How Do You Love Someone Who Needs Nothing?

For many years, I’ve defined love this way:

Love is the voluntary, sacrificial commitment to the well-being of another.

That definition has helped me in marriage, in raising a family, in pastoral ministry, and in thinking about what it means to love my neighbor. It reminds me that love is more than a feeling. Love is a commitment to seek another person’s real good, even when it costs me something.

But not long ago, a question hit me that I’d never really thought about. How does that definition apply to my love for God?

God’s well-being is never in question. He is perfectly good, perfectly sufficient, and completely independent of anything we could give Him. Paul told the philosophers in Athens that God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25).

So if love means seeking someone’s well-being, how do you love Someone whose well-being can’t possibly be improved?

What changes and what doesn’t

Here’s what I’ve come to see. Most of that definition still fits our love for God. Only one part changes.

Our love for God is still voluntary. He doesn’t force it out of us. It’s still sacrificial. Paul urges us “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). And it’s still a commitment, not a passing feeling.

What changes is the object. When we love people, we seek their good. When we love God, we seek His glory.

We love God by seeking His glory.
We love people by seeking their good.

Seeking God’s glory doesn’t mean adding to it. We can’t make Him more glorious than He already is. It means recognizing His glory, honoring it, reflecting it, and making it known. When we love God, we aren’t fixing His circumstances or supplying something He lacks. We’re responding to His infinite worth.

What loving God looks like

That can sound abstract, so let’s bring it down to an ordinary week.

Loving God starts with wanting Him, not just what He gives. Asaph prayed, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25). Love for God enjoys Him for who He is.

Loving God shows up in obedience. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Obedience isn’t a substitute for love. It’s one of the clearest ways love shows itself.

Loving God reaches into everything. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Worship on Sunday matters, but so does how we work on Monday, how we talk at the dinner table, and what we do when no one is watching.

And loving God means trusting Him. When we can’t see how things will turn out, we rest on His character instead of our circumstances.

Doesn’t God care what we do?

Someone might hear “God needs nothing” and conclude that nothing we do matters to Him. That’s not what Scripture teaches.

Hebrews 13:16 says, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” Our love doesn’t add anything to God, but He still takes pleasure in it. Christians have discussed for centuries exactly how an unchanging God is “pleased,” and I won’t try to settle that here. But the Bible plainly says He is. A father doesn’t need his child’s crayon drawing, yet it still ends up on the refrigerator.

Two commandments that belong together

If our love for God can’t improve His well-being, our love for people is a different story. Their well-being really can be helped or hurt by what we do. People get lonely. They grieve. They get sick, go hungry, feel afraid, and wander far from God. We can make a real difference.

Loving them means committing ourselves to their good, even when it’s inconvenient or costly. That good includes their spiritual well-being, not just their comfort or happiness for the moment.

Jesus called loving God the first and greatest commandment and loving our neighbor the second (Matthew 22:37–40). They are distinct, but they can’t be separated.

We don’t love God merely by serving people. Our love for Him also means worship, affection, fellowship, and wholehearted devotion. Yet one of the most important ways we love God is by serving the people He loves.

After His resurrection, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Each time Peter answered, Jesus pointed him to the same task: “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17). Peter couldn’t improve Jesus’ well-being. But he could show his love for Jesus by caring for the people Jesus entrusted to him.

John puts it plainly: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers…. Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:16, 18).

And here’s the beautiful part. Seeking God’s glory and seeking people’s good are not competing goals. Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). When we feed someone who is hungry, sit with someone who is grieving, stand beside someone in a crisis, or help without needing credit, we do good for that person, and we show the world something of what God is like. The same act serves people and glorifies God.

Where both kinds of love begin

Both commandments lead us back to God’s love for us. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). John goes on to say that anyone who claims to love God but hates his brother is a liar (1 John 4:20–21). The two loves rise and fall together.

Our love for God is a response to His grace. Our love for others is an expression of that grace. We don’t serve people to earn God’s approval, and we don’t worship God to supply something He lacks.

That grace gets tested most by people who are hard to love. Some people call them “EGRs.” Extra Grace Required. They’re the people who are hard to like. Maybe they’re selfish, or annoying, or just a little strange. My friends Frank and Sue (not their real names) have always had a knack for loving people like that. People who might otherwise get overlooked, left out, or misunderstood find real friends in them. Their example challenges me to find sincere ways to love the EGRs in my own life.

And honestly, every one of us was an EGR to God. He loved us anyway.

We love because we have been loved.

Passing the light

Every Christmas Eve, our church holds a candlelight service. The flame is passed from one person to the next, each one lighting a neighbor’s candle, until the whole room is glowing. As we sing the final verse of “Silent Night,” everyone raises their candles. When the song ends, the last word of the service is Matthew 5:16: “Let your light shine before others.”

That picture works in any season. Nobody in that room lit their own candle. Even the first flame comes from the Christ Candle. Each of us received the light from someone else, and then we turned and shared it with the person beside us. That’s how God’s love moves through the world, one person at a time.

The light isn’t meant just to be admired. It’s meant to be passed on.

God doesn’t need us to make His life better. But He has placed us among people whose lives we can genuinely bless. We love God by seeking His glory. We love people by seeking their good. And one of the best ways to honor the God who needs nothing is to serve the people who need so much.