God’s Loving Way

THE Bible assures us that God’s way is one of love. (1 John 4:8) Some wonder, in view of all the suffering in the world, how this could be so. But such wonder only because they have not come to know God and his purposes.a

Everything God has done, is doing and yet will do for his creatures is prompted by unselfishness, by love. Our very existence is an expression of God’s love. He did not need to create anything or anyone. He was perfectly self-contained. But because he is love he had great joy and happiness in bringing forth creations of all kinds, seen and unseen.

And how fully God has provided for our every need in the beautiful earth all about us! He endowed us with a mind capable of reasoning, of remembering, of exercising will and feeling emotions. He gave us a body capable of moving about, and to keep in touch with our environment he gave us the five senses.—Ps. 139:14.

God further showed his love by endowing man with his own four attributes of love and wisdom, justice and power, thus making man truly in his image. And lovingly he gave man a mandate, to be fruitful, fill the earth, subdue it, and exercise dominion over the lower animals, and also the powers needed to carry out this mandate.

Even the placing of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Eden and then commanding man not to eat of it was an expression of God’s love. How so? In that man’s safety and happiness depended upon his continued appreciation and dependence upon his Creator; and by this command man was continually reminded of the fact that all he had and was enjoying came from God and that he could lose it by going contrary to God’s requirement. In disobeying, our first parents not only showed lack of love and appreciation of what God had given them but also no love for their future offspring. God, however, did have love for their offspring yet to be born, and so gave at once a promise of the eventual triumph of righteousness. (Gen. 3:15) As time went on he gave man more revelations of his purposes and his requirements, all of which gradually came to be his Book, the Bible.

Jehovah God also showed his love by sending his Son, the Word or Logos, to earth to become a man; there to make known the truth, to show men how to keep integrity and thus prove the Devil a liar, and to provide a ransom for mankind.—Prov. 27:11; Matt. 20:28; John 18:37.

Because God is love he will, in his due time, destroy all the forces of wickedness at the battle of Armageddon. And because he is love he has provided that all those who now seek him and righteousness and meekness may hope to be spared through that battle and enter into the new world of righteousness. To this end he is causing the good news of his kingdom to be preached in all the earth for a witness to all nations.—Matt. 24:14.

In that post-Armageddon new world there will be no doubt in the minds of any that live that God’s way is one of love, for it will be a world in which there will be no more pain, sorrow, crying or death, a world where even the lower animals will dwell together in peace with one another. And as a final expression of his love God will even bring back from the memorial tombs the countless multitudes recorded in his memory.—John 5:28, 29, NW.

Let all who would enjoy the blessings of that new world now study God’s Word, the Bible, and prove to themselves that God’s way is love.

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