…God is love, and who­ev­er abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:16b)

The state­ment that God is love, express­es the deep­est sense of who God is and what he is like. Not only is love a char­ac­ter­is­tic of God, but he is love itself. Love has its ori­gin in his being.

Because God is love, he made every­thing. He gave us life.

When we look at nature, we see amaz­ing beau­ty, painstak­ing detail and order. The entire cos­mos is per­fect­ly inte­grat­ed. Above all, man’s nature—his free will, his con­science, his abil­i­ty to love, think and create—reflects God’s being.

And God saw every­thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (Gen­e­sis 1:31)

You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me togeth­er with bones and sinews. You have grant­ed me life and stead­fast love, and your care has pre­served my spir­it. (Job 10:11–12)

What Is God’s Love Like?

God’s Love Is Personal & Perfect

The pas­sages quot­ed above show that God gives us the gift of life and shares his love with us. His act­ing is love. It shows that the love of God is not sim­ply an attribute, imper­son­al ener­gy or the source of intense feel­ings (what peo­ple often think of love as). Love by its very nature, is deeply con­nect­ed with the deci­sion and will to always want the very best for some­one. God wants the best for us and cre­at­ed every­thing so that it leads us to him—to his love.

God’s Love Must Be Shared

Because God is love, he gives of him­self. This giv­ing shows us the sense of life, that is, to know God’s love and to love him. This is why he made us. He wants us not only to expe­ri­ence his love, but to have a deep rela­tion­ship with him and with oth­ers.

Jesus said:

The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:29b–30)

God enables us to love with all our heart. This is pos­si­ble when we know, accept and expe­ri­ence God’s per­fect love. In spite of our sins, we can under­stand and long for God’s love, because he made us good.

God’s Love Is the Only Love That Can Truly Fulfil Us

God made us to be loved per­fect­ly by him—to be respect­ed and trea­sured by him. Peo­ple often seek this love in oth­er peo­ple, and are dis­ap­point­ed. Even if we were per­fect we would not be able to ful­fil this long­ing in each oth­er. Our lim­it­ed love can nev­er be enough to give each oth­er the true iden­ti­ty and val­ue that only God can give. Only God is able to ful­fil our desire to be loved per­fect­ly. He alone is the source of such love.

Blaise Pas­cal (Physicist/Philosopher 1623–62) wrote about the dan­ger of look­ing for per­fect love in man: “I am not the end of any, and I have not the where­with­al (means) to sat­is­fy them. Am I not about to die? And thus the object of their attach­ment will die….“¹

Peo­ple seek love in many places. To be loved is the most cen­tral goal in life, to be val­ued, accept­ed, hon­oured. Con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly, they search for their iden­ti­ty in this. God’s love is dif­fer­ent. God does­n’t make us the cen­tre of every­thing, unlike peo­ple do when they dote on each oth­er. God teach­es us that being ful­filled does­n’t come by being put in the cen­tre, but by giv­ing our­selves self­less­ly. We learn this from him. He does­n’t want to be praised because of self­ish rea­sons, but because we can’t live a life filled with mean­ing and sense if we are not filled by him—the source of love.

When peo­ple try to find this per­fect love in oth­er peo­ple they put man in God’s place. This is unfair to man and unfair to God. Man can­not ful­fil their expectations—he is too lim­it­ed, and fal­li­ble, and this expec­ta­tion is too great a bur­den for him to bear because he him­self needs this per­fect love from God.

If a per­son rejects God, then their iden­ti­ty and val­ue in life must be tak­en from what they do or how oth­ers accept them. They feel the need to be loved, but will often be dis­ap­point­ed when they look for this in peo­ple. It puts a great strain on rela­tion­ships and takes away the free­dom of the oth­er per­son. Such love is self­ish, not self­less.

God’s Love Is Pure & Selfless

Pure, self­less rela­tion­ships between peo­ple are only pos­si­ble if they are based on God’s pure and self­less love.

We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

God’s love enables us to love with­out expect­ing some­thing back, inde­pen­dent­ly of how I feel or of what is eas­i­er for me, with­out self­ish desires and look­ing for hon­our from the oth­er one. In such rela­tion­ships, I don’t need to look for any accep­tance or hon­our or ful­fil­ment of desires from the oth­er one, because God gives me what I real­ly need. I am then free to share this love joy­ful­ly with oth­ers.

God’s Love Says the Truth

The Old Tes­ta­ment quotes an ancient prayer, in which we find sen­ti­ments which all of us have expe­ri­enced at some stage from oth­ers, or per­haps noticed in our­selves….

They only plan to thrust him down from his high posi­tion. They take plea­sure in false­hood. They bless with their mouths, but inward­ly they curse. (Psalm 62:4)

True love is pure because it is based on truthfulness—even if say­ing the truth is not always easy or accom­pa­nied by good feel­ings.

[Love] does not rejoice at wrong­do­ing, but rejoic­es with the truth. (1 Corinthi­ans 13:6)

A doc­tor may pre­scribe med­i­cine which tastes bit­ter, but he does it because he knows it will make the patient well. It would not be love not to give it to the patient just because he wants to please the patient or make them feel good for the moment. Like­wise true love gives a per­son what they need most, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly what they would pre­fer.

God‘s Love in Jesus

God Became Man Because He Loves Us

While cre­ation and the being of man are great tes­ti­monies of God’s love, the great­est tes­ti­mo­ny of all is that he sent his son Jesus to us. He came so close to us to show through his life and death how much he loves us and wants to save us. He demon­strat­ed his great mer­cy for us by giv­ing us the pos­si­bil­i­ty to be for­giv­en and set free from sin.

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. (1 John 4:9)

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)

Through Jesus We Are Reconciled to God

To accept God’s love means to accept Jesus, and to accept how sin­ful we have been and how much we need his for­give­ness.

God gives us every­thing we need, and gave us many things and abil­i­ties for us to love and do good. When we sin we abuse these good gifts from God, using them for evil, with­out respect­ing what they were entrust­ed to us for. A son who squan­ders all the inher­i­tance his lov­ing, car­ing father gave him on evil plea­sures dis­hon­ours and rejects his father. Like­wise we dis­hon­our and reject God when we don’t ask God how he wants us to live.

When we get to know Jesus, he shows us through his life and death how much we reject­ed God through our sin. He leads us to repen­tance and for­give­ness if we accept him.

This accep­tance is expressed not only in words and beliefs, but in our whole atti­tude, and by let­ting him change our lives.

But God, being rich in mer­cy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our tres­pass­es, made us alive togeth­er with Christ—by grace you have been saved…. (Eph­esians 2:4–5)

To Accept Jesus Means to Accept What He Commanded

If you love me, you will keep my com­mand­ments. (John 14:15)

Who­ev­er has my com­mand­ments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and man­i­fest myself to him. (John 14:21)

God loves us so much that he did not only send his son to save us, but he gave us com­mand­ments through Jesus, that we might live accord­ing to them and live as Jesus lived.

Jesus Commanded Us to Love Everyone

Often peo­ple lim­it their love to peo­ple from their par­tic­u­lar group of friends or family—according to their own cri­te­ria of who they find “lov­able”.

To love every­one means to want the best for every­one with­out favouritism—not pre­fer­ring some peo­ple more than oth­ers. Only this kind of love is self­less.

This was not a com­plete­ly new com­mand­ment. The books of Moses write:

You shall do no injus­tice in court. You shall not be par­tial to the poor or defer to the great, but in right­eous­ness shall you judge your neigh­bour. You shall not go around as a slan­der­er among your peo­ple, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neigh­bour: I am the Lord. You shall not hate your broth­er in your heart, but you shall rea­son frankly with your neigh­bour, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own peo­ple, but you shall love your neigh­bour as your­self: I am the Lord. (Leviti­cus 19:15–18)

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neigh­bour 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 do you have? Do not even the tax col­lec­tors do the same? And if you greet only your broth­ers, 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. (Matthew 5:43–48)

Jesus’ Love Means Saying the Truth

Jesus demon­strat­ed what it means to love every­one through his whole life and death. He knew that what peo­ple need most is to be rec­on­ciled with God, and that what hin­ders peo­ple and makes them blind is sin. His love includ­ed, there­fore, that he clear­ly reject­ed hypocrisy and led peo­ple to assess their lives before God. Jesus lived with­out sin, and there­fore his life was a mir­ror which showed peo­ple who they real­ly were. For those who accept­ed him, they could be led to repen­tance and for­give­ness, but many reject­ed him because they did not want to be con­front­ed with his right­eous­ness and his hon­est love. He told every­one the truth plain­ly, and showed them what they have to change. For this rea­son many hat­ed him, and final­ly they killed him. Today, many reject him and the truth he pro­claimed as well.

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me…. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.” (John 8:42a, 45)

…and that is why he was reject­ed.

We can see through Jesus’ life that true and hon­est love is not nec­es­sar­i­ly attrac­tive or fas­ci­nat­ing (to those who seek their own plea­sure) or con­nect­ed with intense emo­tions. Unfor­tu­nate­ly God’s love is not liked by every­one and you can­not help or win every­one with this love.

Jesus’ Love Can Only Fully Unfold in the Church

And look­ing about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my moth­er and my broth­ers! For who­ev­er does the will of God, he is my broth­er and sis­ter and moth­er.” (Mark 3:34–35)

If peo­ple reject love, they are sep­a­rat­ed from God and from each oth­er. Peo­ple who do not accept God’s love can­not love in a tru­ly self­less way.

Only those who want to love the source of love and be nour­ished by him, will want or be able to give each oth­er his love.

In true, bib­li­cal Church, every­one has decid­ed to live by the love of God – to serve with their whole life and let them­selves be served. It is love which binds them togeth­er, not a man-made hier­ar­chy or an organ­i­sa­tion. If their love grows cold, then the Church dis­in­te­grates. If they love each oth­er, then the Church grows and matures.

This is my com­mand­ment, that you love one anoth­er as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that some­one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I com­mand you. (John 15:12–14)

Those who love Jesus will share their lives. This is the core teach­ing and prac­tice of the entire New Tes­ta­ment.

A new com­mand­ment I give to you, that you love one anoth­er: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one anoth­er. By this all peo­ple will know that you are my dis­ci­ples, if you have love for one anoth­er. (John 13:34–35)

Unfor­tu­nate­ly it is very hard to find peo­ple who want to live this out today. Indi­vid­u­al­ism, ego­tism and con­sumerism are rife in our reli­gious world. When peo­ple do not share their lives in this kind of love, they show that they are not his dis­ci­ples.

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: who­ev­er loves God must also love his broth­er. (1 John 4:20–21)

Love is a com­mand­ment. It encour­ages us and gives us hope that it is pos­si­ble to fol­low Jesus and to live in love, even today. He would­n’t have com­mand­ed this love if it were not pos­si­ble. On our own, we would not be able to do it, but with his help, we can—we can ful­fil the only real aim of life and find the only love which can ful­fil us. This is what we were cre­at­ed for. With­out it, life is emp­ty and sense­less.

Now the full num­ber of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had every­thing in com­mon. (Acts 4:32)

We have the exam­ple of the first Chris­tians in the book of Acts. They loved each oth­er so much that it was very nat­ur­al for them to share their whole lives, includ­ing their pos­ses­sions. They learned this love from Jesus and the apos­tles. They met every day in their homes, and fought for one anoth­er’s spir­i­tu­al lives.

This is the kind of love that Chris­tians must have for each oth­er. Only in this way can they real­ly be a light for the world, show­ing that Jesus set us free from sin, and that he works in us with a pow­er that the world (includ­ing the reli­gious world and so-called church­es) does not know and can­not imi­tate.

Lit­tle chil­dren, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.By this we shall know that we are of the truth….(1 John 3:18–19a)

Are you search­ing for the only real aim of life? Do you prac­tise this love?

We would love to be able to share it with you too! If there are some thoughts or ques­tions that you have about this or oth­er arti­cles you have read on this web­site, please get in touch.

1. Pas­cal, B. (1910). Thoughts. (W. F. Trot­ter, Trans.). New York: P. F. Col­lier and Son. ↩