What is Love?
A strong feeling of affection for someone or something. Examples are love for a parent, child, or friend which affects your behaviour to that person. It can also apply people’s love for animals and a great interest in something or event e.g. a sport or a hobby. However, our love can be for both good people and things and for bad.
How Great Is God’s Love?
We read “… for God is love” (1John 4:8). So, love is one of the essential characteristics of God. God also has a number of other personal characteristics e.g. being holy (without any sin), being just and gracious.
How much does God love us? “But God, … because of His great love with which He loved us …” (Ephesians 2:4). When we realise that God’s “understanding is infinite” (Psalm 147:5) then we begin to understand that God’s love is exceedingly great. As “God so loved the world, …” (John 3:16) we see that he loves everyone in this room, in our town, our country and our world. He loves the good, according to this society, and the bad.
And how long and how deep does that love last for? Malachi 3:6 says “For I am the LORD, I do not change; …” and so God’s great and deep love to everyone continues all the time even when they are not aware of it. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour come into the everlasting benefit of it which also affects their life now.
How Was God’s Love Expressed?
1John 4:10 tells us, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (meaning the sacrifice) for our sins.” So, nobody asked God to come into the world to make salvation from sin possible for the human race. However, God sent His Son, even though people had not asked Him to, to bear the punishment for our sins so that we could be forgiven. God expressed Himself through the Lord Jesus and showed both His justice and His love. When the Lord Jesus was on the cross God showed His justice by punishing Him for our sins. But at the same time God was showing His great love for us as seen in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten (unique) Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” As Christ has died for our sins, then “whosoever believes in him”, and that means anybody who believes in Christ as their Saviour will not “perish”, which means go to hell, “but have (as a present possession) everlasting life.” So, this shows the broadness of God’s love to the world.
However, something of the depth of God’s love is seen at John 13:1 “Now before the feast of the passover {at the time of the cross}, when Jesus … having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” The word “end” means to the “highest degree”. So, He loved His disciples, or followers, to the endof His time on earth even though He knew that they would fail Him and run away from Him very soon (see Matthew 27:47-56). He would continue to love them throughout eternity and to the greatest degree possible as He was about to show by dying for them on the cross.
Then again, the Lord Jesus expressed His very deep love for His disciples in John 15:9, “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide (or continue) in My love.” In heaven God the Father loved God the Son with a love far stronger and deeper than we can understand and similarly God the Son loved God the Father in return. Now another amazing thing that the Lord Jesus says is, that the same love that God the Father has for Him is the same love that He has for those that believe in Him. This incredible statement is something that we would never have believed if the Lord Jesus had not said it. Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus wants us to continually believe it because He said, “abide (or continue) in My love”. That does not mean that we can get out of such marvellous love but we can get out of the realisation and enjoyment of that great love of the Lord Jesus to us which He wants us to continually enjoy. One of our problems is that when all is going well in our lives, then we believe that God and the Lord Jesus love us. However, when circumstances go against us, we then think that God and the Lord Jesus do not love us … but that is not true. God and the Lord Jesus love us intensely all the time and they want those that have believed in the Lord Jesus to continually live in the good of it.
Paul’s Persuasion about God’s love for him
The apostle Paul suffered a lot for the Lord Jesus but despite all of it he could still make the following statement. Romans 8:38-39 “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, v39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So, Paul says, “For I am persuaded, and so this was not just an opinion but it was an assurance based on certain facts. Then Paul lists ten things that cannot separate him from the love of Christ for him:
that neither death, nor life which is neither fear of death, nor life’s distractions away from the truth, nor angels which could be good or evil i.e. demons, nor principalities who are rulers who are either spiritual or have earthly powers e.g. the powerful presidents on earth, nor powers they are active powers either spiritual or earthly, nor things present i.e. what we may now endure, nor things to come which could be things that we are afraid of, nor height, nor depth which are high dimensions or space, nor any other creature, that is in case Paul has missed anything out, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So Paul is saying that he is confident that absolutely nothing, in the present or the future, can separate him from the love of God. God wants believers in Christ to understand and enjoy that as well.