Have you ever doubted God’s love? If you have, you are not alone. We all go through moments of doubt where our faith is tested. Perhaps in this very moment, you are struggling to believe that God loves you.
Over and over, God’s Word teaches that He loves us. But God doesn’t just ask us to blindly believe. He gives us reasons, which we can go back to in moments of doubt. These reasons are grounded in who God is (his being and character) and what he has done for us (his actions in the world). In this article, I will offer five ways we can know that God loves us. These reasons have encouraged my faith in moments of weakness, and I hope they offer the same comfort to you.
- God is Triune
“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” John 17:24
God eternally exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. God has always been a relational being, full of love and life. If God was not Triune, if he had nobody to love before creation, then we could not say “God is love.” We would have to say, “God became love.” This would imply that God was a lonely being who needed creation in order to have someone to love.
What does the reality of an eternal Father mean? Well, Fathers beget life. For God to be an eternal Father means it is in God’s nature to give life. Fathers also love that which they beget. The Father has always had a Son whom he loves. It is in God’s nature to give life and to love.
This love between Father and Son is so strong that this love is itself another person: The Holy Spirit. C.S. Lewis writes, “The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person…What grows out of the joint life of the Father and the Son is a real Person, is in fact the Third of the three Persons who are God.” Through the Spirit, God shares his Trinitarian love with us, for “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5)
The Father, Son, and Spirit have always loved one another. God is love because he is Triune.
- God Needs Nothing
“Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25).
This is the doctrine of God’s aseity. God is utterly self-existent with no external cause. He is self-sufficient with no external needs. Stated positively, God is full of life in and of himself, the life of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Since God is full of life and without need, everything from him is a gift, and thus an act of love.
On a human level, sustainable loving relationships cannot be solely based on need. Psychologists speak of the toxicity of co-dependence, where one’s self-worth and happiness are overly dependent on one person to the point of suffocating and consuming them. Excessive neediness causes damage to relationships.
Now apply this to God. If God was a needy being, then it would be our job to fill a void in his heart. We would be responsible for his emotional welfare. In essence, we would be his servants who exist to satisfy his needs. Our relationship with God would mainly be one of master and slave, not of lover and beloved. Now Scripture does speak of us serving God, but not in the sense of fulfilling his needs. We serve him because we love him, and “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
God is full of life, and he delights in giving life to us. He is a fountain, not a vacuum. Because of God’s aseity, everything we have is a gift from Him.
- God Never Changes
“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” Malachi 3:6
God’s identity as a giver goes hand in hand with his identity as the unchanging one. For “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). All good gifts come from a perfect God.
Now if God could change, he would not be perfect. He could be better one day, and worse the next. How could we trust him to fulfill his promises? How could we rest assured that he will always love us?
Thankfully, the truth is that God never changes. His love for you will never wane. It depends not on your actions but on His faithfulness. Since God is unchanging, you can truly say with the Psalmist that his steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 136).
- God is Holy
“I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” Hosea 11:9
God’s holiness means he is set apart. He is utterly unique in his self-existent and unchanging majesty. None compares with him. He is also unique in his moral purity. Not a trace of sin resides in him, and he opposes all evil.
We often think of God’s holiness as the opposite of his love, but in reality, God is loving because he is holy. He opposition to sin is an act of love towards us. We were created to know and love God, and sin prevents us from fulfilling this purpose. Sin is suicidal. Thus, when God destroys our sin he protects us from self-destruction. In opposing our own sin, the Triune God shares his holiness with us. The Father sent his perfect Son to destroy our sin by taking it upon himself. Then the Father and Son send the Holy Spirit to indwell you, to put God’s holiness inside you and progressively eradicate the evil in you until you see God face-to-face and as a perfect creature.
- God Invites Us into Fellowship with Himself
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” Revelation 21:3
Are God’s nature and attributes like a firework show that you admire from afar? Absolutely not! The Triune God moves towards you and invites you to share in his Triune love. The Father sent the Son to take what is yours, namely your sin, and exchange it for what is His, namely his righteousness, holiness, and love. If you trust in Christ, the Holy Spirit indwells you and imparts all these benefits to you. The Spirit unites you with Christ, which means you can relate to God as a compassionate Father, and this Father can look upon you as his beloved children.
God desires to enrapture you with his life. He invites you into fellowship with himself. The God who is eternally loving, who has no needs, who never changes, who is thrice holy, wants a relationship with you. He gave Himself to save you from your self-destructive sin. In doing so, he offers his very Self to you. He invites you into fellowship with Him. This fellowship is the reason he created you and the only place in which your soul can be satisfied.
