Sadly, millions of people, even religious people, don’t yet know God’s heart and they are afraid of God. Many work to earn His favor, as if to put Him in debt to them, to be blessed. But God is a debtor to no man (Rom 4:4-5). They wrongly suppose that salvation is the reward for them showing enough love to Him. They need to believe what God Himself says… that if we are to be saved it will be entirely because He loved us and graciously provided for our salvation in the cross of His Son.

The Apostle Paul wrote of “the God of love” (2Cor. 13:11) and John declared that “God IS love” (1 John 4:8). Then John goes on to say:

“Herein Is Love, Not that we loved God, but That He Loved Us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (the satisfactory payment) for our sins” (1 John 4: 10).

This is why Paul says the salvation we receive by the love and grace of God is a “gift.” It’s the expression of God’s love toward all of us as sinners. Thus Paul tells us:

“(We) were by (our fallen) nature the children of wrath, even as others, But God, Who Is Rich In Mercy, For His Great Love Wherewith HE LOVED US, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened (made us alive) us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved)” (Eph. 2:3-5).

“…the kindness and LOVE OF GOD Our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to HIS MERCY He saved us…” (Titus 3:4-5).

Does all this mean that God overlooks sin or condones it? By no means! He dealt with our sin-debt for us. It was in His love He paid for our sins on Calvary’s cross “that He might be Just, and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). This is why we read in Rom. 5:8:

“God Commendeth HIS LOVE TOWARD US, In That While We Were Yet Sinners Christ Died For Us.”

This is simply indicative of the kind of lover God is. Love is God’s very nature. Then also, the fact of Genesis 1:26 is that God created man “in His image,” giving man the capacity also to love.

Of course this begs the question; if man is created in the image of the perfectly loving God, then why is man not a genuine lover of others?

By use of the phrase ‘genuine love’ I mean, one who loves without any requirement or expectation of the one they extend their love to. Recall that God gives us His love freely!

It is true that every person has love in them and they do express love of a sort. As you will see love can be two directional. God’s love is as a giver of His love toward others… while the unrenewed soul-self of man is a self-lover, caring only for himself.

I noted God’s love in action earlier. All the verses I included tell us how He loved us “while we were yet sinners.” God is a genuine lover of others, He’s an ‘other-lover.’

Actually man who was created in love and in God’s image does live by a sort of love and this kind of love may be noted every day of our lives. Sad to say, the love of God that man received by his creation in God’s image soon became twisted… that was when Adam sinned and thereby “Sin entered the world” of humanity as a sort of infection that has passed to all men. (Rom 5:12)

The fact is that God’s love and man’s love are polar opposites in their motive.

• God’s love flows outward to others, as a giver (e.g., John 3:16; “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…”)
• On the other hand, man’s love, being twisted due to the fall of Adam, is ‘love of self’ as a self-lover – so man is not a giver, but ‘a getter.’ Thus, every day, from morning to night the unrenewed soulish man, even after being saved, most often lives in accord with his self-serving way. When he does appear to be a lover of others its most often rooted in a wrong motive, for the sake of appearances and reputation… being rooted still in self-pride. This love then is just a manifestation of the twisted love of God… in action.