What Is the Love of God?
If you have ever wondered if God’s love for you is unconditional, this post is for you.
I will never forget the day of my father’s funeral.
My family had gathered at my home so we could go to the church together. I was still getting dressed, fully feeling the weight of what the day held. I had just buried my mother six months earlier, and now I was about to bury my dad.
I remember whispering out loud, almost without thinking, “God, You have got to help me. I can’t do this.”
I can’t fully explain what happened next. I was not picked up off the floor or floating in some literal sense, but I felt as if I had been lifted, surrounded, and carried by something I could not see but could absolutely feel.
In that moment, God showed His love to me yet again, but this time I had absolutely nothing to offer Him.
I had nothing to give Him that day. I could barely stand. My heart was broken into pieces, and I had prayed for six months for my father’s healing. God had not answered the way I asked.
Looking through the lens of performance-based faith, that day should have felt like failure. Instead, it felt like the most tangible love I had ever known.
Because God’s love is not based on your performance.
It never was.
When we look at what Scripture says about God’s love, three things stand out to me: who He is, what He did, and the security we have because of both.
His Character
As humans, we tend to think of God’s attributes as adjectives. We say God is loving, kind, merciful, and faithful, and all of those things are true. But Scripture goes further than that.
Love is not just what God does. It is who He is.
“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
— 1 John 4:8 NKJV
That is not simply poetic language. Scripture is telling us something about the very character of God.
His love is not something He turns on and off depending on what you have done lately. He does not love you more because you had a good week or less because you struggled through a bad one. God loves out of who He is.
Think about that.
His love for you was not a reaction to your good behavior, and it was not earned the day you finally got your act together. Love started with Him.
“We love Him because He first loved us.”
— 1 John 4:19 NKJV
Long before we knew how to love Him back, He was already loving us.
“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.”
— Jeremiah 31:3 NKJV
His love is everlasting. It is not based on our performance or our potential. It flows from who He is.
What He Did
I am a mother of three and a grandmother of five. And counting.
I know what it is to love, and I would do almost anything for my children and grandchildren. But let me just say it plainly: I am not giving up one of my children to die for anybody. Not for a friend, not for a stranger, and not for the best person I know.
Period.
And yet God gave His Son.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
— John 3:16 NKJV
Most of us have heard that verse our entire lives, but familiarity has a way of dulling its weight.
God did not simply say He loved us. He demonstrated it.
Jesus took the punishment our sin deserved. He carried our sin to the cross and paid a debt we could never have paid ourselves.
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
— Romans 5:8 NKJV
And here is the part I never want us to overlook: He did not wait for us to clean ourselves up first.
He moved toward us while we were still sinners, still broken, and still unable to save ourselves.
Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we have access to God, forgiveness of sin, and eternal life. Through Christ, we are reconciled to God and welcomed as His children.
That is what the cross secured for us.
Love did not start with us. It started with Him, and He proved it at the cross.
The Security We Have Because of Both
Here is what changes everything. Because God’s love comes from who He is, and because He demonstrated that love through Christ, we can stand secure in it.
Our security is not built on us. It is built on Him.
His love does not rise and fall with our performance. We are not more loved on our best day and less loved on our worst. And no matter how far you think you have gone, you have not gone too far for His love.
Read that again.
You have not gone too far for His love.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
— Romans 8:35, 38–39 NKJV
Look at that list: death, life, angels, powers, things present, things to come, height, depth, and any other created thing.
For those who belong to Christ, Paul could not name one thing in all creation that could separate them from the love of God.
Not one.
Now, that does not mean sin is insignificant. Sin is serious. It is what separated humanity from God and made salvation necessary in the first place, and even as believers, sin can affect our fellowship with Him.
“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.”
— Isaiah 59:2 NKJV
But sin cannot make God stop loving us. If our sin had stopped His love, the cross never would have happened.
The cross is proof that His love kept moving toward us even when sin had separated us from Him.
So if you have not yet placed your faith in Christ, hear this: His love is still reaching toward you. That love is what sent Jesus to restore what sin had broken.
And if you belong to Christ, your worst day cannot separate you from His love. Neither can your failure or your doubt. Even when you feel far from Him, His love has not changed because it was never anchored in your behavior. It is anchored in Him.
“For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from you.”
— Isaiah 54:10 NKJV
Mountains move before His love does.
And His love is not only powerful. It is tender.
Scripture describes God’s care for His people with some of the most intimate language in the Bible.
“Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me under the shadow of Your wings.”
— Psalm 17:8 NKJV
The apple of His eye. Hidden under His wings. Scripture gives us the picture of being treasured, protected, and held close by God, not kept at arm’s length.
I learned something about that on the day my father was buried.
I had nothing to offer God that day. I could barely stand, and I had prayed for healing without receiving the answer I wanted. By every standard of the performance-based faith I had carried for so long, I had nothing left to give.
And yet that was the day I felt His love most tangibly, because His love was never about what I could give Him. It was about who He is.
There will be seasons when you cannot feel His love, seasons when grief, fear, disappointment, or exhaustion drown out your sense of His presence. In those seasons, Scripture gives us something solid to hold on to.
Asaph wrote about it in Psalm 77 when he was struggling too:
“I will remember the works of the Lord; surely I will remember Your wonders of old. I will also meditate on all Your work, and talk of Your deeds.”
— Psalm 77:11–12 NKJV
When you cannot feel His love, remember what He has done. Remember the ways He has carried you before and remember that His love does not change according to what you feel.
Remember the cross.
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear.”
— 1 John 4:18 NKJV
When we begin to understand that God’s love is not something we have to earn or somehow convince Him to keep giving us, something changes.
We stop approaching Him as though every failure has changed His heart toward us. We stop trying to perform our way back into a love He never stopped giving, and we learn to rest in what He has already shown us to be true.
That is the love you cannot lose.
So, What Does This Mean for You?
You do not have to earn God’s love. You never did, and you do not have to perform to keep it.
His love rests in who He is, not in how well you are doing.
So whatever season you are in right now, whether you feel close to Him or far from Him, whether your faith feels strong or fragile, whether you have been faithful or fallen short, His love has not changed.
You do not have to clean yourself up first or figure everything out before you come to Him. God has already shown us what His love looks like.
Look at Jesus.
Look at the cross.
Grace you can’t earn. Love you can’t lose.
That is what Unmerited is built on.