God’s love means that God eternally gives of himself to others; that is, His love is self-giving for the benefit of others ... to bring about blessing or good for others.
In 1 John 4.8 we read that “God is love”. Among the Trinity, from the Father to the Son, this attribute was active even before creation and continues through to the present time. That love is also reciprocal and I think we can presume characterizes their relationship with the Holy Spirit. This eternal love within the Trinity makes heaven a world of love and joy because each person of the Trinity seeks to bring joy and happiness to the other two.
This self-giving also finds clear expression in God’s relationship to mankind, and especially to sinful men. Paul acknowledges an awareness of the directly personal application of Christ’s love to individual sinners. What joy to know that the purpose of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was to give of themselves to us to bring us true joy and happiness. God’s nature is to act this way toward those upon whom he has set his love. And even better, he will continue to act that way toward us for all eternity.
In the comments of Brinks post, an astute Raquel noted that we are to imitate this communicable attribute of God. How? By first by loving God in return, and second by loving others in imitation of the way God loves them. This of course means we will obey his commands and not the world. And what's amazing is that all of this is because He first loved us.
God gives His love to make us happy so that we can in return give of ourselves to bring joy to God’s heart.
God’s love in us is seen in our love for others and this is so that the world recognizes us as belonging to Him. God gives us his love to enable us to love each other and even to love our enemies.
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