In the last post (A God-Centered View of God’s Love Changes Everything) we started an analysis of II Corinthians 5:14 in light of the fact that God loves Himself: “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.” One question about the text that remained unanswered had to do with what the love is that controls a human being. In one sense the question can be seen as derived from other points, but we will try to deal with that question in this post. The core issue has to do with God loving Himself and all that He loves must be for His own sake. The love that controls a human being is really the love of God for Himself dwelling in the human soul since the only true source of true love is God Himself. For a human being to have true love s/he must have received that love from God. But what is love itself?
To answer this question we must go straight back into the biblical teaching of God Himself who is love. We have seen that Scripture teaches that “God is love” (I John 4:8) and that the only person who truly loves is the believer who is born of God and knows God. So we know that God is love, but can it be true that love is God? At this point we must tread very carefully. Of course God is not what many people call love in our day and so at times it would be blasphemous to teach that God is love if we mean what many people mean by that phrase. However, we must also tread carefully if we deny that true love is God since Scripture does teach that God is love. We have seen that true love is triune by nature and God is the only source for true love. This is not to deny that there is much pseudo-love in the world that passes by the name of love, but the devil is always out to deceive. If love for God is true love, then we know that the devil will try to convince those who believe the lie (that they will be like God as in Genesis 3:5) that their love for themselves is true love. The devil will also try to convince people that they are the source and power of love themselves and if they will but make the proper choices they love. But Scripture teaches us that God is love and that only those who are born of God and know Him can truly love (I John 4:7-8).
We know that God loves Himself as triune and so all true love flows within the Trinity. We know that true love does what is best for another person and what is truly best is for a person to love God in accordance with the Greatest Commandment. So we must ask a few questions of God. What can God give to a person that is the very best for them? Can God give a person something other than Himself that is not the very best? Can God give a person something out of love if that something is not Himself? We can begin to get the picture, but let us look even deeper. Scripture teaches us that the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. What is it that the Father gives or does that shows He loves the Son? What is it that the Son gives or does that shows He loves the Father? Surely love between the Father and the Son is something more than just having a feeling for each other. If a man can have no greater love for a friend than to lay down his life, then that teaches us that true love is giving of our very selves. How can we even think that the love of the Father and of the Son for each other is something less than giving themselves to each other because they alone are what is best?
In some way, then, we must understand the Holy Spirit as the one that the love of the Father and the Son flows through. But even more, in some way the Father gives Himself through the Spirit and the Son gives Himself through the Spirit. We can now understand Romans 5:5 better: “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.” In some way the Holy Spirit as the love of God gives us a love for God because that is God’s best gift and that is giving sinners a love for Himself or bringing them to where they share in His love for Himself. It is the fruit of the Spirit to work love in the hearts of His people (Galatians 5:22). We can do nothing apart from Christ (John 5:4-5), which teaches us that the believer as the branch can do nothing but what comes from the vine. The believer has no love and is controlled by no spiritual love but what is received from Christ as indeed the branch receives from the vine.
The claims that have just been made are enormous. The claim is that when God sets His love on a human being His love must be understood as giving Himself and not just something of Himself because He gives what is best. We see this in I John 4:12: “12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” The believer is told that if s/he loves other believers it is God who abides in us. It is not just that the love of God dwells in us, but God abides in us and it is His love that is perfected in us. Thus we see that only believers love. That is because only believers have God Himself who is love dwelling in us.
God Loves... Himself 
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