Now, Jesus himself was and is a joyous, creative person. He does not allow us to continue thinking of our Father who fills and overflows space as a morose and miserable monarch, a frustrated and petty parent, or a policeman on the prowl.
One cannot think of God in such ways while confronting Jesus’ declaration, “He that has seen me has seen the Father.” One of the most outstanding features of Jesus’ personality was precisely an abundance of joy. This he left as an inheritance to his students, “that their joy might be full” (John 15:11). And they did not say, “Pass the aspirin,” for he was well known to those around him as a happy man. It is deeply illuminating of kingdom living to understand that his steady happiness was not ruled out by his experience of sorrow and even grief.
So we must understand that God does not “love” us without liking us – through gritted teeth – as “Christian” love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it.
The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word love.
This is an excerpt from a book The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. If you would like to buy this book please click here.