The Lies We Believe About GodIhe Atụ

Love of Another Kind

The love of God has no starting point. God is eternal, operates above space and time, and is love (1 John 4:8). Put all this together and there is only one reasonable conclusion you can come to: God has always loved you, even before you got here.

Sometimes songwriters and poets claim to love a romantic partner before time began or before they even met. That’s nice in theory, but when it comes to human relationships, it’s simply not true. We don’t love something before we meet the person. Feelings of love have a beginning and develop over time.

With God, however, He did indeed love you before you knew about Him. You weren’t even a twinkle in your parents’ eyes and God already loved you. God’s love for us existed before we got here, and it’s going to exist long after we exit. God’s love is eternal.

When it comes to God, there are no limits to His love. You can’t put any parameters around the love of God. The apostle Paul put it beautifully when he said, “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17-19). The love of God simply cannot be measured.

But we sometimes think that because God loves all seven billion of us, He doesn’t love each of us individually and personally. Not only would my kids ask me how much I loved them, but they would also ask, “Dad, am I your favorite?” It was their way of seeing if I were the kind of dad who loved his kids as an amorphous group or loved each one of them as a unique individual. Now, I know I shouldn’t have done this, but I would always tell each kid (privately, of course) that he or she was my favorite but not to tell the others — that it was just between us. And, again, they would giggle and run off, happy as a bird with a french fry.

God’s love for you is personal. You are His favorite. He doesn’t love you because you are a member of the human race. He loves you as a unique individual whom no one else on the planet is exactly like.

Saint Augustine said, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” God wants you to know that He loves you, that you are His favorite even though He has billions and billions of favorites, and that He is enamored with you. God’s love is for all humankind — and for each kind of human.