God is a God of justice; a God of truth and mercy. He is a God of righteousness, faithfulness and might. But do you know that God is also a God of love?
Maybe you know this in your head but not in your heart. Or maybe you’ve been taught that God is a loving God but you’ve never actually experienced His love. Maybe you’ve never believed that fact to be true.
But it is true.
God is a loving God and He does love you.
Love Is Who God Is
What you must understand if you are to believe in God’s love is that God is love. (1 John 4:8) Love is who He is. It’s His nature, His character. You cannot separate God from love.
Once you understand this, you will realise that because love is who God is, everything He does is done out of love.
In fact, the very actions that brought us salvation and eternal life, the actions we rest our faith upon, Jesus’ death and resurrection, happened because of God’s love.
We’ve Been Saved By Love
The well known verse, John 3:16 tells us:
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.
Why did God give His only Son, Jesus, so that we might have everlasting life? Because He loved us. When God sent Jesus He did not do so grudgingly. God sent Jesus willingly. Even Jesus Himself gave up His life willingly.
Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified. Not because He couldn’t prevent it. He could have had an army of angels by His side in an instant. (Matthew 26:53-54) But He let Himself be crucified because He loved us. He still loves us, just as God does.
So you see? We were not saved out of obligation or duty. We were saved because the God of the whole earth loved us. And He has loved us from the beginning.
God Has Loved Us From the Beginning
God’s love for us did not start or end with Jesus’ death and resurrection. No. God has loved us from the beginning. When He was separating the light from the dark (Genesis 1:4) and as He filled the land and seas with creatures. (Genesis 1:21)
While He filled the soil with all we would need to eat and survive (Genesis 1:11), when He made the heavens, the sun and stars and moon, (Genesis 1:14-18) as He did all of this, He was loving us. He was thinking good thoughts towards us.
It is Jesus’ death that has revealed God’s great love for us:
In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
(1 John 4:9)
But God has always loved us. And now that Christ has risen (1 Corinthians 15:20) we can still have faith in God’s love because God has poured it out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5:5)
Do You Know That God is Love?
So after all this, Do you know that God is love and that He loves You? Do you believe it?
I believe that truly knowing that God is love and understanding that He loves you is of the uttermost importance. For it is once you have a revelation of God’s love and have experienced God’s love that you can start to believe in His promises. His promise to heal (Mark 1:40-41) , to provide (Philippians 4:19), and to save you from the hand of the Enemy. (Psalm 60:12)
If you have a distorted view of God or simply, a lack of understanding about His love, you will find it difficult to believe that He actually wants to do good things for you. (Jeremiah 29:11)
Believing in God’s Love
It says in Romans 10:17:
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
The more you hear of God’s love, the more your faith in His love will be increased and the more you will begin to believe in God’s love. But you have to be open to hearing for that to happen.
Sometimes your ears can be clogged up by thoughts of condemnation, by fear of God’s righteous judgment. If that’s the case, you’ll find it hard to listen to preachers’ or the Word’s declaration of God’s love for you.
But what you must understand is that nobody deserves God’s love. It has been freely poured out on us.
Second of all, you have been forgiven. Christ nailed your sin on the cross and now it is gone! When God looks at you He sees Jesus, not your wrong or shameful actions.
Lastly, God is not angry with you. His wrath has been turned away. A path has now been opened by Jesus for you to receive His unconditional love. It’s this love that will cast out your fear of His judgment (1 John 4:17-18) and cause you to stand boldly before Him, knowing that He is only looking at you with love.
Experiencing God’s Love
It’s not just about fact, but understanding and truly believing in God’s love. You can’t just know about God’s love but you must experience it. That’s what Paul tells us in Ephesians 3:19 when He says “to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge…”
Once you get past your misunderstandings about God and hear more about His love, you will be able to have that experiential knowledge of His great and deep love. (Ephesians 3:18)
A love that will never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:8) A love that is everlasting and eternal, just as God is. A love that God will be pouring out on us from now and into forever.
