The Love of God

Today's Scripture

1 John 4:9-10 — "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. 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."

Romans 5:8 — "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Zephaniah 3:17 — "The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing."

The Big Idea

"God is love" might be the most quoted and least understood sentence in the Bible. It does not mean God is an easygoing feeling of warmth toward everybody. It means God committed himself, at the cost of his Son's life, to rescue people who gave him no reason to love them — and to never stop. The definition of God's love is not a mood. It is a cross.

Reflection

A definition written in blood

When people today say "love," they usually mean a feeling — warm, affirming, and free of demands. So when they hear "God is love," they translate it as "God is nice." A god like that asks nothing, changes nothing, and costs nothing. He approves of whatever we already wanted to do, the way a mirror approves of your outfit.

The trouble is that nobody actually wants to be loved that way. Think of the difference between a friend who says "you do you" while your life falls apart, and a friend who shows up, tells you the truth, and stays. Cheap affirmation is easy precisely because it gives nothing. Real love costs the lover something.

John, who actually wrote "God is love," will not let the sentence float free like that. He nails it down immediately: 1 John 4:9-10 — "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world... 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." Propitiation is a heavy old word with a precise meaning: a sacrifice that fully absorbs God's righteous anger against sin, so that nothing is left over for us. John's definition of love has blood on it.

That should sound familiar. John 3:16 — "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son." Love, in the Bible, is measured by giving. The Victorian preacher Octavius Winslow traced the gift to its source with a question:

"Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; but the Father, for love!" — Octavius Winslow, No Condemnation in Christ Jesus

Judas, Pilate, and the mob all had their motives — money, fear, envy, the small change of human evil. But behind them all, the deepest answer to "who sent Jesus to the cross?" is the Father — and the motive was love. The cross was not an accident that God salvaged. It was a gift that God planned. For you.

Love without a reason

Here is what makes God's love unlike every other love you have known: it was not attracted by anything in us. Human love is drawn out by something lovely — a face, a personality, a kindness. That is why human love can fade when the loveliness does. God told Israel plainly that his love did not work that way. Deuteronomy 7:7-8 — "It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you... but it is because the LORD loves you." Read that twice. Why does God love you? Because he loves you. The love itself is the reason. There is nothing underneath it to dig up, doubt, or lose.

And it has no expiration date, because it had no start date. Jeremiah 31:3 — "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you." Everlasting runs in both directions: there was never a moment when God began to love you, and there will never be one when he stops.

Packer stares at this until the wonder shows:

"It is staggering that God should love sinners; yet it is true. God loves creatures who have become unlovely and (one would have thought) unlovable." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

And Scripture proves it with timing. Romans 5:8 — "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Not after we cleaned up. Not once we showed promise. While we were still sinners. Tim Keller built his whole ministry on holding those two truths together at once:

"The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope." — Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage

Most of us secretly believe the opposite: that we are not that bad, and God's love is not that strong. So we live on a treadmill — performing for a love we think we must keep earning, and hiding the parts of ourselves we think would end it. The cross corrects both errors in one stroke. The price reveals how bad it really was; no one pays that much for a small problem. And the payment reveals how loved you really are; no one pays that much for someone they merely tolerate.

The measure of love is what it gives

When Packer finally defines the love of God, every word is load-bearing:

"God's love is an exercise of His goodness toward individual sinners whereby, having identified Himself with their welfare, He has given His Son to be their Saviour, and now brings them to know and enjoy Him in a covenant relation." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Individual sinners — not a blurry crowd. God does not love "humanity" the way politicians do, in bulk and from a distance. Paul talked about the Son of God "who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20) — singular, personal, name-on-it love. And notice the phrase "covenant relation." A covenant is a binding promise, like a marriage vow — love that has signed its name and locked the exits. Feelings ebb and flow even in the best marriage; the vow is what holds when the feelings dip. God's love is not a mood he is in. It is a vow he has made — and unlike ours, his vows come with infinite power to keep them.

Then Packer gives us the measuring stick:

"The measure of love is how much it gives, and the measure of the love of God is the gift of His only Son to be made man, and to die for sins, and so to become the one mediator who can bring us to God." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

You can measure any love by its receipts — what it actually paid. A friend's love might cost them an evening. A parent's love might cost them years. God's love cost him his Son. There is no larger possible gift in the universe, which means there is no greater possible love. So when you doubt God's love — and on some dark night you will — do not check your feelings or your circumstances for evidence. Check the receipt. You will never find better proof of being loved than the cross, and you will never need it.

Loved with gladness, held beyond losing

One more correction to our small thoughts: God does not love you reluctantly, the way you might do a favor for someone who annoys you. Zephaniah 3:17 — "he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing." Singing. The God of Sinai and the seraphim sings over his people like a parent over a sleeping child. Packer pushes it to a place that should make your jaw drop — having chosen to love sinners, God has tied his own joy to ours:

"He will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again till he has brought every one of them to heaven. He has in effect resolved that henceforth for all eternity his happiness shall be conditional upon ours." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Sit with that. The Almighty, who needs nothing and lacks nothing, has voluntarily made your homecoming a condition of his own happiness. He did not have to. He chose to. That is why nothing can pry you out of this love. Romans 8:38-39 — "neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Paul lists every threat in the universe and rules them all out, then adds "anything else in all creation" to close the loopholes — and notice, you are part of creation; even you cannot un-love yourself out of this.

No wonder Paul prays that believers would "have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge" (Ephesians 3:18-19). Four dimensions — as if Paul is handing you a measuring tape and admitting in the same breath that the thing you are measuring "surpasses knowledge." It takes strength just to take it in, and he says we need "all the saints" to do it — this love is too big to comprehend alone.

And once you start to take it in, something happens almost automatically: 1 John 4:19 — "We love because he first loved us." Loved people love. Not because they are told to, but the way a struck bell rings. The surest sign that God's love is sinking in is not a feeling during worship; it is patience at your dinner table.

Going Deeper

Today, measure one love by what it gives — yours. Pick one person in your house, school, or workplace, and do for them one small, costly thing with no announcement and no expectation of repayment: take their chore, write the note, make the call, give up the better seat. As you do it, remember you are not earning God's love; you are echoing it. "We love because he first loved us." Let your hands preach yourself a one-sentence sermon on 1 John 4:19.