How God Loves

At our all-church Valentine’s lunch last Sunday, we had a Bible quiz on the word “love”:  I read a text, and you gave the bibli­cal book it’s from—or even chapter and verse.  1 Corinthians 13 came up more than once, and of course we remembered John 3:16 and Romans 5:8.

To make sense of the Bible’s teaching on love, it’s essential to step back start with God’s love. And I mean both God’s love for God (i.e., the infinite joy that infuses the triune Father-Son-Spirit god­head for all eternity) and God’s love for people.  Regarding the former:

The Father states, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 17:5).  And Jesus says, “I do as the Father has com­manded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father” (John 14:31).  You see, a perfect, unbreakable love unites the Father, Son, and Spirit; their glorious oneness is a relational delight and harmony and radiance that is at the center of all reality.

And the latter—God’s love for people—involves his drawing us into the joy and everlasting wonder of his personal fellowship.  Jesus put it this way, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that who­ever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).  And just what is “eternal life” all about?  “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).  In his love God gives us himself—the awesome, ever-satisfying gift of his company forever!

Believers often miss this and mistakenly think being loved by God is about receiving healing or comfort or other gifts from his hand.  But what are such gifts compared to knowing the Giver himself?  Think how miniscule is mere healing or prosperity compared to the infinite value of living in the very presence of the Lord!  Out of his love God manifests himself to us (John 14:21).  Christ died for our sins “that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

So then, for us to love other people means sharing with them what we most treasure and they most need, namely God’s love.  We would fail to love our neighbors well if we only did acts of service for them without showing the way to enter God’s own dazzling presence!