God is Love

Yesterday I took part in some interviews of ministerial candidates. I asked one of the candidates if there were any doctrinal or theological issues of particular importance facing ministers today. The concern he mentioned was the tendency today to over-emphasize God's love to the neglect of God's holiness. I was pleased that he recognized this prevalent distortion of the phrase "God is love" (1 John 4:8, 16). I can't count the number of times I have heard people use this verse to define God as "love". The statement ‘God is love’ is not defining God, but describing Him. Instead of defining God according to our understanding (romantically-laden) of the word “love” we need to define “love” according to God. We would do better to stop using the word love to define God and spend more time learning God's definition of love!