God is love, literally not figuratively. God is a relationship of mutual self-submission from eternity, Father to Son, Son to Father, from which is generated the Holy Spirit. We owe our very existence to an abundant outflowing of Trinitarian love. Love is a beginning and an ending unto itself. It is the only characteristic of God about which that can be said.
But surely there's more to God that simply love? Love is the central character trait from which comes everything else; it is the hub that all the spokes radiate from. Judgment, wrath, discipline, wisdom, mercy and whatever else you can think of all originate in divine love. If we get love wrong (as we frequently do), then we will misunderstand everything else. God will seem to us arbitrary and angry, capricious and spiteful. When we miss the God of love we will create a god to suit us, and that god will look just like us. This is the reason why idolatry is so dangerous: we become like what we worship.
While God can love and judge at the same time, I submit that no human being, not a single one, can love a person and judge him/her at the same time. Let's forget for the moment the fact that judging other people is at least as hostile a thing to do as the thing you're judging them for. The very act of judgment separates you from God. You, good Christian, have become less than you were before. That is the exact meaning of 1 Corinthians 13:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but don't have love, I have become nothing.
That verb, "to become" (Gk. ginomai) is in the first person perfect tense indicative (gegona); it is not a present tense verb. The perfect indicative use of a verb indicates completed action with consequences for the present. You have completed the act of judging and the image of God is diminished as a result.
All human beings are of inestimable worth because they are made in God's image. All of them. Every single one. In a cruel, ridiculous irony Christians have wholly devalued millions and millions of adult people based on inaccurate, biased readings of tiny portions of scripture, while ascribing inestimable worth to the unborn. The fact that the latter is good does not reduce the wrongness of the former.
Matthew 5:48 is one of the most misunderstood passages in scripture:
"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
For a thousand years that verse has been used to point out the duty of the good Christian. Perfection is the goal! We must be perfect as our Father is perfect! Nothing else will do! We have pushed this silly agenda without a thought for the people we would alienate in the process, and all the while we were doing exactly the opposite of what the passage teaches. Pay attention to the context: Matthew 5:43-48 is all about loving people you don't like. Jesus draws a metaphor from nature, about the way the rain and the sun come to the righteous (those in the covenant) and the unrighteous (those outside of it). In other words, our Father loves absolutely everyone all the time. The Greek word teleos is employed in 5:48. It can mean perfect, and it typically does when applied to God, but in context it means this:
"In light of this, be as comprehensive in your love as your heavenly Father is."
Where we want to read exclusive holiness-club messages into the passage, there is only our Father's illogical, radical, all-inclusive love. No marginalizing there. No alienation. No judgment in sight.
God's love does not demand that we be good; it creates the good it desires.
Relax.
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