Love

Love is a facet of God’s moral character.

God's love is a peculiar type of love which the New Testament authors refer to as agape love. This is not the ordinary sort of love that human beings exhibit towards one another. This is a word that is used to describe God's love which is this unconditional, impartial, universal love that is extended to humanity. God's character is such that he is as loving as he is holy. Neither of these can be compromised. They are equally attributes that belong to the very essence or nature of God. God is as loving as he is holy.

Scriptural Data
God's love is unconditional; it is immutable; it is universal.

Some scriptural data concerning God’s love can be looked at.

God’s Nature is Loving
God is essentially loving. 1 John 4:7-21:

''Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for 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 loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.''

''By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so 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 he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us. If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.''

It can be noticed that according to John the love of God is not something that is adventitious to God – a contingent property that God simply happens to exhibit. It belongs to the very essence of God – God is love. So love is of the divine nature and is manifested toward people. So God is not only a God of holiness and justice, but he is also a God of love.

God’s Love is Unconditional
That is also indicated in the passage above (1 John 4:7-21). God loves people not because they loved him, but because he first loved them. So God’s love is not contingent upon people loving him first. His love is unconditional.

But this is not a New Testament peculiarity. This is also true of God’s love expressed in the Old Testament toward his people Israel. Deuteronomy 7:7-8, where God describes why he chose Israel as his own, can be looked at. He says,

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples; but it is because the LORD loves you, and is keeping the oath which he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

Here the Lord says it is not something about Israel that made them particularly lovable or worthy. It is simply God’s sovereign choice. He simply has chosen them. He loves them. There wasn’t anything about Israel that made it particularly worthy of God’s love. God’s love is unconditional.

This same truth is taught in the New Testament. For example, Ephesians 2:4-5, Paul’s letter to the church of Ephesus, can be looked at. Paul says, “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” Here Paul says even when humans were spiritually dead in their sins, God loved them with this great love, and then made them alive in Christ. This is an expression of his grace, his unmerited favor toward them. It is God’s unconditional love.

Finally, the letter to Titus – Titus 3:3-5, which is one of the richest passages in the New Testament, can be looked at. There Paul says,

''For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by men and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit.''

The goodness and loving kindness of God is exhibited toward people not because of deeds of righteousness that they had done but simply in virtue of God’s own mercy. It is simply an expression of the unconditional love of God. The word here for loving kindness is philanthropia from which it gets the word “philanthropic.” It is the will or the love of God toward people. God loves people. Therefore, he has sought to extend his grace to them and save them. So the first quality to highlight of God’s love is its unconditional nature.

God’s Love is Immutable
It is changeless. God is not going to withdraw his love from someone at some point in the future. Jeremiah 31:3 speaks of God’s unchanging love. There the Lord says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” So God is not going to get tired or fed up with people and withdraw his love. His love will not grow old and stale. It is an everlasting love that he has extended to people.

God’s Love is Universal
It is not extended just to some persons, but it is universally extended. John 3:16, Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The object of God's love here is not his people. It is not the church. It is not the elect. It is “the world.” It is the unbelieving world of people that Christ has come to save that God loved so much that he sent his only Son to die for them. This is a universal love that is extended to every person that God creates.

Paradox
God loves the sinner just as intensely as he hates their sin. God hates their sin because it violates the holiness of God. Yet, God loves the person who is perpetrating and guilty of that sin. Romans 5:8 says the following: “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” This is the remarkable thing about God's love – it is extended not toward those who are redeemed, who are his people, who have sought his grace. It is extended to the enemies of God – to people who are sinners and who have their faces opposed to God. It is those that God loves so much that he sends Christ to save them.

There is a tendency to soft-pedal this. This kind of Love is not understood. People think surely there must be something about humans that makes them lovable that would prompt God to love them. So Christians tend to portray lost people as little lost lambs that are wandering from the fold of God, and God reaches out to bring back these little lost lambs that are innocently straying from the fold. They do not understand that in the scriptural view, humans are not innocent lost victims. They are hateful rebels who have opposed God to his face and who shake their fists in his face in opposition to him. That is why Paul refers to people as enemies of God. Yet when people were enemies of God, Christ came and died for them. That is the tremendous truth in this paradox. As sinful and opposed to God as humans are, as unworthy of his love as they are, nevertheless God loves them just as intensely as he hates their sin.

Practical Applications
Some practical applications of the attribute of God's being loving to people’s lives can be looked at.

Bathing in The Sunshine of God’s Love
Ephesians 3:14-19, Paul writes,

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Christians are rooted and grounded in love. Paul asks that they might know the depths of the extent – the height – of Christ's love for them, love which Paul says even surpasses knowledge. For all the knowledge that people might acquire, the love of Christ surpasses that. That is the love that Christians have as they are in Christ. They need to revel in that. They need to bathe in that love that God has shown toward them.

There is no fear in this sort of love as read in 1 John 4:18. It says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.” The holiness or the justice of God is equally essential to God as his love and his grace. Fear of God springs out of that terrible holiness and justice. But for the one who is perfected in love he need not fear God anymore because in Christ, people are his beloved and all of God's love is showered upon them.

Paul says that there is no separation from God’s love that he has exhibited toward people in Christ. Romans 8:35-39 says:

''Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.''

So insofar as people are in Christ they are invulnerable to these perils and attacks upon them. Nothing can separate them from God's love in Christ. The only one who can separate someone from the love of Christ is themself if they separate themself from him by rejecting his love. Jude 21 tells, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” What an interesting exhortation from Jude – keep yourself in the love of God.

In the book of Revelation, chapter 2, it is reminded that people need to review themselves (assess themselves) to see if they are holding to their first love, or if they have begun to cool in their love and commitment to Christ. In Revelation 2:4-5 the angel says to the church in Ephesus:

''But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first.''

People need to review their lives to see if they are holding to their first love, or if their ardor has begun to wane as they have grown older in Christ. Then return to that first love and keep themselves in the love of God as Jude tells them to do.

So people need to bathe and revel in the sunlight of God's love for them.

God’s Love Becomes The Basis For Self-love
God's love of people is the basis for their love of themselves. God knows everything about an individual. There is no skeleton in the closet, no hidden sin, no secret fault that he does not already know. Yet he loves people unfailingly and unconditionally. God loves them despite everything that is wrong with them. That provides the basis for self-love. If God loves someone that much then why cannot a person accept themself? On the basis of God's love for a person – if that person believes what God says – then that person can accept themself and these feelings of inferiority and failure and guilt ought to be driven out because if God loves someone that much that person should be able to accept themself as well and fight against those emotional vestiges perhaps of an unhappy childhood or a dysfunctional home or other influences that have left it difficult for them to accept themself and to love themself in the way God wants the person to. A deep realization of God's love for people can be the basis for their own self-love and self-acceptance in a healthy way.

God’s Love is The Basis For Love of Others in Turn
1 John 4:19-21 makes this point. John says,

''We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.''

On the basis of God’s love filling people’s lives, this should then be extended toward others. People need to forgive others who have wronged them and to love others with the love that God gives to them.

Matthew 5:43-48 – the Sermon on the Mount – talks about the kind of love that Christ calls upon people to exhibit. Jesus says,

''You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.''

Just as God loved people while they were yet enemies, so here Jesus says people shall love their enemies. People should love those who hate them and persecute them and use them – people are to love them. He says if you only love those who love you you are no better than these execrable Roman collaborators – the tax collectors – who were regarded as traitors by the Jews. Or you are just like a Gentile whom the Jews thought of as dogs. Jesus is saying that people have got to have more love than the kind of love that even these people exhibit. People’s love needs to be love like the heavenly Father. It is on the basis of the realization that God's love was directed to them while they were yet hateful and enemies and rebels against him that they can ask him to give them that love for those who oppose them and hate them as well.

It has been said that love is measured by service and service is measured by sacrifice. For example, the depths to which God was willing to go for people’s sake in becoming incarnate as a man, taking on the limitations of human existence, and then becoming a sacrifice for sin, bearing incomprehensible pain undeserved innocent suffering, simply for people’s sake because he loves them so much. Christ's example is the example of this self-giving sacrificial love. So people need to look for opportunities, The depth of one's service and the sacrifice someone is willing to make is going to be a measure of the love that the person is to exhibit toward others, especially to the brethren.