1 John 4:8-16--"God is love." "God is light"; "God is Spirit"; "God is love." Spirit and Light are expressions of God's essential nature. Love is the expression of his personality corresponding to His nature. It is the nature of God to love. He dwells always in the atmosphere of love. Just how to define or describe the love of God may be difficult if not impossible. It appears from certain scriptures (1 John 3:16; John 3:16) that the love of God is of such a nature that it betokens a constant interest in the physical and spiritual welfare of His creatures as to lead Him to make sacrifices beyond human conception to reveal that love. (2) The objects of God's Love. _aa) Jesus Christ, God's only-begotten Son, is the special object of His Love._ Matt. 3:17--"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Also Matt. 17:5; Luke 20:13. Jesus Christ shares the love of the Father in a unique sense, just as He is His Son in a unique sense. He is especially "My chosen." "The One in whom my soul delighteth," "My beloved Son,"--literally: the Son of mine, the beloved. And we can readily understand how that He who did the will of God perfectly should thus become the special object of the Father's love. Of course, if the love of God is eternal, as is the nature of God, which must be the case, then, that love must have had an eternal object to love. So Christ, in addressing the Father, says: "Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." _bb) Believers in His Son, Jesus Christ, are special objects of God's Love._ John 16:27--"For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God." 14:21-23--"He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father. ...If a man love me...my Father will love him." 17:23--"And hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." Do we really believe these words? We are not on the outskirts of God's love, but in its very midst. There stands Christ right in the very midst of that circle of the Father's love; then He draws us to that spot, and, as it were, disappears, leaving us standing there bathed in the same loving-kindness of the Father in which He Himself had basked. _cc) God loves the world of sinners and ungodly men._ John 3:16--"For God so loved the world" was a startling truth to Nicodemus in his narrow exclusivism. God loved not the Jew only, but also the Gentile; not a part of the world of men, but every man in it, irrespective of his moral character. For "God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). This is wonderful when we begin to realize what a world in sin is. The love of God is broader than the measure of man's mind. God desires the salvation of all men (1 Tim. 2:4). (3) How the Love of God reveals Itself. _aa) In making infinite sacrifice for the salvation of men._