# God's Love for Creation ## Intro God is good, and the Bible's way of showing it is to tell a love story that starts before the first human being and ends after the last tear. God made a world He did not need. He feeds the ravens and the cattle. He knows each person before birth. He binds Himself by promise to people who break their promises, and to every living creature after the Flood. In Jesus He comes looking for the lost, and at the cross He gives Himself for His enemies. The last pages of the Bible show Him living with His people in a renewed world where death is gone. This page does three things. First, it explains what the Bible means when it says God loves, using the Hebrew and Greek words behind the English. Second, it takes on the three stories people raise most often to argue that God does not love His creation: the death of David's baby, the Flood, and the dangerous tree in Eden. Each objection is put in its strongest form before it is answered. Third, it gathers **100 passages** from across the whole Bible that show God's love, quoted from a public-domain translation and grouped under ten themes. The hard cases are not hidden at the back. They sit in the middle, because a love that cannot survive the hardest texts is not worth defending, and the Bible never asks anyone to look away from them. **The 30-second version:** > The Bible says God is love, and it shows that love in creating a world He did not need, feeding every creature in it, knowing each person before birth, keeping His promises to people who break theirs, and coming in Jesus to die for His enemies. The hard stories do not cancel this. David's child died under a judgment on the king's public sin, yet God spared David's life, and David expected to go to the child. The Flood came after long patience on a world filled with violence, and God saved every kind of animal and made His covenant with all of them. The tree in Eden was one limit in a garden of plenty, given with a clear warning. At the cross God took death and judgment on Himself. ![In a dark interior an old man in a red cloak bends over a kneeling young man in torn clothes, his hands resting on the son's back, while other figures look on](/codex/assets/rembrandt-return-of-the-prodigal-son.jpg) *The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt, about 1668, State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. Jesus told the parable ([Luke 15:11-32](/codex/luke-15-11-32/)) to show what God is like toward the son who left: the father sees him far off, runs, and kisses him. Public domain ([Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrandt_Harmensz_van_Rijn_-_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)), resized.* ## In full The love of God for His creation is the free, self-giving goodwill by which God wills and effects the good of what He has made: bringing it into being, sustaining it, binding Himself to it by covenant, redeeming it at His own cost, and bringing it to its final good. In classical Christian theology love is not one attribute among others that God happens to display; [1 John 4:8](/codex/1-john-4-8/) and 4:16 predicate love of the divine nature itself ("God is love"), and the doctrine of the [Trinity](/codex/trinity/) supplies the eternal object of that love before any creature existed (see [Trinity Love-Overflow Argument](/codex/trinity-love-overflow-argument/)). Because God is already the fullness of love in Himself, His love for creatures is uncoerced gift rather than need, the point secured by [Aseity](/codex/aseity/) and, on the classical account, by [Divine Impassibility](/codex/divine-impassibility/), which affirms that God's love is a settled perfection of His nature rather than a passion that creatures provoke or withdraw. D. A. Carson's *The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God* (2000) is a useful map of how Scripture actually speaks. He distinguishes five ways the Bible talks about God's love: the love of the Father for the Son within the Godhead; God's providential love over everything He has made; His saving stance toward the fallen world; His particular, effective love for His own people; and the conditional language of remaining in God's love through obedience. Carson's warning is that each sense, absolutized and cut off from the others, produces a distorted doctrine. The structure of this page follows that warning: creation and providence, covenant, the cross, the Spirit, discipline and consummation are all treated as expressions of one love. ### The vocabulary of divine love - **[*Hesed*](/codex/h2617-hesed/)** (Strong's H2617), usually rendered "lovingkindness" in the ASV and "steadfast love" in modern versions. It joins love, loyalty, kindness and mercy, and it lives inside relationship. Nelson Glueck (*Das Wort hesed*, 1927; English *Hesed in the Bible*, 1967) read it as conduct owed within a relationship of mutual obligation. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld (*The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible*, 1978) refined this: *hesed* is kindness within an established relationship that goes beyond what the relationship strictly requires. God names it in His self-revelation to Moses ([Exodus 34:6](/codex/exodus-34-6/)), and [Psalm 136](/codex/psalms-136/) repeats it in every one of its twenty-six verses. - ***Ahav* and *ahavah*** (Strong's H157, H160), the ordinary verb and noun for love. [Deuteronomy 7:7-8](/codex/deuteronomy-7-7-8/) uses the verb to make the point that God's love for Israel had no cause in Israel; [Jeremiah 31:3](/codex/jeremiah-31-3/) calls it "an everlasting love"; [Hosea 11:4](/codex/hosea-11-4/) speaks of "bands of love"; and [2 Samuel 12:24](/codex/2-samuel-12-24/) says of Solomon, born after the death of David's first child, "And Jehovah loved him" ([2 Samuel 12:24](/codex/2-samuel-12-24/), ASV). - **[*Rachamim*](/codex/h7356-rachamim/)** (Strong's H7356), compassion, related to the word for womb. [Psalm 145:9](/codex/psalms-145-9/) extends it to "all his works", and [Isaiah 49:15](/codex/isaiah-49-15/) compares and then surpasses a nursing mother's compassion. - **[*Agapē*](/codex/g0026-agape/) and [*agapaō*](/codex/g0025-agapao/)**, the New Testament's chosen words for God's love, used in [John 3:16](/codex/john-3-16/), [Romans 5:8](/codex/romans-5-8/) and [1 John 4:8](/codex/1-john-4-8/). Anders Nygren (*Agape and Eros*, 1930-1936) argued that New Testament *agapē* is spontaneous and unmotivated by the worth of its object, and that it creates value rather than responding to it. Not every scholar accepts Nygren's sharp contrast with *eros*, but the texts he relied on, such as [Romans 5:8](/codex/romans-5-8/), do describe a love that reaches people while they are still enemies. - ***Philanthropia*** (Strong's G5363), "love toward man", used of God at [Titus 3:4](/codex/titus-3-4/). The New Testament takes a word the Greek world used for the kindness of rulers and applies it to God's saving appearance in Christ. ### The shape of God's love across the story 1. **Creation.** God makes a world and pronounces it "very good" ([Genesis 1:31](/codex/genesis-1-31/)). Nothing compelled Him: [Revelation 4:11](/codex/revelation-4-11/) grounds creation in His will, and [Acts 17:25](/codex/acts-17-25/) denies that God is served "as though he needed anything" ([Acts 17:25](/codex/acts-17-25/), ASV). 2. **Preservation.** God keeps what He made in being and feeds it ([Psalm 104](/codex/psalms-104/); [Psalm 145:15-16](/codex/psalms-145-15-16/)). This is the providential love Carson describes and the doctrine of [Divine Providence](/codex/divine-providence/) develops. 3. **Covenant.** God binds Himself by promise, first to "every living creature of all flesh" after the Flood ([Genesis 9:15-16](/codex/genesis-9-15-16/)), then to Abraham, Israel and David (see [Davidic Covenant](/codex/davidic-covenant/)). Covenant is the form; *hesed* is what fills it. 4. **Incarnation.** "Herein was the love of God manifested" ([1 John 4:9](/codex/1-john-4-9/), ASV): God sends the Son into the world (see [Incarnation](/codex/incarnation/)). 5. **The cross.** God shows His love "while we were yet sinners" ([Romans 5:8](/codex/romans-5-8/), ASV) and does not spare His own Son ([Romans 8:32](/codex/romans-8-32/)). See [Atonement](/codex/atonement/). 6. **The Spirit.** God's love is "shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit" ([Romans 5:5](/codex/romans-5-5/), ASV), and believers are adopted as children who cry "Abba, Father" (see [Pneumatology](/codex/pneumatology/)). 7. **Consummation.** The story ends with God dwelling with His people, death abolished and every tear wiped away ([Revelation 21:3-4](/codex/revelation-21-3-4/); see [New Heavens and New Earth](/codex/new-heavens-and-new-earth/)). ### Love for the non-human creation God's love in Scripture is not limited to human beings. [Psalm 104](/codex/psalms-104/) describes God watering the mountains, growing grass for cattle, giving the young lions their food and the creatures their breath. [Psalm 145:9](/codex/psalms-145-9/) says His "tender mercies are over all his works" ([Psalm 145:9](/codex/psalms-145-9/), ASV). [Psalm 36:6](/codex/psalms-36-6/) says He preserves "man and beast" ([Psalm 36:6](/codex/psalms-36-6/), ASV). Jesus tells His disciples that the Father feeds the birds ([Matthew 6:26](/codex/matthew-6-26/)) and that not one sparrow "is forgotten in the sight of God" ([Luke 12:6](/codex/luke-12-6/), ASV). The book of Jonah ends with God's question about Nineveh, which names its people who "cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle" ([Jonah 4:11](/codex/jonah-4-11/), ASV). The verb there is *chus*, "to have regard, pity" (Strong's H2347), the same verb God has just used for Jonah's feeling toward his shade plant in 4:10: if Jonah pities a plant, God pities a city and its animals. The Flood narrative carries the same concern. God commands the ark to keep every kind of animal alive ([Genesis 6:19-20](/codex/genesis-6-19-20/); [7:3](/codex/genesis-7-3/)), "God remembered Noah, and all the beasts, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark" ([Genesis 8:1](/codex/genesis-8-1/), ASV), and the covenant afterward is made with "every living creature" four times in eight verses ([Genesis 9:10](/codex/genesis-9-10/), [12](/codex/genesis-9-12/), [15](/codex/genesis-9-15/), [16](/codex/genesis-9-16/)). Paul extends redemption itself to the creation, which "shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption" ([Romans 8:21](/codex/romans-8-21/), ASV). ### Love as gift, not need The classical tradition insists that God's love for creatures is free. [Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/) asks in the *Summa Theologiae* (I, q. 20) whether there is love in God and whether God loves all things. His answer to the second is yes, and he draws the contrast that has shaped the discussion since: our love is drawn out by goodness we find in something, but God's love "infuses and creates goodness in things". God does not love creatures because they are good; they are good because He loves them. This is why the doctrine of [Aseity](/codex/aseity/) matters pastorally and not only metaphysically. A God who needed the world would love it the way a creditor loves a debtor. A God who needs nothing can only give. [C.S. Lewis](/codex/c-s-lewis/) makes the same point in *The Four Loves* (1960), where he distinguishes Need-love from Gift-love and says plainly that Divine Love is Gift-love. In *The Problem of Pain* (1940) he adds the corollary that bears directly on the hard cases below: love is not the same as mere kindness. Kindness wants its object to stop suffering on any terms; love wants its object to be good, and will accept pain on the way. People say they want a God of love, Lewis observes, when what they want is "not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven", a benevolence that never interferes. The biblical God is the Father. ## The hard cases: love that does not look like love at first Anyone who reads the whole Bible meets stories that seem to cut against everything above. Three come up more than any others: the LORD striking David's infant son, the Flood, and the tree God placed within reach of Adam and Eve. Each is taken below in the same order: the text, the objection in its strongest form, and then the answer, point by point. The codex has full defeater pages for each story; this section builds on them and focuses on the single question this page is about, whether these acts are compatible with God's love for His creation. Two ground rules apply throughout. 1. **Read the whole passage, not the clipping.** Each of these stories carries its own account of God's motive and of what happened next. An objection that keeps the hard act from the text but discards the text's account of grief, patience, warning and restoration is not reading the story; it is writing a different one. 2. **Do not soften what the text says.** Scripture says the LORD struck the child, that children and animals died in the Flood, and that God put the tree in the garden. Answers that deny these things lose credibility on everything else. The case below concedes them and argues that love is still the right word. ### 1. David and Bathsheba's child (2 Samuel 12:13-25) **The text.** David has committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranged the death of her husband Uriah ([2 Samuel 11](/codex/2-samuel-11/)). The prophet Nathan confronts him. David confesses, "I have sinned against Jehovah" ([2 Samuel 12:13](/codex/2-samuel-12-13/), ASV), and Nathan answers at once: "Jehovah also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die" ([2 Samuel 12:13](/codex/2-samuel-12-13/), ASV). Then comes the sentence on the child: "because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of Jehovah to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die" ([2 Samuel 12:14](/codex/2-samuel-12-14/), ASV). "And Jehovah struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick" ([2 Samuel 12:15](/codex/2-samuel-12-15/), ASV). David fasts and lies on the ground for seven days. When the child dies, he rises, washes, worships, eats, and explains: "can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me" ([2 Samuel 12:23](/codex/2-samuel-12-23/), ASV). Then: "she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon. And Jehovah loved him" ([2 Samuel 12:24](/codex/2-samuel-12-24/), ASV), and God sends Nathan to name the boy Jedidiah (12:25). **The objection, steel-manned.** - The child committed no sin. God Himself struck him, the verb leaves no doubt about the agent, and he died after a week of illness. - God's own Law says "neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers" ([Deuteronomy 24:16](/codex/deuteronomy-24-16/), ASV) and "the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father" ([Ezekiel 18:20](/codex/ezekiel-18-20/), ASV). By the Bible's standard, then, this is punishing the innocent for the guilty. - Worse, the guilty man is spared and the innocent one dies. If a human king did this, we would call it monstrous. A loving God cannot do what we would condemn in a man. **What the text actually says.** 1. **The verb is not softened, and should not be.** "Struck" translates *nagaph* (Strong's H5062). The tagged ASV data show it is the ordinary verb for a blow, a plague, or a defeat: Jehovah "smote Nabal" ([1 Samuel 25:38](/codex/1-samuel-25-38/), ASV), the destroyer passes over to "smite" Egypt ([Exodus 12:23](/codex/exodus-12-23/)), Israel is "smitten" before the Philistines ([1 Samuel 4:2](/codex/1-samuel-4-2/), [4:10](/codex/1-samuel-4-10/)). The text means that God took the child's life. The defense does not depend on blurring that. 2. **The child is never said to be guilty.** Nothing in the chapter accuses the child, and nothing calls his death a punishment *of him*. The stated reason is David's public scandal: he had given "great occasion to the enemies of Jehovah to blaspheme" (12:14). Many commentators take "the enemies of" as an ancient scribal softening of a phrase in which David simply despised the LORD; on either reading the cause named is the king's sin and its public effect on God's name. The penalty lands on David, in the place where it hurts a father most. 3. **The sentence the Law required was death for David.** Adultery carried the death penalty ([Leviticus 20:10](/codex/leviticus-20-10/)), and for a murderer the Law says "ye shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer" ([Numbers 35:31](/codex/numbers-35-31/), ASV). David had done both. God waived that sentence in the same breath as the confession: "thou shalt not die" (12:13). The chapter is first a story of a guilty man receiving mercy he could not claim. 4. **God did not take a life He did not give, and He did not hand the child to nothing.** On the Bible's own terms God is the Author of every life: "I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal" ([Deuteronomy 32:39](/codex/deuteronomy-32-39/), ASV). A human king who kills a child takes what he did not give and sends the child out of his reach. God gives life, sets its length, and receives the one whose life He ends. The comparison to a human murderer fails exactly at the point the objection needs it. 5. **David expected to go to the child.** "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me" (12:23). The change in David, from desperate fasting to washing, worship and food, is the narrative's own signal that he had reached some settled conviction about where the child was. The common evangelical reading takes 12:23 as hope of reunion; John MacArthur (*Safe in the Arms of God*, 2003) and Ronald Nash (*When a Baby Dies*, 1999) both build on it, and [John Chrysostom](/codex/john-chrysostom/) used the verse to comfort grieving parents. Some commentators read it more narrowly, as David saying only that he too will die and join the child in the grave. The text does not settle the question by itself, and the codex does not pretend it does; see [Children in OT Theology](/codex/children-in-ot-theology/) for the traditions on children who die. What can be said with confidence is that Scripture never treats the death of an infant as the end of God's care for that child ([Matthew 18:14](/codex/matthew-18-14/); [19:14](/codex/matthew-19-14/)), and the Christian hope for such children rests on God's character and on Christ's work. 6. **Love speaks immediately afterward, by name.** The very next verse reports Solomon's birth and says "Jehovah loved him" (12:24), and God sends a prophet to name the boy *Yedidyah*, Jedidiah, a name built from *yadid*, "beloved", and the divine name (Strong's H3041). The same Bathsheba who was wronged becomes the mother of the king who builds the temple, and Matthew writes her into the line of the Messiah: "David begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uriah" ([Matthew 1:6](/codex/matthew-1-6/), ASV). God's love for the family does not stop at the grave of the first son; it names the second one Beloved and runs through him to Christ. **Why [Deuteronomy 24:16](/codex/deuteronomy-24-16/) and [Ezekiel 18:20](/codex/ezekiel-18-20/) do not settle it.** The two texts are read differently from [2 Samuel 12](/codex/2-samuel-12/) for a reason the texts themselves give. - **[Deuteronomy 24:16](/codex/deuteronomy-24-16/) is a rule for human courts.** It forbids Israel's judges to execute a child for a parent's crime, and Israel kept it ([2 Kings 14:6](/codex/2-kings-14-6/) cites it). It limits what humans may do to one another. It does not claim that a parent's sin never has consequences for children, which the same Torah denies elsewhere ([Numbers 14:33](/codex/numbers-14-33/), where children wander forty years because of their parents' unbelief). - **[Ezekiel 18](/codex/ezekiel-18/) answers a proverb about guilt.** The exiles were saying "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge" ([Ezekiel 18:2](/codex/ezekiel-18-2/), ASV), blaming their parents for their own judgment. Ezekiel's reply is that each person stands before God for his own sin. That is a statement about moral guilt and final standing, and it fits [2 Samuel 12](/codex/2-samuel-12/) exactly: the child is not counted guilty, and David is. - **Consequence is not guilt.** Children suffer from parents' choices in every age and every worldview: a drunk driver's children, a dictator's subjects. The question is not whether that happens but whether God treats the child as guilty and whether death is the last word for the child. On both questions Scripture says no. See [Inherited Guilt and Visiting Iniquity](/codex/inherited-guilt-and-visiting-iniquity/) for the wider treatment. **The honest residue.** This remains the hardest of the three cases, and nothing above makes it painless. The Christian claim is not that the child's death was good in itself. It is that the God who ended that short life is the same God who forgave the guilty father on the spot, received the child, named the next son Beloved, and brought the Messiah from that marriage. For the full defeater treatment see [David Bathsheba Objection Defeater](/codex/david-bathsheba-objection-defeater/) and [David and Bathsheba](/codex/david-and-bathsheba/). ### 2. The Flood (Genesis 6-9) ![After the flood, Noah and his family offer a sacrifice at a stone altar beneath a wide rainbow, while pairs of animals, horses, camels, cattle, peacocks and swans, spread out across a green landscape](/codex/assets/koch-landscape-with-noahs-thank-offering-1803.jpg) *Landscape with Noah's Thank Offering, by Joseph Anton Koch and Gottlieb Schick, 1803, Städel Museum, Frankfurt. The painting sets the rainbow of [Genesis 9](/codex/genesis-9/) over the animals coming out of the ark, the covenant God made "with every living creature". Image: public domain, via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Anton_Koch_%26_Gottlieb_Schick_-_Landschaft_mit_dem_Dankopfer_Noahs_(1803).jpg), resized.* **The text.** "The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence" ([Genesis 6:11](/codex/genesis-6-11/), ASV). God's response is recorded first as grief: "it repented Jehovah that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart" ([Genesis 6:6](/codex/genesis-6-6/), ASV). God tells Noah to build an ark "to keep them alive" ([Genesis 6:19](/codex/genesis-6-19/), ASV), every kind of animal with his family. Everything with the breath of life outside the ark dies. Afterward God promises, "neither will I again smite any more everything living, as I have done" ([Genesis 8:21](/codex/genesis-8-21/), ASV), and makes a covenant with Noah and "every living creature" ([Genesis 9:10](/codex/genesis-9-10/), ASV), marked by the bow in the cloud. **The objection, steel-manned.** - The Flood killed nearly every human being on earth, including infants and toddlers who had done nothing, and nearly every land animal, which cannot sin at all. - Even if the adults were violent, an all-powerful God had other options: target the guilty, convert them, or remove them painlessly. He chose drowning. - Whatever the theology, the plain picture is the largest mass killing ever described, and the God who did it is the God Christians call love. **The answer.** 1. **Concede what the text says.** Children died in the Flood. "All flesh died ... and every man" ([Genesis 7:21](/codex/genesis-7-21/), ASV), and only "eight souls" were saved ([1 Peter 3:20](/codex/1-peter-3-20/), ASV). Attempts to argue that no infants died do not survive scrutiny and should not be used; [Flood Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/flood-genocide-objection-defeater/) explains why each one fails. 2. **The text records grief before judgment.** Genesis does not show God eager to destroy. It shows Him grieved "at his heart" (6:6). The verb for "grieved" (*'atsab*, Strong's H6087) shares its root with the "pain" and "toil" (*'itstsabon*, H6093) pronounced in [Genesis 3:16-17](/codex/genesis-3-16-17/): the God who saw what sin did to humanity is pictured as feeling its pain Himself. Classical theists read this language as accommodation to human understanding rather than as God being overpowered by emotion (see [Divine Impassibility](/codex/divine-impassibility/)), but on any reading the text's stated posture is sorrow, not cruelty. 3. **The judgment followed long patience.** Peter says "the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing" ([1 Peter 3:20](/codex/1-peter-3-20/), ASV), and calls Noah "a preacher of righteousness" ([2 Peter 2:5](/codex/2-peter-2-5/), ASV). [Genesis 6:3](/codex/genesis-6-3/) sets a span of "a hundred and twenty years", which many readers take as the waiting period before the Flood, though others read it as a limit on human lifespan. On either reading the New Testament presents the ark-building years as a season of warning in public view. 4. **The Flood is judgment on violence, not on innocence.** The repeated reason is that "the earth is filled with violence" ([Genesis 6:13](/codex/genesis-6-13/), ASV). A world in which violence fills the earth is a world in which children are already its chief victims. Removing the perpetrators of that violence is not the opposite of love for the weak; it is one of love's forms. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" ([Genesis 18:25](/codex/genesis-18-25/), ASV) is the Bible's own standard, and the Flood is presented as the Judge doing right. 5. **The judgment preserved the promise.** God had promised in [Genesis 3:15](/codex/genesis-3-15/) that the woman's seed would crush the serpent. A humanity wholly given to violence was a humanity that would destroy itself and that promise with it. The Flood is drastic surgery that saves the patient: one family, carrying the line of promise, and every kind of animal, carried through into a renewed world. Gordon Wenham ("The Coherence of the Flood Narrative", *Vetus Testamentum* 28, 1978; *[Genesis 1](/codex/genesis-1/)-15*, 1987) showed that the Flood story is built as a mirror-structure whose turning point is "God remembered Noah, and all the beasts, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark" ([Genesis 8:1](/codex/genesis-8-1/), ASV). The literary center of the Flood is God's remembering, and the animals are named in it. 6. **The ark is a rescue of the animal world.** The command is to bring every kind "to keep them alive" (6:19-20) and "to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth" ([Genesis 7:3](/codex/genesis-7-3/), ASV). God does not discard the non-human creation; He preserves it, and then binds Himself to it by covenant. The phrase "every living creature" occurs four times in eight verses (9:10, 12, 15, 16). Animals do not sin, and God does not count them as guilty; He makes promises to them. 7. **God limited Himself for every generation after.** "I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake ... neither will I again smite any more everything living" ([Genesis 8:21](/codex/genesis-8-21/), ASV), and "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest ... shall not cease" ([Genesis 8:22](/codex/genesis-8-22/), ASV). The rainbow is a sign God sets for Himself: "I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant" ([Genesis 9:16](/codex/genesis-9-16/), ASV). Every stable season since is the fruit of that promise (see [The Seedtime Argument](/codex/the-seedtime-argument/)). 8. **For the infants, death is not the end.** The children who died in the Flood were taken from a world filled with violence by the God who gave them life. Christian theology, across its traditions, holds that those who die before moral knowledge meet God's mercy, not His wrath; see [Children in OT Theology](/codex/children-in-ot-theology/) for the range of views and their grounds. The objection assumes physical death is the worst thing that can happen to a person. Christianity denies that, and the objector must argue for it, not assume it. 9. **Jesus uses the Flood as a warning, because He wants people saved.** "As were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of man" ([Matthew 24:37](/codex/matthew-24-37/), ASV). The people of Noah's day "knew not until the flood came, and took them all away" ([Matthew 24:39](/codex/matthew-24-39/), ASV). Jesus does not apologize for the Flood; He uses it to call His hearers to be ready, which is a lover's warning, not a tyrant's threat. For the full debate treatment, including the genre question and why the word "genocide" does not fit, see [Flood Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/flood-genocide-objection-defeater/), [Flood Genocide Objection](/codex/flood-genocide-objection/) and [Genesis Flood](/codex/genesis-flood/). ### 3. The tree in Eden (Genesis 2-3) **The text.** "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" ([Genesis 2:16-17](/codex/genesis-2-16-17/), ASV). The man and woman eat. They hide. God calls, "Where art thou?" ([Genesis 3:9](/codex/genesis-3-9/), ASV). He questions them, pronounces judgment, promises a seed who will bruise the serpent's head (3:15), makes them "coats of skins, and clothed them" ([Genesis 3:21](/codex/genesis-3-21/), ASV), and sends them out of the garden "lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever" ([Genesis 3:22](/codex/genesis-3-22/), ASV). **The objection, steel-manned.** - A loving parent does not leave a loaded gun on the kitchen table and tell the children not to touch it. God knew what would happen, placed the tree within reach anyway, and let the serpent into the garden. - The consequences were catastrophic and fell on all of humanity, including billions who never stood near the tree. - If God really loved them, He would have made them unable to fall, or left the tree out. **The answer.** 1. **Love requires the real possibility of refusal.** A creature who cannot say no cannot say yes in any meaningful sense. Obedience without the possibility of disobedience is mechanism, not love, and God's purpose in Scripture is a people who freely love Him ([Deuteronomy 30:19](/codex/deuteronomy-30-19/): "choose life, that thou mayest live"). The tree is the place where that freedom became concrete. See [Free Will Argument from Love](/codex/free-will-argument-from-love/) and [Problem of Evil, Free Will Defense](/codex/problem-of-evil-free-will-defense/). 2. **The gun analogy gets the facts wrong.** Toddlers cannot understand a warning; Adam and Eve could, and received one in plain words before the fact. The tree was not hidden, disguised or booby-trapped. It was one limit in a garden of plenty, and the command itself opens with a permission. In Hebrew, "thou mayest freely eat" (2:16) uses the same emphatic doubled-verb construction as "thou shalt surely die" (2:17): the generosity is stated as strongly as the warning. 3. **God moves toward the guilty.** They hid; God came looking. "Where art thou?" (3:9) is not a request for information. It is the first instance of the pattern that runs to [Luke 19:10](/codex/luke-19-10/), where the Son of man comes "to seek and to save that which was lost". 4. **God promised redemption before He pronounced sentence.** The promise of the serpent-crusher (3:15) comes before the words to the woman (3:16) and to the man (3:17-19). Hope arrives first. 5. **God clothed them.** The Judge dresses the condemned (3:21). Genesis does not call this a sacrifice, and the argument does not need it to; what the verse establishes is care. 6. **The barring of the tree of life was mercy.** The expulsion states its own reason: so that fallen humans would not "live for ever" (3:22) in their fallen state. Fallen and mortal can be redeemed; fallen and immortal could not. The tree barred in [Genesis 3:24](/codex/genesis-3-24/) is offered again at the end of the Bible: "that they may have the right to come to the tree of life" ([Revelation 22:14](/codex/revelation-22-14/), ASV). 7. **The "make them unable to fall" option is not obviously available or better.** Whether God could create free creatures who would never sin in any circumstances depends on what those creatures would freely do, which is the subject of [Counterfactuals of Freedom](/codex/counterfactuals-of-freedom/). And Scripture presents the remedy as older than the offense, chosen "before the foundation of the world" ([Ephesians 1:4](/codex/ephesians-1-4/)). The goal was never a world where no one could sin; it was a world of redeemed image-bearers who freely love. The codex treats these points at length in [God Showed No Love in Eden Objection Defeater](/codex/god-showed-no-love-in-eden-objection-defeater/), [God Showed No Love in Eden Objection](/codex/god-showed-no-love-in-eden-objection/), [Tree of Knowledge Objection Defeater](/codex/tree-of-knowledge-objection-defeater/) and [Tree of Knowledge Objection](/codex/tree-of-knowledge-objection/). What this page adds is the observation that every hard case is shaped the same way: a real judgment, framed before and after by acts of love the objection leaves out. ### The interpretive key: the cross The three cases share a structure, and the New Testament names it. In each, God allows or brings a death, and in each, the story refuses to end there. The cross shows why. - **God does not ask of others what He does not bear Himself.** "God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" ([Romans 5:8](/codex/romans-5-8/), ASV). The God who sentenced David's house, judged the world of Noah, and pronounced death in Eden is the God who in Christ took death and judgment onto Himself. - **The cross is the guarantee that the hard acts are not indifference.** "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?" ([Romans 8:32](/codex/romans-8-32/), ASV). A God who gave His Son for His enemies cannot coherently be accused of not caring about the children of His creatures. - **Death itself is the enemy God defeats.** "The last enemy that shall be abolished is death" ([1 Corinthians 15:26](/codex/1-corinthians-15-26/), ASV). The deaths in these stories are real, but in the biblical story they are not the last word. The Son shared flesh and blood so "that through death he might bring to nought him that had the power of death" ([Hebrews 2:14](/codex/hebrews-2-14/), ASV). The argument in short: if the cross is what it claims to be, then the hard texts must be read as the acts of a God who would rather die than lose His creation. If it is not, the objector has a different argument to make, about whether Christianity is true, and that argument is not won by citing the hard texts. ### What the objector must assume The objection "God cannot be loving, because of these stories" is stronger than it looks and also carries more freight than it admits. To make it work, the objector needs all of the following. None is impossible to hold, but each needs an argument. 1. **An objective standard of love and justice.** To say God is unloving, not merely that His acts are unfashionable, the objector needs moral realism: a real standard God is measured against and fails. Naturalism has notorious difficulty supplying one (see [Moral Argument](/codex/moral-argument/) and [Euthyphro Dilemma](/codex/euthyphro-dilemma/)). The theist can welcome the moral seriousness of the objection; it is evidence for the moral law the theist affirms. 2. **That physical death is the final and worst harm.** Every one of the three cases turns on this. If death is not the end, and the God who ends a life also receives it, the moral calculus changes completely. 3. **That we know the better alternative.** The objection assumes a world without these judgments would have been better on the whole. That is a claim about the total outcome of human history, which no human is placed to assess (see [Skeptical Theism](/codex/skeptical-theism/)). 4. **The text's facts without the text's frame.** The objector takes the hard act from the story (the child died, the waters rose, the tree was there) but rejects the same story's report of grief, patience, warning, mercy and restoration. That is a selection, and it needs a reason. None of this makes the stories easy. It shows that the conclusion "therefore God does not love His creation" does not follow from them, and that the stories themselves point the other way. ## Ten themes of God's love The catalog that follows groups 100 passages under ten themes. Read in order, they trace the whole biblical story, from the first day of creation to the last page of Revelation. | # | Theme | What it shows | Entries | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | Love that made the world | Creation as free gift and delight | 1-10 | | 2 | Love that sustains and feeds every creature | Providence over animals and people alike | 11-20 | | 3 | Love for humanity made in His image | Each person known, formed and valued | 21-30 | | 4 | Covenant love (*hesed*) that will not let go | Love that binds itself by promise | 31-40 | | 5 | Compassion like a father and mother | God's love in the language of family | 41-50 | | 6 | Love that pursues the lost | God as the seeker, from Eden to Luke 15 | 51-60 | | 7 | Love shown at the cross | God's self-giving for His enemies | 61-70 | | 8 | Love poured out by the Spirit | Adoption, indwelling, God is love | 71-80 | | 9 | Love that disciplines, grieves, and waits | Correction, patience, and the hard cases | 81-90 | | 10 | Love that will renew all things | Death undone, creation restored | 91-100 | The companion collections [100 Verses of Compassion and God's Goodness](/codex/100-verses-of-compassion-and-gods-goodness/) and [Verses on God's Goodness and Human Worth](/codex/verses-on-gods-goodness-and-human-worth/) cover mercy, goodness and human worth more broadly. This catalog is narrower: every entry is chosen because it shows God's love for what He made. Fifty-five entries come from the Old Testament and forty-five from the New, because the claim that the God of the Old Testament is not a God of love does not survive a reading of the Old Testament. ## The 100 passages Every quotation is from the American Standard Version (1901), which is in the public domain. The ASV renders the divine name as "Jehovah" and *hesed* as "lovingkindness". ### Love that made the world Creation is the first act of divine love toward anything other than God. Nothing obliged God to make a world; He made one, filled it, and called it good. 1. **[Genesis 1:31](/codex/genesis-1-31/).** "And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" ([Genesis 1:31](/codex/genesis-1-31/), ASV). The first verdict on the finished world is delight, not indifference. 2. **[Genesis 2:9](/codex/genesis-2-9/).** "every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food" ([Genesis 2:9](/codex/genesis-2-9/), ASV). God plants a garden for beauty as well as need. Eden is abundance before it is test. 3. **[Genesis 2:16](/codex/genesis-2-16/).** "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat" ([Genesis 2:16](/codex/genesis-2-16/), ASV). The first command God gives is a permission, and it is lavish. 4. **[Psalm 33:5](/codex/psalms-33-5/).** "The earth is full of the lovingkindness of Jehovah" ([Psalm 33:5](/codex/psalms-33-5/), ASV). Hesed is not confined to Israel's history; the whole earth is saturated with it. 5. **[Psalm 104:24](/codex/psalms-104-24/).** "O Jehovah, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all" ([Psalm 104:24](/codex/psalms-104-24/), ASV). The variety of living things is read as the overflow of wise and generous making. 6. **[Psalm 136:5](/codex/psalms-136-5/).** "To him that by understanding made the heavens; For his lovingkindness endureth for ever" ([Psalm 136:5](/codex/psalms-136-5/), ASV). Israel's great hymn starts its history of steadfast love with the making of the sky. 7. **[Proverbs 8:31](/codex/proverbs-8-31/).** "Rejoicing in his habitable earth; And my delight was with the sons of men" ([Proverbs 8:31](/codex/proverbs-8-31/), ASV). Wisdom, present at creation, delights in the inhabited world and in human beings. 8. **[Isaiah 45:18](/codex/isaiah-45-18/).** "created it not a waste, that formed it to be inhabited" ([Isaiah 45:18](/codex/isaiah-45-18/), ASV). God made the earth on purpose, as a home for living creatures. 9. **[Acts 14:17](/codex/acts-14-17/).** "he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness" ([Acts 14:17](/codex/acts-14-17/), ASV). Paul tells pagans that every harvest and every glad heart is a witness to God's goodness. 10. **[Revelation 4:11](/codex/revelation-4-11/).** "for thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created" ([Revelation 4:11](/codex/revelation-4-11/), ASV). Creation exists by God's free will, not by any need in Him. ### Love that sustains and feeds every creature God's love does not stop at the act of creation. Scripture pictures Him feeding, watering and keeping every living thing, including the animals that will never know His name. 11. **[Psalm 145:9](/codex/psalms-145-9/).** "Jehovah is good to all; And his tender mercies are over all his works" ([Psalm 145:9](/codex/psalms-145-9/), ASV). The word is rachamim, womb-love, and its object is all His works, not only humans. 12. **[Psalm 145:16](/codex/psalms-145-16/).** "Thou openest thy hand, And satisfiest the desire of every living thing" ([Psalm 145:16](/codex/psalms-145-16/), ASV). Every creature's appetite is met from God's open hand. 13. **[Psalm 104:14](/codex/psalms-104-14/).** "He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle" ([Psalm 104:14](/codex/psalms-104-14/), ASV). God grows grass for cattle, not only crops for people. 14. **[Psalm 147:9](/codex/psalms-147-9/).** "He giveth to the beast his food, And to the young ravens which cry" ([Psalm 147:9](/codex/psalms-147-9/), ASV). Even the cry of a young raven is heard and answered. 15. **[Psalm 36:6](/codex/psalms-36-6/).** "O Jehovah, thou preservest man and beast" ([Psalm 36:6](/codex/psalms-36-6/), ASV). Preservation is extended to animals in the same breath as to humans. 16. **[Job 38:41](/codex/job-38-41/).** "Who provideth for the raven his prey, When his young ones cry unto God" ([Job 38:41](/codex/job-38-41/), ASV). God's speech to Job names Himself as the provider of wild, unclean birds. 17. **[Matthew 6:26](/codex/matthew-6-26/).** "Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them" ([Matthew 6:26](/codex/matthew-6-26/), ASV). Jesus points to the birds as daily proof of the Father's care. 18. **[Luke 12:6](/codex/luke-12-6/).** "not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God" ([Luke 12:6](/codex/luke-12-6/), ASV). Sparrows sold five for two pennies are individually remembered by God. 19. **[Jonah 4:11](/codex/jonah-4-11/).** "and should not I have regard for Nineveh, that great city" ([Jonah 4:11](/codex/jonah-4-11/), ASV). The book ends with God's pity for an enemy city, its little ones, and its cattle. 20. **[Matthew 5:45](/codex/matthew-5-45/).** "he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust" ([Matthew 5:45](/codex/matthew-5-45/), ASV). Common grace: God's gifts fall even on those who reject Him. ### Love for humanity made in His image Humans are loved as the creatures who bear God's image. Scripture says each one is known, formed and valued before anyone else knows they exist. 21. **[Genesis 1:27](/codex/genesis-1-27/).** "And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him" ([Genesis 1:27](/codex/genesis-1-27/), ASV). Every human being carries God's image, the ground of human worth. 22. **[Genesis 3:21](/codex/genesis-3-21/).** "Jehovah God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and clothed them" ([Genesis 3:21](/codex/genesis-3-21/), ASV). On the day of the first sin, God Himself dresses the guilty pair. 23. **[Psalm 8:4-5](/codex/psalms-8-4-5/).** "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? ... crownest him with glory and honor" ([Psalm 8:4-5](/codex/psalms-8-4-5/), ASV). The Creator of the stars keeps humanity in mind and crowns it with honor. 24. **[Psalm 139:13-14](/codex/psalms-139-13-14/).** "Thou didst cover me in my mother's womb ... I am fearfully and wonderfully made" ([Psalm 139:13-14](/codex/psalms-139-13-14/), ASV). God's care begins before birth, in the hidden work of the womb. 25. **[Psalm 139:17](/codex/psalms-139-17/).** "How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them" ([Psalm 139:17](/codex/psalms-139-17/), ASV). God's thoughts toward a single person are too many to count. 26. **[Jeremiah 1:5](/codex/jeremiah-1-5/).** "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee" ([Jeremiah 1:5](/codex/jeremiah-1-5/), ASV). God knows a person before that person is formed. 27. **[Isaiah 43:4](/codex/isaiah-43-4/).** "Since thou hast been precious in my sight, and honorable, and I have loved thee" ([Isaiah 43:4](/codex/isaiah-43-4/), ASV). God names His people precious and says so plainly: I have loved thee. 28. **[Matthew 10:30-31](/codex/matthew-10-30-31/).** "the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows" ([Matthew 10:30-31](/codex/matthew-10-30-31/), ASV). God's attention reaches to the smallest detail of a human life. 29. **[Mark 10:16](/codex/mark-10-16/).** "And he took them in his arms, and blessed them, laying his hands upon them" ([Mark 10:16](/codex/mark-10-16/), ASV). Jesus takes little children into His arms when His disciples would send them away. 30. **[Acts 17:27](/codex/acts-17-27/).** "that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us" ([Acts 17:27](/codex/acts-17-27/), ASV). God arranged human history so that people would seek Him, and He is near to each. ### Covenant love (hesed) that will not let go Hesed is love that binds itself by promise and keeps giving beyond what is owed. God attaches it to covenants, and He attaches the first covenant after the Flood to every living creature. 31. **[Exodus 34:6](/codex/exodus-34-6/).** "Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth" ([Exodus 34:6](/codex/exodus-34-6/), ASV). God's own self-description to Moses leads with mercy, grace and abundant hesed. 32. **[Deuteronomy 7:7-8](/codex/deuteronomy-7-7-8/).** "Jehovah did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people ... but because Jehovah loveth you" ([Deuteronomy 7:7-8](/codex/deuteronomy-7-7-8/), ASV). God's love has no cause outside itself: He loves because He loves. 33. **[Deuteronomy 7:9](/codex/deuteronomy-7-9/).** "the faithful God, who keepeth covenant and lovingkindness with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations" ([Deuteronomy 7:9](/codex/deuteronomy-7-9/), ASV). Covenant love outruns judgment by a thousand generations. 34. **[Genesis 9:16](/codex/genesis-9-16/).** "that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth" ([Genesis 9:16](/codex/genesis-9-16/), ASV). After the Flood God binds Himself by covenant to every living creature, not only to Noah. 35. **[Genesis 8:22](/codex/genesis-8-22/).** "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease" ([Genesis 8:22](/codex/genesis-8-22/), ASV). God promises the stable seasons on which every creature's life depends. 36. **[Psalm 136:1](/codex/psalms-136-1/).** "Oh give thanks unto Jehovah; for he is good; For his lovingkindness endureth for ever" ([Psalm 136:1](/codex/psalms-136-1/), ASV). The refrain repeated twenty-six times: His hesed endures for ever. 37. **[Lamentations 3:22-23](/codex/lamentations-3-22-23/).** "It is of Jehovah's lovingkindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness" ([Lamentations 3:22-23](/codex/lamentations-3-22-23/), ASV). Written from the ruins of Jerusalem, it still finds God's mercies new each morning. 38. **[Jeremiah 31:3](/codex/jeremiah-31-3/).** "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee" ([Jeremiah 31:3](/codex/jeremiah-31-3/), ASV). God's love has no beginning, and it draws as well as waits. 39. **[Isaiah 54:10](/codex/isaiah-54-10/).** "For the mountains may depart, and the hills be removed; but my lovingkindness shall not depart from thee" ([Isaiah 54:10](/codex/isaiah-54-10/), ASV). Hesed is more stable than the mountains. 40. **[Psalm 103:17](/codex/psalms-103-17/).** "But the lovingkindness of Jehovah is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him" ([Psalm 103:17](/codex/psalms-103-17/), ASV). Human life fades like grass; God's love does not. ### Compassion like a father and mother Scripture reaches for the closest human bonds it knows, a father with his children and a mother with her nursing child, and then says God's love goes further. 41. **[Psalm 103:13](/codex/psalms-103-13/).** "Like as a father pitieth his children, So Jehovah pitieth them that fear him" ([Psalm 103:13](/codex/psalms-103-13/), ASV). God's compassion is pictured as a father's tenderness toward a weak child. 42. **[Isaiah 49:15](/codex/isaiah-49-15/).** "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee" ([Isaiah 49:15](/codex/isaiah-49-15/), ASV). God's memory of His people is more certain than a nursing mother's. 43. **[Isaiah 66:13](/codex/isaiah-66-13/).** "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you" ([Isaiah 66:13](/codex/isaiah-66-13/), ASV). God takes a mother's role in comforting His people. 44. **[Hosea 11:1](/codex/hosea-11-1/).** "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt" ([Hosea 11:1](/codex/hosea-11-1/), ASV). The exodus is retold as a father's love for a young son. 45. **[Hosea 11:4](/codex/hosea-11-4/).** "I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love" ([Hosea 11:4](/codex/hosea-11-4/), ASV). God leads with human cords, not a halter: bands of love. 46. **[Hosea 11:8](/codex/hosea-11-8/).** "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? ... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together" ([Hosea 11:8](/codex/hosea-11-8/), ASV). Facing a faithless people, God's heart recoils from giving them up. 47. **[Zephaniah 3:17](/codex/zephaniah-3-17/).** "he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love; he will joy over thee with singing" ([Zephaniah 3:17](/codex/zephaniah-3-17/), ASV). God sings over His people with joy. 48. **[Isaiah 40:11](/codex/isaiah-40-11/).** "He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arm, and carry them in his bosom" ([Isaiah 40:11](/codex/isaiah-40-11/), ASV). The God who measures the oceans carries lambs close to His chest. 49. **[Matthew 23:37](/codex/matthew-23-37/).** "how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not" ([Matthew 23:37](/codex/matthew-23-37/), ASV). Jesus grieves over the city that will kill Him and uses a mother hen's image. 50. **[Jeremiah 31:20](/codex/jeremiah-31-20/).** "Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a darling child? ... therefore my heart yearneth for him; I will surely have mercy upon him" ([Jeremiah 31:20](/codex/jeremiah-31-20/), ASV). Even while speaking against Ephraim, God's heart yearns for him. ### Love that pursues the lost From the first question in Eden to the parables of [Luke 15](/codex/luke-15/), God is the one who goes looking. Love in Scripture moves toward the guilty. 51. **[Genesis 3:9](/codex/genesis-3-9/).** "And Jehovah God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou" ([Genesis 3:9](/codex/genesis-3-9/), ASV). The guilty hide; God comes looking for them. 52. **[Ezekiel 33:11](/codex/ezekiel-33-11/).** "As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live" ([Ezekiel 33:11](/codex/ezekiel-33-11/), ASV). God swears by His own life that He wants the wicked to live. 53. **[Ezekiel 34:16](/codex/ezekiel-34-16/).** "I will seek that which was lost, and will bring back that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken" ([Ezekiel 34:16](/codex/ezekiel-34-16/), ASV). God promises to be the shepherd the leaders of Israel refused to be. 54. **[Jonah 4:2](/codex/jonah-4-2/).** "for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness" ([Jonah 4:2](/codex/jonah-4-2/), ASV). Jonah ran from Nineveh because he knew God would forgive it. 55. **[Matthew 9:36](/codex/matthew-9-36/).** "he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd" ([Matthew 9:36](/codex/matthew-9-36/), ASV). Jesus is moved in His gut by crowds of the lost. 56. **[Matthew 18:14](/codex/matthew-18-14/).** "it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish" ([Matthew 18:14](/codex/matthew-18-14/), ASV). The Father does not will the loss of a single little one. 57. **[Luke 15:4](/codex/luke-15-4/).** "doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it" ([Luke 15:4](/codex/luke-15-4/), ASV). The shepherd searches until he finds, and carries the sheep home rejoicing. 58. **[Luke 15:20](/codex/luke-15-20/).** "his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him" ([Luke 15:20](/codex/luke-15-20/), ASV). The father runs to the son who wished him dead. 59. **[Luke 19:10](/codex/luke-19-10/).** "For the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost" ([Luke 19:10](/codex/luke-19-10/), ASV). Jesus states His mission as a rescue. 60. **[2 Peter 3:9](/codex/2-peter-3-9/).** "is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" ([2 Peter 3:9](/codex/2-peter-3-9/), ASV). The delay of judgment is itself patience aimed at repentance. ### Love shown at the cross Every other theme converges here. At the cross God does not only command love or describe it; He gives Himself. 61. **[John 3:16](/codex/john-3-16/).** "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" ([John 3:16](/codex/john-3-16/), ASV). The best-known verse in the Bible measures God's love by what He gave. 62. **[Romans 5:8](/codex/romans-5-8/).** "But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" ([Romans 5:8](/codex/romans-5-8/), ASV). God's love is proved toward enemies, not toward the deserving. 63. **[Romans 8:32](/codex/romans-8-32/).** "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things" ([Romans 8:32](/codex/romans-8-32/), ASV). The cross is the guarantee of every lesser gift. 64. **[1 John 4:9](/codex/1-john-4-9/).** "Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him" ([1 John 4:9](/codex/1-john-4-9/), ASV). The incarnation is love made visible. 65. **[1 John 4:10](/codex/1-john-4-10/).** "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" ([1 John 4:10](/codex/1-john-4-10/), ASV). Love defined: God's initiative, not our achievement. 66. **[John 15:13](/codex/john-15-13/).** "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" ([John 15:13](/codex/john-15-13/), ASV). Jesus names the greatest love, and then does it. 67. **[Galatians 2:20](/codex/galatians-2-20/).** "the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me" ([Galatians 2:20](/codex/galatians-2-20/), ASV). Paul applies the cross personally: He loved me. 68. **[Ephesians 2:4-5](/codex/ephesians-2-4-5/).** "but God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ" ([Ephesians 2:4-5](/codex/ephesians-2-4-5/), ASV). God's great love reaches people who are spiritually dead. 69. **[Isaiah 53:5](/codex/isaiah-53-5/).** "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities" ([Isaiah 53:5](/codex/isaiah-53-5/), ASV). Isaiah's servant bears the wounds that heal others. 70. **[Titus 3:4-5](/codex/titus-3-4-5/).** "But when the kindness of God our Saviour, and his love toward man, appeared ... according to his mercy he saved us" ([Titus 3:4-5](/codex/titus-3-4-5/), ASV). The Greek behind love toward man is philanthropia, God's love for humankind. ### Love poured out by the Spirit God's love is not only shown from outside; Scripture says it is poured into the human heart, so that people become children who can call God Father. 71. **[Romans 5:5](/codex/romans-5-5/).** "the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given unto us" ([Romans 5:5](/codex/romans-5-5/), ASV). The Spirit pours God's love into the believer. 72. **[Romans 8:15](/codex/romans-8-15/).** "ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" ([Romans 8:15](/codex/romans-8-15/), ASV). Love makes the outsider a child of the house. 73. **[Galatians 4:6](/codex/galatians-4-6/).** "God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father" ([Galatians 4:6](/codex/galatians-4-6/), ASV). The Spirit gives believers the Son's own address to the Father. 74. **[Galatians 5:22](/codex/galatians-5-22/).** "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace" ([Galatians 5:22](/codex/galatians-5-22/), ASV). Love heads the list of what the Spirit grows in people. 75. **[1 John 3:1](/codex/1-john-3-1/).** "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are" ([1 John 3:1](/codex/1-john-3-1/), ASV). The love is not a title only: such we are. 76. **[1 John 4:8](/codex/1-john-4-8/).** "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love" ([1 John 4:8](/codex/1-john-4-8/), ASV). Love is not one thing God does; it is what God is. 77. **[1 John 4:16](/codex/1-john-4-16/).** "God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him" ([1 John 4:16](/codex/1-john-4-16/), ASV). To live in love is to live in God. 78. **[John 14:23](/codex/john-14-23/).** "my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" ([John 14:23](/codex/john-14-23/), ASV). The Father and the Son make their home with those who love Jesus. 79. **[John 17:23](/codex/john-17-23/).** "that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me" ([John 17:23](/codex/john-17-23/), ASV). Jesus says the Father loves His people as He loves the Son. 80. **[Ephesians 3:19](/codex/ephesians-3-19/).** "and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge" ([Ephesians 3:19](/codex/ephesians-3-19/), ASV). Christ's love can be known and still exceeds knowing. ### Love that disciplines, grieves, and waits Love that never corrects is indifference. Scripture insists that God's discipline is a mark of His love, that He takes no pleasure in afflicting, and that even judgment comes after long patience. The hard cases below belong here. 81. **[Proverbs 3:12](/codex/proverbs-3-12/).** "For whom Jehovah loveth he reproveth, Even as a father the son in whom he delighteth" ([Proverbs 3:12](/codex/proverbs-3-12/), ASV). Correction is described as a father's delight in his son. 82. **[Hebrews 12:6](/codex/hebrews-12-6/).** "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth" ([Hebrews 12:6](/codex/hebrews-12-6/), ASV). Discipline is proof of sonship, not of rejection. 83. **[Hebrews 12:10](/codex/hebrews-12-10/).** "but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness" ([Hebrews 12:10](/codex/hebrews-12-10/), ASV). Unlike human parents, God's discipline is always for the child's good. 84. **[Deuteronomy 8:5](/codex/deuteronomy-8-5/).** "as a man chasteneth his son, so Jehovah thy God chasteneth thee" ([Deuteronomy 8:5](/codex/deuteronomy-8-5/), ASV). The wilderness years are interpreted as a father's training. 85. **[Revelation 3:19](/codex/revelation-3-19/).** "As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent" ([Revelation 3:19](/codex/revelation-3-19/), ASV). The risen Christ rebukes a lukewarm church because He loves it. 86. **[Lamentations 3:33](/codex/lamentations-3-33/).** "For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men" ([Lamentations 3:33](/codex/lamentations-3-33/), ASV). God's judgments are not His pleasure. 87. **[Genesis 6:6](/codex/genesis-6-6/).** "and it grieved him at his heart" ([Genesis 6:6](/codex/genesis-6-6/), ASV). Before the Flood, Scripture records God's grief, not His glee. 88. **[1 Peter 3:20](/codex/1-peter-3-20/).** "when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing" ([1 Peter 3:20](/codex/1-peter-3-20/), ASV). The Flood came after a long season of divine patience. 89. **[2 Samuel 12:13](/codex/2-samuel-12-13/).** "Jehovah also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die" ([2 Samuel 12:13](/codex/2-samuel-12-13/), ASV). David deserved death under the Law and was forgiven on the spot. 90. **[2 Samuel 12:24](/codex/2-samuel-12-24/).** "and he called his name Solomon. And Jehovah loved him" ([2 Samuel 12:24](/codex/2-samuel-12-24/), ASV). After the death of the first child, God's love is announced over the second. ### Love that will renew all things The story ends where it began, with God and His creatures together in a good world, but now without death. Love is the reason the story has an ending at all. 91. **[Romans 8:21](/codex/romans-8-21/).** "the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God" ([Romans 8:21](/codex/romans-8-21/), ASV). Redemption reaches the non-human creation too. 92. **[Romans 8:38-39](/codex/romans-8-38-39/).** "neither death, nor life ... shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" ([Romans 8:38-39](/codex/romans-8-38-39/), ASV). Not even death can cut a person off from God's love. 93. **[Colossians 1:20](/codex/colossians-1-20/).** "through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross" ([Colossians 1:20](/codex/colossians-1-20/), ASV). The cross aims at the reconciliation of all things. 94. **[Isaiah 11:6](/codex/isaiah-11-6/).** "And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid" ([Isaiah 11:6](/codex/isaiah-11-6/), ASV). Even predator and prey are at peace in the age to come. 95. **[Isaiah 25:8](/codex/isaiah-25-8/).** "He hath swallowed up death for ever; and the Lord Jehovah will wipe away tears from off all faces" ([Isaiah 25:8](/codex/isaiah-25-8/), ASV). God promises to end death itself, and to wipe every face. 96. **[Isaiah 65:17](/codex/isaiah-65-17/).** "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth" ([Isaiah 65:17](/codex/isaiah-65-17/), ASV). God's last act, like His first, is creation. 97. **[John 14:2-3](/codex/john-14-2-3/).** "I go to prepare a place for you ... I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also" ([John 14:2-3](/codex/john-14-2-3/), ASV). Love wants the beloved near, and Jesus promises exactly that. 98. **[Revelation 21:3-4](/codex/revelation-21-3-4/).** "the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them ... and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more" ([Revelation 21:3-4](/codex/revelation-21-3-4/), ASV). The goal of history is God living with His people, with death gone. 99. **[Revelation 21:5](/codex/revelation-21-5/).** "Behold, I make all things new" ([Revelation 21:5](/codex/revelation-21-5/), ASV). The one on the throne renews; He does not discard. 100. **[Revelation 22:14](/codex/revelation-22-14/).** "that they may have the right to come to the tree of life" ([Revelation 22:14](/codex/revelation-22-14/), ASV). The tree barred in [Genesis 3](/codex/genesis-3/) is open again at the end of the Bible. ## Grammar and hermeneutics A few grammatical and interpretive points carry weight in the arguments above. Each is stated only as far as the text supports it. - **"God is love" is not "love is God."** In [1 John 4:8](/codex/1-john-4-8/) the Greek reads *ho theos agapē estin*. *Theos* carries the article and *agapē* does not, which marks *theos* as the subject and *agapē* as the predicate. The sentence describes what God is; it does not turn love into a god, and it cannot be reversed into "whatever people call love is divine." See [G0026 - agape](/codex/g0026-agape/). - ***Hesed* is covenant love.** The word is used overwhelmingly within established relationships, and Sakenfeld's definition, kindness that goes beyond what the relationship requires, explains why the Psalms can call it both faithful and free. When [Exodus 34:6](/codex/exodus-34-6/) and [Jonah 4:2](/codex/jonah-4-2/) put *hesed* at the center of God's self-description, they describe a love that has bound itself. See [H2617 - hesed](/codex/h2617-hesed/). - **The generosity in [Genesis 2:16](/codex/genesis-2-16/) is emphatic.** "Thou mayest freely eat" doubles the verb (an infinitive absolute with the finite verb), the same construction used for "thou shalt surely die" in 2:17. The permission is stated as strongly as the warning. - ***Nagaph* in [2 Samuel 12:15](/codex/2-samuel-12-15/) names God as the agent.** The verb is used for plague and defeat in battle across the historical books, and the text does not soften it. The answer to the objection has to come from the context the chapter supplies, not from redefining the verb. - **[2 Samuel 12](/codex/2-samuel-12/) is narrative, not law.** The chapter describes a specific prophetic judgment on a specific king for a specific public sin. It does not prescribe a principle that parents' sins are to be punished on children, and the Law that does speak to that question, [Deuteronomy 24:16](/codex/deuteronomy-24-16/), forbids human courts to do it. Reading a descriptive narrative as a general rule is a category mistake. - **"Repented" and "grieved" in [Genesis 6:6](/codex/genesis-6-6/) are relational language.** The Hebrew verbs (*nacham*, see [H5162 - nacham](/codex/h5162-nacham/); *'atsab*) describe God's response to human evil in human terms. Classical theism reads them as accommodated language for God's settled opposition to evil, and open theists read them more literally. Either way the text's point is that the Flood was not God's pleasure. - **Genre and canon.** The hard cases are read within the whole canon, which supplies their frame: the covenant after the Flood, the promise of [Genesis 3:15](/codex/genesis-3-15/), and the cross. The [OT vs NT God Objection Defeater](/codex/ot-vs-nt-god-objection-defeater/) develops why reading Old Testament texts in isolation from the canon's own trajectory distorts them. ## Other objections engaged **"Nature is full of suffering and predation. A loving Creator would not build a world like that."** - *Steel-man:* animals suffered and died for long ages, predators eat their prey alive, and disease and disaster strike without regard to guilt. No moral lesson justifies a parasitic wasp. - *Answer:* Scripture does not hide this; it says the creation "groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" ([Romans 8:22](/codex/romans-8-22/), ASV) and was "subjected to vanity" in hope ([Romans 8:20](/codex/romans-8-20/)). It also presents God as the provider of the lion's food ([Psalm 104:21](/codex/psalms-104-21/)) and promises a world where "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb" ([Isaiah 11:6](/codex/isaiah-11-6/), ASV). Christians differ on how animal death relates to the Fall (see [Death Before the Fall](/codex/death-before-the-fall/)), but they agree that natural evil is not the last word on creation. The broader arguments are at [Problem of Evil](/codex/problem-of-evil/), [Evidential Problem of Evil Defeater](/codex/evidential-problem-of-evil-defeater/), [Problem of Evil, Soul-Making Theodicy](/codex/problem-of-evil-soul-making-theodicy/) and [God Causes Cancer Objection Defeater](/codex/god-causes-cancer-objection-defeater/). **"The Old Testament judgments, the conquest, the Amalekites, the plagues, show a God of wrath, not love."** - *Steel-man:* the hard texts are not three but dozens, and they cluster around the same God who claims to be love. - *Answer:* each text has to be read on its own terms, and the codex does so: [Canaanite Conquest Objection Defeater](/codex/canaanite-conquest-objection-defeater/), [Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/amalekite-genocide-objection-defeater/), [God and the Killing of Children](/codex/god-and-the-killing-of-children/), [Divine Wipeouts and Their Justification](/codex/divine-wipeouts-and-their-justification/). The common pattern is the one traced above: long patience before judgment, judgment on violence and child sacrifice rather than on innocence, and a frame of covenant love that the judgments serve. Love that never opposes evil is not love. **"Divine love is a human projection. People invent a loving father in the sky because they need one."** - *Steel-man:* Freud and others argued that belief in a loving God fits human wishes too neatly to be trusted. - *Answer:* the God of Scripture does not behave like a wish. He disciplines, judges, delays, and demands. A projected deity would not have written the hard cases into its own scripture. And the argument cuts both ways: the wish that there be no judge is as strong as the wish that there be a father. See [Religion Is a Crutch Objection Defeater](/codex/religion-is-a-crutch-objection-defeater/), [Love Is Just Chemicals Objection Defeater](/codex/love-is-just-chemicals-objection-defeater/) and [Sigmund Freud](/codex/sigmund-freud/). **"A loving God would not send anyone to hell."** - *Steel-man:* no finite sin deserves unending punishment, and a parent who tormented a child forever could not be called loving. - *Answer:* Christians hold different views on the nature of final judgment (see [Hell and Eternal Punishment](/codex/hell-and-eternal-punishment/) and [Conditional Immortality](/codex/conditional-immortality/)), but all agree on three points this page has already shown. God takes "no pleasure in the death of the wicked" ([Ezekiel 33:11](/codex/ezekiel-33-11/), ASV); He is "not wishing that any should perish" ([2 Peter 3:9](/codex/2-peter-3-9/), ASV); and He has gone to the cross to make a way out. Love that respects persons does not force itself on those who refuse it to the end. C. S. Lewis's line in *The Problem of Pain* (1940), that the doors of hell are "locked on the inside", is the classic statement of this point. **"If God loves everyone, why does He let people reject Him?"** - *Answer:* because love that cannot be refused is not love, which is the lesson of the tree in Eden. See [Free Will Argument from Love](/codex/free-will-argument-from-love/), [Argument from Love](/codex/argument-from-love/) and [Divine Hiddenness](/codex/divine-hiddenness/). ## Scholarly note - **Augustine** treated 1 John at length in his *Homilies on the First Epistle of John* (*Tractatus in epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos*, about AD 407), the work containing the famous "love, and do what you will". In *On Christian Doctrine* (book 1) he argues that God's love for us is entirely directed to our good and not to any advantage of His own. See [Augustine](/codex/augustine/). - **[Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/)**, *Summa Theologiae* I, q. 20, "Of God's Love": love is in God, God loves all things that exist, and God's love creates the goodness in things rather than responding to it. - **D. A. Carson**, *The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God* (Crossway, 2000): the five ways Scripture speaks of God's love, and the danger of absolutizing any one of them. - **Nelson Glueck**, *Hesed in the Bible* (1967, from the German of 1927), and **Katharine Doob Sakenfeld**, *The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible* (1978): the two landmark studies of *hesed*, the first stressing mutual obligation and the second kindness beyond obligation. - **Anders Nygren**, *Agape and Eros* (1930-1936): New Testament *agapē* as unmotivated, value-creating love. Influential and much debated. - **[C.S. Lewis](/codex/c-s-lewis/)**, *The Problem of Pain* (1940), chapter 3, "Divine Goodness", on why love is not mere kindness, and *The Four Loves* (1960) on Gift-love and Need-love. - **[Paul Copan](/codex/paul-copan/)**, *Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God* (Baker, 2011): the standard popular-level treatment of the Old Testament's hard texts in their ancient Near Eastern setting. - **Gordon J. Wenham**, *[Genesis 1](/codex/genesis-1/)-15* (Word Biblical Commentary, 1987), and "The Coherence of the Flood Narrative" (*Vetus Testamentum* 28, 1978): the mirror structure of [Genesis 6](/codex/genesis-6/)-9 centered on "God remembered Noah". - For close reading of [2 Samuel 12](/codex/2-samuel-12/), Robert Alter's annotated translation *The David Story* (1999) and Robert D. Bergen's *1, 2 Samuel* (New American Commentary, 1996) are standard resources. - On children who die: **Ronald Nash**, *When a Baby Dies* (1999), and **John MacArthur**, *Safe in the Arms of God* (2003), both of which read [2 Samuel 12:23](/codex/2-samuel-12-23/) as hope of reunion; the codex surveys the wider traditions at [Children in OT Theology](/codex/children-in-ot-theology/). ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - Robert Alter, *The David Story* (1999). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3932267W) - D. A. Carson, *The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God* (2000). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8640547W) - Nelson Glueck, *Das Wort ḥesed* (1927). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL36930828W) - Nelson Glueck, *Hesed in the Bible* (1967). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1286129W) - C. S. Lewis, *The Problem of Pain* (1940). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL71167W) - C. S. Lewis, *The Four Loves* (1960). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL71161W) - John MacArthur, *Safe in the Arms of God: Truth from Heaven About the Death of a Child* (2003). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL15076083W) - Ronald H. Nash, *When a baby dies* (1999). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1850227W) - Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, *The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible* (Brill, 1978). [doi:10.1163/9789004386778](https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004386778) ## See also - [Biblical Love](/codex/biblical-love/), love as the Bible defines it, human and divine - [Biblical Goodness](/codex/biblical-goodness/), God's goodness as the ground of His love - [Divine Attributes](/codex/divine-attributes/), where love sits among the classical perfections of God - [Divine Providence](/codex/divine-providence/), God's continuing care for everything He made - [Aseity](/codex/aseity/), why God's love is gift and not need - [Divine Impassibility](/codex/divine-impassibility/), God's love as a settled perfection, not a passion - [Trinity Love-Overflow Argument](/codex/trinity-love-overflow-argument/), the eternal love of Father, Son and Spirit before creation - [100 Verses of Compassion and God's Goodness](/codex/100-verses-of-compassion-and-gods-goodness/), a companion collection on mercy and goodness - [Verses on God's Goodness and Human Worth](/codex/verses-on-gods-goodness-and-human-worth/), verses for answering the "God of the Bible is evil" charge - [David Bathsheba Objection Defeater](/codex/david-bathsheba-objection-defeater/), the full defeater for [2 Samuel 11](/codex/2-samuel-11/)-12 - [Flood Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/flood-genocide-objection-defeater/), the full defeater for the Flood - [God Showed No Love in Eden Objection Defeater](/codex/god-showed-no-love-in-eden-objection-defeater/), the five mercies of [Genesis 3](/codex/genesis-3/) - [Tree of Knowledge Objection Defeater](/codex/tree-of-knowledge-objection-defeater/), what the tree's name means - [Children in OT Theology](/codex/children-in-ot-theology/), children in judgment narratives and the hope for children who die - [Problem of Evil](/codex/problem-of-evil/), the general argument from suffering - [Atonement](/codex/atonement/), how the cross deals with sin
## Common questions this page answers **Q: Does God love His creation, or only human beings?** Scripture says God loves all He has made. His "tender mercies are over all his works" ([Psalm 145:9](/codex/psalms-145-9/), ASV), He feeds the birds and the cattle, not one sparrow is forgotten before Him, and after the Flood He made His covenant with "every living creature". Human beings are loved in a special way as bearers of His image, but His care reaches the whole creation, which [Romans 8:21](/codex/romans-8-21/) says will itself be set free. **Q: Why did God kill David's baby?** [2 Samuel 12](/codex/2-samuel-12/) says the LORD struck the child after David's adultery and murder, because David's sin had given the enemies of God occasion to blaspheme. The child is never called guilty; the judgment fell on David, who deserved death under the Law and was forgiven on the spot. David expected to go to the child (12:23), and God immediately named the next son Jedidiah, "beloved of the LORD", through whom the line of the Messiah runs. **Q: Did David's baby go to heaven?** Many Christians read David's words "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me" ([2 Samuel 12:23](/codex/2-samuel-12-23/)) as confidence that he would see the child again, and this is the common evangelical reading. Some commentators read it more narrowly as a statement that David too would die. Across the major traditions, the hope for children who die rests on God's character and Christ's work, and Jesus said of little children that "to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven". **Q: If God is love, why did He flood the world?** Genesis says the earth was "filled with violence", that God grieved over it, and that He waited a long time while Noah built the ark and preached. The Flood ended a violent world, preserved the human line through which the promised Redeemer would come, and rescued every kind of animal. Afterward God bound Himself never to do it again and made a covenant with every living creature, marked by the rainbow. **Q: How could a loving God drown children and animals in the Flood?** The text does say children and animals died, and that should not be denied. The Christian answer is that God, who gives every life, also receives those who die before moral knowledge in mercy, that physical death is not the worst or final harm, and that the animals were never counted guilty: God saved every kind of them in the ark and then made His covenant with them. **Q: Why did God put the tree in the garden?** Because love requires the real possibility of refusing it. The tree was one limit in a garden where God said "of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat", and the warning was given plainly in advance. When Adam and Eve disobeyed, God came looking for them, promised a Redeemer, clothed them, and barred the tree of life so they would not live forever in a fallen state. The same tree of life is offered again at the end of the Bible. **Q: What are the best Bible verses about God's love?** The most-cited are [John 3:16](/codex/john-3-16/), [Romans 5:8](/codex/romans-5-8/), [Romans 8:38-39](/codex/romans-8-38-39/), [1 John 4:8-10](/codex/1-john-4-8-10/), [Lamentations 3:22-23](/codex/lamentations-3-22-23/), [Jeremiah 31:3](/codex/jeremiah-31-3/), [Zephaniah 3:17](/codex/zephaniah-3-17/), [Isaiah 49:15](/codex/isaiah-49-15/), [Psalm 136](/codex/psalms-136/) and the parables of [Luke 15](/codex/luke-15/). This page gathers 100 passages under ten themes, from God's love in creation to His promise to make all things new. **Q: What does "God is love" mean?** In [1 John 4:8](/codex/1-john-4-8/) and 4:16, love is not just something God does; it is what He is. The Greek grammar makes God the subject and love the description, so the verse cannot be reversed into "love is God". Christian theology connects this to the Trinity: before anything was created, the Father, Son and Spirit loved one another, and creation is the overflow of that love, not the filling of a need. **Q: Does God's love mean He never judges or disciplines?** No. Scripture says "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth" ([Hebrews 12:6](/codex/hebrews-12-6/), ASV) and that God "doth not afflict willingly" ([Lamentations 3:33](/codex/lamentations-3-33/)). A love that never opposed evil or corrected the beloved would be indifference. God's judgments in Scripture come after long patience, aim at repentance and restoration, and are finally borne by God Himself at the cross.