But take the Old Testament revelation of God, and you are prepared to understand the New Testament declaration—God is love.

   God is good, and the fountain of good, and of good only. He must needs hate iniquity, as that which is opposed to Him and to all blessedness. He chooses men that they may be brought near unto Himself. He therefore teaches them by the law to know His character, and to know their sinfulness. By the bitter conviction of sin and guilt He turns them from sin and destruction; and by the sweet revelation of His grace and favor He draws them unto Himself. They now understand that He loves them, and that He hates their sin; they are to live, sin is to be destroyed. Their true self He seeks, and therefore He is jealous; an undivided heart and an unconditional surrender of the will is His demand and that because He is loving. Yet it is not sufficient that Jehovah—“I , even I,”—forgives and removes His people’s sin, giving unto them His righteousness, He even gives them a new heart, and puts His Holy Spirit within them, so that they are now able to love and serve Him. Nay, He has promised to dwell in them, and to walk in them; so that He who loved them, who redeemed them, is also He who lives in them, who by His Holy Spirit renews and sanctifies them with a most real, intimate, and mysterious union and communion with Himself. This is the substance of the Old Testament revelation. Jehovah condescending in election, redeeming in righteousness-grace, renewing and indwelling by the Spirit—who is a God like unto Him? 

   This God is Love; so the New Testament still further unfolds. Love seeks the object itself; God seeks us, our true self. Shall I say our immortal spirit? No; God seeks us—man according to the divine idea—body, soul, and spirit; His desire and purpose is to possess us, knowing, loving, serving Him, and rejoicing in Him as our fountain and centre. Love rescues us, by the stupendous sacrifice of Christ, delivering us from the condemnation of sin, from the curse of the law, from the power of death, and from the thralldom of Satan, and separating us, by a painful and yet blessed co-crucifixion, from sin, the great opposite of love. Love then communicates itself to us, and that by the Holy Ghost, so that we see, accept, and respond to the Father’s election and the Savior’s redemption by a will divinely wrought in us—the first act of liberty, the birth-movement of the emancipated new man. Love then takes up its abode in us. 

   This most real experience is described in various ways. When God reveals and gives unto us His love in Christ Jesus the new life commences. Contrasting it with our past condition, we call this crisis “regeneration.” Regarding the change that is effected in our will, we call it “conversion” or turning unto God. Looking at the attitude in which the soul then stands to the divine love, we call it “faith.” But viewing it as the starting-point of a new course, it is the receiving of the Holy Ghost as an indwelling spirit, it is the entrance of Christ into the heart, it is the communication of that love of God which is perfect, infinite, unchanging. God now dwelleth in us because we love, and because He hath given to us of His Spirit. Thus we are betrothed unto Christ and sealed by the Spirit; but the purpose of love is not yet fulfilled, for the marriage of the Lamb is not yet come. We wait for the adoption; that is, the redemption of the body. When we shall see Jesus as He is, and be like Him, when, delivered from the body of sin and death, as the children of the resurrection, changed into the likeness of the transfigured Savior, we shall know as we are known; and in perfect union and communion with the Head and all the saints shall evermore serve Him in childlike humility, in brotherly likemindedness, with the undivided and restful affection of the wife, and with the mysterious and at present incomprehensible unity of incorporated members; then, brethren and companions in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, then shall we know that God is love, then the words of Jesus shall be fulfilled, “I in them, and thou in me; that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” 

The Hidden Life - Adolph Saphir