This week, we have taken a brief look at some of the main characteristics of God. God is great, righteous, merciful, and patient. While this is not meant to be an exhaustive list of God’s characteristics, it would still be remiss of me not to include love in the week-long discussion about Him. After all, God is love (1 John 4:8). Love is the essence of God’s being.
No passage captures the love of God quite like John 3:16. It is a passage known by millions of people across the world.
John 3:16 (ESV)
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
One of the things that highlights the love of God in this passage is the aim of His love. The aim of His love is the world. Why does this highlight the love of God? It is because the world that God loved was not very lovable. It was a world that had pretty much the same cast of characters that it has now. It was a world made up of people who lived in sin, were absorbed with self, stumbled in darkness, and staggered in doubt, but still God gave. The world He gave His Son for was full of corruption and deceitfulness and with people who had murderous aims and malicious ambitions, but still, God gave anyway. This should tell us volumes about the love of God.
Of course, what really highlights the love of God in John 3:16 is not just the aim of it, but the action that it moved God to take. God giving His Son for the world is the greatest demonstration of love ever seen. Could there ever be a greater sacrifice made by a father than the giving up of his son for the advancement of his enemies? You might think about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as a comparable example, but remember, he was willing to make that sacrifice for God, while God did it for His enemies. That certainly makes a difference. Furthermore, God sacrificed, not just a Son, but His one and only Son. That, too, says much about the kind of love it took for God to make such a sacrifice.
Another thing to remember about this great love of God is that it is unchangeable. Nothing in or out of this world can stop God from being full of love because that is just who He is. That tells us that nothing will ever stop God from loving us. Paul wrote about this in Romans 8.
Romans 8:35–39 (ESV)
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What comfort it is to know that the essence of God is love and that this is something that will never change. We cannot be separated from the love of God. We can be sure that God will love us tomorrow the same way He loved us today. We can rest easy tonight knowing that the Almighty, all-knowing, ever-present, true, and living God will meet us in the morning, ready to guide, protect, and strengthen us for another day. That is just who God is. We should all be glad to belong to Him.
As you wind down for the night, think about these things.