God is Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Axiom- a statement that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.

Eight Axioms to Cultivate a Robust Faith

• God is love, so it is all about love.

• God is always present and at work.

• God is just like Jesus.

• God meets us in our messy reality.

• God cares about all of it more than we do.

• God does the same work in us and through us.

• God's love always reckons with power.

• God transforms us through embodied participation.

1 John 4:7-19

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. 16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. 17 In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love. 19 We love because he first loved us.

God is love and love is the greatest power in the world.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

1 If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

What are we without love? 

I am a noisy gong.

I am nothing.

I gain nothing.

It seems like this has always been a temptation for Christians: to privilege knowledge and power at the expense of love.

Salvation cannot be separated from God's love.

It is hard for us to trust love to get the job done. 

• Living with clinched fists is exhausting.

• How often do you walk around with clinched fists and not realize it?

• What are you holding on to that hinders your ability to love?•Living with clinched fists is exhausting.

• How often do you walk around with clinched fists and not realize it?

• What are you holding on to that hinders your ability to love?

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• Living with hands open enables us to live out love.