But God's love for us is not the only part of our relationship with Him that we must understand; for if that were the whole of it, one might be tempted to think too highly of humans. What a marvelous creation indeed, for God to love us so. This would lead to arrogance at the expense of God's love, and that must not be so.
The other aspect of our relationship with God we must understand is this: God doesn't need us.
We, as humans, don't add anything to God at all. He would be perfectly fine without us. To think that we could ever add to the completeness that is the Trinity is arrogance at its worst. We must realize that even though God wants us, He doesn't need us.
This isn't the way our love work at all now is it? A true good love on earth has both giving and taking aspects involved. If you every read love poetry with that in mind you will be shocked at how truly selfish that poetry can seem. Isn't it all about the lover and not the loved? Isn't it all about his need for her, or her need for him, instead of what he can DO for her, or her for him? Granted, there is also sacrificial giving involved. But even the most romantic ideas has both sides. For example:
Let's say that a man tells his wife that he would willingly die for her. That, by itself, is certain giving. But then he turns right around and tells her the reason he would perform such a brave act is because he couldn't live without her. As romantic as that may well be, it still demonstrates my point entirely. There is a need part of his great love for her as well.
Of course, this is all right and proper. A humans love always has a giving and needing aspect to it. C.S. Lewis called it 'gift-love' and 'need-love'. A child running into his mothers arms for protection is demonstrating a strong need-love. He loves her and needs her. It is not wrong for the child to do this, and is a natural part of our loves. We are not God and therefore are not complete without others.
But the child that runs to his mother also demonstrates an aspect of gift-love. He is giving his mother his complete trust. This is certainly a great and generous gift. So the boy is demonstrating both sides of love: gift-love and need-love.
But the mother demonstrates both sides as well. The parent may perhaps be showing much more gift-love than her son, but is there not an aspect of need-love as well? Is the consoling mother receiving NOTHING for the exchange? Is not the capability to protect her children a need for her also?
So if what we say if true, then are all relationships fundamentally selfish? Yes and no. It would be better to say that all human relationships contain an element of selfishness; or perhaps that even the highest human love always receives something for its great sacrifice. There have been relationships (far too few I suppose) where the individuals demonstrated a high degree of gift-love, but to say that the giver received nothing in return is foolhardy at best. Of course, I don't believe that any of this is wrong at all. Unfortunately we have run far a field of the subject at hand, so that question will be best left for another time.
Suffice to say that we don't know what it is like to be God. (Not that the previous statement holds a great shock for anyone but a few quite insane people.) We don't know what it is like to love a person without any need at all, and we don't know what it is like to be loved by another human without their needing something from us.
But God has no needs at all. He is the only being capable of pure gift-love. He doesn't need us, but He wants us. We will give nothing at all to Him that He doesn't already have. We add nothing to the overabundance that is His simply by being God. Yet He still pursues us. Isn't that in the end the greatest love ever? To be wanted yet not needed in the least? To be so loved by a Being that we will add nothing to?
This balance, this midpoint between ultimate worth and worthlessness, is something that can give us a correct perspective as we look at ourselves, as we try to find the compromise between arrogance and self-deprivation.
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