This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
God took the initiative to reach out in love to us. This model for our love is a model of initiative in sacrifice. Having reminded us that God is Spirit and God is Light, the apostle John also now reminds us that God is Love, and each eternal quality of God by necessity must be indivisibly and eternally fused together with every other one of His holy attributes. It is not our nature to spontaneously love God or others. We do not love God in an unsolicited manner. We did not take the initiative in love; God did. Love begets love. God’s love causes a reply of love in us. The essence of Who God is requires that each of His attributes are inseparably interlinked together. One single quality must never be divorced from His other holy attributes. God took action in loving us. He sent His Son to die on the cross. His love was not in response to man’s love but was initiated wholly within Himself. It was His plan from eternity to do this. The love of God must never be disconnected from His righteousness, His holiness, His goodness, and His perfect nature, for to do so is to reduce God to a figment of man’s imagination. But herein is God’s Love (as well as His righteousness, holiness, goodness, and grace), not that we loved God (for we were dead in our sins and at enmity with Him), but that He loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son into the world to be the propitiation for our sins so that all who believe on Him, would not perish but have everlasting life. God’s love cannot contradict His justice. God is perfect and absolute righteousness. He can never oppose who He is. He cannot wink at our sins. He will not sweep them under the rug. God is no crooked divine dealer in the sky. Someone had to pay the price for sin. The only person who could satisfy a holy God was Jesus Christ. His death on the cross satisfied the justice of God. That was an exorbitant price to pay; He paid top dollar for our sins…His very own life. God does not save us by the life of Christ but by the death of Christ. We do not become Christians by following Jesus’ example. We become Christians by accepting His death in place of our eternal death. Only Christ’s death can satisfy an absolutely holy God. Dear friends, since God loved us so much, should we not also love one another?
Spiritual Steve 