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Over the last two weeks, we’ve learned a lot about God’s love, including the scope of God’s love (greater than you can ever imagine!) and the outcomes of God’s love (He sent his Son to die for you!). This week, I want to highlight how God’s love affects the rest of his characteristics.
God’s love is the foundation for how he interacts with his people. In fact, it is foundational for many of the characteristics we see in each category of God’s characteristics. We won’t look at every characteristic in this list, but I encourage you to read through the verse list or do your own research and find verses that support each one.
In addition, just because a characteristic isn’t highlighted doesn’t mean it is not related to God’s love. I just didn’t find a specific verse to connect them in my in-depth (but still limited) research. Also, the Bible doesn’t limit itself to my categories of God’s characteristics within a verse or passage, so many verses we will look at will span multiple categories. I’ve tried to place verses where they most represent a certain category.
Sovereign
In our first lesson on the scope of God’s love, we saw that God’s love is eternal, which fits under the category of God’s sovereignty. But God also has established a kingdom for those who love him.
1 Chronicles 16:34: Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever.
Psalm 103:17-19: 17 But from everlasting to everlasting
the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
18 with those who keep his covenant
and remember to obey his precepts.19 The Lord has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Characteristics from other categories we see in these verses are God’s goodness and his righteousness.
Judge
One of the most common descriptions of God in the Bible is first given in Exodus 34:6-7, and it covers many of the characteristics in the God is Judge category.
Exodus 34:6-7: 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
In these verses, we see that God is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, generous with his love, faithful, and forgiving. However, he does also have wrath for sin.
Here are a couple more verses that show us that God’s love interacts with his other “judge” characteristics.
Psalm 33:5: The Lord loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.
Ephesians 2:4-5: 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
Because of God’s love, he has sent Jesus to become our Savior so that when he judges, he can count us alive with Christ rather than dead in sin.
Relational
God’s relational characteristics guide the way God interacts with his people. They also reflect ways we should imitate God in our relationships with others.
God’s love brings joy to us because we know we can trust in him.
Psalm 13:5: But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
God loves us enough that he gives us encouragement and hope so that we can be strengthened as we walk with him.
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17: 16 May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, 17 encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.
God’s love and kindness often appear together in the Bible. Because of his love and kindness, he saved us by his mercy and renews us through his generous gift of the Holy Spirit.
Titus 3:4-7: 4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.
Warrior
The characteristics related to God as Warrior are all about the ways that God protects and saves us from the enemy and restores us when we are hurting or tired. God’s love is what drives him to protect us, save us, and restore us.
Zephaniah 3:17: The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
Psalm 36:7-8: 7 How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!
People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8 They feast on the abundance of your house;
you give them drink from your river of delights.
Psalm 109:21: But you, Sovereign Lord,
help me for your name’s sake;
out of the goodness of your love, deliver me.
Isaiah 63:9: In all their distress he too was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them
all the days of old.
Provider
As our Provider, God loves us enough to provide us a Savior who would redeem us from our sin and give us hope for all eternity. He also blesses us and satisfies us with all good things.
Psalm 103:2-5: 2 Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Psalm 130:7: Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
Worthy
Finally, we see that God’s love is tied to his worthiness. He is worthy of all praise and worship and admiration. We’ll look at this a bit more next week in how we should respond to God’s love.
Psalm 31:21-22: 21 Praise be to the Lord,
for he showed me the wonders of his love
when I was in a city under siege.
22 In my alarm I said,
“I am cut off from your sight!”
Yet you heard my cry for mercy
when I called to you for help.
Psalm 63:3: Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
Conclusion
I hope this lesson helped you see how God’s love is integral to who he is and how he interacts with us. His love is so foundational to who God is that we can hardly understand his other characteristics apart from his love. God’s love is the reason that he wants to have a relationship with us, that he sent his Son to die for us, and that he gives us chance after chance to repent of our sins. Next week, we’ll look at what our response should be to the amazing gift of God’s love.
Premium Resources
Each individual characteristic of God study will come with two resources: a word search just for fun (including an answer key), and a list of verses for if you want to investigate that individual characteristic of God more completely.
You can access these resources by clicking here: God Is Love Resources
Or you can download them here: