The Apple and the Tree (1 John 4:7-8)
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8)
On billboards and t-shirts across the country, one will find three simple words: “God is love.” Those three words contain a breadth of theology unparalleled by human thought. Can we possibly understand these three words? Who can describe the love existing between the Father, Son and Spirit? Who can fathom the love God has for Himself as the most lovely One? Can we understand the love of God for this world? We look over a field of daisies and ponder like G.K. Chesterton, “It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.” Even more so, who can fathom the love of God for this world in sending His only Son? Of sending Him at the right time to die for the ungodly, the wicked, the rebellious?
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?
Each of us have heard the saying, “The apple never falls far from the tree.” Who can love like God except those who have been born of God? Who can grow in their love for their fellow man except those who spend their days with Him “who loved me and gave himself for me”? (Gal. 2:20) The love of God serves as both the motivation and the formation of each and every ounce of love found in the Christian heart. In this light, one can only echo the prayer of Paul: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father…that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:14-18)
