Dallas Willard

“We must understand that God does not love us without liking us through gritted teeth as Christian love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word love.”

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God