God is Love
by Jonathan Pless
Love is a difficult topic. Much opinion and emotion is wrapped up in the word.
Webster defines love as "a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person.”
More modern, contemporary sources describe love as a “feeling of strong attraction and emotional affection.”
It seems our modern world defines love as a “strong feeling” at most. Love is commonly viewed as a blend of feelings and emotion. I would agree in part.
The New Testament was originally written in Greek, and there we find several Greek words that we translate with the word “love”:
Agápē love is an unconditional type of love.This love is selfless; it gives and expects nothing in return. It is sacrificial by nature. The closest human relationship example would be a mother’s love for her child. This is the type of love God has for us.
Éros is a physical type of love. Sexual, passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. Intended to be found exclusively in marital relationships.
Philía describes the love of friends. Affectionate regard or friendship. Think of Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love).
Finally, storge love is love for family or love for one’s country. Love of a creed or group.
These help us think about the many sides and expressions of that word “love.” However, I find it imperative to have a better basis for our word love.
The Bible tells us in 1 John 4:8 God is love (agápē). If we want a real picture of what love is, we must look at God himself.
Does God Hate?
What does it mean that God is love? Does He love everyone? Does He love without regard to character, behavior, or belief? To get to that answer, we have to consider the opposite: does God hate? Can He hate?
The short answer is: yes. God’s hate is directed towards sin and wickedness.
In the beginning, God created a beautiful, abundant world with the potential to flourish in relationship to Him. But the ones He created to steward and care for that world (humans) rebelled against Him and chose to go their own way. This brought death, suffering, abuse, and evil into God’s good world. Does God love that? Absolutely not!
Proverbs 6:16-19 lists seven things God hates: haughty eyes, liars, murderers, schemers, evil plots, false witnesses, and gossips or troublemakers.
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but a representative one. God hates the things that desecrate His creation and His people. Part of God being a “God of love” is an intense hatred for wickedness.
David says in Psalm 5:4, “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.”
Does God hate? Yes. If He did not hate sin and the wicked, He would not be holy or loving.
This does not contradict His love - it is because of His love. He loves the good world He created, and He loves the humans He created in His image. So when those humans destroy the world and their fellow image-bearers, He is angry.
The Bible never says the phrase I commonly heard growing up, He "hates the sin, but loves the sinner." In fact, God is “angry with the wicked every day” (Psalm 7:11).
Does this mean God hates us because we’re liars and murderers and haughty and gossips? After all, Jeremiah 17:9 says “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Does God love me?
What hope do we have if God hates sin and my heart is full of it?
While the heart is deceitful and wicked, God has provided another way instead of us taking on his righteous wrath.
God has poured out His righteous hatred, wrath, and vengeance on His Son so he could pour out His equally righteous love and mercy on whosoever would believe.
This is the wonderful reminder of the gospel and the greatest example of love we could ever look to.
The CSB translates John 3:16 this way,
For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
How does God love us? In this way: He gave His own Son to take our place and give us His perfect righteousness.
That’s how God loves. And if you are united to Him through faith in Jesus, you are secure in His love. Nothing can remove you from His hand. You no longer stand under His wrath for your sin, He has traded your failure for His own perfect life! You are no longer those things listed in Proverbs 6, you are united to the perfect Son of God and bear His righteousness.
And if you are not, hear His invitation to you:
if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)
The good news of the gospel is that there is nothing you can do to redeem yourself, but that God has already done it all in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Because He is love, He has given His own Son to rescue a wayward and rebellious people. All we need to do is come to Him by faith.
This is the testimony of every Christian:
And you were dead in your trespasses and sin in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also.But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us,made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do. (Ephesians 2:1-10)