God is Love: A Theology of God’s Love

God is love; it is His very nature. Read this theology of God’s love and understand more about His nature of Love.

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes

God is love.^[1] This truth is simple and profound.

Paul prayed that the saints would be rooted and grounded in love and be able to comprehend the breadth, length, height, and depth of love.

He prayed they would know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge and be filled up to all the fullness of God (Eph 3:18-19).

“Knowing the love of Christ” is not referring to one’s human love for Christ but knowing God’s love through Christ. This kind of love “surpasses knowledge.” It involves fellowship with Christ revealing the Father’s love.

God does not share, like other beings, the quality of being a loving being.

God is love; it is His very nature.

We Can Not Comprehend the Majesty of God’s Love

Like the holiness of God, the love of God can only be partly comprehended by human understanding from what has been revealed and is being confirmed in the heart.

Some philosophers assume God’s love can be understood inferentially from humanity’s love.

However, Brunner insists that “It is not that we already know what ‘love’ is and can then apply it to God. . . .the idea, the understanding of love—the Agape of the New Testament—can only be understood from what happens in revelation.”^[2]

In His gracious condescension, God has allowed the written revelation of His Word, and sent His Word in human space and time to illustrate His unconditional agape love.

Understanding God’s Love By Contrasting Two Types of Love

To come to a fuller understanding of love, Nygren examined the meanings of two traditional Greek words for “love,” eros and agape, and their significance in understanding God’s love.

The contrast shows the distinctiveness of each type of love which emerged from cultures with different underlying moralities, Hellenism and Judiasm.^[3]

In the traditions of Oriental-Hellenism, the concept of love is understood as eros. Eros is considerably more than the desire of the senses.

Broadly, it indicates the desire for that which one does not possess, but which one would like to have, or ought to have—an acquisitive love.

Eros is aimed at that which has value, because it is worth loving in some way. The value attracts one and evokes “love” from the beholder. The love which is eros is based upon and motivated by the desire for value.^[4]

This is the love with which all humanity is familiar—the love between man and woman, the love for children, the love for occupation, the love for friendship, the love of things.

In these cases, in some manner, whether material or non-material, there is a value attached at some point; there is something “loveable.” Eros is egocentric and revolves around selfish behaviors.

It also involves a selfish stepping-stone kind of love, where one believes the present situation or relationship is a stepping stone to something higher and more.

If eros is the only kind of love understood, then striving and working toward God will be one’s understanding as the way toward God.^[5]

The writers of the New Testament, to avoid any suggestion of eros, have not used the word in the New Testament.^[6]

Contrary to eros is agape. The original sense of agape meant a respect and sympathy between equals.

With the Septuagint’s use of the word agape, the definition began to describe a conscious unworthiness before God, His mercy, and grace.^[7]

With this core understanding, Nygren explored how agape came to define love that does not seek that which has value but gives value and even creates value.

The Agape Kind of Love

Agape is God’s love that is spontaneous, unmotivated, and creative. It is not “attracted” by some kind of loveable quality, but desires to pour forth upon those without value, upon the unlovable and defiled.

Divine love seeks out those for whom no one cares, those whom society would generally reject and detest, and creates value.^[8]

Martin Luther writes along the same lines,

The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it. . . . Rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good. . . . This is the love of the cross, born of the cross, which turns in the direction where it does not find good which it may enjoy but where it may confer good upon the bad and needy person.^[9]

God’s love for His creation loves those who are rebellious and disobedient and seeks to find a way to show His love. God’s love does not seek repayment for Himself.

Brunner writes,

“The One who loves does not seek anything for Himself; all He desires is to benefit the one He loves. And the benefit He wants to impart is not “something,” but His very Self, for this Love is self-surrender, self-giving to the other, to whom love is directed.”^[10]

This is the love of God.

Greatest Revelation of Love

It is because God loves His creation that He reveals Himself and His love. For God so loved that He gave (John 3:16).

He gave of Himself, out of Himself that humanity could become one with Him (John 17), sharing in His nature and fellowship (1 John 5:20). Brunner expounds,

To go forth from Oneself, to impart Oneself—this is the Nature of the Living God. . . . Hence revelation is not only a means, it is the “thing itself.”

The God of revelation, that is the God whose Nature it is to impart Himself, can only be known in this event of self-revelation. . . . Only in the actual process of this self-communication do we experience that God is One who loves; and only in this self-communication do we learn what this Love is—this Love which is fathomless, generous, free, and without “motive.^[11]

The greatest revelation of God’s love is the incarnation whose mission it was to reveal unconditional love, to impart holiness where none existed, and establish the New Covenant with humanity.

Scripture vividly portrays the radical sinfulness of humanity.

All humans continue to go astray (Isa 53:6) with deceitful and desperately corrupt hearts (Jer 17:9). Humans stand helpless in the light of God’s holiness. Yet, Jesus’ surrender on the cross illustrates the love of God and accomplishes that which humanity cannot.

Divine Love

The real meaning of the whole divine revelation is divine reconciliation between God and humanity.

In this revelation, God discloses the secret of His being.^[12]

This is love, not that we loved, but that He loved us unconditionally (1 John 4:10), while we were yet sinners (Rom 5:8), while we were weak and helpless (Rom 5:6), and when we were enemies of God (Rom 5:10).

In this wicked state, humanity was justified by the blood of Jesus, saved from His holy wrath and reconciled to God (Rom 5:8-11).

The Paradox of God’s Holiness and Love

Luther considered God’s nature to be one of paradoxes.

He writes, “God’s love—and therefore the possibility of any kind of true knowledge of God—is found ‘hidden under its opposites.’”^[13] God seems to conceal Himself in the lowly, which reveals His great love.

Luther’s terms, God’s “strange work” and God’s “proper work” were introduced earlier to describe God’s work in humanity.

God’s strange work involves putting down, taking away hope, even leading to desperation; and God’s proper work concerns forgiving, giving mercy, taking up, saving, encouraging, etc. Luther considers God’s strange work, “the works of the left hand,” while God’s proper work “the works of the right hand.”

Even when the works seem to be different, they all issue forth from God’s love. God’s proper work is veiled in His strange work and takes place simultaneously with it.^[14]

God’s Purposes Prevail

God will use all things and work them together for His purposes.

The purpose of God’s strange work is not to scare, but to help humanity recognize the true God of love. God’s love advances toward the sinful, weak, and what others consider “nothing” to forgive, strengthen, and transform.

Brunner agrees that the relationship between God’s holiness and love is a contrast. As he explains, holiness creates distance, but love creates communion. Holiness establishes barriers and love breaks through them.^[15]

The love that breaks through barriers is seen throughout the Bible.

In the garden, God commanded, “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Gen 2:17 NIV).

After Adam and Eve’s sin, God came looking for them to cover their sin, to bridge the gap between His creature and sin, and reestablish a relationship.

It is not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Pet 2:9). It is where the holiness of God, and the necessary result of judgment is taken seriously that one sees the infinite nature of the love of God.

Love and holiness, even when set in stark contrast to one another, are part of the same going out and coming in of God. These elements are beyond human comprehension, yet essential to the understanding of God.

Love completes holiness and is not fully love without holiness.

In a limited metaphor, the love of a human only has value if he or she has self-respect—concern for his or her personal honor.

Holiness is God’s concern for His personal honor, His exclusiveness, where His love is His concern for His creatures and His desire for inclusiveness.^[16]

The Grace of God

God’s love can plainly be seen in His grace, which plays a primary role in one’s coming to know God more intimately.

By God’s gift of grace one is saved through faith, (Eph 2:8) and one cannot even come to God unless a work of grace has been done in one’s heart (John 6:44).

Grace restores believers’ relationship with God, so believers are enabled to live in fellowship with Christ. Grace is the divine nature working undeservingly in human hearts, wills, and actions. It is God’s way of divinely empowering humanity.^[17]

God’s Grace Leads to Love

Packer explains that God’s grace working in humanity, “is intended to make us capable of, and actually to lead us into, the exercise of love, trust, delight, hope and obedience Godward—those acts which, from our side, make up the reality of fellowship with God, who is constantly making Himself known to us.

This is what all the work of grace aims at—an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with him.”^[18]

Bonhoeffer warned of Christianity’s cheapening the power of grace in believers’ lives.

He wrote that followers of Luther took Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith and divorced it from a life of dedicated obedience in following Christ.

Bonhoeffer warned that allowing baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, and the preaching forgiveness without repentance cheapens the grace of God.

When this cheapened idea of grace is allowed, humanity tends to continue in sin without true repentance and surrender to Christ with a resulting life of discipleship; it insults and devalues the cost of grace paid on the cross.^[19]

It is true repentance and true acknowledgment of the sinner’s situation that releases the grace for him or her to overcome the snares and captivity of the enemy.

Paul explains,

“With gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do His will” (2 Tim 2:25-26).

It is repentance, a change of heart and mind, which leads to “knowledge” (“full knowledge,” cf Col 1:9; 1 Cor. 15:34) as understanding of the wrong and understanding of the Savior, which produces an escape from the trap sent by the evil one.

Without understanding the power in repentance, the gift of absolution of sins cheapens grace, and humanity is done a tremendous disservice.^[20]

Without true repentance, true surrender to the lordship of Christ is impossible.

In such cases, humanity lives lifeless and powerless lives ensnared by the enemy, not understanding the power of grace bought by the love of God on Calvary.

Persistence, Patience, and Faithfulness

God’s persistence and patience gives humanity space and time to repent. In love He waits and woos humanity gently. He is patient, slow to anger, and “long-tempered.”

When Moses went up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments the second time,

“The Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness and truth; who keeps loving-kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished’” (Exod 34:6-7).

As exhibited by the Lord’s grace and mercy to the Israelites, He is not impatient in His severity. He is “slow to anger” (Ps 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2) and “longsuffering” (Exod 34:6; Num 14:18).

In the midst of the most corrupt peoples on earth, God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being constructed (1 Pet 3:20).

Hosea’s understanding of God’s patience and faithfulness in the face of unfaithfulness is the apex of Old Testament understanding of God’s unconditional love and grace.

Hosea was called to take “an adulterous” wife, who eventually left him and their three children for a series of other men.

Hosea could have legally divorced Gomer under the law, yet, despite his anguish he continued to love.

Procksch observed that,

As Hosea himself in his shattered happiness learned to know love as the indestructible force which could save even his lost wife, so Yahweh’s holiness as the sum of His being must contain the creative love which slays but also makes alive again (cf. 6:1 f.).

In the older Hebrew concept the divine stands in mortal opposition to the human and especially the sinful.

This opposition remains in Hosea’s view of God, but it is absorbed into the opposition of holy love to unholy nature.

What God in virtue of His holiness may do to love unholy nature, no man may do, and therefore the antithesis between God and man consists in the very love which overcomes it.^[21]

God’s love again is seen to break down and overcome the barriers constructed by sin. Hosea’s call was to demonstrate God’s love and faithfulness. Gomer’s adultery mirrored Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Lord. They worshiped idols and rejected His holiness and law in every conceivable manner.

The book of Hosea illustrates vividly God’s hesed (unfailing mercy, loving-kindness, steadfast love).^[22]

Hosea’s life constituted a real-life parable of God’s unconditional love.

God loved not because Israel deserved His love, but because He is love and bestows love on the undeserved.

For most people, this is incomprehensible love.

When Israel was unfaithful, God remained faithful, first disciplining Israel, but then restoring them to intimacy with Himself (Hos 14).

Christian Love

Because God is love and bestows His love on humanity, humanity is required to show love.

Jesus stated the totality of the law and the prophets is the command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:37-40).

Humanity is unable to accomplish this on its own.

Even the best of people under the law could not accomplish this until Jesus Christ. God knew the law only brings an awareness of sin and not the power to overcome. So He sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice.

He was the perfect man who could love with all His heart, soul, mind, and strength, and through His sacrifice, empower all humanity to love. “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9).

It is through Christ one loves and knows love.

“The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom 5:5).

Stauffer explains that from God proceeds everything that may be called love. The believer’s love for God “is nothing but the direct flowing back of the heavenly love which has been poured out upon the called” (Rom 5:5).^[23]

John writes that believers see and know what true love is because Christ laid down His life for them. Because Christ is the example of love, believers should emulate love and lay down their lives for others in need.

“But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:16-18).

This is the love for which one is to love one’s neighbor. The purpose for love poured out in the believer’s heart is that it flow back toward God and flow out toward neighbors, friends, and enemies. Hodges, in discussing the connection between love and knowing God in 1 John 4:7-8, comments,

“Hence, one who loves (in the Christian sense of that term) has been born of God (cf. 1 John 2:29; 3:9; 5:1, 4, 18) and he knows God. Love stems from a regenerate nature and also from fellowship with God (see 2:3-5). The absence of love is evidence that a person does not know God. . . . Since God is love, intimate acquaintance with Him will produce love. Like light (1 John 1:5), love is intrinsic to the character and nature of God, and one who is intimately acquainted with God walks in His light (1 John 1:7)”. ^[24]

In conclusion, even when humanity does not understand, God acts in accordance with His unchanging nature.

For humanity to understand this valuable lesson is to know the ways of God.

Knowing about God’s nature brings about reverence for who He is and a reverence for one’s place in the relationship.

God is not simply an idea or “the man upstairs,” but is the sovereign God Almighty who wills to reveal Himself in holy love toward His creation.

Selah.

Learn more about practically living The Christian Journey from the Home Page at www.drcynthiajohnson.com

Notes:

1. 1 John 4:7-8, 16. ↑
2. Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God: Dogmatics, vol. 1, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia, PN: Westminster Press, 1950), 185. ↑
3. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip S. Watson (Philadephia, PA: Westminister Press, 1953), 53-54. ↑
4. Nygren, 166-181. ↑
5. Nygren, 177. ↑
6. Elwell, 1357. ↑
7. Ethelbert Stauffer, “ἀγάπη,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 1, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 55. ↑
8. Nygren, 75-80. ↑
9. Martin Luther, Selected Writings of Martin Luther: 1529-1546, ed. Theodore G. Tappert, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1967), 83. ↑
10. Brunner, 186. ↑
11. Brunner, 188. ↑
12. Brunner, 184. ↑
13. Martin Luther, Heidelberg Disputation, 19, 20; Luther’s Works, 55 vols., ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Lois: Concordia, 1955-1986), 31:52; quoted in Veli-Matti Karkkainen, The Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 102. ↑
14. Karkkainen, 103. ↑
15. Brunner, 188. ↑
16. Brunner, 189. ↑
17. Hans Conzelmann, “χάρις,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 9, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 372-401. ↑
18. Packer, 250. ↑
19. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1968) 45-60. ↑
20. Bonhoeffer, 45-60. ↑
21. Procksch, “ἅγιος,” 1:92-3. ↑
22. Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, “hesed,” trans. Mark E. Biddle, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendricson, 1997), 449-464. ↑
23. Stauffer, “ἀγάπη,” 1:50. ↑
24. Zane C. Hodges, 1 John, The Bible Knowledge Commentary, vol.2, ed. John F. Walvoord, Roy B. Zuck, (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1983-c1985), 898. ↑

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