“God is love.” ~ 1 John 4:16
One of the commonly heard concepts of the Christian life is that God loves us. We teach it in our classrooms and work to model it for our students. We hear it in sermons, read it in books, and proclaim it loudly in praise songs — we even see it declared at sporting events (i.e., “John 3:16” which, of course, begins “For God so loved the world…”). And yet, in the many years I have followed Christ, this concept of God’s love remains one of the most elusive for my heart to fully comprehend.
In a world where so much of what we understand of love is conditional, perhaps that is to be expected — who hasn’t felt abandoned or betrayed by someone we believed loved us? Even children who experience the closest thing this world knows to “unconditional love” from their parents may find themselves struggling with feeling worthy — feeling like they need to prove themselves to their parents. There is, of course, more to it than just our limited and conditional understanding of love. When it comes to God’s love, we have to remember that God does not just love. He is love, and cannot, therefore, do or be other than he is.
God’s love is famously described in 1 Corinthians 13:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (vv 4-8a)
Note that the verses do not say that love acts in patience and kindness; they say that love is patient and kind. They do not suggest that love is sometimes trusting, may or may not choose to protect and hope, or that it perseveres occasionally — the passage plainly says always. I don’t think that even my strongest emotional ties to those I love most could ever produce that kind of love in me.
This is why understanding God’s love with my heart has been such a challenge — especially in regard to his love for me. My head understands that he cannot help but love me, but my heart shrinks away from the reality of that love and says, “I’m not worthy. I am imperfect and incapable of returning the love you offer me.” The fact is, however, that God does not need me to return perfect love, because he knows that I am imperfect (my head knows this, my heart struggles to really comprehend it). The beauty of God’s love is realizing that he offers it freely — all I have to do is decide whether or not to accept it, and then whether or not to return it in my own, imperfect way.
To return imperfect love to the perfect Lover is one of the more daunting aspects of being a follower of Christ. Those who accept it in their head and don’t wrestle with it in their hearts may grow stagnant in their relationship with him, content with the one-sided gift he offers. Others, however, will be inspired to seek his Kingdom and righteousness first, to work toward denying themselves and following him, and to learn to love others with his kind of love, even if it is imperfect.
