How Do You Love God? Why Belief Is Not the Same as Love

Do you love God, or do you just believe in Him?

That is not a trick question. Belief and love are not the same thing. You can believe that God exists. You can believe that Jesus died and rose again. You can believe that the Bible is true, hold correct doctrine, attend church for years, and still not love God in the way Scripture actually describes.

The Bible is blunt about this.

“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that — and shudder.”

James 2:19 (NIV)

The demons have perfect theology. Their belief is more accurate than yours or mine. And it saves them from nothing, because belief was never the point. So the question is not whether you attend church, not whether you pray occasionally, not whether you would tick the box marked Christian. But whether there is a genuine, growing, active love for God at the center of your life.

If that question makes you uncomfortable, you are in good company. This is an invitation to examine it.

You cannot love someone you do not know

You cannot love someone you do not know. Not truly. Not deeply. Not in the way that produces the kind of love this whole book has been describing.

There is a difference between knowing about God and knowing God. It is the same difference that exists between knowing facts about a person and actually knowing them. You could study someone’s biography, memorize their history, recite their achievements, and still be a complete stranger to them. Knowledge about is not the same as knowledge of.

And Scripture is clear about which one God is after.

God is not impressed by your intellectual mastery of theology. What delights Him is being known. Not admired from a distance. Not studied as a subject. Known, the way you know a person you love, through time spent together, through attention paid, through trust built across seasons of both difficulty and joy.

Jesus takes this further than we expect. He does not describe knowing God as one spiritual benefit among many. He describes it as the very definition of eternal life.

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

John 17:3 (NIV)

Eternal life is not simply living forever. It is knowing God. Which means the goal of the Christian life is not primarily to behave correctly, or to believe the right things, or to avoid the wrong things. It is to know God. Personally. Deeply. Increasingly. The behavior, the belief, the obedience, all of it flows from that knowing.

This is why you can serve faithfully for years and still feel that something is missing. The missing thing is not more activity. It is deeper knowing.

God is not hiding

The good news is that God is not hiding from you. He has gone to extraordinary lengths to make Himself known.

He gave us Jesus, who is God making Himself visible. Every word He spoke, every person He healed, every meal He shared, was the Father revealing Himself to people who could not otherwise see Him. Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. And He gave us His Spirit, who searches the deep things of God so that we can actually understand what He has freely given us.

So knowing God is not reserved for scholars or theologians. It is the birthright of every person who belongs to Him.

But it is not passive. It requires pursuit. When Paul wrote to the Philippians, he had already met Jesus on the road to Damascus. He had more theological knowledge and spiritual experience than almost anyone who has ever lived. And still, this was his deepest desire:

“I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord… I want to know Christ.”

Philippians 3:8, 10 (NIV)

I want to know Christ. Present tense. After everything, knowing God was still the goal. Not arriving at it. Still pursuing it. Because knowing God is not a destination you reach and then stop. It is a relationship you go deeper into for the rest of your life, and for all of eternity after that.

You are already known

“But now that you know God — or rather are known by God — how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces?”

Galatians 4:9 (NIV)

He starts to say you know God, and then he stops and corrects himself mid-sentence. Or rather are known by God. Because the foundation is not your knowledge of Him. It is His knowledge of you.

He knew you before you knew yourself. He called you by name before you thought to call on His. Your pursuit of knowing Him is always a response to the fact that He has already known and chosen you. That is the foundation, not your spiritual effort, not your consistency, not how well you have been doing lately. His prior, unconditional, complete knowledge of you.

That is what makes knowing God possible, and it is what makes it safe. You are not trying to make yourself known to a God who might reject what He finds. You are being drawn deeper into a God who already knows everything about you and has already said yes.

Where love for God actually comes from

If your love for God feels weak or distant right now, the instinct is to grit your teeth and try harder. To pray more, read more, serve more. But love has never worked that way.

“We love because he first loved us.”

1 John 4:19 (NIV)

We love in response to being loved. That is not selfishness. It is design, and God accounted for it completely. He did not stand at a distance and command affection. He sent His Son into the very humanity that had rejected Him, to absorb the full weight of every sin, so that the gap between a holy God and a broken people could be closed for good. That is the love you have already received.

So if your love for God feels thin, the first question to ask is not what do I need to do differently. It is how well do I actually know His love for me. Because a love for God that lasts does not come from trying harder. It comes from being more thoroughly convinced of how loved you already are.

Belief will not get you there. Belief points at God from across the room. Love walks toward Him, and keeps walking, for the rest of your life, because it has finally understood that He walked toward you first.