The Love of God is badly misunderstood by many. God is love. God does not need created beings to manifest love. So love is an independent attribute of God. Since God is a trinity, He manifests love between persons of the trinity. God’s independent love is as eternal as God Himself.
God’s love for His creation is a dependent love. It depends upon there being created beings. Dependent love is necessarily a lesser love. God manifests his love for fallen humanity through the sacrificial death of His son. Each person in this Church Age who accepts that death for himself is placed by the Holy Spirit into Jesus Christ. In this way he enters into the eternal love of God. Those who reject the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ for them, reject God’s love, and remain under God’s eternal wrath. God’s love for sinners, as great and as deep as it is for living sinners, is no longer extended to those who die before accepting it. That love is necessarily temporary.
If there were not two levels of love, then God’s love for sinners would be equivalent to God’s eternal love. And that would lead to one of two heresies. (1) If God will love forever every person to whom He extends love (everyone), then there would be universal salvation. (2) If God does eternally love some and not others, then He must never love some. That would be limited atonement. The slides, The Love of God slides document the differences in the two levels of love through New Testament Scriptures.