All of the truths we have examined in this series — righteousness, authority, prayer, warfare, healing, confession, the Word as foundation — serve one ultimate purpose. They equip the new creation to be what God always intended humanity to be: a visible expression of who He is in the world. And the most fundamental, most defining characteristic of who God is, is expressed in four words that may be the most significant four words in the entire Bible:
God is love.
“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” — 1 John 4:8 (KJV)
Not God is loving — as a quality He sometimes expresses. Not God has love — as a possession He chooses to share. God is love — as a statement of His essential being, His core nature, the defining reality of who He is. Love is not something God does. Love is what God is.
And the new creation, born of this God, carries within them — through the indwelling Holy Spirit — the actual love of God Himself:
“And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” — Romans 5:5 (KJV)
Shed abroad. Not deposited cautiously. Not dripped in sparingly. Shed abroad — poured out, spread throughout, filling every dimension of the new creation’s inner life with the love that is the very nature of the God who now inhabits them. This is not a command the new creation is expected to fulfil through moral effort. It is a provision the Holy Spirit has already made.
“God Is Love” — The Most Radical Statement in Scripture
The declaration of 1 John 4:8 requires the same precision of attention we brought to the Greek words in earlier articles — because its full weight is rarely carried in popular Christian teaching.
God is love. The Greek is ho theos agape estin — literally, the God love is. John is not making a comparative statement — God is like love, or God resembles love. He is making an identity statement: the nature of God is constituted by agape. Love is not one of His attributes among others. It is the defining character of His being — the reality from which all His other attributes flow, through which all His other attributes are expressed.
When God exercises justice, His justice is an expression of love — because love cannot be indifferent to the harm that injustice brings. When God demonstrates holiness, His holiness is an expression of love — because love cannot accommodate the corruption that sin brings to those He loves. When God operates in power, His power is the power of love — directed toward the redemption and restoration of the ones He loves.
This matters for the new creation because it defines what it means to be born of God. “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” — 1 John 4:7 (KJV). To be born of God is to be born of love — to have the very love-nature of God as the foundational reality of your new spiritual being. The new creation does not merely receive instructions to love. They receive the capacity to love with God’s own love, because the One who is love now dwells in them.
Agape — The Love That Has No Human Equivalent
The word translated love throughout these passages is the Greek agape — and it is essential to distinguish it from the other words the Greek language uses for love, because the distinction reveals what makes the love of God categorically different from any natural human affection.
Eros — the love of desire and attraction, driven by what the beloved offers to the one who loves. Eros is conditional: it rises and falls with the attractiveness of its object. When the object ceases to satisfy, eros diminishes.
Phileo — the love of friendship and natural affection, the warmth of genuine attachment between people who know and enjoy each other. Phileo is beautiful and good — but it too is responsive. It is love in response to qualities perceived in another.
Agape — is altogether different. Agape is not driven by the quality of its object. It does not rise and fall with the attractiveness or performance of the one loved. It is the love that loves because of what it is, not because of what it receives. It is the love that gave — “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” — before the world had anything to offer in return, while the world was still in rebellion, still hostile, still at enmity with God.
“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” — Romans 5:8 (KJV)
While we were yet sinners. Not after we had performed to an acceptable standard. Not after we had cleaned ourselves up. While we were yet sinners — when we were at our least deserving, at our furthest from righteousness, at our most contrary to everything God is — the love of God was commended toward us. This is agape: love that originates in the nature of the one who loves, not in the merit of the one loved.
“Shed Abroad” — The Greek Ekcheo and What It Means
The phrase shed abroad in Romans 5:5 is the translation of the Greek ekcheo — and the word carries a significance that the English phrase barely captures.
Ekcheo means to pour out, to gush out, to shed forth in abundance — the same word used in Acts 2:17 for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost: “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” It is the language of abundance, of overflow, of something that cannot be contained to a small corner but fills every available space.
Paul is describing what the Holy Spirit has done with the love of God in the heart of the new creation: He has poured it out — abundantly, thoroughly, filling the inner life. Not as a meagre supply that the believer must ration carefully. Not as a capacity that will run out under pressure. The love of God has been ekcheo’d — shed abroad, poured out, flooding the heart — by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
This is why the love of the new creation is categorically different from natural human affection — even at its best. Natural affection, however genuine and warm, operates from a finite supply. It can be exhausted by sustained difficulty, by betrayal, by the grinding weight of loving someone who does not respond in kind. The agape that has been shed abroad by the Holy Spirit does not operate from a finite supply. It operates from the inexhaustible love-nature of the God who is love, poured through the Spirit who indwells the new creation.
The new creation that taps into this shed-abroad love does not love from their own resources. They love with the love of God — because that love has been poured into them and is available to flow through them.
1 Corinthians 13 — The Portrait of Agape in Action
The most detailed portrait of what agape looks like in practice is the Apostle Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 13 — a passage so familiar that its radical content can be overlooked:
“Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” — 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (KJV)
Charity in the King James Version is agape. And Paul’s description is not a list of virtues to aspire to. It is a description of how the love of God — when shed abroad in the heart by the Spirit and expressed through the new creation — actually behaves in the texture of daily relationships.
Suffereth long and is kind. Agape does not exhaust its patience quickly. Under sustained provocation, under repeated disappointment, under circumstances that natural affection would long since have withdrawn from — agape continues. And it does so not with gritted-teeth endurance but with kindness: the active expression of goodwill toward the one who is trying the patience.
Seeketh not her own. This is the sharpest distinction from every form of natural love. Natural love — even at its most generous — retains a thread of self-interest. Agape seeks not its own benefit but the genuine good of the one loved, regardless of whether that service is acknowledged, reciprocated, or even perceived.
Is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. Agape does not maintain a mental record of wrongs. It does not rehearse the offenses it has received or keep a running account of failures. The love that thinks no evil is the love that refuses to define the other person by their worst moments — the love that sees what God has done and is doing in them, rather than what the latest failure confirms.
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Four all things. Not selective bearing, not conditional hope — comprehensive, unreserved, maintained under all circumstances. This is not the product of exceptional human character. It is the product of a love that has been poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit and that draws from the inexhaustible source of the God who is love.
“By This Shall All Men Know” — Love as the New Creation’s Distinguishing Mark
“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” — John 13:34–35 (KJV)
Jesus calls it a new commandment — not because the command to love was absent from the Old Testament, but because the standard has been raised to a categorically different level: as I have loved you. The standard of the new creation’s love is not the law’s standard of loving the neighbour as yourself — which still leaves the self as the baseline. The standard is as I have loved you — the love that laid down its life, that gave everything, that loved while being rejected, that persisted through betrayal and denial and abandonment.
And the outcome of this love is specifically public: by this shall all men know. The love of the new creation toward one another is the visible evidence to the watching world that Jesus’ claims are true. It is the proof of life — the observable sign that something different, something supernatural, something that has no natural explanation is present in the community of believers.
This means that the love we have been examining throughout this article is not merely a private spiritual experience. It is the new creation’s most powerful form of witness — more compelling than argument, more persuasive than eloquence, more credible than any other claim. The community that genuinely loves one another as Jesus loved them is the community that the world cannot easily dismiss.
The Fruit That Comes First — Galatians 5:22
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” — Galatians 5:22–23 (KJV)
The fruit of the Spirit. Not the effort of the believer — the fruit of the Spirit. And love is listed first — not arbitrarily. Love is the foundational fruit from which every other fruit grows. Joy is love experiencing its fullness. Peace is love undisturbed by fear. Longsuffering is love persisting through difficulty. Gentleness is love expressed in manner. Goodness is love expressed in character. Faith — faithfulness — is love expressed in reliability.
The new creation does not produce these fruits by moral effort, by gritting their teeth and trying harder to be more loving, more joyful, more patient. The fruit is produced by the Spirit — automatically, organically, as the natural outflow of a life in which the love of God has been shed abroad. The believer’s role is to yield to the Spirit, to walk in the Spirit, to allow what the Spirit has already poured in to flow out unhindered into every relationship and every situation.
Walking in Love — The Comprehensive Life Standard
“And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.” — Ephesians 5:2 (KJV)
Walk in love. Not perform love when convenient. Not express love toward those who deserve it. Walk in it — as a way of life, as the governing principle of every movement, every relationship, every decision. The standard is, again, Christ — who gave Himself.
“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.” — 1 John 5:2 (KJV)
The test of love for God is love for His people. The test of love for the brethren is the fruit of a love for God that has been genuinely established, not merely professed. The two are inseparable in the new-creation life — and the new creation that is genuinely walking in the love of God will find that love expressing itself naturally and consistently toward the people God loves.
What Comes Next
The love of God expressed through the new creation is the ultimate evidence of kingdom life — but it operates most powerfully in the context of community: the body of Christ, the local church, the assembly of believers who together constitute the visible expression of Christ in the world. In the next article, we examine the body of Christ and the new creation’s role in it — what the church is according to the New Testament, how each member is gifted and fitted for a specific function, and why the new creation that is disconnected from the body is living below the provision God has made for their growth and fruitfulness.
“From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” — Ephesians 4:16 (KJV)
Fitly joined. Compacted together. Every joint supplying. The body grows in love — and the love we have examined in this article is the very substance in which the body grows and is built.
Bible Verses Cited: Romans 5:5; Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:7–8; 1 John 4:16–19; 1 John 5:2; 1 Corinthians 13:4–7; John 3:16; John 13:34–35; Galatians 5:22–23; Ephesians 5:2; Ephesians 4:16; Acts 2:17 (KJV)
Series: New Creation in Christ Jesus — Article 29 of 35
Author: Joseph Olarewaju | FaithBibleStudy.org
