Here are 3 reasons God loves you so much.
1. God Loves You So Much Because of Who He Is
We often imagine God to be the “random rule maker.” In other words, we often believe that good is good because God said it is good and bad is bad because God said it is bad. If God said stealing was good would stealing then be good? If God said being unfaithful was good would adultery be good?
The key to answering questions like this is to understand that God ultimately does what he does because of who he is. God would never say that stealing was good because God is completely just and thus he could never command anything unjust. God commands faithfulness not because he randomly said faithfulness is better than unfaithfulness; rather, he commands faithfulness because he himself is faithful in his own nature.
My point is, everything God does flows from who God is. His laws and his actions are a reflection of his being. So the reason God loves you so much is because God is love. 1 John 4:7-9 teaches us:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”
This truth is so important because we must always remember that God does not love us because of what we do; again, God loves us because of who he is. This means that God’s love for us will never change because he never changes. This is why God can love us at our worst. In our darkest hours when we’ve done the worst things in our lives, God’s love remains because his love is rooted in himself and not in us. You can’t lose the love of God because of something you might do because you did not gain the love of God by something you did. We can’t let the love of God down because we were never the ones holding the love of God up.
Certainly God lets us reap what we sow and demands that we repent of sin (Galatians 6:7-10), but God also extends to us endless grace and love for us to humbly receive because he is a loving God (Romans 5:20-21).
2. God Loves You So Much Because of Who You Are
While God loves all of his creation – the stars, the grass, the ocean, the animals – God has a special love for humans that is unlike any other love he has for anything else in all of creation. So God not only loves us because of who he is, God also loves us because of who we are.
There are at least two expressions of this truth. 1. God loves us because we are his creations made in his image, and 2. God loves us because he remembers we are completely dependent creatures in need of his love. To the first point, notice what God said in Genesis 1:26-27. It states:
Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
God loves all human life because we are all endowed with a special value from God himself. No other creations in all the universe are loved like humans by God. If you are human, you are loved by God because he made you.
But God in kindness also loves us because of how needy we are for him. Like a parent who looks at their little child who makes all kinds of mistakes and is in need of all kinds of help, God loving helps us because he remembers our neediness. As Psalm 103:13-17 teaches us:
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him . . . .”
God will always love you because he remembers who you are. You are his creation, and you are in desperate need of him. He will not abandon you.
3. God Loves You So Much Because It Brings Him Glory
While the love of God should make us feel protected, secure, and even “important” as God’s creation, we must also remember that even the love of God is ultimately about the glory of God. While God does love us immensely in a way that no other part of his creation experiences, God still places his own glory at the center of all things. If he didn’t, he would no longer be God.
This is why the love of God will not be forced upon us. While God loves the whole world, according to John 3:16 he will only save those who believe in Jesus. God will not bless those who curse him unless they repent because God will never allow his name to be dishonored.
According to Isaiah 43:7, God made us for his glory. When God shows us his love, when God forgives through the sacrifice of Jesus, and when God blesses us even when we don’t deserve it – all of this shines a light on his greatness. As Psalm 23:1-3 famously states:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
Why does God love us so much? “For his name’s sake.” While to some this might feel like God’s love is cheapened by this truth, in reality, this truth only enriches the love of God for us. As John Piper said, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” Therefore, because God is so committed to his own glory, God is also just as committed to loving us because through his love God is glorified. God’s love and our good truly are intertwined for all eternity.
