Love is easily claimed. Its character is revealed by what it does when the beloved is undeserving and the cost is real.
Islam and Christianity both speak of divine mercy, forgiveness and love. A fair comparison cannot begin by pretending that the Qur'an presents Allah as merciless or that Muslims worship a deity who never loves. Nor can Christianity be reduced to the sentimental claim that God approves everyone regardless of truth, repentance or holiness.
The deeper question is not whether the word love appears in both religions. It is this:
What does each revelation show divine love doing for the guilty, the unthankful and the evil?
The Qur'an repeatedly identifies the kinds of people Allah loves and does not love. Jesus commands His disciples to love those who do not deserve it because the Father Himself is kind to the unthankful and evil. The apostles then point to the cross as the historical manifestation of that love: Christ died not for those who had first made themselves worthy, but for the ungodly, sinners and enemies.
This difference reaches beyond vocabulary. It concerns what God is like.
The Qur'an genuinely speaks of mercy and love
The Islamic case should be allowed to speak in its strongest recognisable form.
With the exception of Surah 9, the chapters of the Qur'an open with the basmala, invoking Allah as the Most Compassionate and Most Merciful. Surah 7:156 declares, "My mercy encompasses everything", before specifying the people for whom mercy will be ordained. Surah 39:53 tells those who have exceeded the limits against themselves not to despair of Allah's mercy.
The Qur'an also calls Allah al-Wadud. The term is variously translated "the Loving", "the Most Loving" or "the Affectionate" (Surahs 11:90; 85:14). It would therefore be false to claim that love is absent from the Qur'anic description of Allah.
Nor is Qur'anic love merely an abstract title. Surah 5:54 speaks of a people "who love Him and are loved by Him". Surah 3:31 promises:
"If you sincerely love Allah, then follow me; Allah will love you and forgive your sins" (Surah 3:31, The Clear Quran, trans. Mustafa Khattab).
Other passages say that Allah loves those who do good, those who repeatedly repent and purify themselves, those who are just, those who trust him and those who are mindful of him (Surahs 2:195; 2:222; 3:76; 3:159; 5:42).
An informed Muslim can therefore say that Allah is merciful, forgiving and loving; that his mercy reaches throughout creation; that he receives the repentant; and that his love is morally serious rather than indifferent to human conduct.
The Christian argument should not deny any of that. It should ask what kind of pattern these statements form and what redemptive act, if any, manifests the love they name.
The repeated refrain: Allah does not love
Anyone reading the Qur'an continuously is likely to notice a recurring formula. English translations alternate between "Allah does not love" and "Allah does not like", but the Arabic repeatedly uses la yuhibbu, from the ordinary Qur'anic root for love.
The construction appears in more than twenty clauses when direct statements and equivalent forms using "He" are included, although the exact English phrase varies by translation. Among them, Allah does not love or like:
- transgressors (Surahs 2:190; 5:87);
- corruption and those who spread it (2:205; 5:64; 28:77);
- every persistent unbelieving sinner and the disbelievers (2:276; 3:32);
- wrongdoers (3:57; 3:140);
- the arrogant and boastful (4:36; 31:18; 57:23);
- the treacherous and sinful (4:107; 8:58; 22:38);
- and those who exult arrogantly (28:76).
The precise English wording varies, and some descriptions overlap. The cumulative pattern does not.
The contrast in Surah 3:31-32 is especially revealing. Those who follow Muhammad are promised Allah's love and forgiveness. The next verse commands obedience to Allah and the messenger, then says of those who turn away that "Allah does not like the disbelievers".
Love is repeatedly mapped onto moral and religious categories. The repentant, pure, just, trusting and obedient are loved. Unbelief, treachery, arrogance, injustice and corruption stand beneath the declaration that Allah does not love.
This is not a trivial observation. Repetition forms theology. The reader is taught to understand divine love through the distinction between those whose character and allegiance receive approval and those whose rebellion does not.
What the refrain does not prove
The conclusion must not outrun the evidence.
"Allah does not love the disbelievers" does not mean that Islamic theology must deny every form of kindness, patience, provision or mercy towards them. A Muslim may distinguish Allah's general mercy towards creation from his special love for the faithful. He may argue that continued life, food, family, guidance and opportunity to repent are themselves expressions of mercy even towards those who are not presently loved.
Surah 7:156 provides material for such a distinction. Allah's mercy "encompasses everything", yet the verse continues by ordaining mercy for those who fear him, give alms and believe in his revelations. General mercy and saving mercy need not be identical.
Nor should a Christian object that a holy God must love wickedness or approve the unrepentant. Love which delights in cruelty would not be virtuous love. Moral opposition to corruption is not a defect in God.
The real question is whether divine love moves towards the undeserving for their rescue while they are still opposed to God, and what God gives in order to accomplish that rescue.
Here the words of Jesus become decisive.
The Bible does not confuse love with approval
Before hearing Jesus' command to love enemies, we should remove another caricature. The Bible never teaches that God's love is moral indifference.
The psalmist says:
"The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity" (Psalm 5:5).
John the Baptist declares that the person who refuses the Son does not possess life, but that "the wrath of God abideth on him" (John 3:36). Jesus also speaks of a particular love connected with obedience and fellowship:
"He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father" (John 14:21).
Christian theology therefore cannot answer Islam with the slogan that Allah distinguishes while the biblical God never does. Scripture distinguishes God's generous kindness towards creatures, His saving love towards sinners, His fatherly delight and communion with His obedient children, and His holy opposition to evil. These are not contradictions. Love can seek an enemy's good without approving his enmity.
That distinction makes Jesus' teaching more powerful, not less.
He is kind to the unthankful and to the evil
Jesus commands conduct which exceeds ordinary reciprocity:
"But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil" (Luke 6:35).
The command is grounded in the character of God. Christ does not merely tell His disciples to adopt an admirable policy. He tells them to resemble their Father.
Matthew records the same reasoning:
"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:44-45).
"Children of your Father" and "children of the Highest" describe family resemblance. Jesus is not teaching that acts of kindness purchase adoption. He is saying that those who belong to God should display the generosity of God's own character.
The Father gives sunshine and rain to people who neither thank nor obey Him. He sustains the evil without calling evil good. His kindness is not elicited by their worthiness, and it does not wait for reciprocity.
This directly answers the idea that love can move only towards those who have first become lovable. Jesus tells us to do good to those who hate us because that is what the Father is like.
Common kindness is not yet reconciliation
Sunshine, rain, food and life are real gifts. They do not by themselves remove guilt or reconcile an enemy to God.
Jesus' teaching therefore establishes an essential foundation: God is benevolent towards the undeserving. It does not yet disclose the full cost of saving them. General kindness leaves the rebel alive; redemptive love brings the rebel home without denying the evil of his rebellion.
The gospel moves from providence to propitiation. The God who gives rain to His enemies gives His Son for their reconciliation.
Paul expresses the movement through a deliberate sequence:
"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Romans 5:6).
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
"For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life" (Romans 5:10).
Without strength. Ungodly. Sinners. Enemies.
Paul removes every suggestion that Christ's death is God's reward for prior moral improvement. The love is manifested while its recipients stand beneath descriptions which make them undeserving of it. Repentance and transformed living follow, but they do not cause the love which sends Christ.
The Qur'an repeatedly describes whom Allah loves and does not love. The gospel reveals what God's love did for those who did not love Him.
God is love, and He sent His Son
John makes the Christian claim with unmatched concentration:
"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love" (1 John 4:8).
John does not offer that statement as a philosophical slogan from which every doctrine of God can be deduced. He immediately gives it historical and Trinitarian content:
"In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him" (1 John 4:9).
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
Divine love is manifested in sending. The Father does not wait for humanity to ascend towards Him. The Son comes into the world that sinners might live through Him.
The language also prevents love from becoming mere indulgence. The Son is sent as "the propitiation for our sins". Love does not deny the holiness which condemns sin; it provides what holiness requires. Mercy does not persuade justice to look away. The God who loves acts to remove His people's guilt through the sacrifice He provides.
The mechanics of substitution require their own full treatment. The point here is what substitution reveals about God: He does not save at a safe distance. The Father sends His beloved Son; the Son willingly lays down His life; and God acts in Christ to reconcile sinners to Himself (John 10:18; 2 Corinthians 5:19).
Christian redemption is therefore not the sacrifice of a reluctant creature to protect an untouched deity. It is divine self-giving in the incarnation and cross.
Love does not cease to be holy
A common objection now appears from the opposite direction. If God loves enemies before they repent, does holiness matter? Does unconditional love make repentance, faith and obedience unnecessary?
No.
The cross is the strongest possible denial that sin is harmless. If forgiveness required only a reassuring declaration, the incarnation and crucifixion become unintelligible. At Calvary, love does not redefine evil. It bears its judgement.
The gospel summons sinners to repent and believe. Those reconciled to God are created unto good works and commanded to walk in holiness. Jesus does not promise intimate communion to the person who cherishes rebellion while demanding that God approve it.
But the order is decisive. God does not first discover something worthy in His enemies and then decide to love them. His saving initiative creates the reconciliation and new life which obedience expresses.
Biblical love is therefore neither sentimental permissiveness nor earned approval. It is holy love which moves towards the guilty, deals with their guilt and transforms those it receives.
The love of God appeared
Paul's letter to Titus gathers the entire contrast into a few sentences. He begins with people who were foolish, disobedient and enslaved, "living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another". Then comes the intervention:
"But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us" (Titus 3:4-5).
The love of God appears in salvation. It does not merely announce that salvation may become available if human righteousness reaches the required level. "He saved us"; and the text immediately excludes works of righteousness as its cause.
This does not oppose mercy to transformation. The passage continues with regeneration and renewal by the Holy Ghost (Titus 3:5-6). The same love which receives the undeserving refuses to leave them enslaved to hatred.
Christian love moves in a recognisable order:
God is kind to the undeserving. God takes the initiative towards sinners. God sends the Son. The Son bears sin and reconciles enemies. The Holy Ghost renews those who are saved. The reconciled then learn to love as they have been loved.
Grace produces the family resemblance which Jesus commands.
Does the Qur'an command mercy towards enemies?
A Muslim may object that Islam also commands generosity, patience, justice and mercy towards people who are not Muslims. That is true and should be acknowledged. The Qur'an can command justice even where hostility exists and can commend feeding the needy, the orphan and the captive (Surahs 5:8; 76:8-9). Muslims may display costly kindness, and Christians have no licence to deny it.
The argument is not that no Muslim can love an enemy or that the Qur'an contains no moral instruction towards outsiders. Human conduct is not the final comparison.
The question is what God Himself does in the central act of salvation.
In Christianity, the command to love enemies is grounded in the Father's character and reaches its supreme manifestation in the Son dying for God's enemies. The ethical demand and the redemptive event interpret one another. Christians love enemies because God loved them when they were His enemies.
Islam can command mercy and appeal to Allah's mercy. It does not proclaim that Allah entered creation, assumed human nature and bore the cost of reconciling His enemies to Himself. The absence is not merely one missing doctrine beside many others. It removes the act which the New Testament repeatedly identifies as the manifestation and measure of divine love.
Did Christ merely make love visible?
The cross is an example, but it is not merely an example.
If Christ's death only demonstrates an inspiring principle of self-sacrifice, sinners may admire the display while remaining condemned. The New Testament says more. We were "reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (Romans 5:10). Christ "loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2). His love accomplishes what His people could not accomplish for themselves.
This gives Christian assurance its personal character. The believer does not rest upon the strength of his own love for God, but upon the demonstrated love of God in Christ. Paul asks:
"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32).
The gift of the Son becomes the pledge that God will complete His saving purpose. Paul therefore ends not with confidence in human devotion but with confidence that nothing in creation "shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39).
Love does not merely offer a possibility and wait to discover whether human performance will complete it. In Christ it reconciles, saves, renews and keeps.
Two accounts of divine love
The evidence can now be gathered without caricature.
The Qur'an calls Allah loving and merciful. It declares that his mercy encompasses everything, invites sinners to repent, promises forgiveness, and identifies people whom Allah loves. It also repeatedly states that Allah does not love categories including disbelievers, wrongdoers, the corrupt, treacherous people, transgressors and the arrogant. Qur'anic love is morally discriminating and regularly described in relation to repentance, obedience, faith and righteous character.
The Bible also distinguishes. God hates iniquity, judges unbelief, delights in obedience and refuses to call evil good. Christianity cannot claim a loving God by surrendering holiness.
Yet the Bible reveals a further movement. The Father is kind to the unthankful and evil. He commands His children to love enemies because His own goodness precedes reciprocity. That benevolence reaches its redemptive climax while we are without strength, ungodly, sinners and enemies. The Father sends; the Son gives Himself; the Spirit renews.
Islam can account for mercy towards the repentant and love which approves righteousness. The gospel accounts for those truths and also explains how holy love moves towards enemies, bears the cost of reconciliation and creates the righteousness in which it delights.
The Christian claim therefore possesses the greater explanatory fullness. It does not choose between love and holiness, kindness and judgement, acceptance and transformation. At the cross, each finds its proper place without being reduced to another.
The verdict of the cross
The final difference is not that one book contains the word love while the other does not.
It is the difference between love described and love manifested in an accomplished redemption.
The Qur'an tells the reader whom Allah loves and whom he does not love. It promises mercy and forgiveness, but it contains no incarnation, no Father giving the eternal Son, no divine self-substitution and no finished work which reconciles enemies through God's own costly initiative.
The gospel declares:
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
That sentence holds the verdict.
Not that we loved God.
He loved us.
He sent His Son.
The love of God is not measured by a claim detached from history. It is measured at Calvary.
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Primary sources and further reading
- Psalms 5 and 11; Matthew 5; Luke 6; John 3, 10 and 14; Romans 5 and 8; 2 Corinthians 5; Ephesians 2 and 5; Titus 3; 1 John 3-4.
- Qur'an, Surahs 7:156, 11:90, 39:53 and 85:14, on mercy, forgiveness and al-Wadud. Direct Qur'anic quotations are from Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran; variant renderings are identified where discussed.
- Qur'an, Surahs 2:195, 2:222, 3:31-32, 3:159, 5:42 and 5:54, on those whom Allah loves.
- Qur'an, representative passages 2:190, 2:205, 2:276, 3:32, 3:57, 3:140, 4:36, 4:107, 5:64, 5:87, 8:58, 22:38, 28:76, 28:77, 31:18 and 57:23, containing the recurring declaration that Allah does not love or like particular categories. The Quranic Arabic Corpus entry for the root *h-b-b* also identifies related clauses using reversed word order or a divine pronoun.
- Qur'an, Surahs 5:8 and 76:8-9, on justice despite hatred and feeding the needy, orphan and captive.
- D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God.
- John Stott, The Cross of Christ.
- Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ.