God is Love

God is LOVE. What more do you need to hear? God IS love. There are 3 different kinds of love translated from the Greek in the New Testament - friendship (phileo), romantic (eros) and unconditional (agape) love. Agape is God's love. Without condition. You didn't earn it. You didn't deserve it. It goes hand-in-hand with grace, which means undeserved.
I've heard that we imagine God in our own father's image, and my dad wasn't very loving. Consequently I was always afraid of God, that, like my dad, would get in a bad mood and smack me. But neither is God a wimp. Just because He is love, doesn't mean He's some pansy. By the way, in Genesis, it says God created Adam AND Eve in His image. So man and woman together is how God is. (He created Eve from Adam's rib.)
Is God still strict? Yes. Is He still just? Yes. But He is LOVE. Some people don't even know what love is. God's word says love is patient, kind, long suffering, doesn't keep a record of wrong doing, doesn't envy, doesn't brag, isn't proud, isn't rude, isn't self-seeking, not easily angered, doesn't delight in evil, rejoices in the truth, always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres.
(God) Love never fails...