The Love of God

Love is a very common word in everyday life. People speak about it, write about it, argue about it, and sing about it. Yet although the word is used frequently, it is not always used with the same meaning. For some, it is only a temporary feeling, with no commitment to whoever or whatever caused the emotion to arise. For others, love is self-centred and is therefore only an expression of selfishness. Some regard it as an elusive dream, which will happen if one is lucky. Yet many have experienced real love. Still, the question remains: ‘is there more to love than we have experienced?’ 

How would we describe love? Obviously, love is an affection, indeed the deepest and strongest of affections. It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to remove love from a person. But love is more than an affection, it is also an attitude. I suppose attitude brings the mind into play because it often reveals the reason or reasons why a person loves. Moreover, love is active because love must express itself. It is determined to show how much it feels and cares about someone close to them or something such as one’s country.

 

How should we approach love? Perhaps we could consider it from the bottom up and see how a person develops in love. Or maybe we should consider from the top down and see how the best expression of love was revealed. We will follow the second option here, by beginning with God. After all, the Bible says what the highest display of love was: ‘In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4:10). 

 

The love of God

God is the biggest subject we can consider. Everything about him is perfect, incapable of getting bigger or better. One word that could describe his love is the term full. Love is full in whatever way we look at it. His love is eternal, which means it has always been there. There has never been a moment when it did not exist and there never will be such a moment. His love is complete in that it always involves all his power and knowledge. Whenever God’s love is communicated, it includes his omnipotence and his omniscience. 

 

In addition to saying that his love is full, we can also say that it is focussed. Indeed, what God focusses on reveals his fullness. Although we cannot understand what it means, we know that love exists fully within the Trinity, between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They love one another eternally and completely, without increase or decrease. This has always been their focus, which is how John can say that God is love. But within their focus there was something outside of God that would involve the divine persons and their love.

 

Part of that love of God or even central to that love is their plan of love for helping lost sinners. It was their loving intention from eternity to reveal their love for lost sinners, who were undeserving of it. For that to happen, the Father, in his love, chose his people; the Son, in his love, agreed to become a man and provide redemption for them; and the Spirit agreed to regenerate and sanctify them. Moreover, the expression of their love will continue in the eternity to come as it is revealed constantly towards those who will inherit glory, who will be permanent members of the family of God.

 

In a sense, that is a simple explanation of the plan of the God of love. Much more can be said about each detail. But for now, it is sufficient to say that the love of God is the basis of and the reason why Christians can love. If it were not for the love of God for them, where would they be as lost sinners? The divine love is the root from which true spiritual love comes. 

 

The love of the Father

We have already mentioned how the love of the Father included him choosing his people. Yet he showed his love for them by also adopting them into his family when they believed in Jesus through the gospel offer of salvation. The fact they have been given such a privilege is a great motive for them living lives of love. 

 

Another feature of the love of the Father is that he expresses love for those who are opposed to him. Jesus taught his disciples that they should love those who opposed them and one reason for them doing so was that they should be like their Father in heaven who did good things for the just and the unjust. Again, imitating their heavenly Father in this way is a powerful motive for them living lives of love.  

 

Of course, the love of the Father is seen in his act of sending his Son to be the Saviour of the world. That reality is expressed in John 3:16 which says that God displayed his love for the world by giving his Son so that anyone who believes in Jesus will have eternal life. By ‘giving’ here, John means that the Father gave his Son to the cross where he suffered the wrath of God when he paid the penalty for sin. This divine action by the Father on their behalf is a most powerful motive for them loving him in return, and so living lives of life.

 

The love of Jesus

Believers delight in thinking about the love of Jesus for them. Many aspects of his love could be mentioned and here we can only mention some of them. First, we can say that his love was strong, even as John says when he writes that Jesus ‘having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end’ (John 13:1). Obviously, his love persisted despite the many failures of his disciples. Even their failures to co-operate with him because of their wrong grasp of what he was teaching did not reduce the degree of his love for them. 

 

Second, we can see that the love of Jesus was sacrificial, obviously in the way by which it was revealed on the cross where he suffered out of love in a way that the most penetrating of words cannot fully describe. He gave himself for them, as Paul gladly noted when he said about Jesus that he was ‘the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20). Jesus paid the penalty for our sins by becoming the sacrifice instead of us.

 

Third, we know that his love was marked by service. He told his disciples that he was among them as one who served. Jesus ‘came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45). He was willing to perform the actions usually done by the meanest household slave when he washed the feet of his disciples on the evening of his arrest. Then he pointed out to them that they should do the same: ‘If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you’ (John 13:14-15). Jesus made it very clear that true service must be an expression of love.

 

The love of the Spirit

Paul once expressed his desires for a church with these words: ‘I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf’ (Rom. 15:30). In what ways does the Spirit show love? Obviously, he loves in all the ways that God loves because the Spirit is God. Yet we also know that the divine persons have certain activities identified with them and we can assume that the Spirit will love doing some of the actions in which he is engaged. 

 

We can be sure that the Spirit loved each of his people when he regenerated them. Probably, we link that action to his divine power, but we should not forget that it was also an act of love. Then he came to indwell them lovingly even although they are still sinners requiring sanctification throughout their lives. There is no divine favouritism expressed when this happens. The Holy Spirit also loves to strengthen the cry of ‘Abba, Father’ that arises from their hearts, and he loves to witness with their spirits that they are the children of God. Again, there is no divine favouritism in this activity. 

 

When Paul urges the Ephesians not to grieve the Holy Spirit, he is indirectly referring to the love of the Spirit because, as we know even from daily life, those who grieve do so because they love. The sense of his comforting presence will be withdrawn when that occurs because of their sins. But he will love them into repentance for their folly and he will express his love by restoring them graciously.

 

When it comes to love, we have the perfect models in the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Obviously, there are aspects of their love that we cannot approach to. Yet we can imitate aspects of their love, and we can do so in at least three ways. First, the Trinity’s love reveals care and compassion, reveals the willingness to include the cross, and reveals the degree of comfort that they desire to give. We can show care and compassion, we can share what happened at the cross, and we can enjoy and speak about the comforts they provide.