God's Love is Affectionate

We continue in our study of “The Love of the Triune God” by moving to our first aspect of God’s love - his complete love. In order to understand the love of God (or really, to understand love at all) we have to first recognize that God defines all of reality, and so, he defines love. When studying the nature of God, there is a tendency to think of him as just a superhuman. In one sense, this is understandable, as we are made in the image of God. So, there are aspects of our nature that are reflective of his nature. But, what we tend to do is think of God as essentially like us. So, when we think of God’s wrath, we think of it in terms of human anger. Or, when we think of his love, we think of our desires and infatuations.  We might think that he loves like us, just better or more intensely than we do. However, we do not define the nature of love. God does. 

To define the love of God, we have to start with some theological concepts. First, the love of God is one of his communicable attributes. This means that it is an aspect of his nature that we also find in our nature because he has made us in his image. As John says, in 1 John 4:7, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” This means that we can look to God to understand how we should love, and we can understand God’s love, in some small way, by considering human love (more on this later).

Second, all of God’s attributes or infinite and perfect. This concept is what theologians call the “simplicity of God”. By that, they don’t mean that God is simple to understand, or that he is simpleminded. What they mean is that God is not a combination and mixture of a bunch of different attributes. He is the perfection of all of his attributes. Let me explain it this way. Men will often complain that they cannot understand what women think. You know the popular warning that men give to other men: if your wife says that she is fine, she is not, in fact, fine. Why is that? Well, it’s because women (and men too) are complex beings. They experience various emotions throughout the day. Sometimes they are happy, sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes focused. And, “fine” can mean different things at different points of the day. Every human is loving, but we are not always loving. Sometimes we are wrathful, and when we are wrathful, we may feel no inclination to love. God is not like that. He is always loving, gracious, good, patient, just, and holy. And, his attributes are not separated and compartmentalized. So, God’s love is holy and just, even as it is also gracious and good. And, God’s justice is loving and gracious, even as it is holy. He does not put aside his love so that he can be just.

Lastly, God reveals his nature in Scripture through various analogies. He does this especially when revealing his love. God reveals his love by speaking of himself as a husband and father. In Matt. 23, Jesus speaks of his love for Jerusalem as a hen who wants to gather her chicks under her wings. These analogies are meant to draw some important connections between the experiences we have as humans and the nature of God. So, when Paul, in Eph. 5, says that husbands should love their wives as Christ loves the church, it helps us to define what real love is. It is sacrificial, constant, gracious, and forgiving. But, we have to acknowledge that analogies can only take us so far. God’s nature is also impassible, which means that he is not controlled by his experiences like we are. Men have done some really stupid things for the sake of love. Just before Leah and I started dating, we went to a birthday party at a friend’s house. I was infatuated with her, so, like any sixteen-year-old, I was willing to go to extremes to impress her. So, when we finished having lunch on the porch of our friend’s house, we all decided to race out to the pool and swim. Thinking I would show off my athletic abilities, I chose to jump the banister of the porch, clear the bushes, and beat everyone to the pool. I did not account for the fact that the eave of the roof was only about five feet above the banister, and when I jumped, my head hit the roof and I went tumbling into the bushes. You could say that my love for Leah controlled me to the point that I lost any other sense. God is not like that. He is not controlled by any external force. He does not decide to love because he is lonely or needy. Rather, his love brings about all that we know out of an overflow of his nature.

With all that understood, today, I want to focus on the first aspect of God’s love. God’s love is affectionate. To see that, let’s read Isaiah 62:1-5. From this text, see two points: The Delight of God’s love, and the Direction of God’s love.

First, see the delight of God’s love. The book of Isaiah is a hard word. It is hard because much of it centers on the judgment of God. Isaiah prophesied just prior to the conquest of Judah by the Babylonians, and he foretold of all of the destruction that would come on the nations of Israel and Judah because of their sin. Yet, he does not just warn of judgment. He also promises redemption. Isaiah gives us the clearest picture of the Messiah - an anointed servant who would do the will of God, even to death. The latter part of Isaiah also promises the restoration of Israel. Chapters 62 and 63 are especially beautiful in the emotion with which God promises his love. You see that in the first verse of our passage. God cannot keep silent regarding his love for his people. You could say that God is emotional about it. He delights to do good for his people. I want you to notice two aspects of this affection that he has for them. First, notice the terms he uses to describe his affection. In verse 3 he says that he will crown them with beauty. In verse 4 he says, “The Lord delights in you.” The Hebrew for “delight” there is hapes, which means “to desire” or “be moved by” or “to take pleasure in”. In verse 5, he says, “Your God shall rejoice over you.” Oh, with what beautiful language does God describe his love for his people. He describes it in much the same way that we might describe our love for our spouse. This morning, our call to worship was from the Song of Solomon, which is a whole book of the Bible that serves as an analogy of God’s love for his people. Brothers and sisters, understand that God’s love for you is not technical. It is not something he has to do. It is not an impulse. It is not a reaction. God has set his love on you, and he is deeply moved and delights to do it! He rejoices over you!

Notice, too, the titles he gives to his people. In verse 4, he says that he is going to change their name. They once were called “Forsaken” and “Desolate”, but now they will be called by two different names. The first is the Hebrew name, Hephzibah, which means “My Delight is In Her.” God’s love for his people is so affectionate, that he wants even their name to reflect his delight in them. Second, he will call them Beulah, which means “married.” As a husband covenants with his wife to provide and care for her in sickness and in health, so God covenants with his people to give them an inheritance.

But, there is a point of clarity that we need to have with this affection of God, and that brings me to my second point: the direction of God’s love. As I warned at the beginning of my sermon, we cannot just simply take our own experience of affection, delight, and rejoicing, and apply it to God. We can’t do that, for one, because we are not infinite and perfect. But, we also can’t do that because we are sinful. Our love and affection have been impacted by sin, so that we do not love as we ought. Even though we have been created in the image of God, like a broken mirror, we do not reflect that image perfectly. So, we could say that the love of a man for a woman is good and noble, but what if that man and woman pursue each other only for their own sexual gratification? We could say that the love of a mother for her child is good and godly, but what if the mother is obsessive and overprotective of the child to the point that she neglects discipline, or, she tries to live vicariously through her children and never helps them develop their own identity?

It is helpful, at this point, to remember the definition that I gave for love last week: Love is the act of willing the good of another person and acting, as far as it is possible, to affect that good. Love - true, godly love - is directed towards the good. It has a purpose, an end. And, true, godly affection is the same way. We see this in our text. God’s delight is formed around his covenant and his intention for his people. In verse 1, we see that he intends to make Israel righteous so that her salvation will shine like a burning torch. He will give them authority to rule over the nations because he will make them holy. And, his intention is to marry them, to make a covenant with them. Like the bride changes her name and inherits a new family with all the benefits that come with that, so God intends to bless his people with a new heavens and a new earth.

Our affections are so often directed towards our own ends. We chase after a love-interest, not because we want to do them good, but because we feel that they would complete us. A husband and wife might decide to have children because it will bring them closer or make them happy. But true affection is not directed inward, but outward. Consider the interview between Matt Fradd and the philosopher, Peter Kreeft, on the podcast, Pints with Acquinas. Matt Fradd asked Peter Kreeft, “What advice would you give to someone who is newly married or about to be?” Kreeft’s response has gone viral for all the right reasons. He answered, “Do you think that, when you are very old, and when your wife is very old, and wrinkled, and fat, and not very bright, or even nasty, that you will still find her beautiful. If so, marry her.” Then, after a long pause, through tears, he said this: “The last view I had of my wife in the nursing home, about an hour after she died, I fell in love with her again. Here is a wasted, emaciated, wrinkled, suffering body… it’s as beautiful as a crucifix. Because that body ain’t gonna last, but the soul is. So, if you don’t love her soul, but just love her body, don’t get married.” What?! There is no way to understand what he said within the lens of our modern, oversexualized, over-individualized culture. This is not a worldly affection. This is not an inwardly directed delight. This is a picture of godly affection. Now, I have no idea the pain and sorrow that Dr. Kreeft went through in the loss of his wife, and I pray I never do. But, in 25 years of marriage, I do think I understand why he can say this. My wife and I have built a life together, and when I look at her, I do not just see the sixteen-year-old I first noticed, crossing the road from church, in the rain, in a red and yellow dress to get in her parents’ car. I don’t just see the woman who walked down the aisle at First Presbyterian Church, or the one who helped my dad, brother, and me frame our house while she was seven months pregnant. I don’t just see the woman that gave birth to our three children, or the one that went to 30 hours of training and attorneys’ offices with me so that we could adopt our fourth child. I don’t just see the woman I know now. I see all of it, and I can look out into the future and see what I want for her then. I see all of that because my affection for my wife is not directed towards myself, but towards her good, towards the good of the life that we’ve made together and will make together.

This is how I think Kreeft could look at his wife’s withered body and be moved to love and affection. What she could give him was gone and had been gone for a long time. But, his love was motivated for her good, and saw beauty in the life her body represented, even in that moment. So it is with God’s love for us. He does not set his affection upon us because we are beautiful, worthy creatures who can give him something. He sets his delight on us so that he might make us beautiful and worthy. This is the love of God for us. May we bask in it, and may we live in righteousness and shine like a torch because of it.

Bibliography

Carson, D. A. The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. Wheaton: Crossway, 2000.

Fradd, Matt. Love, Loss, and the Meaning of Suffering. July 13, 2026. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2GXNL89aywe4tGA2nzPIYz (accessed July 18, 2026).

Gendersen, J. van, and W. H. Velema. Concise Reformed Dogmatics. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008.

 1 (Gendersen and Velema 2008)

 2 (Carson 2000)

 3 (Fradd 2026)