Relationships end, friends drift away, and even our own family members fail us at times. Human love is fickle and changing; even the strongest human love is tested in life’s trials. But God’s love is perfect, steadfast, and unchanging, and in His love, we can have strength as we face the challenges of the world as well as hope for eternity. Learn more about God’s love and what the Bible has to say about it.
God Is Love
The love of God is greater than anything we can imagine. He does more than just love us: He is love itself. It is only through His love that we are truly able to love others. Because God loves us, we have nothing to fear. As the Creator of the universe, He is sovereign over everything.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent His only Son into the world so that we might have life through Him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is brought to perfection in us…
God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. We love because He first loved us. — 1 John 4:8-12, 16-19
God’s Love Is Unconditional
His love is not gained by anything we do in our own merit. The Bible states that God loved us while we were still sinners; His love abounds from His infinite goodness and mercy.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through Him from the wrath. Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by His life. — Romans 5:7-10
God’s love is steadfast and unchanging. Though we may grow distant from Him or fickle in our attitude toward Him, He continues to love us.
Though the mountains fall away
and the hills be shaken,
My love shall never fall away from you
nor my covenant of peace be shaken,
says the Lord, who has mercy on you. — Isaiah 54:10
God’s Love Gives Us Assurance and Strength
Nothing can separate us from God’s love, and in His love, we have assurance of eternal life, and strength as we approach the trials of this world.
What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but handed Him over for us all, how will He not also give us everything else along with Him?
What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?
No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:31-32, 35, 37-39