Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

1 John 4:7-10

In the last week or so, a once popular Christian song has been reimagined to affirm the LGBTQ message that love is love. After all, the passage above states that God is love and whoever loves has been born of God.”

Not so fast. That is the same kind of distortions of God’s love John was addressing in his day.

It is true that God is love, but as John writes, “the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so the we might live through him.”

Human love is imperfect and anything that is called “love’ that is outside of God’s directive for human beings is sin and it is those sins, that God “sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

Propitiation? It’s a big word that means “the act of appeasing or making up for a wrongdoing to regain someone’s favor.” On our own, thanks to our sin, we are far from God, but thanks to the work of Christ on the cross and through His resurrection, He has reconciled us to the Father and our response is to simply love God and lover others as well.

You might be familiar with this verse from John’s Gospel:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16