It is hard for our minds and hearts to wrap around the thought that God loves Himself within the Trinity and that is His only true love. All other love must flow from God’s love for Himself. This is quite a different way of looking at things than is done in the modern day. We can look at a familiar passage and see the difference this view makes. II Corinthians 5:14: “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; 15 and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” Now we normally think of the love of Christ as being the love that Christ has for a person and the person recognizes that and that is what controls him or her. We think of it as Christ having such a depth of feeling for us that we are controlled by His depth of feeling and so return certain feelings in such a way that it controls our behavior. Still others might say that His love at the cross was such that He died for all and we should be governed by His love He had for human beings at the cross.
Now, let us examine the thought of this text a little more. As we read and think through this text, we can see how we have just supposed certain things and so end up with a man-centered interpretation of Christ in the passage. We have supposed that the love of Christ was primarily for me. We have supposed certain things about what love is. Did love for man control Christ when He was in human form or did love for the Father control Him? We know that Christ had to have loved the Father perfectly in all things in accordance with the Greatest Commandment or He would not have been without sin and there would be no perfect sacrifice. What love of Christ is it, then, that controls a person? Indeed it is true that man is to do all he does being controlled by the love of Christ, but that does not answer what the focus of Christ’s love is. It also does not answer what the very essence of love is either.
It is easy from a man-centered perspective to sit back and think of the love of Christ being the feelings of Christ toward me and then living based on that. After all, since man thinks he is so wonderful and loves himself it is not a huge leap for him to think that God thinks man is wonderful and loves him in the same way that man loves man. But does the Bible speak of love that way? In Romans 5:5 we read this: “and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” What is the only reason that a man has true love? It is because the Holy Spirit is in that person’s heart. This sounds like a shocking statement, but nevertheless it is biblical. The only people who truly love are believers. Only believers truly love anyone. I John 4:7-8 is very clear on this: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” This text tells us why we should love one another. The first reason given is that love is from God. The second reason which is built on the first reason is that all those who love are born of God and know God. The third reason is that the one who does not love does not know God. The fourth reason is that God is love.
As we behold these verses in I John 4:7-8, it would be very easy to run from the obvious meaning. People throw out many illustrations to show that unbelievers do love in some way. Only true believers truly love because only true believers know God who is love. Only true believers have access to the only source of true love and that source is the God who is love. Yet those who are born of God and know God are those who love because they have the love of God poured out in their hearts. Okay, one might say, I can see that it is impossible to get around the obvious meaning of this text that John stated in the positive and in the negative. But how does that demonstrate that God loves Himself? All it shows is that God is the only source of true love and only those who are born of Him and know Him have true love.
But what we must remember is that God is triune. It is not just that He is a single and solitary individual living in the outer edges of the universe in love for Himself in a singular way, but He is triune. In other words, the God who is love is triune and so He lives in perfect love within the Trinity. To say that God is love is to say that as triune He lives in love for Himself. To say that God is self-sufficient is to say that God is sufficient within Himself to love Himself for all eternity without another being or anything else. Once we begin to focus the thoughts of the soul on what it means for God as triune to be love, it will change everything in terms of our worldview. It shows us that God does not need us to live in perfect love. It shows us that God is perfect in love when His love is for Himself and that the Greatest Commandment must in fact be a command to us to love Him as He loves Himself. It teaches us that we are only loved if in some way we are loved for His own sake. We must keep in mind that man is made in His image and believing man is renewed and/or regenerated when “the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph 4:24). In other words, when God looks upon human beings He sees Himself in some way. When He looks upon unbelievers who have fallen and who have the devil as their father He seems Himself abused and misused as the devil did. When He looks upon believers who are united to Christ He sees Himself because believers are one with Christ (Col 3:4). In other words, believers are loved for the sake of Christ.
At this point we can see the tremendous change this would make for the Gospel and sanctification. The Gospel is not primarily about God’s love for human beings, it is the love of the Father for the Son and of the love of the Son for the Father. All love for a person, therefore, is entirely of grace because there is no cause found in man whatsoever but all causes for it are found in God alone (Romans 3:23-25; Eph 1:6; 2:1-10). The Gospel is all about the glory of God in Christ (II Corinthians 4:4-6) rather than about the glory and wonder of man. I don’t have to wonder why God loved me, I can understand that all of His love is truly within Himself and all that He shows is for Himself and His own glory. It is enough to make people fall on their faces in utter adoration of Him who lives in perfect love as triune and shares His love for Himself with people in Christ. This is a person that is controlled by the love of Christ because it is the love of God shared by the triune God in a person that loves Christ. This is the life of God in the soul of man as Henry Scougal wrote.
God Loves... Himself 
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