Why does God love us?
The remarkable answer Scripture gives is that God does not love us because of anything in us — He loves us because of what He is. Love is not merely something God does; it is His very nature.
Love Is God's Nature
J. N. Darby brings this out powerfully in his paper The Love of God:
J. N. DarbyHe 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… We delight in holiness therefore, because He is holy, but love is His nature; that is what He is.
Darby draws an important distinction: holiness and justice are characteristics of God's dealings, but love is what He is in Himself. Holiness would only repel the sinner; love draws him. The whole movement of God toward man springs from this nature.
Nothing in Us to Draw It Out
A. J. Pollock states the point with memorable clarity, quoting Deuteronomy 7:7-8:
A. J. PollockMoses said to Israel, "The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you." He could furnish no reason save what God was in Himself. This is a great comfort, for it puts the love of God on a basis that can never break down.
He continues:
Practical_PapersIf we set our affection on an object we think worthy, and find we have been mistaken, our love is likely to evaporate. What a comfort that God expects nothing from us, is thereby never disappointed at not finding what He does not look for. Love is in the fount of His own being.
This is the decisive contrast between divine and human love. Human love responds to something attractive in its object — "we love because we like," Pollock says. Divine love has its propulsive energy in God's own nature. There was nothing in man to draw it forth; indeed everything to drive it back.
He Loved Us When We Were Dead
Hamilton Smith, commenting on 1 John 4, draws out the stunning timing of God's love:
Hamilton SmithIn our unregenerate days we were dead to God and in our sins. In order that we might live and have our sins forgiven, God manifested His love toward us by sending "His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him" and, further, He "sent His Son a propitiation for our sins."
And then this key sentence:
123_JOHNIt is therefore a love that can rise above all evil and anything that I may detect to be wrong in a brother. I love him, not because of what he is, but because of the nature I possess, which is love.
The Cross: Where God's Nature and Character Meet
R. McBroom addresses the question that naturally arises — if God's nature is love, why could He not simply overlook sin?
R. McBroomEver since the fall, God's nature — love — has been towards His creature man, but the righteousness and holiness of God, that is His character, have been constantly outraged by him in his sin and iniquity, so that while God's love was for His creature, His attributes were against him.
But the cross has changed all that. The work of Christ met the character of God at the same time as it expressed His love; God's answer to man's worst is the fulness of blessing.
The cross was not needed to make God love us — He already did. It was needed so that His love could reach us without violating His holiness. F. B. Hole makes the same point:
F. B. Hole"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). Far from our having to change His heart toward us by a propitiatory sacrifice, His heart which is toward man is the very source of all our blessing. Our sins had made propitiation necessary, but He Himself provided the necessary sacrifice.
A Sovereign, Eternal Love
An article in An Outline of Sound Words (1967) gathers these threads together:
There was nothing in us to love when we were in the distance from God, but the motive lay in the heart of God; it was a love of divine compassion that chose to take us up and make us suitable for His holy presence.
And:
1 The Love of GodBefore ever there was a movement in our hearts Godward, He loved us with an infinite, sovereign and eternal love, so that it has been written, "We love, because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19).
The Father's Love for His Children
F. B. Hole, writing on Fatherhood and Sonship, lifts the subject higher still. God's love for us is not merely the compassion of a Creator for a ruined creature — it is a Father's love, patterned on the love the Father has for His own Son:
F. B. HoleConnect God's Fatherhood with Christ the Son — who is the worthy Object of His love, and in whom a perfect response is given — and at once you have the key that opens the subject in its fulness. That is the standard! There you see the revelation in its perfection!
The Father loves the Son, and we are brought into that same circle of love. He has placed us in Christ, and all the delight the Father has in the Son now rests upon those who are in Him.
God does not love us because we are lovable, deserving, or attractive. He loves us because He is love — it is His unchangeable nature. Deuteronomy 7 already made this plain: "not because ye were more… but because the Lord loved you." There is no reason outside of God Himself. The cross did not create God's love but expressed it, providing the righteous ground on which that love could reach sinners without compromising His holiness. And the ultimate purpose of that love is to bring us into the very relationship the Father has with the Son — so that the love with which the Father loved Christ before the foundation of the world rests on us forever (John 17:23, 26).
This is, as Pollock says, "a great comfort, for it puts the love of God on a basis that can never break down."