Have you ever thought about where love comes from? If you have, you probably assume it comes from God. And you’d be right. It does. But God has never been a lonely being who existed by Himself before He created anything. For one thing, He is eternal, which means He is outside of time. Technically, there is no “before” with God.

But there’s another reason God has never been by Himself. In the beginning, there was (and still is) a family: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And this family is not only the perfect expression of love. This family is love.1 So when we think about where love originally came from, it isn’t from the heart of a God that lives by Himself. It’s from the heart of a divine relationship, even from the start. It’s a family kind of love that is more perfect than we can possibly imagine.

When we understand this perfect family love, the whole idea of an angry, critical God that so many people have begins to fall apart. 

I spent much of my life thinking of God as very stern and authoritative, as though He was always focused on my faults. No matter how hard I tried, I assumed that His priority for me was to improve me in whatever areas I was falling short. I always felt like I needed to get cleaned up and put everything in order before He could really use me and relate to me. In my mind, He always seemed a little frustrated with His people—and specifically with me.

But love doesn’t focus on those flaws and shortcomings. 

God wants the best for us, but the best begins with delight and adoration. Anger doesn’t produce the best in people. Kindness and compassion do.

So this family is not angry by nature. The Father, Son, and Spirit are not frustrated. They don’t sit around talking about how bad things are or how disappointed they are. There has never been any jealousy or competition in this family. No striving for rights, no complaints about injustice, no bickering about who gets what.

No member of this family has ever wondered, “Why don’t I get to be like Him? Why do You give Him more than You give Me? When do I get My turn?” Can you imagine what would happen if you asked the Father, the Son, or the Spirit which one of them was most important? How would they answer? I can’t imagine any of them stepping up and claiming to be in first place. I think they would all point to one another.

None of these family members has ever felt disconnected or distant from another, simply because They are one. You can’t have disconnection and distance in a three-in-one person.

Because of this perfect unity, no member of this family has ever felt insecure or needed more attention or affirmation. No one has tried to pose as someone He isn’t in order to make Himself feel better. None has ever had to develop coping skills or needed healing from emotional wounds. None has ever worried that love will run out.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are an eternal family with an eternal love. But beings with eternal love can’t be content to keep it to themselves. The beauty of love is always realized in its expression and demonstration. It doesn’t sit still. It looks for someone who can receive all its wonderful blessings.

The perfect love of this divine family is expressed and celebrated. It is always perfect and always flowing freely. It is always unbreakable but always determined to fulfill one another’s desires and purposes, which are in complete harmony. It’s constant but always moving, never seasonal but always looking for seasons of opportunity and growth, fully satisfied but always hungry for more.

And in all those truths—those paradoxes of perfect love—it longs for expression. Love seeks manifestations, looking for ways to bring others in. If perfect love is selfless, it will find a way to turn toward other selves. That’s the nature of our triune God. His Kingdom exists because of love and for love because He is love. The culture of this Kingdom is thoroughly shaped by the unbreakable union of the divine family, the perfect environment. And everything in His Kingdom, whether visible or invisible, eternal or temporal, overwhelmingly beautiful or ordinary and mundane, exists because of love.

Every good thing finds its source in love.

Every good thing is sustained by love, or more specifically, by the One who is love, the Father who loves perfectly.

And all of His attributes find their fullness and perfection in love. That tells us a lot about ourselves. If every good thing is sourced by and sustained by love, and we are a “very good” thing (Genesis 1:31), then we find our source, our sustenance, and our reason for being in this foundation of love.

We’ll talk more about creation soon, but just think for a moment about the fact that human beings exist because of love. The first verse of the Bible says, “In the beginning God…” (Genesis 1:1), and if God is love, we are justified in reading that verse as, “In the beginning love….”

Many Christians are still very focused on sin and brokenness, even though these are exactly the problems Jesus came to heal us from. And I know from experience that when you are

focused on sin and brokenness, you have a tendency to see God as angry and authoritative, maybe with His arms crossed or His head shaking in disapproval. I did, so I understand what that’s like. You see a God who is hard to please.

That is not the picture of God that the Bible gives us. This is not the heart behind creation. This was no part of the heavenly family’s love. Before the foundation of the world, there was love. And if you read Scripture carefully, you’ll see that this is when the remedy for sin was already planned. God chose us “before the foundation of the world” to be holy and blameless in Jesus (Ephesians 1:4). Looking ahead over all the rebellion in the world into each of our lives, even before it all happened, God said yes to love.

This is what our Father’s heart looks like. This is the picture He gives us. Before the world was made, it was already in God’s mind to bring created beings into the fellowship of the divine family. He was motivated to express His true nature—not only within the Trinity but far beyond it. So love went to work to create a beautiful, harmonious, joyful expression of His goodness. In other words, this world exists because God wanted to make His love visible.

This blog is an excerpt from The Love Awakening book. Learn more about the book HERE.