Don't Judge God's Love by Man's Love

God’s love is too often judged by the love of man.  Our love, though real, is usually very shallow and thus if it we use our love to try to understand God’s love for us, our comparison is skewed to say the least.

To understand more fully God’s love is to look at it in biblical types of God’s love:

1. God the Father loved His Son and the Son loves the Father.  Remember that we are speaking of a Trinity and the love of each person within the Trinity for the for other persons of God.  You cannot understand this kind of love if you only see love in terms as man sees i, because this would be like a person saying, “I know how to love you because I Iove myself.”   In John we are told that the Father loves the Son both with (agape) John 3:35 and (phileo) John 5:20.  John also tells us that Jesus loved the Father in John 14:31.  Remember that Jesus’ actions were based solely upon His Father’s will and the love for the Father as well.
2. God also loves His Creation.  He lovingly made and keeps His Creation according to Genesis 1 and Matthew 6.  
3. The Bible also clearly tells us that God loves the world, even though they are sinners.  In John 3:16 does not tells us that God loves some elect hand full people, but the kurios (entire world).  God clearly has a love for those who have no love for Him as He sent His Son to die for the world before the world was even capable of loving Him. (1 John 2:2 & John 15:19)  We must also accept that because of this love for the world, He takes no pleasure in the death of sinners. (Ezekiel 33:11)
4. God clearly has a special place in His heart for His children, both the Jewish people and the born again.  When God chose Israel, He made it clear that His love was not because of their greatness, because they had no greatness (Deuteronomy 7:7).  He chose to love them even during the times they rejected His leading (1 Kings 10:9).  Now He has chosen to love the saved, not because of their actions, but because they are His children (2 Thessalonians 2:16).  Jesus loved the church enough to die for it too (Ephesians 5:25).  This is the love of unconditional terms.  God chose to love us even when we are doing anything worth loving us for.
5. Lastly, there is a place of God’s love for us based upon our obedience.  This doesn’t mean we must do things to be loved by God, but there is a specialness within the love of God for those that love Him (Jude 21 & John 15:9, 10)

The reasons that the love of God is a difficult doctrine is once again because we must  not see the love of God based upon our understanding of man’s concept love for his own kind.  Realize that God doesn’t love, but God IS love (1 John 4:8 & 16).  This means love is His character not just His actions or emotions.  Love comes from God because that is Who He is, instead of man’s concept of love which is based upon how we feel.  This will be the next section of our study here.