Does God love like this?

Yesterday in our united service we were thinking about love - God's love for us, which hopefully results in love for God, for neighbours and for each other. We were using 1 Corinthians 13 as the basis for our thoughts. The description is of Christian love. But does God love as Paul describes? He is the source of Christian love; is he the pattern, or is his love of a different kind?

• 'Love is patient', 'long suffering' . Yes, God is patient. He doesn't zap us immediately we do anything wrong! And he seems able to put up with a lot more going wrong than we think should be allowed.
• 'Love is kind'. Yes - that is what 'grace' is all about, kindness and favour to those who do not merit it.
• 'Love does not envy'. Well, God does not need to.
• 'Love does not boast, it is not proud' - in the AV, 'vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.' How does that sit with God's refusal to share his glory with anyone else? Easily - love that is not honest is questionable, and God is far above everything he has created. So is his Son. Yet Jesus exemplifies true humility, and was not too proud to wash his disciples' feet, claiming all the while to be doing only what he saw his Father doing.
• 'Love does not dishonour others'. Neither does God dishonour us. He does not ignore us, nor does he ride roughshod over our free will. He honours us as people who are responsible for what they do.
• 'Love is not self seeking.' One version says, 'Love does not insist on its own way.' But doesn't God do exactly that? He seeks praise and glory for himself, he wants us to pray, 'Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.'  Yes and no. He wants us to live in the real world, where he is worthy of all praise and glory, and his kingdom and his will are not just the best goals in life, but the only goals that give lasting harmony and happiness. Love has to seek these things. But God does not insist on his own way, he gives us the choice: we are free to reject his love and to reject his ways and to take the consequences. God's sovereignty and foresight do not cancel out human freedom and responsibility.
  
• 'Love is not easily angered'. No - neither is God. Especially if we are his children.
• 'Love keeps no record of wrongs.' But hold on, doesn't God do just that? On judgement day we will have to account for everything we have said and done and thought. Isn't that keeping a record of wrongs? How can God be a loving God if he is going to be the judge of all? This is a major problem Paul looks at in his letter to the Romans. The way I look at it is this: God is love, and because he loved the world he sent his Son to open the way for our wrongs to be blotted out of his record. He could not stop being just and fair, so the only way to take our wrongs from us was incredibly costly. But God has done it. However, his love needs to be responded to in order to have any effect, otherwise it is as if he is loving at a distance. But when we do respond and believe his love and believe we can live in his presence without guilt, then we experience his forgiveness and can face judgement day without fear. 'Love keeps no record of wrongs' is another way of saying, 'Love forgives'; that's is what God does, and what we must do.
• 'Love does not rejoice in evil but rejoices in the truth.' God hates it when bad things happen - when one member of Christ's body is suffering, Christ is suffering. But God loves it when good things are said and done.
• 'Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.' Certainly God protects and perseveres. Does he need to trust and hope? He knows all about us, he knows exactly what the future holds. Better, perhaps, if we say God is always confident. Yet from our point of view, we can say that God risks putting his affairs into our hands - he is counting on us, and that requires a fair amount of faith and hope!
• 'Love never fails', and God will never fail, nor will he fail us.

'We love, because God first loved us.' Jesus is the one who most clearly reveals God's nature, and his love for us his people is paralleled by our Father's love for us. Our problem is we don't see it as clearly as we might. Lord, open the eyes of our hearts to your love! And may your love constantly fill us and overflow!