“God is love” is one of the best-known phrases in the Bible, familiar to Christians and nonbelievers alike. While it expresses a core truth about God, it is often misappropriated as a kind of rhetorical tool, to downplay any notions of sin, righteousness, or God’s judgment.
As C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “Of course, what these people mean when they say that God is love is often something quite different: they really mean ‘Love is God’. They really mean that our feelings of love, however and wherever they arise, and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great respect.”
The assumption, intentional or not, that every human expression of love is somehow divine, has more in common with pantheism than with biblical truth. To avoid such a pitfall, it’s vital to look at various aspects of God’s love before turning to our own.
God’s love is trinitarian
“Trinitarian” may not be the most poetic or romantic way to describe love, but it is the most essential. The origin, existence, and meaning of love all derive from the triune God.
“All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love,’” observed Lewis. “But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.”
God didn’t create the universe, angels, and human beings because he was lonely. Before creation, he existed eternally as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who enjoyed an all-sufficient, all-encompassing love amongst themselves. This infinite, pre-existent love which God had in himself is the source of all the genuine love in the world.
God’s love is creative
The love of God within the Trinity isn’t static but creative. As Lewis put it, “the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else.”
Out of this dynamic, triune love, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created a universe teeming with beauty and goodness. For the final, masterful touch, God created us, men and women made in his own image, relational creatures designed to give and receive love.
God rejoiced in his creation, calling it very good. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom personified describes this moment of creativity: “I was a skilled craftsman beside him. I was his delight every day, always rejoicing before him. I was rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the children of Adam” (Proverbs 8:30-31). Wisdom, in the person of God the Son, was with the Father from the beginning, as they delighted together in their creative work and especially in their creation of humanity.
God’s love is faithful and eternal
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
His faithful love endures for ever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
His faithful love endures for ever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords.
His faithful love endures for ever.
(Psalm 136:1-3)
All 26 verses of Psalm 136 repeat this refrain: “His faithful love endures forever.” Throughout Scripture, it’s one of the most frequent expressions of praise and worship. The Hebrew word for “faithful love” is hesed, which also means loyalty and kindness. When used of God, it is described as enduring, consistent, and eternal.
God’s faithful love extends to his entire creation. He provides for the needs of humans as well as animals and satisfies us with all good things, which he has given us to enjoy. While God lavishes his providential love on the righteous as well as the wicked, his special love for his own, who know and trust him, goes far beyond. He has washed away our sins and adopted us as his daughters and sons, and he will never leave or forsake us.
As he said through his prophet, “The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness’” (Jeremiah 31:3).
God’s love is holy
In contemporary Christian circles, we tend to speak of God’s love far more than we do of his holiness. Yet according to Scripture, God’s holiness is his core attribute, from which all his other attributes flow and find their shape.
When the prophet Isaiah first encountered God, it was the Lord’s holiness that dominated the vision:
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
(Isaiah 6:1-3)
In the apostle John’s apocalyptic visions of heaven, he had the same experience:
And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to say,
“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come!”
(Revelation 4:8)
To speak of God as holy is to recognize his purity, his majesty, his complete otherness. He is farther above and beyond us that the most remote ends of the universe. All his attributes – his beauty, goodness, mercy, justice, and love – are expressions of his holy nature.
God’s love and justice coexist
Modern Western culture has an especially difficult time reconciling God’s love with his righteous wrath and judgment against sin. Yet Scripture affirms both and doesn’t hold them as contradictory.
As Timothy Keller explained, “If we have lived comfortable, untroubled lives, [verses about God’s judgment] may trouble us; to anyone who has experienced injustice or oppression they are a comfort. Because Jesus will be the infallible judge, we don’t have to be. We can let our grudges go and our revenge die.”
Since God is holy and just, he cannot simply overlook sin and allow injustice to go unpunished. To do so, he wouldn’t be loving; in fact, he wouldn’t be God. Justice demands a price to be paid, but God’s love paid that price through his Son.
The apostle Paul spells out this divine solution: “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:25-26).
Far from being at odds, God’s love and justice embraced at the cross of Jesus.
God’s love is unconditional
When we speak of unconditional love, we have in mind a love that doesn’t depend on our performance. It doesn’t increase if we do right, nor does it decrease if we do wrong. This doesn’t mean our feelings don’t change in response to another’s behaviour, nor does it rule out appropriate consequences for doing right or wrong. Nevertheless, this kind of love keeps its steadfast commitment to the good of the one we love.
As fallen human beings, we may find unconditional love wonderful in theory but difficult to practice. God’s love, however, is unconditional in the truest sense. It does not preclude consequences for our actions; God feels joy at our obedience and sorrow at our disobedience, yet he will never remove his love from us. Even when he warns sinners of his coming judgment, he does it so they might repent and be saved.
If we’ve come to know Jesus through faith and stand in his perfect righteousness, nothing we do can make God love us any more or any less. From before we existed, God chose us in his Son, not because of anything we might do, but simply because he set his love on us.
“The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples,” God told his people through Moses. “But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 7:7-8).
This is as true of us who follow Jesus as it was of the Israelites in the wilderness. As Jesus assured his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you” (John 15:16).
God’s love demands a response
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
(Matthew 22:37-40)
By saying that all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments, Jesus was not giving us permission to ignore every other command in Scripture and define love as we please, just so long as we don’t offend anyone.
Throughout the Old Testament, God frequently reminded his people that to love him meant being faithful to him, trusting him, and obeying all his commands and statutes.
Jesus taught the same to his followers: “If you love me, you will keep my commands.” He then added, “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 14:15; John 15:13-14).
God is the source of love, and he defines it for us. We are to love him with every faculty and fibre of our being, seeking to walk with him more closely, delight in him more deeply, and become like him more fully. We are to love others sacrificially, as he loved us, not to earn his acceptance, but with gratitude because we are already accepted through his Son.
Such love is impossible apart from Jesus, as he himself told us: “Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me” (John 15:4-5).
As we stay connected to him through his Word, prayer, the community of our brothers and sisters, and the power of the Holy Spirit, our love for him and for others will continue to grow. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
