God's Love: The Fly in the Oneness Ointment

"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. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us."
- I John 4:7-8, 16-19

This passage was written by the same Apostle John who gave us the Revelation. Yet, while that book can often be mystifying, I don't think anyone can say that of the portion I quote here. There is one central point, and he makes it eminently clear: It is, and has always been, God's nature to love. Therefore, we, His people, can express love confidently.

Orthodox Christians hold that the love God shows to us is a manifestation of that same nature of love that He had shared so intimately within the Trinity, the Father's loving the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son's loving the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit's loving the Father and the Son. We have assurance of His love because it is an infinite and eternal love, preceding even our existence.

However, the Sabellian (or Modalist, or Oneness) believes in a monadic deity, a unitary oneness that had no companionship for the unknowable eternity before Genesis 1. He must ask the question, Whom did God love? Since he believes that there was no one else there to be loved, then his answer can only be "no one." And that presents a problem.

We do know from Scripture that it is contrary to God's nature to change: "I the LORD do not change" (Malachi 3:6, compare Numbers 23:19 and I Samuel 15:29). Therefore, since the Sabellian God did not have love in eternity past, then neither could He become loving, since that would have been a change of nature. A God without love would not be a redeemer, a sanctifier, or a merciful Father. Therefore, the Sabellian God cannot be the God of the Bible (John 3:16).