Love

Love in Scripture is not primarily a feeling. It is covenant faithfulness in action: God binding himself to his people and keeping that bond even when they do not deserve it. John states the claim plainly, “God is love,” and then defines it by an event rather than an emotion: “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”

Jesus makes the same connection on the night before his death. He loves his own “to the end,” washing the feet of the men who will abandon him within hours, and then gives them a new commandment: to love one another as he has loved them. The love he commands is not a feeling to summon but a pattern to imitate, humble service and sacrifice that does not stop when it costs something.

Paul traces this love to the cross in Romans 5: “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s love is not a response to what is lovable in its object. It is the cause of it.

What is agape love?

The New Testament word for the love Christians are commanded to have is agape, and Paul describes what it looks like in practice rather than defining it abstractly: “Love is patient, love is kind, is not jealous, does not brag, is not puffed up; it does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered; it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). Agape is measured by what it does for another person, not by what it feels, and Paul makes clear that this kind of love outlasts every spiritual gift that will eventually pass away.

Why did God love the world?

Scripture does not explain God’s love by pointing to something worthy in its object. John records Jesus’s own summary of the gospel: “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” (John 3:16). The world in view is not a world that earned God’s affection. It is a world under judgment, and God’s love is what moves him to give his Son to rescue it. Follow how this theme develops through the Bible.