Christians take great comfort in the New Testament teaching that God is love. Such a Being has His creation's well being at heart and does all for the best of His children. Christians, therefore, feel enveloped by God's Divine love and are deeply reassured by the fact that their Divine Father wants their best at all times.
But what if God were not "Love"? What if He were a selfcentered, self-absorbed, Creator?
If this were true, can we conceive how horrific human existence would be? Such a sadistic god would create only for his own pleasure; existence would be a stage conceived to only satisfy his every whim; he would have no reason to create humans for any higher purpose, and he would have no desire to share eternity with anyone. If such a god had created humans, it would have been to simply get sadistic satisfaction from controlling them and abusing them.
We humans are blessed to be a part of an existence conceived and orchestrated by a Being who is totally motivated by love. The Bible assures us that God is love (I John 4:8,16); that He is a God who delights in and "exercises loving kindness" (Jeremiah 9:24); and who is "plenteous in mercy" (Psalm 86:5). Everything about His essence is goodness and out-going concern and no selfishness is to be found in Him.
From the beginning, He made everything in the universe with love, with the ultimate aim that it would all be "very good" (Genesis 1:31). That "very good" creation was to be a special world for His last physical creation; a special gift of love for His children, made in His very image: man and woman. The earth is "full of the goodness of the Lord" (Psalm 33:5), yet it is only a token of the future world God is planning to give to spiritually transformed humans that will, by far, surpass anything imaginable in beauty and glory.
Lastly, humans were not simply created to exist for a period of time, experience life, suffer and then die. He created humans as His supreme masterpiece with whom He wants to share all things (Romans 8:16-17). To accomplish this great aim, He sent His son to die a most excruciating death, as supreme evidence that He wants humans with Him in His Kingdom forever. As the Apostle John reminds us, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
Let there be no doubt, therefore, that our God is love and that His aims are good and only good, at all times. Let all of creation be fully reassured and exult in this awesome truth.
