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Many today talk about God’s love, but do not understand it. They see it as good-natured indulgence or sentiment patterned after human emotion. This misunderstanding of God’s love may help to explain why there is so little real love in the church. The better acquainted we are with God's wondrous love for His people, the more we will be able to love Him and each other.

In 1 John 4:8 we read that “God is love.” John is not simply saying that God loves. John is saying that God is love itself. Love is His nature.

To better understand God’s love, it will be helpful to list seven attributes of that love and support them with Scripture.

1) The love of God is sovereign. God is sovereign, under obligation to no one, a law unto Himself, acting according to His own imperial pleasure. Since God is sovereign, and since He is love, it necessarily follows that His love is sovereign. God is God, He does as He pleases; because God is love, He loves as He pleases. “As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Romans 9:13). Jacob was no more deserving of Divine love than Esau. We might think it was because Esau gave up the birthright Genesis 25:29–34). But Jacob was deceitful (Genesis 27). They were twins, each as much a sinner as the other; yet God loved the one and hated the other. Why? Because it pleased Him to do so. He had already determined to love one and hate the other before they were born; before they had done any good or evil (verse 11). Paul explains this further in Romans 9:15: “For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

The sovereignty of God’s love necessarily follows from the fact that it is uninfluenced by anything we do. The cause of God’s love lies in Himself. God is not influenced by anything outside of Himself; God loves whom He pleases. If God’s love were determined by anything other than His will, He would be under a compulsion external to Himself. He would be under a law of love greater than He, and He would therefore be under a law of love. But this cannot be so because God is ruled by nothing.

2) The love of God is unconditional. In other words, nothing about us makes God love us. It can be argued that this point is the same as the sovereignty of God’s love, but the reason it is a separate point is to stress that God places no conditions upon us for receiving His love. The love of God is free. Notice that God’s love for Israel was not based on anything about Israel: “The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 7:7–8).

In 1 John 4:19, we read, “We love him, because he first loved us.” Romans 5:8 agrees: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” As we will see in the third attribute of God’s love, God has loved His people from everlasting. Therefore, nothing about us can be the cause of what is found in God from eternity.

God did not love us because we loved Him, but He loved us before we had a particle of love for Him. Had God loved us in return for our love, it would not be unconditional. God’s love for His people was not and is not influenced by anything about us. If it were, then we would not have God’s love because there is everything about us to repel Him and make Him loathe us. We are a sinful, depraved, mass of corruption with no good thing: “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10–18).

3) The third attribute of God’s love is that it is eternal. We should expect this since God Himself is eternal, and He is love. God’s love had no beginning. It is eternal, or everlasting: “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee” (Jeremiah 31:3). God loved His people before He called heaven and earth into existence: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1:4–5).

Since God’s love for us is from eternity, not only does it not have a beginning, it also has no ending. Notice: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Psalm 90:2). God is from everlasting to everlasting; God is love; therefore, God’s love is from everlasting to everlasting. God’s love is without beginning and without end.

4) God’s love is infinite. Everything about God, including His love, is limitless. In Psalm 139:8, David wrote, “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.” There is no place we can go and nothing we or anyone or anything can do that will separate us from God’s love. “For I am persuaded,” wrote Paul, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).

5) God’s love is immutable. This means that God’s love does not change. Peter denied Christ, but Jesus never stopped loving him. James writes, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). God does not vary (Malachi 3:6), and since He is love, His love does not change.

6) God’s love is holy. His love never conflicts with His holiness. This is where many people make a mistake and think that somewhere between the Old and New Testaments, God threw away holiness and righteousness and became loving. They see love as leniency, complete tolerance, and just letting anything go. But that is not God’s love. There is no change in God’s love or in His standard of righteousness between the Old and New Testaments. God’s holiness and righteousness are not limited to the Old Testament, and God’s love is not limited to the New. The Old Testament often speaks of God’s love: “Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; for they have been ever of old. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, O Lord” (Psalm 25:6–7); and “How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings” (Psalm 36:7). The New Testament often speaks of God’s righteous indignation against sinners, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).

God is as righteous and holy in the New Testament as in the Old. And He is as loving. In fact, holiness and love go together. God does not approve of sin, but in His love, He provides a way for sinners to be redeemed. God shows His love through His upholding righteousness and in His demand for holiness. God does not compromise His holiness and His righteous demands by loving sinners. Nor does He compromise His love by His righteous demands. He showed His love and His demand for righteousness by having Jesus Christ die for our sins. And when we who are justified fall into a pattern of sin, He brings us back toward holiness by chastening us: “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Hebrews 12:6).

7) The final aspect of God’s love we will examine is that it is gracious. John 3:16 tells us this: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” God’s giving His Son was an act of grace. Jesus did not die to make God love us; He died because God already loved us. Remember: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).

When we are tempted to doubt God’s love because of some affliction, we should think of these seven attributes of God’s love. We should also keep in mind that Jesus Christ was beloved of the Father, yet He suffered poverty, disgrace, and persecution. He hungered and thirsted. It was not incompatible with God’s love for Christ when God permitted men to spit on Him and hit Him. God did not enrich His Son on earth with temporal prosperity: Christ did not live in king’s palaces. Jesus said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). Yet He also said, “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand” (John 3:35). Now read Romans 8:16–17: “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” We, too, may suffer in this life. But, as joint heirs with Christ, God will also give us all things.

Yes, we may not see it in this life, but we Christians are to be joint heirs with Jesus Christ of all things. Spiritual blessings are the principal gifts of Divine love. As Christians, we are in conflict with the world, and it hates us: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18–19). This means more than the direct reaction of the people. It refers to the very system of the world that is against the way we act and do business as Christians (see Luke 10:3). Paul, in Ephesians 6:12, points out, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

On the other hand, let’s always remember God’s sovereign, unconditional, eternal, infinite, immutable, holy, and gracious love:
 

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 8:31–39).