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What is love?

So we could spend a long time discussing the nature of complacency in God and what it is like to know and enjoy and admire and be satisfied in God, and we could spend a long time talking about benevolence to people who don’t have the kind of admirable traits that make us drawn to them.

So what I think would be most helpful in response to the question is to give a biblical definition of the love of benevolence because this is the kind of love, which in the Bible, is celebrated as the heart of God’s love. So the magnitude of God’s love of benevolence is measured in the Bible by four criteria that it can see:

1. The degree to which the person loved does not deserve to be loved.

2. The greatness of the price paid to love a person.

3. The greatness of the good that is done for the person when he is loved.

4. The level of desire that God has for the good of the one loved.

So let me just give a verse for each one of those:

1. In Romans 5:6–8, God loves the least deserving and therefore his love is greater. “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one might dare even to die — but God” — different from all that — “shows his love” — this is what love is— “in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.” So the first measure of the magnitude of God’s love is we don’t deserve it. That is why it is great.

2. Consider the price he is willing to pay: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). This love is measured not just by the fact that I don’t deserve it. It is measured by the price he is willing to pay; namely, his own Son’s life.

3. The third measure is the good that I get through this love. In John 3:16 that is called “eternal life.” “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And then he defines eternal life in John 17:3 by saying it is to know God and to know Christ. So the greatest possible love gives the greatest possible gift, which is God himself.

4. Did God show this love begrudgingly or does with all his heart? Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” We read the same response in the parable of the prodigal son where the father sees his son coming home, and he hugs him, and he puts a ring on his hand and robes and shoes and throws a party (Luke 15:20–24). In other words, God is totally into saving us. Nobody is twisting God’s arm.

So the most beautiful love in the world is this divine love that pays the highest price, the life of the Son of God, for completely undeserving enemies, to give us the longest and greatest happiness in his presence. And he loves doing it.

- John Piper

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