What does it mean that God is omnibenevolent?

He is holy. He is just, and therefore there must be judgment; but He is love, and love draws me. This is the spring of all His dealings until He is forced to action — not naturally forced — forced by reason of evil; for He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity … We delight in holiness therefore, because He is holy, but love is His nature; that is what He is.

Now in this epistle and in this chapter, remarkably, it is what the divine nature is. God is love. Whatever might occur in the history of the church of God, He is unchangeable … Christ is the image of the invisible God. He has been here — light and love, and that is what God was, manifest in the flesh.

God is love, and God has acted in love toward us. Thus there is a twofold motive for loving one another. Firstly, the very nature of God is love, and, being born of God, we partake of His nature. By loving one another, we give a practical proof that we are born of God and know God. If we have no love for the brethren, it would prove that we are strangers to God.

Love being essential to the Godhead, because "God is love," love has neither beginning nor ending. Because God is eternal, love is eternal. Before there was a creature to be loved, "God is love." But that love in the past eternity required an object. A love that is inert, dormant, a mere abstraction, has no affinity with the love of God. Love must love, and love another.

Where, then, before the foundation of the world, did love find its necessary and worthy object? The Uncreated Son Himself supplies the answer: "Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24). Within the circle of the Godhead love was always all-pervading.

The love of God announced in the gospel is not of recent origin. It was hidden, but is now made manifest. He teaches us that "love is of God" and that "God is love." God Himself is the origin, the primeval fount of love: He is love.

It being so that love is the very nature of God, that love of God is inscrutable, incomprehensible, inaccessible to the creature, as the divine nature must necessarily be. But in our day the choicest treasure of the Father's house has been manifested, being adequately and gloriously displayed in the Incarnate Son.

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us." … It is the sinner's need that draws out His love. … He sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins, and that is the proof of His love.

"God is love" may account for it all. There the secret is told. If the manifestations are excellent and marvellous, the hidden springs which are opened in Himself give us to know it all.

While God is love, He is also light. And God will not allow one side of His nature to exceed or to eclipse the other. God is perfect as light as well as love. His love is infinite, and so is His light.

Some people think that eternal punishment cannot be reconciled with the fact that God is love, and therefore they refuse to believe it. Is there any force in this argument?

None whatever. The Scriptures reveal equally both facts … The strongest possible abhorrence is quite consistent with the strongest possible affection; we would indeed go further and say it is inseparable from it. It is impossible to regard any one with deep love and not heartily hate all that imperils that person in any way.

Disbelief in the goodness of God — in His real care for man's highest development and blessing — and disobedience to the known will of God by our first parents.

The goodness of God when believed always creates and deepens reverence for Himself, and carefulness as to His holy will in worship and service.

It is "the goodness of God" that leads to repentance. But it is this very chapter that asserts that if men do not suffer the goodness of God to take them by the hand and lead them to repentance, they will find themselves seized by the severity of God and haled to judgment.