The Love of God

Introduction

The word “love” is often thrown around with not real thought of its true meaning. Sometimes it is considered a feeling of attraction, but the Bible paints a much different picture; a picture of something much deeper and more profound than that. God’s love sets the example for all other love

Definitions:

Three kinds of love in the New Testament Greek:

eros: has to do with physical attraction

phileos: brotherly love — the love of friendship

agapeo: The highest form of love because it is not based upon feelings, attraction, or circumstances

In it’s greatest form this love even, or especially, loves the unlovable

1 John 4:8 NIV

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:16 NIV

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

VARIOUS CATEGORIES OF GOD’S LOVE

God’s Love is an Inner, Trinitarian Love

God’s love has always existed internally within the triune Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

This love is perfect — the template for all Godly love

Matthew 3:17 NIV

And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

John 1:18 NIV

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

John 3:35 NIV

The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands.

John 5:20 NIV

For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.

John 10:17 NIV

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.

John 14:9 NIV

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

John 14:9–10 NIV

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

God’s Love is Infinite

John 17:23 NIV

I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

How amazing that the Father loves us as much as He loves the Son

1 John 3:1 NIV

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

John 17:26 NIV

I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

When Jesus comes to live in us…He brings the Father’s love with Him into our lives

God’s love is Sacrificial

True love is costly

God gave EVERYTHING — His one and only Son

John 3:16 NIV

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Romans 5:8 NIV

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

John 15:13 NIV

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Because Jesus loves us so much…He willingly faced the suffering and death of the Cross

Ephesians 5:25 NIV

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

John 10:11 NIV

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

God’s Love is Volitional

He chooses, by His own free will, to love us

Even though we have nothing in us to attract Him to love us…He willingly chooses to love us

It is His will..His heart…His passion to love us

Deuteronomy 7:7–8 NIV

The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

God did not love us because we’re valuable; we’re valuable because He loves us — Martin Luther

1 John 4:10 NIV

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 4:19 NIV

We love because he first loved us.

God’s Love is Eternal/Everlasting

Jeremiah 31:3 NIV

The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.

Ephesians 1:4–5 NIV

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—

God’s Love is Passionate

His heart overflows with love for us

Deuteronomy 30:9 NIV

Then the Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your land. The Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your ancestors,

Deuteronomy 30:9 NIV

Then the Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the work of your hands and in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your land. The Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your ancestors,

Isaiah 64:4 NIV

Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.

Jeremiah 32:41 NIV

I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.

Zephaniah 3:17 NIV

The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

Luke 15:20 NIV

So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

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Because of His passionate love for us, God’s heart rejoices when just one sinner comes home

Who can comprehend this kind of love?