The Bible defines God.

Yes, God is a God of love. He is also a God of justice, a God of wrath, a holy and righteous God, and many other things which cannot be cut out and used in isolation to oversimplistically define God. But this does not negate the fact that God is, indeed, a God of perfect love. Thus, when we define the word “love,” it must be in a manner that is consistent with God’s character rather than our own sentiments or cultural preferences. If we want to know true love, we must look to God and not our own feelings, biases, or flawed human relationships.

The Bible does repeatedly characterize God in terms of His love. While many people falsely claim that the Old Testament paints God as a cold and ruthless judge without mercy, some of the most frequent descriptions of the LORD in the Hebrew Scriptures are phrases like “slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness,” (Exodus 34:6), “slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness,” (Numbers 14:18), and “slow to anger and great in lovingkindness,” (Psalm 145:8). Likewise, the New Testament famously says things like:

“The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love,” (1 John 4:8).

The Bible is quite clear that love is not a passing sentiment that God may or may not possess at a given time. Love is a central attribute of God’s unchanging character. God is love as certainly and unwaveringly as God is holy (Leviticus 11:44-45) or God is “a consuming fire, a jealous God,” (Deuteronomy 4:24). All such things, which the word of God plainly declares, must be taken together as revealing the very nature and character of God. So yes, it is certainly true that the biblical God is a God of love.

Love and discipline Many people today assume that rebuke, chastisement, and punishment are contrary to love. But biblically, God does all of these things. What’s more (and this is crucial to understand) He doesn’t do them in spite of being loving but rather because He is loving! Done righteously, these are actually expressions of true love! Jesus Himself said:

“Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent,” (Revelation 3:19).

The New Testament authors echo and build on this sentiment, writing things like:

“For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives. It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons,” (Hebrews 12:6-8).

We read similar statements in the Old Testament, such as:

“For whom the Lord loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights,” (Proverbs 3:12).

This not only attaches rebuke, reproof, and correction to God’s love, it assumes that such things as necessary parts of human love as well! A father who does not chastise his children does not love them! Letting people go on in their sin and refusing to confront and correct them is not love, it is indifference. We often miss the part of the famous “love chapter” read at so many weddings where it says that love “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth,” (1 Corinthians 13:6). This is an essential part of what love is, and it finds its perfect expression in God.

Love and wrath It’s one thing to say that rebuke and even corrective punishment are loving. After all, they are meant to restore the person and set them back on the right path. But what about God’s wrath, especially that final, ultimate wrath which He pours out eternally on those in hell? Isn’t that contrary to love? Again, the answer is actually no. And once again, the issue isn’t simply that God is so just and righteous that He will cast unrepentant sinners into hell in spite of His love. In reality, even God’s wrath expresses His love.

In a world where sin and evil exist, wrath is a necessary corollary of love. To put it another way, you can’t love someone without also having righteous indignation toward that which harms or threatens the one you love. Jesus draws on precisely this principle in some of his judgment language:

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea,” (Mark 9:42, see also Luke 17:1-2).

In other words, if you hurt one of these precious people that Jesus loves, you’d be better off being dragged by the throat to the bottom of the ocean compared to what He’s going to do to you! God likewise spoke to Israel this way through the prophets:

“For thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘After glory He has sent me against the nations which plunder you, for he who touches you, touches the apple of His eye. For behold, I will wave My hand over them so that they will be plunder for their slaves. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me,'” (Zechariah 2:8-9).

When someone harms one God loves, they might as well be poking God in the eye, and He will bring them down for it! Earlier still, the violent plagues on Egypt were because God loved Israel (Deuteronomy 4:47, 7:8). Sin brings death and suffering to all mankind and a curse on the whole of creation. How can the love of God not provoke Him to wrath against those who persist in bringing such cataclysmic harm on His people, indeed, on all people! A loving God will not allow sin and death to abide forever. Yet, He allows them to abide for a time, and this too is motivated by love:

“What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,” (Romans 9:22-23).

Thus, God’s wrath (and the manner and timing in which He carries it out) are inseparably bound up with God’s love. His attributes cannot be spliced out and set against one another. There is no conflict between God’s justice, holiness, love, wrath, compassion, mercy, or any other attribute of God. The God of wrath is the God of love without contradiction.

Conclusion: God is a God of love God is a God of love. This fact tells us something about God, but it also tells us something about what love is. We cannot start with our sentimental, subjective sense of what love ought to be and then use that to deny portions of God’s word because they strike us (incorrectly, I might add) as “unloving.” We also cannot pit God’s love against His wrath, justice, or holiness. Indeed, love would not be love without rebuke, correction, and even righteous wrath. The God of the Bible provides a perfect picture of true, whole, rich, and robust love in all its facets, and our own conceptions of love must bend to His self-revelation.