What Does “God Is Love” Actually Mean?

Love isn’t a standard apart from God, some morality separate from him that he must adhere to. God isn’t loving because he fulfills an external standard. He is love. Therefore, what he does is, by definition, loving. His actions, thoughts, messages, decisions, covenants, promises, judgments, all of them are expressions of love. 

We see a great deception when people argue against Christianity with, “God isn’t loving because he …” or “God is hateful because he …” These statements belie a deep and core issue. Humanity believes they can judge God based on their understanding of love, as if an infinite, eternal, and omnipotent God must bow to a limited and ignorant definition of love. This deception flows from the original sin, choosing a morality (knowledge of good and evil) apart from God who is Life. 

Modern views define love a number of different ways. It is a feeling that rises and falls based on circumstances or self-interest. Love might be viewed as a romantic relationship, or even sexual. Others define love as an affirmation of sexual or worldly identity. When feelings or circumstances fade, love disappears, or at least by their definition. 

Other current cultural ideas of love emphasize it for mutual benefit — “I love as long as I get something in return.” Some equate love with blanket approval. They want to do something, or think it will make them “happy,” and their definition of love must allow what they desire. Of course, happiness has the same problems as anything based on feelings, a poor and even dangerous foundation for anything. 

Our modern culture contains a similarity to Gnosticism, as well. It’s common for people to express “my truth” and encourage others to do the same, as if truth can be different from person to person. While most probably don’t understand old Gnosticism, the philosophy of personal, special spiritual knowledge is eerily similar. 

In our intellectual, Western society, we can also separate belief from action, as if we can have faith in God but don’t have to act like it. John addresses this several times in his letter when he says, “God is love.” 

These modern ideas of love influence the church, too. We must be careful to delineate between cultural ideas of love and what the Bible declares. The Scriptural definition of love is radically different than the ones we, as sinful and rebellious humanity, could come up with. 

God’s love seeks the eternal best for others and acts self-sacrificially on their behalf, not because anyone earns it. Every person created in God’s image has intrinsic, eternal value. God’s love seeks relationship, reconciliation, redemption, deliverance, salvation, and blessing for people and all creation. His compassion makes promises and remains faithful to his Word. He makes covenants and gives the best he has so those who believe will have eternal life. 

The romance genre outsells every other one. Musicians and movies are constantly produced about different facets of love. We long for love more than anything else. 

It makes sense when you consider the God who is love created us in his image. Yet our sin separated us from the Person of love, frustrating our core longing: to be seen, heard, liked, enjoyed, and loved. So we try to find it anywhere we can. And we so often get it wrong. 

Love is a Person. Therefore, we can see how God sought to give us what we most desire by sending himself to be with us, Immanuel. Scripture, the both Old and New Testaments, continually instructs us to commit our hearts and lives to absolute devotion to God as a Person. Not because God is selfish but because within that action, we find the life we seek. There’s no other way to find or know love except by hearing and seeing and having intimate, oneness with God. 

God is love, but he is also peace and righteousness and Spirit. He is healer and provider. He alone is goodness. God’s love can’t be separated from other aspects of his character and identity. We can’t define any of these ideas any more than we can love. He is the definition of all of it. 

This necessitates a dying to ourselves, which includes our idea of love. Because we’ve lived apart from God, in rebellion to him as all people have, we have wrong ideas of love. They can only be corrected through following and listening to God, through the Spirit, the Bible, and the Church. This feels like death, but it leads to the life which satisfies us and gives us hope. 

God’s love makes us sons and daughters, not simple servants or mindless automatons. He bore us from the Spirit and chose to adopt us, all because he is love. He changed our very parentage and nature, killing the sinful one and giving us his own. 

Just as God loves others because of his divine nature, he provides the same for us through the cross and resurrection. He’s made us partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Like God doesn’t try to adhere to an external standard, we can’t, either. We have the divine nature within us to live by the Law of Spirit and Life (Romans 8:2), the Law of Liberty (James 1:25). Submitting our lives unto and following the one who is love, we will love others, naturally fulfilling the moral standards of righteousness. 

God is also eternal and omniscient. His love never fails. Therefore, we can trust him to keep his promises for our future. We have an unfailing hope, an inheritance as sons and daughters of God. We can trust him to accomplish this because he is love and he loves us. The next age, the Kingdom of God, will be ruled and reigned by love. 

Peace. 

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Kharoll Mendoza

Britt Mooney lives and tells great stories. As an author of fiction and non-fiction, he is passionate about teaching ministries and nonprofits the power of storytelling to inspire and spread truth. Mooney has a podcast called Kingdom Over Coffee and is a published author of We Were Reborn for This: The Jesus Model for Living Heaven on Earth as well as Say Yes: How God-Sized Dreams Take Flight.