There are many aspects of our Creator, the Eternal God, that are beyond our ability to completely understand. While we can intellectually recognize some things about Him, there is much we will never fully know until we are experiencing the same existence He does on the other side of the resurrection. We find one such aspect of God—reflected in this case in the Son, Jesus Christ—described in a passage the Apostle Paul wrote to the brethren in Ephesus. He told them that he prayed “that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17–19).
If we are paying attention, the last part of that passage presents a bit of a conundrum. How can we “know the love of Christ” if that love “passes knowledge”?
The world around us does not make it easier, to be sure. Many of the different strains of “Christianity” that surround us have reduced the concept of God’s love to something relatively trivial. Performers in stadiums sing about Jesus as a worldly female pop star would sing about her current boyfriend, and worshippers in megachurches close their eyes, raise their hands, and sway from side to side, basking in the “glow” of “God’s love.”
But God’s love is rich and profound, and it defies such attempts to reduce it to mere human chemistry. In this life, we will likely never come to comprehend it fully—one of the great challenges of our entire lives is to grow in our understanding of the incomparable love for us possessed and expressed by the Father and the Son.
In fact, seen clearly, growing in our understanding of God’s love is part and parcel of growing toward eternal life. How so?
Jesus said in His prayer with His disciples on Passover evening, before His arrest and crucifixion, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). And if knowing God is a fundamental aspect of attaining eternal life, then understanding Him means grappling with this fact: “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8).
What a profound statement that is! “God is love.” It is hard for us to fathom as human beings that any one characteristic could be such a definitive part of our character that such a statement could be made of us. Yet love is so central—so fundamental, so integral—to who God is, what He does, and how He thinks, that the Bible can say, “God is love,” and it’s not an exaggeration; it’s fundamentally true.
So, if eternal life is our desire, and thus knowing God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ is our desire, then coming to better understand Their love is an essential goal—as challenging as it may be.
We Have Help
As we seek to grow in that understanding, God has not left us at the mercy of human philosophies or whatever ideas our own hearts might conjure up. Instead, He has provided us with real assistance in this life.
For instance, we can, ourselves, partake of God’s Holy Spirit. Through that Spirit, “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts” (Romans 5:5). So crucial is the Spirit to understanding the love of God that it is hard to imagine how we could even begin to move in that direction without that Spirit dwelling in us, transforming us, and enabling us to partake of the divine nature ourselves (2 Peter 1:4).
We also have God’s law of love, which outlines His love in everyday terms, showing us how to act, speak, and even think in ways that help us to grow in that love, ourselves. God’s law and His love are so intertwined that Paul said that “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10), and Jesus said that the entirety of “the Law and the Prophets” hangs on the two commands to love God and love our neighbor.
And even the creation, itself, serves as an aid in understanding the love of God—in particular, the love of parents.
Many passages in the Bible reveal that the physical world around us is theomorphic—meant to reflect various aspects of God. Our shape and mental capacity, for instance, is patterned after our Creator, and we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–27). And marriage between a man and a woman is meant to picture the relationship between Jesus Christ and His Church (Ephesians 5:31–32). These are not ideas we somehow “force” upon God—they are aspects of the creation and physical reality designed by Him to reflect aspects of Himself and divine realities.
And parenthood plays a special role in this revelation. God is our Father. The entire purpose of His plan is to grow His family. Thus, meditating on our own experiences concerning the love of our parents, or our love for our children, becomes an avenue toward better understanding God’s love for us.
As we’ll see, Jesus Himself takes advantage of this fact in His own efforts to reveal God’s love to us. In the remainder of this article, we will follow His lead and lean on our common human experience, either with parents or as parents, as we seek to refine our understanding of God’s love. And as we do, we’ll also address some misconceptions we can have about that love.
Not Just a “Corporate Love”
For example, one misconception about God’s love is that it is some sort of “corporate love”—that is, a love for the whole Body of Christ, or just a love for the collective “you.” Of course, He does love His Church in the collective sense, but it is crucial to understand that He also loves you, personally—you, whoever you are, reading this article right now. If you were the only one who had ever sinned, Christ would still have chosen to die, just for you.
King David had a grasp of this individual love. Consider His words in Psalm 33: “The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works” (vv. 13–15). David didn’t consider God’s work of building and developing humanity as some sort of “assembly line” effort, but instead he saw God as a dedicated artisan working on each of us—personally and intimately.
Our Heavenly Father is invested in each of us as individuals—in our individual development as sons and daughters.
In fact, David’s understanding of the personal, loving attention he possessed from God left him intimidated by the wonder of it. Throughout Psalm 139, David waxes poetic about the individual attention His Creator lavishes on Him, even speaking of God’s formation of him in his mother’s womb (v. 13). Upon reflecting on the fact that he lives each day under the intimate gaze of his Heavenly Father’s attention, he proclaims, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:6).
Perhaps we find it hard to believe that our Father really loves us individually—thinks about us, makes plans concerning our individual lives, or longs to spend time with us as individuals. But not only does Jesus assure us that God has numbered the very hairs of our heads (Matthew 10:30), He also says something about us that should leave us no doubt. In His prayer to God for us before His arrest, He says that He longs for the world to know that God “loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:23).
Note that carefully: Jesus said God loves us as He loved Him. Do we doubt God’s individual love for Jesus? Surely not! Then let us not doubt His individual love for us!
Not Just Because He “Has To”
Another misconception some have is the idea that God loves you out of mere obligation or requirement—because He “must” or is “contractually obligated,” as if he might choose not to love us if the circumstances changed. But that is not the case.
Often in pre-marital counseling, we discuss love as a choice, and it’s true that we must actively choose to love, especially in difficult times—but just as love is more than an emotion, it’s also more than a duty. Love is a profound, multifaceted commitment, and God’s love for us is far deeper and more significant than mere obligation. Loving us is His natural state.
Becoming a parent can help you see that. Fatherhood certainly helped me. When you see your children suffer—due, say, to illness or injury—you feel something unique. I remember the first time one of mine had an ear infection; he was crying from the pain, and he was so little that words of consolation weren’t registering. I remember praying that God would put his pain on me, instead—because I loved that little baby! That wasn’t anything special about me, to be sure. Many of you reading have been in a similar situation or will be. I learned from that experience that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice was not only about His personal actions and choices—as Mr. Gerald Weston has mentioned many times, the day of Christ’s death must have been a difficult day for the Father, as well. They each paid a price, and Paul points us to that price to say, They loved you enough to go through this.
And why do we love our children? Is it because the law says we have to? Because we will be arrested and placed in “parent jail” if we don’t? Is it out of obligation?
None of that. We love them because of who they are and because they’re ours.
If you are a parent at a park, and you see a nearby child scrape his knee and call for his mom, you don’t ignore him—you care, and you help him find his parents. But it’s different with your own children, and that isn’t wrong. It’s as it should be. You scan the little crowd at the park from time to time for your children, because they are yours and you love them. You look for them not just to make sure they are behaving, but simply because they are yours.
God loves you because you’re His and because you’re you. He says to a rebellious Israel, “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). God’s thoughts are never of hatred for us, but of hope for a wonderful future.
We are commanded to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). This may seem extreme at times, and it is. It is the sort of love we all have to grow into over time, and it must be rooted in more than a sense of obligation. It must be a love born out of our very natures.
Yet God is not commanding us to grow into a love that He does not already feel, Himself. Note His own words to Israel: “I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land, with all My heart and with all My soul” (Jeremiah 32:41). The love He commands us to grow into is the love He already has for us. He asks us to give our all because He has already given His all.
Jesus encourages us in this by saying, “Seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you” (Luke 12:31). It’s easy to be overly anxious as we strive to focus on seeking God’s Kingdom, feeling He might be disappointed in us. But Christ’s next words reassure: “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (v. 32).
Those are not the words of obligation! God is not going to give us His Kingdom merely because we have fulfilled our part in some sort of contract. It is His good pleasure to do so! Why? Because He loves us.
Jesus Christ worked to help us embrace the fact that the Father loves us—not begrudgingly or out of obligation, but out of true bonds of affection—by pointing us to our own imperfect fathers. “What man is there among you who,” He asked, “if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him” (Matthew 7:9–11). Even human parents, despite their many human flaws, long to give good gifts to their children. Why would we doubt that God longs to do the same?
God inspired Isaiah to record His profound love for sinning Israelites who felt forsaken: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me” (Isaiah 49:15–16).
Those are not the words of a God who loves each of us merely out of obligation or contractual commitment. That is a parent’s love.
His Love Is Unconditional
That last passage helps to illustrate another misconception that we must conquer as we seek to understand God’s love more fully: the idea that God only loves us when we’re good. In fact, He loves us all the time. His love for us is unconditional.
This truth has been twisted by the lawless, so we should clarify that loving people doesn’t mean their obedience doesn’t matter. God’s love is not an excuse for our disobedience, and such satanic theologies should be cast aside with vehemence. A parent’s love for his child doesn’t mean the child’s obedience means less to him—if anything, he takes more pleasure and joy in seeing his son or daughter obey! As the Apostle John said of his spiritual children in the faith, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth” (3 John 4).
Yet parental love must be unconditional—not a function of what the child does or does not do. In the booklet Successful Parenting: God’s Way, Dr. Jeffrey Fall mentions “unconditional love” 13 times, pointing out that even our correction of our children must be grounded in that love. After all, we read that “whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights” (Proverbs 3:12). Note the order: God’s correction is not to make us lovable again—it only takes place because He loves.
If we don’t grow in our grasp of God’s unconditional love, we risk seeing Him as an authoritarian figure who guides and corrects us without being personally invested, instead of seeing Him as a loving Father who guides and corrects us because He is personally invested. We must recognize that God loves us unconditionally—not just when we’re good.
Even the Festival pattern teaches us this. The very first Festival—the one that, of necessity, precedes all the others—is Passover. Before we come to possess the Spirit, pictured by Pentecost, and even before we have repented and turned from sin and toward Him, pictured by the Days of Unleavened Bread, comes Passover, picturing the Father’s giving of His own Son for us: “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
If the Father and Son were willing to go to that length for us out of their love for us—while we were still enemies (v. 10)—then what limit is there to that love? As Paul writes in Romans 8, “Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (vv. 33–35).
The unconditional love of God is illustrated well in Christ’s tale of the prodigal son, told in Luke 15. In the parable, there was a wealthy man who had sons. One of them decided, I don’t want to wait until you’re dead, old man, to have my inheritance—I want it now. His father gave him his part of the inheritance, and he proceeded to live a terrible life. He was able to buy a lot of “friends,” but when the money ran out, the friends ran out, and he found himself essentially sitting in a pigpen, so starved that he craved the garbage given to the animals. “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants”’” (Luke 15:17–19). Knowing he had done wrong, this son crafted a confession to tell his father, hoping that his father would forgive him. Then, “he arose and came to his father” (v. 20).
Now, notice what the next part of the story doesn’t say: When the son finally arrived, his father looked at him sternly and allowed him to go on and on about how unworthy he was—and then, grimacing, he finally nodded toward a door for the boy to go and think about his crime some more.
Instead, the prodigal son didn’t even make it to the house before his father acted: “But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” (v. 20). Just the sight of his son coming back was enough to move the father to run to him and shower him with affection—before his son even had time to start his prepared speech. And even after the son had started, he was unable to finish before the father called out to his servants, “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (vv. 22–24).
Was the father’s love conditional? Were these the actions of a father stewing in disdain and disappointment while his son was gone? A father whose heart was cold and distant during the son’s absence? Clearly not! While the son’s prodigal living had put distance between himself and his father—such that his father’s love could not be seen or experienced—it is plain in the story that the father never stopped loving his son. And Jesus intended that as a lesson for us about our Father.
We simply must understand this aspect of God’s love for us. There are times when we feel that we have messed up so much that our journey back to God will be an agonizing walk of shame. In those times, we must remember that God is not just waiting for us at the end of that journey. Rather, upon the sight of our turning, even at a distance, He has met us on the way, fallen upon our neck, kissed us, and has already begun actively bringing us into a restoration of our relationship with Him—because His love is unconditional.
Love that Transforms
Coming to better understand God’s love for us is more than an academic exercise. It is in many ways transformative.
We’ve already seen that it should transform our understanding of God’s correction. He is not seeking to make us lovable again. He is correcting us because He loves us.
To whatever degree we can grow in understanding God’s love for us, that understanding transforms how we perceive and experience our trials. When you comprehend how profoundly God loves you, that understanding feeds a deep and abiding trust in Him, knowing that if He has chosen to allow a trial, His love is behind that choice—and He will be by your side every step of the way.
When we grow in comprehending God’s love for us, that comprehension transforms our understanding of His law. We will see His commands not as arbitrary rules given by a God who simply enjoys bossing us around, but as guidelines provided for our good, not His (Deuteronomy 10:13).
Understanding God’s love for us transforms our relationships with others. When we recognize how much God truly loves us, we open our mind to recognizing how much God truly loves our brothers and sisters in Christ—even those we may find irritating or offensive. How can we hold a grudge against our brother when we recognize how much he means to God? How can we hold some record of wrongdoing against our sister when we comprehend the love God has for her?
Ultimately, the pursuit of understanding God’s love involves seeking to grow in loving Him and loving others in the same way we, ourselves, are loved by Him. And while such a goal is truly the project of a lifetime, it opens the door to the greatest transformation of all: eternal life alongside our Father and Elder Brother, experiencing—and perfectly reflecting, ourselves—Their divine love, forever.