God Is Love, But What Is Love?

Here is an interesting verse. "But now the Lord declares, 'Those who honor me I will honor, those who despise Me will be disdainded.'" (1 Samuel 2:30) This verse palinly says there are some people whom God disdains.

Talking about God Psalm 5:5 says that God does "hate all who do wrong." This verse plainly says that God hates some people.

But the Bible also says that God is love (1 John 4:8) and "his love endures forever." (1 Chronicles 16:34)

Is the Bible contradictory? Is God schizophrenic? No. We need to understand what love is. Love is not a feeling. Love is an action. 1 John 4:19 says: "We love because He [God] first loved us."

Romans 5:8 tells us what love is: "God demonstrated His own love for us in this; While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

God sacrificed His only Son so that we could live. Love is an action, not a feeling. God tells to do the same thing: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." (Luke 6:27)

He is telling us to do the same thing He did for us. We were enemies of God. We did wrong. We despised God. That means God disdained and hated us. But, He also loved us. He loved His enemies and that love is His giving His only Son to die, paying on our behalf the penalty we owe for disobeying God and being an enemy of God.

In our culture we tend to think of love as a feeling. But in the Bible love is an action, not a feeling. We are not called by God to like everyone, but we are called by God to put aside our feelings and act in a loving manner toward everyone.