School of the Foundations of the Christian Faith “The Creator and His Creation.” Lesson 4. God’s Love. The school consists of 22 lessons. The school was founded by the Christian Bible Institute.
God’s love, mercy, and grace are different expressions of God’s goodness.
God’s love is an eternal and integral part of His character, which most clearly expresses the manifestation of His goodness.
1. What Is Love?
To understand God’s love more clearly, let us talk about what love is. What do we mean when we speak of love?
Scripture says:
1 John 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Unfortunately, many people associate love with feelings. These feelings can come and go, and no one can control them.
People say, “I’ve fallen in love,” referring to a feeling that has swept over a person and taken hold of them uncontrollably. In reality, such “love” is an expression of self-love and selfishness.
When a person says they are in love, it most often means that the object of their love gives them special sensations. When they think about her, their heart beats faster and their blood pressure rises slightly. This brings a state of mild excitement and a very pleasant feeling that the person craves again and again, to an ever-greater degree. But when the intensity and sharpness of such sensations begin to fade, people lose interest in each other and say that love is over and there is nothing they can do about it. “You can’t force love.”
The world calls these experiences love. Most people perceive love in exactly this way. Some even try to prove that everyone must submit to this feeling because “God is love.” It is very important to note that this biblical text says, “God is love,” not “love is God”!
What, then, is the meaning of true love revealed to us by God?
John, known as the apostle of love, explains it to us in this same passage:
1 John 4:8–10 God is love. God’s love for us was revealed in this: God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might receive life through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
God’s love is expressed in giving Himself fully and dedicating Himself to those He loves. God makes the greatest sacrifices for the sake of His love for humanity. He gave His Son for our salvation!
God’s love is an expression of His true goodness. True love does not exclude feelings. It is always rich in feeling. It brings immense joy and fulfillment. But these feelings are of an entirely different nature—not the kind we have just been discussing.
The reason for God’s love is His nature, not people’s merits. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us…”
When we speak of God’s love, we mean precisely the kind of love that sacrifices itself for the highest good of those He loves. True love brings an immense sense of fulfillment and joy.
How does God’s love arise?
2. The Origin of God's Love
When we speak of the origin of someone's love, once again we continue to view it from our accustomed perspective. When assessing human love, we see that it appears and disappears. One day a person feels like loving; the next day, they do not.
But God's love is completely different!
1. God's Love Is Eternal
It is an integral part of His nature. God's love has always existed! It did not arise as a result of the creation of humanity. It was not that God first created people, then saw that they had turned out well and pleased Him, and therefore loved them. God is love! He has always been this way—even before creating the people He loves.
2. God's Love Comes from Within Him
True love always comes from the heart of the one who loves. It cannot arise from any external causes. God simply loves because He wants to love, because it is part of His nature!
1 John 4:10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
When we speak of God's love for us, we cannot say that God found something particularly attractive in us that caused Him to leave heaven and come down to earth to draw us to Himself. No, His love came and continues to come from His own desire and determination. This fills us with admiration and gratitude and gives us confidence in His love for us.
3. The Work of God's Love
How does God's love work in practice?
This question is particularly relevant because evil truly exists on earth.
How Can God’s Love and the Existence of Evil Be Reconciled?
We encounter evil every day! People experience pain, deprivation, all kinds of difficulties, and death. How can all this be reconciled with God’s absolute goodness and His love?
To understand this question, it will help us to some extent to understand the relationships within the Trinity.
John 3:35 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. The Son is completely devoted to what the Father desires.
John 5:30 I can do nothing on My own. As I hear, I judge, and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.
The Holy Spirit does not seek His own, but what the Son desires.
John 16:13–14 When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you.
God’s love has always been manifested among the three Persons of the Godhead.
Wherever we see two or three Persons of the Trinity manifested simultaneously, we see absolute love and harmony.
Because God’s love is perfect, God the Father cannot allow any impurity, sin, or rebellion against the holiness and purity of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Therefore, God’s absolute wrath against sin also proceeds from His love.
God has no evil in Himself. His wrath is His necessary and inevitable response to sin. Through it, He protects absolute love and absolute holiness.
God’s perfect love and harmony within the Trinity must be protected from any rebellion, resistance, and impurity from outside. That is why we see so many problems and so much suffering in our modern world. All of this is the result of the Fall and humanity’s rebellion against God.
At the same time, the Bible clearly says that God loves people! God created humanity in His own image and likeness. God lived in harmony with His creation. An atmosphere of love and peace reigned in the Garden of Eden. When the first people rebelled against God, they placed themselves under God’s wrath, as God had warned them from the very beginning.
Because God’s holiness is infinite, a person who sinned against it would have had to remain under the unending effect of God’s wrath. But God, because of His great love for humanity, planned the greatest operation to save people. This operation consisted in the incarnation of God the Son. God the Son became human, took human sins upon Himself, endured the full measure of God’s wrath, and suffered terrible torment and death on the cross at Calvary.
All this was done only because God loved people. This love originated in Him Himself. It did not arise because of our merits or virtues.
The Apostle Paul speaks about the power and greatness of God’s love
Eph. 2:1–5 And you were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to [the will of] the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
2 Cor. 5:18–21 All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them… For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
God’s love cannot be explained from a human perspective.
God should have consigned people to eternal destruction! He had the right to do so. God’s holiness and justice required that sinners be punished, but God’s love for people moved Him to find another solution—a solution that cost Him very dearly. He gave up the One He loved most in all the world—He gave His Son over to suffering and death!
This is the greatest manifestation of God’s grace and love, which should cause every person who has truly experienced its saving work to tremble with awe.
And finally:
Does God love everyone equally?
God’s perfect love is shown toward everyone, but it is expressed in different ways.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
It is clearly stated here that God loves the whole world—that is, God loves the entire world and all people. That is why God extends common grace, manifested in the fact that all people equally receive from God light and warmth, water and food, air, and everything necessary for life.
Matt. 5:45 For He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
At the same time, the Bible says that very many people, because of their opposition to God, will go into eternal destruction because they did not believe in Jesus Christ and did not submit to Him.
God has a special love for those who are born of His Spirit, who have become His children, and who love Him and are faithful to Him.
1 Tim. 4:10 For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
1 Cor. 2:9 But as it is written: Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him.
Rom. 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Love for born-again people comes from God's love for His Son, Jesus Christ. Why? Because these people were born of the Spirit of Jesus Christ and received His nature in their hearts.
The reason for this special love of God lies in His grace, which gave us new birth and enabled us to love Him.
Therefore, the entire life of true believers consists in continually humbling themselves before God, continually delighting in His love, and continually being filled with His grace. It is precisely being filled with the grace of God that enables us to love Him and rejoice in Him forever!
Eph. 5:1–2 Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
Review questions:
- How do many people understand love?
- What is true love?
- How is God's love for people expressed?
- Does God love all people equally?
- Why is God angry with sinners?
- How can we escape God's wrath?
Bible verse to memorize: 1 John 4:10; John 3:16
Source: Christian Bible Institute
