Yes, God is wholly God without us. It doesn’t make him any less God to have a place that only we can fill, to hunger for our company, to desire our love even to the death, and to make us his bride. It makes him more God.
1 John 4:8 tells us that God is love. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. Again in I John 4:16: And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
It’s not just that he loves, but he IS love. What is the point of love if there is no object to receive that love? The very word denotes a lover and a recipient of love. There is no Biblical indication that God loves the angels, and there are verses that indicate it is not a love relationship, for example, Heb 1:14 Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?
We complete God’s love. I John 2:5 tells us, But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him. We’re told again in I John 4:12 that No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
God created us for a relationship where he gives and receives love. As much emphasis as God puts in the Bible on the fact that he IS love, on his love for us, and on his desire for our love, shows us that he is emotionally involved, both corporately and individually, in mankind. So emotionally involved, in fact, that he allows a part of his Godhead to dwell within us in order for us to have the capability of loving him the way he so desperately wants us to (Acts 2:38,28). This intense love causes him to give us his mind (I Co. 2:16), to adopt us as sons alongside his real Son (Romans 8:15,16; Ephesians 2:6), provide us with his inheritance (Ephesians 1:13,14), and to seek each one of us out to walk in a personal relationship with him (John 15:15). His love moves him to jealousy (II Co. 11:2), provokes him to anger (Mark 3:5), and causes him to literally beg us to come back from our waywardness and love him (Luke 13:34). It has him rejoicing over us with singing one minute (Zephaniah 3:17) and weeping brokenheartedly the next (Luke 19:41). He cries over us the way a mother’s heart breaks over her children (Luke 13:34). He loves us in a way that only Love Himself can. And he feels a great loss when we don’t respond to that love.
God pursued us (I John 4:10), performing the greatest act of love that exists. (John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.) He didn’t do it just out of charity, or feeling sorry for us, or because having created us it was his duty. He felt so emotionally in love with us that he chose to do it because we were worth it. Love needed us to complete Love. Over and over the Bible refers to a union between us and God, and the nature of a union is that two are united into one. Here are some examples:
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? (Matt 19:4-6) But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit. (1 Co. 6:17)
Remain in me, and I will remain in you. (John 15:4-27)
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (John 14:23)
Marriage, the greatest expression of love on earth, was created by God, and we are his bride. (See Ephesians 5:31,32; I Corinthians 6:17; and II Corinthians 11:2.) In I Corinthians 6:17, when he says But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit, it stands to reason that the God who created marriage for a man and a woman to complete each other also expects his marriage with his bride to work that way.
While God is wholly God without us, there is a place we fill in him that nothing else can fill. When it comes to God loving man, Ezekiel 16 and the second chapter of Hosea are two of the most heartbreaking chapters of the Bible, as a broken-hearted God cries out for us, his beloved. I cannot read the verses below and not believe that there is a place in God that needs our love. Otherwise, we would not have the ability to cause him such deep, heart-rending pain.
“And you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough? You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols.” (Ezekiel 16:20,21)
“You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband!” (Ezekiel 16:32)
“How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.” (Hosea 11:8)
“You also took the fine jewelry I gave you, the jewelry made of my gold and silver, and you made for yourself male idols and engaged in prostitution with them. And you took your embroidered clothes to put on them, and you offered my oil and incense before them. Also the food I provided for you– the fine flour, olive oil and honey I gave you to eat– you offered as fragrant incense before them. That is what happened, declares the Sovereign LORD.” (Ezekiel 16:17-19)
“I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot,” declares the LORD.” (Hosea 2:13)
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34)
What a love story! It is so grand, so noble, and so true. It is so beautiful, good-hearted, and strong, withstanding every attempt by satan to destroy it. Through the ages God continues to woo us back to him. And this fairy-tale does end with happily-ever-after. We will stand by our King and speak our marriage vows to each other. He will be wholly loved and we will be wholly loved. God is wholly God, and it doesn’t make him any less God for him to need us to complete his love.
