“There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.”
He Is Love. More Than You Think
Three words. One of the most quoted statements in Scripture. And possibly one of the most under-examined.
God is love. We put it on mugs and wall prints and tend to read it as a warm sentiment, a reassurance that God is generally positive about us. But John’s declaration is not a sentiment. It is one of the most theologically radical claims ever made.
He does not say God is loving. He says God is love. Love is not one attribute among many. It is not something God turns on and off depending on our behaviour. It is the very nature of who he is.
This matters because there are many things love is not. Love is not permissiveness, the idea that a loving God will never challenge us or call us away from things that harm us. Love is not sentimentality, a comfortable feeling that requires nothing of either party. And love is not unconditional approval, the notion that God is indifferent to how we live because he loves us anyway.
Real love, as God defines it, is the opposite of passive. We see it most clearly at the cross. The love of God is not something he feels from a safe distance. It is something he demonstrated at enormous personal cost. Want to see how God showed his love among us, look at the Cross, you see He sent his one and only Son. That is love as action, love as sacrifice, love that moves toward the beloved at whatever the price. There was nothing that was going to stop him, there was nothing that we could show that would make him second guess his choice, you can put any word to it, it is still love.
And here is the part that should stop us in our tracks, he knew what we were before he loved us. He did not love us because we were loveable. He loved us while we were, as Paul puts it, still enemies. There is no version of you that God surveyed and said, “Yes, that is someone worth dying for.” The love was not a response to your worthiness. It is an expression of his nature.
This is what makes Christian love so distinct. We love because he first loved us, not because the people around us have earned it, but because we have been loved by someone who modelled what love actually looks like.
You are not tolerated by God. You are not pitied by God. You are loved by God, with the full, knowing, costly, undeserved love of the one who made you.
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