What is God's love according to the Bible?

Observe, it does not say merely that God is loving, but that He is love. It is not only that love is an attribute of His character, but it is the very activity of His nature. We do not read that God is justice, or holiness; He is just and He is holy; but it would not express the full and blessed truth to say that God is loving; He is much more, He is love itself. Hence, when the sinner — "whosoever" he be, it matters not — is brought to see his own total and absolute ruin, his hopeless wretchedness, his guilt and misery, the utter vanity and worthlessness of all within and around him, (and there is nothing in the whole world that can satisfy his heart, and nothing in his heart that can satisfy God, or satisfy even his own conscience) when these things are opened in any measure to his view, then is he met by this grand substantial truth that "God is love," and that He so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son.

Here is life and rest for the soul. Here is salvation, full, free, and everlasting, for the poor, needy, guilty, lost one; — salvation resting not upon anything in man or of man, upon aught that he is or can be, aught that he has done or can do, but simply upon what God is and has done. God loves and gives, and the sinner believes and has. This is far beyond creation, government, or law. In creation, God spake and it was done. He called worlds into existence by the word of His mouth. But we hear nothing, throughout the entire record of creation, of God loving and giving.

"God is light;" and "God is love." These two are His essential qualities — His very being. We know that power, dominion and authority, wisdom and riches belong to Him. But it is nowhere said in scripture, that "God is power," or that "God is wisdom," etc. We know that God is holy, righteous, and just, and that He is good, gracious, and merciful. But these divine qualities are only the manifest results of what God is in Himself, i.e., "Light," and "Love."

Love is God’s very nature. “God is love” (1 John 4:16). What rest of heart it is to know this, to trust One who is unaffected by selfishness, partiality, or caprice of any kind.

It is not true that "the one absolute definition of the Almighty, self-existent, supreme Being is, that he is Love." The apostle John, who beyond all treats of this, is careful in 1 John 1. to report to us that He is Light. It is only in chap. 4. of the same Epistle that he tells us He is Love. Light is the essential purity of His nature, which makes every thing and one manifest; Love is rather the energy of His nature, which goes out in active goodness. To leave out Light is to conceive a false god who can let off sin and sinners easily, not the True Self-existent One, Who is Love also. Christ is His image in both respects, as He was and is very God, no less than the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Charity, because it is God's presence, and that we feel His presence, and look to Him in it, is intolerant of evil. In mere brotherly kindness, the brother being the object before my mind (and, if God's presence be not felt, we do not realise it, nature coming in so easily and here in its most unsuspected and kindly shapes), I put man before God, smother up evil, keep kindness going, at any rate so far exclude and shut out God. Charity is His active presence though it will be in love to man; but it gives to God all His rights. He it is that is love, but He is never inconsistent with Himself. His love to us was shewn in what was the most solemn proof of His intolerance of evil, the cross. There is no true love apart from righteousness. If God is indifferent to evil, is not righteous, then there is no love in grace to the sinner. If He abhors evil, cannot suffer it in His presence, then His dealings with us as sinners shew the most perfect love. If I have ten children, and they go wrong, and I say, 'Well, I am to shew love to them,' and I take no account of their evil ways; or if some of them go wrong and I treat them as if there was no difference to my mind in their well doing or evil doing; this is not love but carelessness as to evil. This is the kind of love looked for by unconverted man, namely, God's being as careless as to evil as they are; but this is not divine charity which abhors the evil, but rises over it, dealing with it either in putting it away or in needed chastenings. Now if God were indifferent to evil there is no holy being to be the object of my love - nothing sanctifying. God does not own as love what admits of sin.

In verse 7, the Holy Ghost goes on to show the wonders and reality of God's love in giving His Son, and the love of Christ in dying for us. "For scarcely for a righteous man would one die." If there were a righteous man, who was perfectly just and unblameable in his ways, yet there would be nothing in that to draw out the affections, and it would be difficult to find one who would love him enough to die for him; but possibly there might be a good man, be loved by all, and some one might possibly be found to lay down his life for him. But if such a thing really happened, what a stir and talk it would make! The life of this good man, beloved by all, is in jeopardy; can any one be found who will risk their lives to save his? Yes; one has actually been found to do it! But what a wonder of love. This would be the greatest proof of love in man. But God's love far eclipses it, as we read in verse 8: "But God commendeth His love toward us, in that," while we were neither good nor righteous, but "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." That is why it is called His love, because it is a love peculiar to God Himself. With us, there must always be something in another to draw out our love; in other words, there must be something to love. But God loved us when there was nothing in us to love, but our hearts at enmity to Him, and nothing but a mass of sin; for it was "while we were yet sinners" that God's love went out toward us; and the perfect expression of that love was, He gave His Son to die for us, so that now (verse 9) we are "justified by His blood." His precious blood meets every charge that the enemy could bring against us; and now, being already justified, we shall be saved from the wrath that is about to be revealed upon a guilty world. If we believe in the love now, we shall be saved from the wrath that is coming; but if the love is rejected, wrath must be the consequence.

Four qualities of God come before us — love, mercy, kindness and grace (verses 4 and 7). Love is the nature of God, the spring of all His actions, and the source of all our blessings. If God acts according to the love of His heart, the blessing that results can only be measured by His love. The question, then, is not what measure of blessing will meet our needs, but what is the height of blessing that will satisfy the love of God. Grace is love in activity towards unworthy objects, and goes out towards all. Mercy is shown to the individual sinner. Kindness is the bestowal of blessings upon the believer. God acts, then, “because of His great love”, not because of anything that we are. Who can measure His “great love”, and who can measure the blessing that is according to that love?

This love is that alone which is eternally active; it proceeded from God and could only have an end if He had. It was there in full activity as the motive, spring, and life of the Holy Trinity, before the power that created was called into action. It neither began to be nor commenced to be active, nor shall it cease to exist and be active. It is inherent in and native to Godhead; it flows from Each to Each within the Holy Trinity, and spreads itself over all that God is and does. "Love is of God." "God is Love." Love is behind all that God does, whether in creation, providence, or government, and is seen in fullest lustre in its own sphere, namely Redemption. Righteousness and holiness were called into action by their opposites; love cannot be dormant. Hence the beautiful moral suitability, as all thoughtful minds have felt, of plurality within the blessed Godhead. The activity and reciprocity of love within the Godhead is instinctively felt, as we learn that love is the nature of God, but we have the truth itself stated by the Son: "Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24).

In the first place, then, God's love to the world is manifested in the cross. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." It is not allowable to narrow this down to a love simply to the elect, as has been only too often done. It is true that the elect are all originally of the world, and that thus He loves them when dead in trespasses and sins, and for His great love quickens them (Eph. 2:4). But we cannot limit His love here to this: it is out of keeping with the "whosoever" which follows. Moreover the "world" cannot fairly be interpreted as less than the whole of it, if we believe in the transparent honesty and accuracy of Scripture. God's love to the world, then, is so deep and wonderful that it can only be measured by the gift of His Son. We dare not refuse to credit fully what is so solemnly assured.

Solemn passages these, Christian father! Are you going to degrade your own children to "bastards," by training them on the non-punishment principle? Prove that he is your son by — scourging him. It is thus God dealt with you and me. "He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." And why? Because He loves us, and does love us; "For whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth." Does "scourging" look like "receiving"? or "chastening" like "loving"? Certainly not in any other relationship, but it is just that which characterises the love of the father for his son. First of all, it is true, came the Father's kisses of welcome; then the "BEST garment" then the ring and the sandals; then the fatted calf, and the music and dancing; and afterwards — the rod. The "rod" does not taste like the "kiss," but the same love that applied the kiss wields the rod. The love that spared not the only begotten Son, but laid the "chastisement of our peace upon Him," Who was the Holy and Spotless One, cannot spare our sinful flesh. Therefore it afflicts the flesh, in order to make the conscience to judge it, and the foolish heart, that had given way to it, return and cling the more closely to the love that applied the rod.