I am sharing wonderful comments from Gordon Fee about how the Apostle Paul considered the love of God:
“For Paul the ‘love of God’ was no mere abstraction. God’s [boundless, my addition] love, the most essential reality about his character and the absolute predicate of our existence, has been demonstrated historically in its most lavish and expansive expression through Christ’s death for his enemies. . . . But such love is not merely an objective historical event. By the presence of the Spirit, God’s love, played out to the full in Christ, is an experienced reality in the heart of the believer. This is what the Spirit has so richly ‘shed abroad in our hearts.’ If we are not thus overtaken by God himself at this crucial point, then all else is lost. . . . What rectifies all of this for us is not simply the fact of God’s love - although in some ways that would surely be enough - but that God’s love has been effectively realized in the experience of the believer. God’s love for us has been ‘poured out’ as a prodigal, experienced reality by the presence of the Holy Spirit, whom God has also lavishly poured out into our hearts.”