Q&R: Should we use Love as a name for God? Brad Jersak

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Question:

Should we use the word Love as a name for God? I started thinking about this after I recently read that “God is change.” God certainly is IN change, and God is fluid. But is He change? Then, I was reading a suggestion to substitute the word ‘love’ for God. I haven’t yet found where God describes Himself as love (although He uses many wonderful descriptions.) I know that the Apostle John says God is love. And, given our unceasing ability to make things up, do we go maybe a bit too far when we substitute the word ‘love’ for God? 

Response:

Thanks for this great question. I don’t know that God ever uses “Love” as a proper name in Scripture, but you are right that the Apostle John says “God is Love” to describe God’s singular nature. To the degree that the “Name” is descriptive of God’s self-revealed nature, then I believe it’s fine to use it as a name. 

It then begs the question: what kind of love? It can be a very watered-down and corrupted word. But that’s where some of the actual biblical names for God are more explicit. For example, YHWH (Yahweh) is translated as “I AM”. While many would rush to say that “I AM” means “self-existent One” (which is surely true), I would suggest God wants us to ask, “Am what?” and in the revelation to Moses (Exodus 33 and many times in the Bible thereafter), God finishes the sentence: “I AM gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness (or mercy).” In other words, “I AM what? I AM LOVE!”

So, too, in the Name of Jesus, we have a picture of what love looks like: Jesus means, “God saves.” And his other name, Emmanuel, means “God with us.” These names describe God’s one nature: Love. But John goes even further: if you want to know what Love looks like, he says, behold the Cross, where God is revealed as self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering Love. Love looks like the One who gave himself to the world, not taking vengeance, but reconciling the world to himself. And if so, Love is not only a good name for God, it’s one of the best. 

But you also mentioned hearing, “God is change.” I don’t know the context of that statement, but I think the Scripture says otherwise. Verses like, “I, the Lord, do not change” (Malachi 3:6) and “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

Note: this does NOT mean we experience God as an “unmoved mover” or a non-relational wall of cold granite. It means that God’s nature (love!) does not change. God’s love never fails, never turns away, never ceases, is never contingent. God is infinite love and, therefore, God is immovably faithful to all whom God loves (namely, the whole world).

How I experience that love might change according to my orientation toward it, but as one early Christian teacher put it, “God no more turns from the sinner than the sun ceases to shine on the blind.” I might turn from love or be blinded to it, but the infinite, abiding Love of God for each of us never changes.

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