God’s Love
Love is a universal need that we all have, and we will go to great lengths to try and get that need met. Honestly, I’d go as far to say that almost every one of most people’s actions can be explained as an effort to pursue love in some way or to preserve it in some way.
We are all looking for love, but sadly as hard as we look for it and chase after it, it sometimes seems to be forever out of our grasp because even when we think we’ve found it, at some point it ceases to satisfy.
So, what do we do? How do we respond if we find ourselves constantly trying to pursue, earn, or maintain someone else’s love?
Well, the short answer is that we turn to God because God is love (1 John 4:8).
GOD’S LOVE
Love is one of God’s attributes. In the same way that we’ve said throughout this series that God is self-existent, eternal, immutable, good, omnipresent, omniscient, omnisapient, omnipotent, sovereign, holy, and just, the Bible also tells us that God is love.
We obviously have to define that, however, because in this culture we say things like “I love pizza, I love video games, or I love Netflix.”
So, what kind of love are we talking about here when we are told that God is love?
Well to understand what it means, we must continue to look at what else Scripture says about God and the way He expresses love.
HOLY LOVE
When we talk about God’s love, one of the first things we need to point out is that it is holy love.
Holiness is part of God’s nature. He is distinct from His creation and high and exalted far above us in infinite majesty and glory. Holiness it means that God is pure.
God’s love is a love that is pure. It’s reliable, spotless, and perfect. God’s love is separate from and different from the world’s love.
To be a holy love means that it is not superficial. We are not just talking about emotions. There’s a depth to God’s love. It’s a love that provides real satisfaction, real fulfillment, and not a love that fades away.
God’s holy love is a love that is infinitely beyond and better than the kind of love we see and experience in the world.
SACRIFICIAL LOVE
The next thing to note about God’s love is that it is a sacrificial love. It’s the kind of love that costs Him something.
In 1 John 4:10, the apostle John tells us this:
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)
God’s love is the kind of love in which He would send His own Son to be a sacrifice for our sins!
When we talk about God’s love, we can’t separate that from God’s attribute of justice that we talked about earlier in our series.
God is just. He upholds what is right and punishes what is wrong.
When the world talks about God’s love, it sometimes gets talked about He can just overlook sin since He is love. People say that everyone is going to end up in heaven one day because God is love.
When God’s love gets talked about in that way, we are separating His love from His justice. We can’t do that because God is both love and just. He is everything right and morally good, and He cannot just overlook sin.
Sin must be dealt with, and the punishment for sin is death (Ro. 3:23). However, this is where the love of God meets His justice, and we can talk about it being a sacrificial love.
God sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Out of His love for us, God sent Jesus to take His wrath and receive the punishment for our sins!
Talk about doing crazy things for love! The God of the universe leaves the glory and riches of heaven to receive our punishment for our evil choices so that we could be in a loving relationship with Him now and forever!
It doesn’t get much more unbelievable than that. God’s love is a sacrificial love.
GRACIOUS LOVE
The next aspect of God’s love and that is it’s a gracious love.
The apostle Paul writes these words in Ephesians 2:4-5:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. (Eph. 2:4-5)
Notice that God’s love is described as His “great love for us. Also, notice that it’s by “grace you have been saved.”
God gifts His love to you and me. That’s called grace. There is nothing we have to do to earn it.
But remember, God can only gift us His love because of His sacrificial love to pour out His wrath on His own Son.
You see, it's a gracious love, for the objects of God's love were the objects of His wrath - that's the amazing thing! This is a love above all loves that He shows toward us in that while we were yet sinners... what a love! Does that not thrill you? That the wrath of God abided upon your head, but now the grace of God is being tipped up into your heart! What a love! The unlovely, the unlovable, have inherited free, unearned, unmerited grace, unqualified - nothing in you, nothing in me that could attract God to us, in fact everything in us that would repel anything holy, anything righteous, anything good - yet God, in His grace, has come to us. (Pastor David Legge)
Oh, what depth of love that God has for you and has for me. And He gifts it to us! His love is a gracious love.
ETERNAL LOVE
Another aspect of God’s love is that it is an eternal love.
In Jeremiah 31:3, the prophet Jeremiah writes that God says, “…I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
In a previous blog post, we discussed how God is eternal. God has no beginning, and He has no end. He’s just always been and always will be! Now think about this: If God is love, then that means that He’s always been love and always will be.
God’s love to us is a stream whose source is hidden in eternity. Does not eternal love delight you? God is no stranger to you; he has known you long before you knew yourself…Known unto God from the foundation of the earth were you; he was always thinking of you; there was never a period when you were not in his mind and on his heart. (Charles Spurgeon)
There will never be a time when you are not in God’s mind or on his heart.
We’ve probably all had someone tell us that their feelings for us began to fade or maybe even told us that they don’t love us anymore. That will never happen with God! His love is eternal and will go on and on forever!
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
As we continue to dive deeply into what God’s love is like, we must also highlight that God’s love is an unconditional love.
In John 3:16, the apostle John writes these famous words:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (Jn. 3:16)
Notice the word whoever in this verse. Whoever, means no strings attached. His love is open to anyone, regardless of who you are, where you’ve been, or what you’ve done.
All throughout the gospels we read about Jesus hanging out with and loving thieves, liars, thugs, murderers, and the sexually promiscuous. Therefore, don’t try to talk your way out of God’s love based on the things you’ve done. Whoever means whoever!
God’s love is unconditional.
UNLIMITED LOVE
In Ephesians 3, the apostle Paul is praying for the church at Ephesus and he says this in his prayer:
And I pray that you… may grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge. (Eph. 3:18-19)
God’s love is so wide, so long, so high, and so deep that you can’t even fully comprehend it. It’s unlimited! It never runs out.
Think about this: If you’ve put your faith in Jesus for salvation, God’s love has been poured into you (Romans 5:5), which means there is an unlimited amount of God’s love that has flooded your inmost heart.
Here’s something else about Romans 5:5 that you don’t want to miss: The Greek word translated “poured out” is written in the perfect tense which means that this was a completed action at one point in time that has ongoing results.
It’s a continuous free flow of love. Because God’s love is unlimited, when He poured it into your hearts, you have all of His love, all of the time!
God cannot love you any less or any more than He does right now!
God delights in you. He rejoices over you and sings over you.
CONCLUSION
God’s love is holy, sacrificial, gracious, eternal, unconditional, and unlimited. If God’s love has been poured out into your heart, then you can rest in it. Quit trying to prove yourself to Him. Quit trying to earn His love through your performance, behavior, and/or religious activities.
Also, if you have all of God’s love at all times, then you can quit living in shame.
You don’t have to hide from God or from others. You don’t have to make up for what you’ve done to not feel shame. God knows what you did. He knows what you are doing in your life right now. He’s always known, and He still sent Jesus to the cross for you!
So, don’t let Satan keep you buried in shame. God’s love rescues you from shame.
Finally, as a result of having God’s love in your life, give His love away.
Jesus fills us up with His love so that we don’t have to keep spending all of our time and effort looking for it and are now free to rest in it and give it away!
And as we make ourselves available to Him, He will express His unconditional and sacrificial love through us.
We’ll find ourselves loving others without demanding anything from them in return and also sacrificing our time, energy, and resources to pour into them.
