Love is a loyal, self-sacrificing, other-focused, giving relationship to another person. If you love someone, you will be concerned about their wellbeing, you will be loyal to them, you will appreciate them, and you will give of yourself for them. Since love is a relationship, it can only exist as long as there are at least two persons between whom the loving relationsip can exist. If there is only one person, then love simply can not exist.

But can’t you love yourself?

Love is other-centered, not self-centered. If you “love yourself” that is not really love, but egotism or in extreme cases even narcissism.

God IS love

1 John 4:8 — “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

John wrote something amazing. He is saying that God IS love. He could have said that God has love, but he chose to say that he is love. That means that love is an intrinsic part of what God is. Love is God’s very nature or essense.

If there is no God there is no love. If there is no love, there is no God. Since God is eternal, love is eternal. There has not existed even a millisecond when love did not exist.

“Jesus had a beginning”

The problem is that Arian doctrine claims that Jesus has not always existed, but had a beginning. Arius said:

“If the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not.”

According to Arianism, the Son was the first thing that God created. Before the Son was created God was all alone, only one person alone in all of existence.

Before Jesus was created, whom did God love?

If before the Son was created there was no one for God to love, it means that love could not exist. And if love could not exist even for a millisecond, then God could not exist. At least not the God of the Bible.

The God described by Arianism is not the same God as the Bible describes. THe God of Arianism is not love. Their God could maybe learn to love, which would make him incomplete. Perhaps their God could be said to be powerful, be wise, be just, even be able to have love. But he could never be said to be love. A unitarian God, such as the one described by Arius, simply lacks the capacity for intrinsic love, and is therefore not the God that is described in the Bible.

“But it was love that made God create other beings.”

Creating other beings because you want to have company is not love, but a satisfaction of a selfish desire. Such a God would not be self-sufficient.

The logical conclusion

The only way that God could be described with the words “God is love”, is if God intrinsically, eternally, in himself, consists of at least two persons. That is what the doctrine of the trinity describes: One god, internally consisting of three eternal persons who have always and will always share love between them. God is an eternal loving relationship between the three divine persons.