We read “God is Love” (1 John 4:7-8) to the point that it becomes a bit trite, a cliché. We can become numb to the full power of its meaning. Let’s think more deeply about it for a moment.

God’s Love, Without Us

How can God be an emotion? Or even an action, if we define love as acting in the loved one’s best interests? I can understand that He feels loving, or does loving things. But what did John mean when he said that God is love?

Love must have an object, something or somebody to love. Before God created the world, what was that object? The answer: God Himself. It’s more than we can grasp completely, but the Bible teaches that, while there is only one God, that God is multi-dimensional…actually multi-Personal. The “Trinity“, the three distinct-but-equal Persons of the One God, have always loved one another, since before time began. So, just as God is three Persons, God is also characterized by the love between Them (Matthew 3:16-17, Matthew 17:5, John 17:4-5).

C.S. Lewis, in his book “Mere Christianity“, refers to this love relationship as a kind of dance. Timothy Keller’s book, “Jesus the King“, pictures that dance as each of the Three constantly orbiting around the other Two, focussing Their entire energies on the Others’ glory. When I try to get that image in my mind, I come up with something like an atom, with electrons circling the nucleus. That falls short, however, because each of the three “Electrons” is in turn the Nucleus of the others!

Our Love, Without God

As finite, flawed humans, our love works more like a sound-system “feedback loop”. You’ve certainly heard one happening: It’s the lovely high-pitched squeal that the system can make. Here’s the quick explanation of what is going on:

• A sound is made, like someone speaking or singing.
• A microphone is listening. The sound it hears gets sent to an amplifier.
• The amplifier boosts the volume and sends the sound out to a speaker.
• So far, so good, but….
  • That listening microphone hears the amplified sound coming from the speaker, in addition to the original voice it intends to hear.
    • That amplified sound goes from the microphone, to the amplifier, to the speaker.
    • The microphone hears the now-doubly-amplified sound, and sends it to the amplifier and speaker.
      • Again and again, many times per second.
        • Result = SQUEAL

At its best, our love works similarly to the sound system. Person A (the microphone) sends love to Person B (the speaker). B returns it, amplified. A receives that return, and sends it out again. Both A and B are continually giving and receiving love. That love keeps growing with each cycle. Both are happy and fulfilled.

However, there are two flaws with that comparison.

One: The loop is easily broken. Person B, for whatever reason, does not return the love to Person A ¹. That leaves A sitting there, stuck, unable to send any further love to B. With no more input, B is also stuck, sitting on an empty love tank. Both are unhappy, and unable to do anything about it.

Two: Notice the very first step of the sound-system description above is “A sound is made.” That original sound is not part of the loop between microphone and speaker. It is outside the loop, but it is the critical primer that gets the loop started in the first place. As humans, we are always inside the loop; we need a “love primer” to get us started. Guess Who that might be?

We love, because He first loved us.

1 John 4:19

Our Love vs. God’s Love

We are not capable of always orbiting, putting the loved one as our nucleus. We can’t always be the giver of love, pouring out continually without receiving anything back. As humans, we need nourishment also. We need to be loved. We need to occasionally stand still and have someone orbit around us.

(How many times have I complained about someone who behaves as if they think they are the center of the universe? And how many times is that complaint because don’t they know that I am the center?! 😁)

God doesn’t have that problem. He doesn’t need us at all, or anything we can give to Him ². He has infinite love already, just within Himself. He needs no other feedback.

That means that God is outside the loop. We can return His love back to Him, of course, and we should. But if we don’t, it doesn’t stop Him. He still continually pours out love on us, because He alone is the Source of that love. Nothing about it depends on us.

That also means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us any more than He already does. His love is infinite to begin with. By definition, there is no “more” possible. Conversely, there is nothing we can do to make Him love us any less. His love just keeps on coming, no matter what we do. It is inherent in His nature. He can’t NOT love, any more than a fire can keep from being hot.

There is a great old song that tries to express this truth. “The Love of God” was written by Frederick Martin Lehman in 1917. Its third verse has always been my favorite ³:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
and were the skies of parchment made;
were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill,
and ev’ryone a scribe by trade;
to write the love of God above
would drain the ocean dry;
nor could the scroll contain the whole,
though stretched from sky to sky

God’s Love Expressed

If we ask “How can we know for sure that God loves us like this?”, the answer is “Jesus“. Although every breath we take is a sign of God’s love, the sacrifice of His Son is the greatest sign of all. The Son, in His steps of the Trinity-dance, became a man so that He could pay the price necessary to bring us into the dance with Him (John 17:11, 20-21). On Calvary, God said “I love you!”….written in red.

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

John 3:16-17 (See other love verses here.)

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—
the saints’ and angels’ song.

1. Maybe something prevents B from receiving the love, or A doesn’t send in a way that B understands, or either A or B is simply not interested in sending love out.
2. He simply chooses to want us.
3. That verse is based on a portion of a Jewish poem from the 11th century named Haddamut (or Akdamut). When Lehman heard about them, he was told that these lines had been found written on the wall of an insane asylum cell! Apparently the inmate had been aware of the ancient poem. See more at this link.