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relative side of truth. It is not stated merely as an abstraction; we are taken at once to
love in action:--
"God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent
His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love,
not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for
our sins . . . . . No man hath seen God at any time . . . . . If a man say, I love God, and
hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how
can he love God Whom he hath not seen?" (I John 4: 7-21).
Just as we know light only by its manifestations, so we know love only by that in
which "was manifested the love of God". The fact that God is both "light" and "love"
accounts for the plan of redemption. Light working by itself would have meant
condemnation to us all (John 3: 19, 20), but love devised a way whereby the holiness
and righteousness of God should be upheld, and yet the sinner be justified and accepted.
The very nature of God demands the cross as the only solution; light necessitates
judgment, but love provides the ransom.
With these two broad channels of manifestation in some measure understood, we shall
be able to trace more clearly the attributes of God revealed in the Scriptures. Before
doing so, however, we must see how this double manifestation was anticipated in the Old
Testament names of God, and how the completion is reached in the Person of Christ as
God manifest in the flesh.
Light and Love--"This God is our God."