God Loves Us with All of His Heart

A) God is love; wholehearted love (1 John 4:16). 
The very essence of God is wholehearted love. Wholehearted love is of the most importance to God’s personality and in all of His relationships; to the Son, to us, and in what He desires from us. From eternity past, God loves with all of His heart and strength. This is how the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father.

B) The love in God’s heart has at least five distinct expressions that are deeply interrelated:
1) God’s love for Jesus: God intensely loves Jesus with all His heart.

2) God’s love for us: He loves us with all of His heart, mind, and strength. He loves the redeemed with the same intensity that He loves Jesus.

3) Our love for God: God’s very own love is imparted to us by the Holy Spirit.
    (Romans 5:5)

4) Our love for ourselves: We love ourselves in God’s love and for God’s sake.

5) Our love for others: We love others in the overflow of experiencing God’s love.
    (1 John 4:19)

C) God loves us with the same intensity that God loves Jesus, and we must abide in this truth all of our days (John 15:9; 17:23).

D) Abide in love:
To abide in love means to continually live in it. This requires that we focus on living in God’s love. We set our heart to understanding this (1 John 3:1). We must be students of God’s emotions; growing in our understanding of His multi-faceted love.

E) The union in the Godhead reveals the nature, quality, and intensity of God's love and relationships.
These relationships are a picture of what perfect love is, and of how God relates to God, how He relates to us, and how we relate to Him and others. Each person of the Trinity enjoys and fully engages in the relationship with the others. Jesus has joy and enthusiasm in His love for the Father. He is moved in loving the Father and in being loved by the Father. His love is never mechanical. He is not disinterested or bored in His relationship with the Father.

F) We best understand God’s love as we consider the glorious truth of the Trinity.
The way that God loves within the Trinity is the way He loves us, it is the very same love. He never suspends one attribute for even one moment. He always loves in fullness; He never loves us with just a part of His love, because that would be to deny His own character. He will never diminish or grow in love, because His love is infinite in measure and eternal in duration.

G) God’s greatness includes His intense love, infinite power, great wisdom, and majestic splendor.
Insight into God’s greatness includes seeing the quality of His love and the relationships within the Godhead. This gives us insight into Jesus’ beauty, supremacy, and worth.