God is love. He intrinsically cares deeply about us by nature. God is immutable. He never changes. His love for us is therefore constant and unfailing. It never fluctuates in accord with our good and bad behavior.
Love constantly motivates God to come to our aid and produce goodness from our distress. If he did not love us, he would simply let us suffer alone without his assistance, mitigation or purpose.
God’s love is an ever present good for which we can always be thankful. It makes him fair and compassionate in his dealings with us.
Afflictions are easier to endure when we understand how much God loves us. The Bible quantifies his love in terms of theology, relationships, nature and infinity.
Theology
God loves us so much that through the death of Jesus he voluntarily paid the penalty for every sin ever committed by every person who has ever lived or shall live.
An imperfect analogy is a judge who convicts a chronic criminal for committing a felony.
The judge declares the man guilty and sentences him to prison. He then steps down from the bench and serves the required jail time on behalf of the felon as a voluntary substitute.
Not only that, the judge invites to felon to live forever in his beautiful home, free of charge.
Relationships
We strive to know everything we can about those we truly love.
The Bible says God loves us so much that he knows everything about us, even the number of hairs on our head. In today’s vernacular, we might say God loves us so much he can recite our individual DNA codes from memory.
We learn about those we love by watching them in different situations over time.
God exists apart from time. He therefore knew everything about us before we were even born, including every detail of our earthly history – past, present and future.
That God chose to love us despite his advance knowledge of every bad thing we would ever do, say or think means no sin we have committed, are committing today or will commit tomorrow will ever diminish his care and compassion for us.
That God chose to love us despite his advance knowledge of our depravity also means there is nothing we can ever do to make him love us more.
Nature
Jesus said God cares about us more than he cares about birds, flowers and grass.
Birds. Jesus contended that if God provided for birds to eat, flowers to bloom and grass to grow, he would certainly provide for us, the pinnacle of his creation.
Jesus lived in an arid desert where soils are rocky, rain is scarce and vegetation is sparse. God intended birds to survive this harsh environment. He therefore gave them the required eyesight, mobility and instinct to find food.
The world is full of individual, family and societal turmoil, but God wants us to prosper in this harsh environment. He therefore gave us the personal traits, earthly resources and spiritual certainties we need to endure distress.
Flowers. God created desert flowers to beautify the landscape. He designed them to find moisture and nutrients wherever they take root so they could bloom and grow.
God wants to beautify the world through us. He provides constant access to his living water and spiritual nutrients so we can bloom and grow wherever we reside.
Grass. God intended grass to stabilize the desert topsoil so he designed it to absorb moisture, reduce runoff and prevent erosion.
When we live righteously, spread the Gospel and do soulful good works, we build strong families, stable societies and healthy environments that make the world a better place.
Infinity
The length, breadth, height, depth, duration, density and intensity of God’s love are infinite.
Infinity is hard enough to comprehend in the context of time, space and mathematics.
Applying the concept to personal love is even more difficult because we rarely encounter anyone who is always pleasant toward us in every circumstance, let alone loving.
The intensity of the heat and light inside the sun is also beyond human comprehension, but we know it radiates across 93 million miles of space to warm and illuminate the earth.
We may be unable to comprehend the immutable intensity of God’s love, but it radiates across the great divide between his holiness and our unrighteousness to bring us eternal life.
