Get the full show notes at While you're there, sign up for the Think Update, a brief, weekly email delivering tools and tips to help you defend your faith, straight to your inbox. Well, how many times have you heard someone tell you this: “God is love”? The phrase comes from 1 John 4:8.
And the full context of that verse is this: “The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (that’s from the Christian Standard Bible, the CSB. The Bible has many translations in English. The CSB is one of my favorite translations. Maybe I’ll do a review on it some time. But in whatever translation you read it, 1 John 4:8, at least the second half of the verse, is pretty much going to say the same thing. In the Greek, it’s ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν--hah theh-ahs aGAHpay estIN. There’s not really any other way of rending it in English other than simply, “God is love”).
While God is love, he is also just. And a just God has to punish sin. These two attributes of God seem to be in conflict. Have you ever thought about that? Well we’re going to get to the bottom of it today. And I want to show you how to explain the Gospel basing your presentation off of two words: love and justice.
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