Deep down, most of us sense that this world is no accident. The order and complexity around us doesn’t sit well with the idea that we’re an insignificant dot in a meaningless universe.
And yet the world’s suffering makes that hard to hold onto. A loving God and a broken world seem difficult to reconcile – harder still when tragedy strikes close to home. Even if we’re spared, we all know someone who has suffered greatly. It’s easy to conclude that if God exists at all, He can’t be a God of love.
There’s another tension too. Scripture presents God as a judge as well as a Father. How can judgment sit alongside love and mercy?
We believe both are true at once. God’s love and God’s justice aren’t in conflict, they’re in balance. That’s not wishful thinking. It’s how Scripture presents Him throughout.
God is love
Love is one of our deepest instincts. We long to love and be loved, however much we try to suppress it. But human love always falls short. We fail each other. Relationships break down. And even the strongest bonds end, death sees to that. When someone we love is gone, what’s left is often loneliness.
God is different. Nothing separates us from His love. As Charles Spurgeon put it:
“When the time comes for you to die, you need not be afraid, because death cannot separate you from God’s love.”
We were made to be loved and only God can fully meet that need. For Him, love isn’t just something He does. It’s who He is. John writes:
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:8 NIV)
The word John uses is agapé. In our culture, “love” usually means romantic feeling or family affection, but Greek has separate words for those. Agapé is different: sacrificial love, concerned only with the good of the person loved. It’s a love only God can give in its purest form. A parent’s love for a newborn comes closest, but even that falls short of what God offers.
Agapé is almost beyond our understanding. It surpasses anything we can imagine.
Love wins?
Of all God’s attributes, love is the one that reaches us deepest because we’re wired to crave it. In recent years, the phrase “love wins” has become a slogan for the idea that everyone eventually makes it to heaven. Many can’t accept that a loving God would condemn anyone to hell, so this comforting teaching has taken hold.
But God doesn’t condemn anyone. We choose whether to accept Jesus, and we live with the consequences of that choice. Elevating one of God’s attributes while ignoring the rest distorts the picture. It lets our emotions override what Scripture actually says.
God is holy and just. Everything He does is perfect. And yes, God hates sin. Sin is what separates us from Him; every one of us has lost that connection. The only way back is to be made righteous in His eyes, and that’s only possible through what Jesus did for us on the cross.
Why can’t we always feel God’s love?
We all go through seasons of struggle and isolation. In those seasons, we can be sure of one thing: God never leaves. If He feels distant, it isn’t Him who moved. It’s us.
The more we conform to the world around us, the further we drift from God, and the further we drift, the harder it becomes to believe He loves us at all. Like any relationship, distance breaks connection. God never moves away. But we can edge Him out.
Once we grasp how unbreakable His love is, we can rest in the fact that He knows us completely, and lean on Him without reservation.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30 NIV)
I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me. (Proverbs 8:17 NIV)
What greater love?
Could there be a greater love than our Creator taking on flesh to die in our place – sparing us the judgment we deserve? God’s love is shown fully at the cross.
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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:16-17 NIV)
This is love in its greatest form and it’s personal. Even if you were the only sinner alive, God would still have sent His Son to die for you. Jesus willingly endured pain, suffering, and rejection because of that love.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8 NIV)
Against that, our earthly lives shrink into perspective. We can’t fully grasp what happened at the cross – the physical and mental agony alone is beyond comprehension, and there was a spiritual weight to it we’ll never fully understand. All of it, to prove a love without limit. We’re valued so highly that Scripture calls us “children of God”:
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. (1 John 3:1 NIV)
And “co-heirs with Christ”:
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs–heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:16-17 NIV)
It’s an everlasting relationship, with the promise of sitting with Christ on His throne:
To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. (Revelation 3:21 NIV)
Incredible promises indeed.
Jesus Christ is coming back
God’s plan is bigger than we can grasp, but one thing is certain: Jesus is coming back. His love didn’t end at the cross and the empty tomb. He promised to return for those who know and love Him.
We can see the world unravelling around us. Scripture told us to expect exactly this in the end times. That doesn’t mean God has changed. It means He’s delaying His return, because He wants everyone to be saved:
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9 NIV)
God hates what’s happening in the world, but none of it surprises Him. He told us this moral decline would come before Jesus returns. He’s waiting as long as possible, for as many as possible, to turn to Him. But He won’t wait forever. Many will choose not to accept His love, and there will come a point when it’s too late.
Respond To God’s Love
Our Creator is a God of love beyond anything we can fully grasp, and we won’t understand it completely until we stand before Him. Until then, our response is to live in light of what He’s shown us through His Son. If you haven’t yet responded to that love, you can find out how to be saved here.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 NIV)
We’re sinners, undeserving of anything and yet His love should shine through our lives. We experience that love through the forgiveness of our sins. Not a day should pass without gratitude for it.
Living in this troubled world, we need to walk with Jesus daily:
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Colossians 2:6-7 NIV)
The closer we walk with Him, the more we understand His true love for us – an agapé love greater than we can imagine.
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:4-5 NIV)
This story from Sundar Singh offers another way to see it:
| Once, as I travelled through the Himalayas, there was a great forest fire. Everyone was frantically trying to fight the fire, but I noticed a group of men standing and looking up into a tree about to catch light. I asked what they were looking at — they pointed to a nest full of young birds. Above it, the mother bird circled wildly, calling out warnings. There was nothing anyone could do. As the nest caught fire, the mother bird didn’t fly away. She flew down, settled on the nest, and covered her young with her wings. Moments later, she and her nestlings were gone. I turned to those standing by and said: “We have witnessed something remarkable. God gave that bird such love and devotion that she gave her life to protect her young. If her small heart could hold that much love, how much greater must be the love of her Creator? That is the love that brought Him down from heaven to become a man. That is the love that made Him suffer a painful death for our sake.” — Wisdom of the Sadhu: Teachings of Sundar Singh |
Nothing can separate you from that love:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39 NIV)