Have you ever heard that there is nothing you can do that would cause God to love you more than He already does, or that there is nothing you can do that would cause God to love you less?

Both of these are true—but only when we are considering God’s heart, His attitude, the caring, compassionate, longing for each person originating with God Himself.

But when we understand that love is more than a feeling or attitude a person has for another, that for love to actually function, it requires another intelligent being to enter into relationship and to reciprocate that love, then we realize that God does not functionally love every person equally. This is not because God’s heart has less love for any individual, but because not every person responds to His love by loving and trusting Him and entering into a deepening trust relationship with Him such that His love can flow into and through them.

While God emotionally, attitudinally, and even intellectually loves with the same infinite love all people, in order for His love to function, to flow into and transform a person, it requires that person to respond to God’s love by exercising their power of choice to love and trust Him in return, to open their heart to Him, to choose to enter into intimacy, friendship, and an ever-deepening journey of growth and development with Him.

This is design law, how reality works. Love cannot function and grow through edict, rules, external power, threats of punishment, law and law enforcement, or through platitudes, Bible quotes, or comforting statements—even if those statements are true. Love requires connection, trust, intimacy, and knowing the person for oneself.

This is why Jesus said:

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3 NIV84).

While it is true that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to save it, it is only those who respond to that love, receive that love, and choose to trust (believe) in Him who open their hearts and are reborn with a new life, a new animating energy, the Spirit of Christ brought by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and thereby participate in that love (2 Corinthians 5:14).

These are the people who God loves, not just in heart attitude, but in deed, in action, in function; His love is not just external—it flows into them and brings them new desires, motives, identity, meaning, purpose, peace, and it frees them from fear.

God, in heart, loves all equally, but in function, He can love only those who respond to His love by opening their hearts to Him. And the more time we spend with Him in loving trust, the closer we get to Him, the more we are transformed, the deeper we grow in our bonds of love and trust, and God is able to functionally love us more and more.

This is why John is called the disciple Jesus loved:

One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him (John 13:23 NIV84, emphasis mine).

When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home (John 19:26, 27 NIV84, emphasis mine).

So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” (John 20:2, emphasis mine).

Jesus, in heart, loved all of His disciples equally, but John, the youngest, was the one who responded with the deepest love and trust in return and opened himself more fully to the love of Christ than the others. This had a measurable result because love is real, and it causes real changes in people who participate in God’s love.

In John, because he responded to Jesus’ love more deeply than the others, he experienced greater transformation than the other disciples at that point in their development. This is evidenced by the fact that John was the only one who stayed through the entire crucifixion weekend and stood at the cross.

Where were the others? They were all overcome by fear and ran away. Peter was so afraid that he denied Jesus three times with cursing.

But as love functions in our hearts, it casts out all fear (1 John 4:18). John, having participated in Christ’s love more fully, was not afraid for his life; love had done its work of casting fear out of him. As a result, functionally, not attitudinally or emotionally, Jesus loved John more that weekend than He did the other disciples.

Jacob and Esau

This is why the Bible says that God loved Jacob but hated Esau (Romans 9:13). It’s not because God had different emotions toward Jacob and Esau; rather, it was because of the heart responses of Jacob and Esau and how love functions.

Jacob opened his heart in trust to God and responded to God’s love with love and trust in return; thus, God was able to enter into a loving relationship with Jacob and could love Jacob. But Esau did not love and trust God, did not open his heart to God, and even though God had love in His heart for Esau, because Esau refused to respond in love and trust, God could not love Esau functionally, relationally, intimately.

Some get confused because the Bible uses the word “hate” in this passage. But it does not mean what we mean by hate; it merely means to love less. In this context, God was not able to love Esau as much as Jacob because Esau refused to love and trust God in return. This is not about attitude of heart; it is how love functions—and God does hate not being able to love, functionally connect in trusting intimacy, with His children (just like any parent does).

This is evidenced by Jesus’ admonishment:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26, 27 NIV84).

Jesus has already instructed that we must love God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves, and even that we must love our enemies (Luke 10:27; 6:27, 35). So Jesus is not contradicting Himself here. He is not suggesting we should have hate in our hearts for our families, but that we should have supreme love for God, for it is only by loving God first and being reborn with hearts that love that we are enabled to love others. If we prioritize others over God, we actually cut ourselves off from love and will not be able to love others. Thus, we love God and our families in heart, but our functional loyal love is to God first and families second.

Jesus’ Functional Love

This principle, that love functions only in hearts and minds that are receptive and choose freely to participate in God’s love, is evidenced in the various Bible examples of people who prevented Jesus from loving them in deed, in action, functionally. They could not prevent Jesus from loving them in His heart, but they did prevent Jesus from loving them functionally. Thus, Jesus loved them less than others in action.

Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region (Matthew 8:34 NIV84, emphasis mine).

Jesus loved these people and longed to save them, but His heart of love could not act to love when they refused Him.

Perhaps the most striking example of how God is not able to love all people equally, even though He has infinite love in His heart for all people, is the story about Jesus visiting Nazareth:

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips.

“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way (Luke 4:16–30 NIV84, emphasis mine).

 How it must have broken Jesus’ heart. His heart of infinite love was longing to save these people, reaching out to them with truth, with love, with His healing grace, but they hardened their hearts, closed their minds, and not only drove Him from their presence, but tried to kill Him.

Jesus’ heart was full of love, but despite His heart of infinite love, He could not love these people functionally.

It’s the same today. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are infinite love, and They long to pour Their love into our hearts (Romans 5:5). But They cannot functionally love you and me if we refuse, if we won’t respond to Them by opening the door to our hearts and inviting Them in.

Today, right now, Jesus says to you and to me,

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me (Revelation 3:20 NIV84).

Jesus’ heart is full of love, and He longs to love you, to enter into intimate friendship with you, to know you personally and to have you know Him personally. And in that love/trust friendship with Him, He longs to heal you, transform you, renew you, recreate you, remove all your fears, guilt, shame, and cleanse you to be like Him. He wants to love you. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to, right now, open your heart and say yes to Him, invite Him in and let His love transform you!