I was raised on the magical world of fantasy and fairy tales. Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella, Snow White, and The Chronicles of Narnia influenced my understanding of love, heroism and the underdog. As a little girl, I filled my world with imaginary play, mimicking the stories of the beautiful characters. I longed for the day when I would be whisked away by a handsome prince and I could communicate with my cat. Because of this, it should be no surprise that I crumbled in despair when my first love didn’t result in my “happily ever after.”

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The love espoused in fairy tales is enticing. Maybe because it always works out in the end, or maybe because it often promotes the housekeeper to queen, but I think it’s because the stories show what love could look like. The tales create a world where love always destroys evil, where there is harmony in the lands and where there is always a happy ending.

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The Bible is no fairy tale. It is so much better because it is real. The Bible tells the true story of a King who loves His people so much that He died for them. The King’s love triumphs over all evil and destroys it for all of eternity. And the end is a new chapter where love reigns supreme, there are no tears or sorrows, and love is only outdone by more love. God’s story of love transforms humanity into new creatures and transports us to full restoration. While the world says “I love you as you are,” God says “I love you as you are, but I love you too much to leave you in your sin and brokenness.”

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It is this second part of God’s love that we often misunderstand, because we have cheapened and twisted the meaning of love. The world teaches that love with conditions, love that allows suffering, love that is not absolutely free of restraint is no love at all. We have created an idol of love and attempt to squeeze God into the mold. In Counterfeit Gods, Tim Keller defines an idol as “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”

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In the secular worldview, this earth, our physical bodies and what we can achieve and accrue is all that exists. This makes freedom to do whatever we want the ultimate meaning of life. But if this is the case, if absolute, unchecked freedom is the only way to happiness, we will only see God’s authority and His will as suppressive rather than freeing. But the Bible says true freedom is found in Christ (John 8:32).

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For us to experience God’s love the way He intended, we must answer the following questions: What does it mean that God is love? How can God be loving and send people to hell, allow suffering or limit earthly freedom?

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What Does it Mean That God is Love?

Scripture says God defines love, not us. 1 John 4:8 says, “God is love.” God does not merely give love or show love, He is love. Agape love is the unmerited graciousness that flows from God. The love of God is an affection, not a duty. It is the actionable love that seeks the welfare of others. Jesus perfectly demonstrated God’s affection for His image-bearers by coming in close, healing their bodies with his hands, washing their feet, and sharing meals with them. Jesus didn’t just say He loves us, He showed us how much He loves us by laying down His life for us. The Bible describes God’s love for humanity in terms of a marriage. Just like a husband and wife choose to tie themselves to one another until death parts them, God chose to tie Himself to us in agape love, to commune with us and  have a relationship with us. And His steadfast and enduring affection for us is most clearly demonstrated on the cross.

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The love of God cannot be abstracted from His holiness, His providence, His personhood, His sovereignty or His wrath. God perfectly expresses all of His attributes at the same time. God’s holiness is always loving; His justice is always merciful; His power is always holy. When we attempt to separate God’s love from His holiness, we are loving a God of our own making. The result of this abstraction, D.A. Carson says, “is that the love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been sanitized, democratized and above all sentimentalized.”  

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In light of how the Bible defines God’s love, let’s look at how God reveals His love for us through hell, suffering and freedom.

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How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?

How does a good and loving God send people to an eternal hell? The Bible defines hell as the place where people who have not experienced saving faith exist after death. Because hell is separation from God, it is separation from all that is good. The prophet Daniel describes it as a place of “shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2).

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For some, the only way to uphold God as loving is to remove the reality of hell from Christianity. It seems this is the only way to make God more loving and people more valuable. But, upon closer inspection, we see the opposite is true. When you lessen the penalty for a wrong, you lessen the wrong itself and ultimately you lessen the value of the victim, or the person who was wronged. Imagine a family sitting in a courtroom, waiting for the judge to pronounce the penalty for the man who murdered their daughter. After listening to weeks of evidence proving the man’s guilt, the judge hands down a verdict: guilty. The family takes a big sigh of relief as they wait to hear the sentence. “For this murder,” the judge says, “I sentence you to three month’s probation.”

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What would this judgment communicate to the family about the worth of their daughter? It would obviously communicate that she, as a human, lacked value. To say people need not be accountable for the wrongs they commit is to cheapen human life and choice. What would this judgment communicate about the judge’s sense of justice? We would see him as corrupt, unjust or even cruel.

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Thankfully, God is nothing like this judge.

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If God didn’t punish sin, it would communicate that God is not holy. And a God who is not holy is no God at all. The holiness of God gives us our morality and teaches us how to treat our fellow humankind. To ask God to remove hell makes light of the affront against God’s holiness and mercy and cheapens the cost of sins. Instead, God’s love is displayed for us through the death of His Son and through the reality of hell. Without the blood of Jesus, God would not be merciful or loving. But without the reality of hell, God would not be holy or just. Thankfully, God is all of these, perfectly.  

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How Can a Loving God Allow Suffering?

I can remember the exact moment suffering interrupted my security in God’s love. It happened when my mom said in staccato agony, “You have to come home. Your dad’s cancer is back. It’s bad. Stage Four. Be prepared to say goodbye.” With each word, God’s goodness dissolved and His love evaporated. Watching my dad die after enduring 10 years of cancer forced me to ask the question, “Why would a loving God allow suffering?” Maybe it would have made more sense to me if my dad was a bad man. Or maybe I could have rationalized God’s love if my dad only suffered for a while but then didn’t die.

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For us to reconcile pain and suffering with God’s love, we have to examine the totality of God’s character. The Western world, transfixed on pleasure, has a thin understanding of God’s love. Suffering—from criticism to cancer—easily seems to overpower the love of God.

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Consciously or not, we think  God’s best love was offered to us before sin entered the world, and after that, it has been utterly demolished. In the Garden of Eden, we see God invite humanity into the perfect love He shared with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. There was no pain, no suffering, no angst—only love. And, Christians look longingly toward the end of all things. Heaven is the home for love and absent of all suffering (Revelation 21:4). But we hate that we have to spend our days in between the bookends of God’s story. We exist in the almost, but not yet, where the consequences of sin are pronounced and pervasive, and where our view of God’s love has been distorted.

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We have forgotten the suffering, incarnate love of Jesus. In response to the suffering of 9/11, Tim Keller said, “It is on the cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock, that God knows too what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack … John Stott puts it this way: ‘I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?’ Do you see what this means? It’s true, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be … that he doesn’t love us! It can’t be that he doesn’t care. God so loved us and hates our suffering that he was willing to come down and get involved with it.”

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We cannot dismiss suffering by saying God doesn’t care. Nor can we successfully avoid experiencing suffering in this life. In the fullness of God’s character, we see that God’s love is not diminished, tarnished or limited by suffering. Instead, God’s love is expanded in suffering because He entered into it, suffering among the people, with the people and, ultimately, for the people. Jesus experienced excruciating pain, agony, and rejection so that when we experience such torment, we will never have to be alone in it. Jesus gave up His life so the eternal effects of suffering would be demolished for us forever. This is the expansive, biblical view of the love of God. This is a God who does not eradicate suffering but meets us there in it.

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How Does God Show Us His Love Through Limitations?

What the world gets right is that freedom is beautiful and necessary for love to exist. Love cannot be coerced or forced. It cannot be a duty. It must be given freely and received freely. But what the world gets wrong is that it assumes humanity will spend its freedom wisely and unselfishly—it assumes  we are all inherently good. The reality is that our sin has made us poor owners of our freedom. We have made freedom into the unhindered right to do anything and everything we want.

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God showed us His love when He intervened and established rules for us to live by. These rules govern and guide us to experience the most freedom we can on this side of heaven. God does not give random prohibitions or conditions. He guides us into our greatest joy, our most present contentment and our most meaningful existence through His promises and warnings. There is great blessing in God’s limits on our freedom and great kindness in His warnings to stay within His path.

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For the most part, we know this to be true. When we watch our kids play in the front yard or send them off to a sleepover, we give parameters for their safety. We commit to remain faithful in our marriage so our love will flourish. We don’t steal from our employers so we can keep our jobs. In all these ways we limit our freedom for the good of others and society.

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But trusting God to show us His love through His limitations gets more difficult when we think His boundaries are unreasonable. For example, the world says there is great freedom to be found in sleeping with whomever you want, whenever you want, however you want. And the world says there is freedom to be found in independence apart from God and Christian community. We have been persuaded we are the sum total of our desires, and anything or anyone who gets in the way is not for us but against us.

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But God, knowing what will bring us ruin, what will break our hearts and what will devastate our souls, is willing to take that criticism because He loves us so much. David wrote in Psalm 19: “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes … Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward” (7–8,11 ESV). Because the love of God—rooted in His character of holiness, goodness, mercy and righteousness—is limitless, we can trust His limitations. We can trust that within these boundaries  freedom is truly found.

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The love of God is relentless. There is nothing we can do to cause God to love us less. His love is deep enough to meet us in our darkest sin and strong enough to sustain us through our most painful suffering. No one can outrun God’s love and no heartache can overwhelm its power. This is because God’s love is tied to His character, which is perfect and infinite in every way. The love of God is no fairy tale—it is true and available for you.

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