, it takes all his ways, the chastening as well as the comforting, the severe as well as the tender, to deal with them in love. The dark lines have as much to do in making their true light, as the milder. Were all dispensations without trials, without sorrow, God would not be love in his dealings with such children, so compassed with infirmities, so easily going astray, so in need of correction, any more than if all were unmixed tribulation. Oh! how should this enable us to glory even in any tribulation, knowing that if we do love God, that trial is only one aspect, one operation, of  his love towards us; one of those lines of Providence, which, as when we look upon the wrong side of a beautiful tapestry, seem now all mixed, and confused, and contradictory, as if, instead of any wise design or loving object, all were at best but blind chance; but when seen on the right side, as they appear to those who look on them from heaven, whence every line can be traced to the uttermost, exhibit but one continual evidence of the hand of God, ordering all things in infinite wisdom, all with constant reference to the fulfillment of his promises, all working together in the most faithful, patient, unchangeable love to them that love him. This we now know by faith, on the assurance of God’s word. It is a part of that very working together of all things for our good, that we must know these things only by faith, so long as we abide in the flesh. The sight of them will come when the end of them is accomplished. Then, with what adoration will we trace in every minute particular, the ways of God’s love towards us and his whole Church, and see what steady light was always upon us, however dark the earthly cloud; and how steadily, from all directions, the working together went on; and how all the wrath of man and all the malice of Satan, were forced to join in it, so that in that respect “all things” indeed were ours, “the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come.”

Lastly. From the view we have taken of the character of God, there arises a thought of no little seriousness, for the consideration of all who withhold their hearts from him.

They often read this very text, “God is Love,” as if it were a refuge from the sterner declarations of the scriptures; and hence they indulge the hope that though they go on to neglect him, to disobey him, to refuse him their hearts, and set at nought his fear, and in such sin should die; nevertheless, either he will not, or else may not execute his law upon them in the awful penalty pronounced in his word, but in some way or other may make room for their escape. I beg them to consider. There is no encouragement in this character of God to them. Precisely the reverse. You might as well say there never could have been such a judgment as the deluge, as that the impenitent will not be cast into hell, because God is Love. I grant that between the two judgments there is an unspeakable difference in degree, but both are judgments of God’s anger against sinners — both awful beyond our conception; and if his being Love must prevent the one, it would have prevented the other. You might as well say, the fearful flash of the red lightning can never appear, because all light is its original perfection is purely white. The more our God is Love in the harmony of all his attributes, and in the harmony of all his works and ways, the more must he be “a consuming fire” to those who, instead of harmonizing in their hearts and ways with his will, exhibit rebellion where there should be love, and reject that great manifestation of the love of God toward us, his only begotten Son, sent into the world that they might live through him. Surely, the earthly ruler is not less the loving magistrate, when he bars the prison upon the criminal, than when he opens the door of some peaceful asylum to the needy and deserving. You know it is just the contrary. The more he is love, the more is he just; the more will he uphold the just law; the more will he be stern against transgressors; the more the obedient can rely on him, because the more must the disobedient be afraid of him. Mercy is not love. In some minds it is the antagonist of the ends of true love. Tenderness in an earthly ruler, compassion that lays aside the penalty of the law, is not love. It may be the very reverse; producing results which true love would of all things most deprecate. You must think of God always as having a law to uphold and honor, a moral government of boundless extent to sustain. You must take care to remember, that however dear to him is every immortal soul; however he “desireth not the death of sinner, but rather that he may turn unto him and live;” infinitely dearer to him are his own law, and government, and holiness, and truth, all of which are pledged for the punishment of sin; and the very fact that God is Love, not mercy, not compassion, not goodness, not holiness, not justice, not wisdom, but the meeting and harmonizing of all these in that love which includes and employs all, each in its place, in a perfect government over all creatures in heaven and earth, and under the dearth, is as much the assurance that the sinner who doth not turn unto him must perish under the wrath of his law, a that the penitent sinner who doth turn unto him shall live in the fullness of his grace and glory. “The terror of the Lord” is not another part of God’s character, but the same. It is only that character of love seen from another quarter, in manifestation on another surface, in exercise toward another object; just as the same pillar of fire was all brightness and consolation toward God’s people, and all darkness and dismay toward their enemies. All depends upon us — upon the position from which we look at God, the direction from which we come to him. Do we contemplate him from amidst his own reconciled people — do we come to him with hearts turned unto him, seeking him through his only Son, our only Saviour? then he is love, and because he is love, our salvation and blessedness in his kingdom are sure — all is light. But is it from the opposite quarter, from among those who would not have him reign over them, and would not seek him, but reject his grace? then he is still infinite love; and for that very reason, your condemnation and rejection are certain. There is now no salvation for you; you are lost forever, except you are in Christ Jesus. God, in wonderful love, has provided a way by which we may live before him; by which the most sinful, truly repenting, may live in his peace and glory forever. But it is “through his only begotten Son.” The way is broad enough for all. The invitation is free enough and urgent enough for all. None are cast out that come in that way. None are accepted that come in any other. None that perish will have any to accuse by themselves. “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life,” is the Saviour’s kind remonstrance with them now. Ye would not come unto me, that he might have life, will be his stern rebuke and condemnation, when they meet him as the Judge of the quick and dead, and find themselves cast out, and condemned, and lost, to all eternity.

God is love. His saints, made perfect in his likeness, are love. Heaven, the communion of God and his saints is love. What is hell? Only think of it as having, in its fallen angels and its lost immortal souls, no love; their intellectual powers and all the capacities and desires of their fallen nature in fullest vigor, but no love! What then must be that awful fellowship—that communion of the lost! Saviour, we flee to thee! Oh! bind our hearts to thee. In these may it be the prayer and striving of our whole life to be found, each hour of life, that wherever death may find us we may be safe in thee! 

⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.