God is Love, Light and Life. Each of these things tell us something special about God.
1st John 4:7-8 tells us that God is love: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” 1st John 4:16 also states: “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Referring to God as “love” means that He is intelligent, emotional and also possesses a free-will, insomuch that love requires a choice.
1st John 1:5-7 tells us that God is light: “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Referring to God as “light” conveys God’s holiness, in terms of His holy character. James 1:17 further adds: “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” Habakkuk 1:13 states: “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You can not look on wickedness with favor.” Non-Calvinists argue that this disproves Calvinism’s doctrine of exhaustive determinism, because God is too holy to ever be considered sin’s author.
John 1:3-4 tells us that God is life: “All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” God is the source of all life in existence. Jesus states at Luke 20:38: “Now He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for all live to Him.” Genesis 2:7 states of the first man, Adam: “Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” God is life, and what He seeks from us can be referred to as The Great Exchange. God seeks to give life for life. God desires to give you His life in exchange for your life. He will give you eternal life, with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, if you will give Him your life. God chooses us to choose Him. Will we?
