Love

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Love is one of the easiest attributes of God to affirm and one of the hardest to recognize when life hurts.

“God loves you” sounds wonderful when prayers are being answered, relationships are thriving, and life is behaving itself. It becomes much harder to believe when God says no, remains silent, or allows the pain to continue. I have certainly had moments when “God loves me” felt less like an obvious truth and more like a theological claim I was expected to accept despite the evidence screaming in the opposite direction.

So what exactly do we mean when we say God is loving?

That definition includes affection. God is not coldly calculating what is best for us while remaining emotionally detached from the people involved. But love also seeks the beloved's good, which complicates things.

We often treat love as though its primary job is to make the beloved happy, relieve pain, affirm desire, and prevent suffering whenever possible. Such an instinct is not wrong. When I love someone, I want wonderful things for them. I want to see them happy. If they are hurting, I want the pain to stop. If I have the ability to help them, standing back and doing nothing is a very strange way to demonstrate love. Love does comfort, give, protect, rescue, and remove suffering.

But not always.

A loving parent does not give a child everything the child wants. A doctor may cause pain while treating an injury. Someone who loves me may tell me something I don't want to hear because allowing me to continue down a destructive path would be easier, but it would not be loving.

So the issue is not whether love grants our desires or removes our pain.

It is what happens when my desires, my comfort, and my actual good point in different directions?

Scripture Overview

God's love is not a vague warmth toward creation, but neither is it merely a set of actions. Scripture presents love as something God genuinely has for His creatures and expresses through the way He treats them.

John writes:

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

1 John 4:8–10

John does not leave “God is love” as an abstract description. He shows us what love looks like: God sends His Son so that we might live through Him. The love comes first—“not that we loved God, but that he loved us”—and then it takes concrete form.

Jesus says something similar in John 3:16:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son...”

John 3:16

Paul adds God “did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32).

In each passage, love is expressed through costly giving. The Cross does not show us love always feels delightful. It shows us love can seek the beloved's good through something profoundly painful.

John 11 makes the tension even harder to ignore. John tells us that Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Then, after hearing Lazarus was sick, Jesus stayed where He was for two more days (John 11:5–6).

Does that really fit with the idea of love always relieving suffering?

And John does not soften the tension: Jesus loved them, yet He waited.

Love Is More Than Wanting Someone to Be Happy

In today’s day and age, the self-help movement has proven to be a double-edged sword. I would be the last to say that nothing helpful comes from books and podcasts that teach us skills for improving our lives. But I also think, at least in Western culture, happiness has become something of an idol.

I’m thinking about how often I’ve heard a parent say they just want their child to be happy. It is right to desire happiness for someone. Yet I fear we have made happiness itself the ultimate goal.

What if happiness is not God’s number one goal for us? He does not say, Thou shalt be happy and teach others to be happy. Jesus said to love one another (Jn. 13:34). What if there are times when happiness and love are at odds with each other?

Children are rarely delighted to be stuck with a needle. Yet parents take them to the doctor anyway.

Love wants the well-being of the beloved. Meaning there will sometimes be moments when love must choose between someone’s immediate happiness and something better.

If a doctor needs to give my son a shot of penicillin, I could say no because the needle will upset him. Why should I put his happiness at risk? Alternatively, if I refuse treatment and a lovely case of strep throat goes from mild to severe, he will not be happy then either.

I can protect his future happiness by sacrificing some of his temporary happiness. Or I can protect his temporary happiness at the expense of his future good.

Which is the loving thing to do?

In the same way, God’s love is not governed by what will make us happiest in the moment. He loves us according to what is genuinely good for us. Our ultimate well-being is not merely comfort, but holiness and communion with Him. Meaning His love may sometimes be expressed through allowing difficult experiences that do not make us happy now, but serve a good far greater than our immediate happiness.

Jesus Loved Them, Yet He Waited

I remember house hunting for the first time. I went out with my real estate agent while my husband was at work and found a few houses I liked.

My husband was not as interested. He always had some reason the house was not up to standard, so I prayed God would soften his heart.

And prayed.

Not that prayer seemed to do me any good. My husband remained as picky as ever, so I gave up on the house hunt completely. Resentfully.

And while I resented my husband, I also resented God. I really liked some of those houses, and I felt a little mocked by that verse that says to ask and we shall receive (Matt. 7:8).

I feel the verse should come with a disclaimer saying, Read verse 11.

“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

Matthew 7:11

Good gifts.

A house is good, right?!?

But it is not just about what we determine to be good. It is also about what our all-knowing Father, in His wisdom, knows is good to give us.

Did I eventually get a house?

Yes. Three years later, I started the search again and struck real estate gold. No, not a mansion on a hill, but it’s a house. It had everything we needed and most of what we asked for, and I much prefer it to any of the homes I'd wanted three years earlier.

I’m not saying we will always eventually get what we want. I have experienced some crushing unanswered prayers in my lifetime. But given enough distance from an unanswered prayer, I have found in many cases I can eventually trace God’s wisdom.

Which is the sort of mindset I recommend when examining John 11.

Jesus is close to three siblings: Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. One day, He receives word that Lazarus has fallen ill.

The sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.

John 11:3–6.

That little word so is hard to miss. John tells us Jesus loved them and then immediately connects his love to His decision to remain where He was for two more days.

Jesus loved them, so He waited.

Meanwhile, Mary and Martha were going through a terrible time. They believed that if Jesus arrived in time, He could heal Lazarus (Jn. 11:21). The problem is when Jesus finally reached Bethany, Lazarus had already been dead for four days.

Jesus could have left immediately and Lazarus still would have been dead for about two days by the time He arrived.

So why the additional delay? Why allow the sisters to remain in grief for two more days when Jesus already knew the planned outcome?

“This sickness will not end in death,” Jesus had said. “No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it” (Jn. 11:4).

Scholars treat the question in different ways, but I think the chapter itself gives us some clues.

Jesus tells His disciples:

“Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.”

John 11:14–15

Jesus already said God will be glorified. Now He says His absence was beneficial for the disciples’ belief.

Then, when He arrives in Bethany, He tells Martha:

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

John 11:25–26

At the tomb, He says to her:

“Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”

John 11:40

Finally, after the stone is moved, Jesus prays:

“Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

John 11:41–42

Belief, God’s glory, and Christ’s identity keep surfacing throughout the chapter.

So why do I think Jesus delayed?

I think He wanted enough time to pass so there could be no doubt Lazarus was dead. Had Jesus arrived shortly after Lazarus died, someone could at least claim Lazarus had not truly been dead. However, in the passage, Martha herself objected to opening the tomb because there would already be an odor from the body (Jn. 11:39).

At such a  point, nobody standing nearby was going to mistake Lazarus for a man who had simply fainted.

If Lazarus was unquestionably dead and afterwards, unquestionably alive, the miracle did what the chapter says it would do: glorify God and strengthen belief in Christ.

I cannot prove this was the exact reason for the extra two days. John does not tell us directly. I do believe John 11:15 points toward an issue of timing. Jesus wanted the miracle to happen under circumstances that would serve belief, and the chapter gives us solid reason to think the delay was purposeful.

The sisters, however, did not know any of Christ's plans while they were grieving. From where they stood, Jesus had not arrived in time to give them what they wanted: their brother healed. Instead, His absence opened the door to something they had not asked for at all—resurrection.

That does not mean every unanswered prayer is secretly waiting for a more spectacular miracle. Sometimes the answer is no; sometimes it is wait; and sometimes I may never know in this life why God answered the way He did.

John 11 gives us the reason in this particular case, but it also gives us a principle we can carry into the cases where the reason is not so obvious: God’s love is not governed by our temporary well-being when something greater is at stake. Here, Jesus allowed Lazarus to die and Mary and Martha to grieve because the resurrection that followed would glorify God and strengthen belief in Christ.

A delayed answer was not evidence He had stopped loving them. Sometimes the more loving answer can be wait.

Love Grieves With the Beloved

I have found I can gain remarkable new insights into Jesus' behavior when I switch my thinking from What did Jesus do? to What did Jesus not do?

Imagine John 11 presenting a rather different account.

Jesus hears about Lazarus' death and delays His departure by two days. When He arrives, He ignores the sisters and all the weeping and wailing. Gosh darn it, people, the man has a busy schedule. He needs to move this procession along. So He arrives at the tomb and resurrects Lazarus.

That is a very different Jesus from the one John 11 actually presents.

Instead of ignoring everybody, Jesus takes the time to listen to Mary and Martha's complaints, and He responds. Jesus notices the grief around Him, but He also encounters people who do not yet understand or trust what He is doing. Mary and Martha both insist Lazarus would not have died if He had been there (Jn. 11:21, 32), while Jesus repeatedly turns the chapter toward belief in who He is and what God is about to reveal.

Then John makes some remarkable observations: Jesus was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled” (Jn. 11:33), and “Jesus wept” (Jn. 11:35).

Even though Jesus knew what He was about to do, He connected so deeply with the grief and shaky belief around Him that He wept with them. How different His emotional connection is from the imaginary Jesus who brushes right past everybody and resurrects Lazarus. In the actual account, even the Jews recognize His weeping as an expression of love: “See how he loved him!” (Jn. 11:36).

This reminds me of a time when I was going through a deep season of grief. There was one particular moment that stuck with me.

I stood in line to get food at a church baptism when a friend of mine asked how I was doing. I told her I was thinking about joining our church's grief group. She already knew why I was grieving, so it was telling when she blinked at me and asked, “Is it really that bad?” A bit stung, I told her yes. She nodded, turned around, and grabbed her plate for food.

That was the entire interaction.

Her complete lack of emotional connection immediately struck me as unloving. I was in a devastating season of life, and her unwillingness to engage with my pain both wounded me and damaged our relationship.

This is not an issue of forgive her for being a brat. It is a matter of recognition.

She asked me how I was, and I broke the #1 Rule of Proper Christianity: if you are not well, never answer honestly. I told her the truth, and she failed to recognize it as a moment when I needed her to enter into my pain with me.

The grief was not mild. I was already in an extremely dark place and struggling to keep going. To experience that kind of dismissiveness when I was actively suicidal was a blow too deep for words.

God does not do that to us.

He doesn't merely know what we feel. His love genuinely engages with us in it. He grieves with us in sorrow, shares our joy, delights in what is right, and meets us within our emotional lives. He commands His people to do likewise: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Rom. 12:15).

Jesus knew Lazarus' death was temporary. He knew what He was about to do. None of that made Mary and Martha's pain irrelevant to Him.

We may not be able to see God weep the way the mourners at Lazarus' tomb saw Jesus weep, but John 11 gives us reason to reject the idea that knowing the ending makes Him indifferent to what we feel along the way.

The Cost of Love

When I think about love, I often think about warm feelings and loved ones. Or moments gathered around the table with lots of laughter and storytelling. But occasionally—like when my children demand more of my time than I want to give—I recognize love often has reason to be sacrificial.

How often do I think about the fact that expressing love can be downright inconvenient?

I'm just talking about me. I am a person who likes to be left alone. I also have a chatty husband and three socially-oriented sons. They do not like to leave me unaccompanied. I find the most loving thing I can usually give my family is my time and attention—which just happens to be the very thing I do not like to give.

But if I am going to love them, I have to care about their well-being. Interacting with me is part of maintaining a healthy family connection, and connection matters to them. So loving them requires me to give something I would often rather keep for myself.

Not to mention being a complete hermit is probably not great for my mental health either.

That is part of what makes Christianity's clearest expression of divine love so beautiful. Scripture shows God's love through costly self-giving.

“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

1 John 4:9–10

I think it is common to recognize the Cross as a sacrificial expression of Jesus' love for His beloved. But how often do we think about the Father's sacrifice?

Consider how often a parent will say, I wish I could bear this instead of my child.

As a parent, I know the depth of pain that comes with seeing my child distressed and not being able to stop the misery. I would take their place in a heartbeat, every single time.

So I wonder how horrific it was for the Father to send His Son into human life knowing what Jesus would endure. Scripture does not present the Father and Son as emotionally detached parties carrying out a transaction. This is the Father sending His beloved Son.

I cannot imagine watching my child endure condemnation, humiliation, beatings, and nail-pierced hands while knowing I had willingly sent him into such suffering. I'll be honest, I don't think I love anyone enough to sacrifice my child in their place.

I'd sacrifice myself, sure. That is a much easier scenario.

But my child?

No.

So think about the cost to the Father in sending His only Son. I cannot fully comprehend it.

And the Son was not dragged unwillingly into the plan. Jesus says, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (Jn. 10:18). The Father was willing to send the Son, and the Son was willing to go.

The Spirit is not absent from that self-giving either. Hebrews says Christ “through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God” (Heb. 9:14).

The Cross does more than tell us God loves us. It shows us what love was willing to give.

I can think of no greater expression of love.

God Is Love

Scripture has a unique way of attributing love to God's character.

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

1 John 4:8

This verse rejects the idea that God merely performs loving actions. Love belongs to His character.

This goes back to the question, Is it loving because God says it is, or does God say it is because it is loving?

I don't think either option properly captures the bigger picture. Of course, if God says something is loving, we can believe it is loving. But “God is love” captures something I think to be far more wonderful.

God's character is not measured against some external standard called love, and He does not arbitrarily manufacture the meaning of love by declaration. God is the ultimate expression of what it means to be loving. If we were to look up love in the dictionary, we should find God's name written there before anything else. His actions flow from a nature in which love is intrinsic.

To help make this a bit clearer, I will admit my own disposition is not a reflection of perfect love. Left to my own devices, I'm actually inclined more toward a wounded kind of hate. Any genuine love growing in me is the fruit of the Holy Spirit actively producing in me what does not naturally originate from me.

But God does not need to become loving.

When the Bible says God is love, it is saying He is the source and perfect expression of what love is.

When Love Doesn't Feel Like Love

Even with everything this section has said so far, there are still things we observe that appear to conflict with our understanding of love. We've established love can prioritize ultimate well-being over temporary well-being. We've explored the concept of unanswered prayers.

I think the harder question is this: how does God's love interact with His wrath?

There are plenty of difficult cases we could examine here: warfare in the Old Testament, Abraham and Isaac, slavery, judgments that affected entire families. Each deserves more careful treatment than I can give it here. How does any of that relate to love?

I assure you there are concrete answers to those questions. That does not mean we will discover every answer in this lifetime. Some things may remain beyond our present understanding. An answer being unknown to us does not mean there is no answer.

The one I want to tackle here is the one I think is hardest to answer. If eternal condemnation itself does not contradict God's love, then the existence of other difficult cases does not establish a contradiction merely because we do not yet understand how all the pieces fit.

Why would a loving God send anyone to hell?

That question is rarely abstract. It touches the people we love, ourselves, and those who appear kind, wounded, confused, or simply unconvinced. The thought of eternal condemnation can be horrifying.

Again, I must give a disclaimer that this question deserves its own book. However, the first thing we can establish here is universal guilt and the reality of moral harm. Psalm 14:2–3 states emphatically “there is no one who does good, not even one.” Ecclesiastes says, “Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins” (Eccl. 7:20).

Sometimes I think we treat sin—the failure to do right and the inclination to do wrong—a little too abstractly. Sin becomes this thing that is wrong, but why it is wrong can sometimes blur.

Ever heard the saying, there's no such thing as a victimless crime?

I think something similar can be said about sin. Sin produces real moral harm. Sometimes harm is obvious because another person suffers. Sometimes the sinner damages themselves. And ultimately sin is an offense against God Himself.

Take pride. Pride places a person in a state of higher importance than they possess. A person cannot interact accurately with reality when their self-image is distorted. Even before we consider what pride may do to other people, it is already corrupting the person who embraces it.

The reality of moral harm requires an account from a just God. The dilemma for a God who is both loving and just is not whether He should choose love or choose justice. He must be true to both. In His justice, God must answer the cry against evil (Gen. 18:20). In His love, God desires mercy for the offender (Ezek. 33:11).

So how can God remain fully just toward evil while extending mercy to the offender?

The Cross.

Justice is dealt with, and the path to forgiveness is established.

But what happens when someone rejects the Cross?

I like to explain this with a courtroom scene. The Father is the Judge, and Christ has already satisfied the demands of justice through the Cross. When an authentic believer comes before the Judge, that person does not stand on the basis of his or her own righteousness. The believer stands in Christ, and there is no condemnation (Rom. 8:1).

The unbeliever stands before the same Judge without the saving work of Christ applied to them. The Judge sees the sins that person has committed and judges accordingly.

If the Judge simply looked at evil and declared the offender forgiven without justice ever being satisfied, then the victim's cry would be ignored. Mercy purchased by pretending evil does not matter would not be justice.

But we still have the question of hell.

Why does the punishment need to be eternal?

First, we have to recognize what hell actually is. Scripture uses multiple images to describe its misery. Hell is described with fire (Matt. 13:41–42), while elsewhere judgment is described as darkness (Matt. 22:13). These images cannot both function as straightforward physical descriptions of the same environment. They are communicating the reality of judgment through imagery: horror, exclusion, misery, and condemnation.

What they consistently communicate is that condemnation is genuinely terrible.

Luke 16 gives us one picture of postmortem misery. The rich man is in Hades and describes himself as being in torment (Luke 16:23–24). You may notice, though, he is remarkably conversational for someone we tend to picture as literally burning alive. He is clearly miserable, but the scene suggests the imagery is communicating more than a simple physical description of flames.

While that is not very reassuring in and of itself, it is worth noticing when trying to understand what Scripture is actually telling us about condemnation.

It is also important to note the rich man is completely unrepentant. He is demanding and complaining, but he never expresses repentance. Revelation gives us another striking pattern. Even under severe judgment, people “still did not repent” (Rev. 9:20–21), and later they curse God rather than turn to Him (Rev. 16:9–11).

What the Bible does not portray is an individual who is genuinely repentant, longs for reconciliation with God, and is nevertheless eternally rejected by Him.

That absence does not prove such a state is impossible, but it matters. The biblical pattern gives us reason to question whether such a state exists at all.

I think of hell this way: hell is, at least in part, God giving the unbeliever what the unbeliever ultimately insists upon—life apart from His favor.

If God holds His hand out to me and I say, No thanks, then there is nothing unloving about God honoring that rejection. Likewise, if God offers reconciliation and I refuse it, then it makes sense that God eventually allows rejection to become permanent and to serve as the punishment for wickedness.

Think about what separation from God's favor actually means.

Think of all the wonder God provides: laughter, sunshine, loved ones, beauty, pleasure, companionship. “Every good and perfect gift is from above” (Jas. 1:17).

Now imagine all of those gifts stripped away: human evil no longer restrained by the presence of God's blessings, existence apart from every good flowing from God's favor.

That kind of existence would be genuinely miserable even before we consider anything else Scripture may mean by judgment.

Losing the universal blessings of God would be horrific. But if someone persistently rejects God and the reconciliation He offers, then there is nothing contradictory about a loving God allowing rejection to become permanent.

The unbeliever says, I don't want God.

God says, Then you won't have Me.

So yes, we may still have questions about the unreached, about individuals who believe they are saved but are not (Matt. 7:22–23), and about judgment, responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, and mercy.

Those questions matter, and they deserve answers of their own.

I have not attempted to explain everything there is to explain about hell here. I don't need to. If eternal condemnation can be shown to be fully compatible with God's love, then the existence of other difficult cases does not create a contradiction in God's character merely because we do not yet understand every one of them.

There is no contradiction between God's love and His wrath.

Love does not require God to ignore evil, deny justice to those who have been wronged, or force reconciliation on those who persistently reject it.

We don't need every answer before we can trust God is loving. We need enough evidence to know our faith rests on a solid foundation.

Where That Leaves Us

This essay is not meant to answer how God’s love interacts with Susan’s specific circumstances. Or Bob’s chronic illness. Or Jane’s divorce. The goal here is to help the reader understand divine love is not disproved by an experience or environment that appears unloving.

God’s love is emotionally real. It seeks genuine good, can permit painful circumstances, bears tremendous cost, belongs to His character, and does not disappear when justice requires wrath.

We can be in a difficult situation and wonder how a loving God could allow such and such to happen. That’s okay. We can also be in a place of investigation where we are trying to establish whether God really is loving. Nothing wrong with that. We can be searching for answers and grieving the lack of them. Perfectly normal and, I would say, probably quite healthy.

But once we have established God is, indeed, love, we can rest assured nothing in creation is exempt from His loving governance.

All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version (NIV).