Why Does God Love Us?
1 John 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Chances are, you’ve probably have been told that God loves you. As John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It is good and right that this attribute be made much of, for God’s love is the heart of the gospel.
But the question I want to answer in this post is, “Why does God loves us?” I am speaking particularly of His fatherly love for His children, for Christians—His love that gives salvation and eternal life. Why does He love us?
Because We Are Good?
Perhaps, we might think, God loves us because we are good. After all, we have a basic instinct: when we do something good, we expect to be rewarded. We’re taught this from the moment we’re born: “If you’re good today, you’ll get a snack.” And we’re still taught this in the workplace: “If you hit your numbers, there’s a bonus and promotion waiting.”
But is that why God loves us?
Suppose you overheard a mom saying, "Oh, why do I love my kids? The reason I love Eve is because she gets good grades at school. I love Mary because she’s just so pretty. I love Joseph because he’s a good kid.” You’d be horrified. If the mom was serious, she would be basing her love on her children. If their goodness was truly the reason she loved, she would stop loving the moment they failed. Bad grade on a math test? Kicked out of the family. One pimple on a face? Kicked out of the family. One act of disobedience? Kicked out of the family.
Good parents do not establish their love on so wobbly a foundation. Even if they struggle with so base a love, they would not callously admit it. But God is not just a better parent; He is the perfect Father. He does not love us because of something good in us. In fact, the Bible says we’re not good people. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We were sinners first, and still God loves us. To be a sinner means to love sin, to be a slave to sin, to have no power to stop sinning. Sin is rebellion against God, hating Him and His ways. We were God’s enemies, and yet He loved us.
Because We Do Good?
But, maybe, we might say to ourselves, we could do good things to make up for our badness, to right the wrong, pay back our debts—and then God will love us. But the Bible says God “saved us [Christians], not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy” (Titus 3:5). That means that the gift of salvation comes by God’s mercy—that is, His compassion and pity upon us. Salvation does not come because of the good things we have done. Salvation, and therefore God’s love, is not built on the foundation of what you do, but on God and what He has already done.
It is impossible to earn or deserve God’s love. It is too marvelous a gift for sinners to earn.
Because We Have Potential to Do Good?
Yet the human heart continues to contend. “Yes, we’re not perfect people now,” you might say in your heart, “but maybe God loves us because He sees that we have the potential to be good. Maybe, we’re not good now, but in the future, we could be.” But the Bible says that “the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Look at how comprehensive the verse is: great wickedness, infecting every intent, only evil, continually. We are bent upon being and doing bad.
If we’re these kinds of people (and we are), we don’t have much good potential! Psalm 51:5 says that we are this way from birth. Yes, this means that even the cute little baby, cooing and gurgling, is a sinner, wicked to the core. If children were perfect, they would never lie, fight, or scream. But if you’ve ever babysat a child for more than a few hours, you will quickly see their sin! No one teaches children how to sin; we were born with the ability to sin. And as we get older, we just become more excellent at sinning—and hiding it.
Because He is Forced?
Perhaps, then, God loves us only because of compulsion, as if He needed to.
But, what would you think if you overheard a dad saying, “Oh, why do I love Adam? I love Adam because that’s just my job. No one else is going to take care of him, so I have to do it. I love Mark because I’ve got no one else to love, and I really need someone to make me feel better about myself. I love Hannah because if I don’t I’ll feel really guilty, and I just can’t deal with that.”
That kind of ‘love’ is tragic. It’s a because-I-have-to ‘love,’ a ‘love’ that drags its feet—unexcited, apathetic, lazy. It’s a ‘love’ unworthy of the name, an insult to love’s true character. “I’ll do only the bare minimum. I’ll give only to get. I love only because of duty.”
A lazy, unwilling ‘love’ is not the kind of love that good parents have for their children. Good parent’s love is free and generous, devoted and kind, full and genuine. But, God is the perfect parent, the perfect Father. His love is free and overflowing, not small and weak. He is not forced to love as if He owed us. As Romans 11:35-36 says, “…Who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him? [Implied answer: no one!] For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” If all things are from God, what could anyone give to Him, so that He would owe us something? He owns everything; who can give Him anything that He doesn’t already possess? No one.
Because Jesus Died?
Thus far, I have asked questions that most Christians and church-goers can answer fairly easily. The classic reformed answer: “We are saved by grace alone through faith alone—not by anything good in us, nor by the works of law.” So, for the Christians reading, here’s a harder question: Does God love us because Jesus died for us?
1 John 4:10 says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
The first part of the verse—“This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us”—sets up the order of God’s love: namely that He loved us first, and we respond. It is not the other way around. You didn’t love God first. He didn’t respond to your love. No. God loves first. It also sets the priority of God’s love. Whose love is greater, ours, or God’s? Well, which light is brighter, the moon, or the sun? Obviously, the sun. The moon is only a reflection—and a dim one at that—of the source of light: the sun. We love not from ourselves, but only as a reflection of God’s perfect love. God's love is far greater.
The last part of the verse—“He sent Jesus, His Son, to be the propitiation for our sins”—tell us how we know that God loves us. Propitiation means a sacrifice, a death, that takes the punishment deserved for sin. We deserve to die eternally as a punishment for our rebellion against God. But Christ died in our place, for our sin, so that there is no more for us. He drank up our hell and death, that we would have heaven and eternal life. We must trust God, and He will save us.
But the middle part of the verse—He loved us and sent His Son—answers my question. Does God love us because Christ died for us? No. That’s what the verse says: “He loved us and sent His Son.” His love motivated Him to send His Son in order to die for us. His love preceded sending His Son, and therefore preceded Jesus’ death on the cross. Therefore, Jesus death is not the reason God loves us. The blood of Calvary did not purchase God’s love. Rather, God’s love motivated Him to send His Son to die for us.
The cross is God’s plan, birthed in love. He loved us, therefore He made the way of salvation for us, to make the way for His pre-cross love to be received. Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is the evidence of God’s love, not the cause of it.
God does not love us because there is something good in us. God does not love us because there is something outside of Him—even if it is something as foundational as the cross of the Lord Jesus—forcing Him love us.
But, thus, my questions is still unanswered. Why does God loves us?
God Loves Us Because He Loves Us
It is from God’s own goodness that His love flows. He loves us because He loves us. We don’t deserve His love. Nothing pushes Him to love us. He loves us simply because He is God.
That might sound a little strange. But think of your parents. Why did your parents love you when you were young? Why did they persist in their love? Ideally, they love you not because you gave them something, not because they’re forced to, but simply because they are your parents.
Out of their love for one another, you came into being, and out of that love they continue to love you. They prayed for you before you even existed, for God to give them a child. They loved you before you were born, before you even had a name. They loved you before they knew what you looked like. They loved you even when you were a helpless, crying baby. They loved from the first day until today, and have loving hopes for your future. Even if you don’t know your biological parents, you have the incredibly special blessing of being loved by your adoptive parents, who probably worked a thousand times harder to get you. They especially demonstrate parental love for you.
But as good as your parents are, God is a better parent, the best Father, the source and fountain of all love. His love for us is rooted in who He is.
He is eternal. His love is from before time began: Ephesians 1:4-5 says that He loved and chose His people before the foundation of the world.
He is all powerful. His love conquers all. Romans 8:39 says that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
He is unchanging. His love never fails. “For His lovingkindness is everlasting” (Ps 136).
He is perfect. His love is perfect, whole, complete. The Father loved us, even as He has loved His Son (John 17:23).
God’s love is like a fountain, an over-flowing stream, endless, boundless, increasing eternally. He is generous, lavish, abundant towards His children. His love is not rationed as if God is worried He would run out. His love is not lazy, or reluctant, or half-hearted. His love is whole, unrestrained, complete. His love is not given in proportion to how good, or bad, we are. His love towards us is not diminished towards us when we sin and fail and suffer. We enjoy His love more when we walk in obedience, but that does not mean He loves us more.
If you are a Christian, God loved you before time began. He can not love you more, He will not love you less, and He will never ever stop loving you in eternity. There is no love like His.
Summary
So why does God love us? Not because we deserve it, not because He has to, but because He is God.
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)
Do you know this glorious God? Do you know this great, merciful love? If you do, then it is not because you were born into a Christian family, not because you go to a Christian school, and not because you know some things in the Bible. It is because in love, He adopted you into His family by making you trust in Jesus Christ. Enjoy His love, and love Him in return. He is worthy!
If you do not know this loving God, then you do not know His love, and you are not yet His child. But, with mercy and compassion, He says to you, “Come. Leave your sin and come to Jesus. Believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died in your place for your sins and rose for your salvation.
This compassionate God loves the sinner and the broken; with open arms He welcomes you.
Adapted from a sermon preached for Valor Christian Academy on 2021.02.09.
Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash