The Love of God: How was it shown in Jesus?
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”
1 John 4:9-12 ESV
It is spring, and all around, the world is turning green. The public gardens near where I live have become a place of delight for all the winter weary people. There are swaths of yellow and blue, swirls of orange and red, and stripes of purple and pink. It is beautiful and restoring. It is the result of creative work back in the autumn: preparing the beds, choosing the colours, and planting the bulbs. In a little while, the planting will begin again for a summer display. And throughout there will be the constant work to keep it neat and tidy and blooming, and perhaps new beds and new flowers.
This is how I think of God’s love for us – a love that has a good and amazing purpose but that necessarily involves both goodness and severity. The whole earth is His creation, and any artist knows that a creation involves both adding and taking away for a piece of art to become what it is meant to be.
The King James Version of the Bible occasionally translates the word that is also translated love, as “charity”. Being charitable has the idea of showing benevolence and kindness, and perhaps this idea helps to separate love from emotion and make it a characteristic instead. Real kindness or love is not dependent on how one feels, or on who the recipient is.
God’s love embraces everyone and everything but His love does not have the same effect on everyone and everything since the effect is dependent on the response. His love is based on what is good for His creation. His love, therefore, is not just to make us feel good and happy but it is meant to change us for our good, so that the world becomes what He meant it to be.
His love for us was shown in Jesus so that we might live through him.
In Christianity the cross is seen as a symbol of love where self was denied so that others could live. The denying of self is not necessarily about self-deprivation, but it is the ability to see the bigger picture. Although it can sound as if it is a negative virtue, it is really about becoming a new and better creation! This was the love of Jesus for his fellow humans and for his God, willing to trust that God is good and would keep His promises, and believing that obedience to his Father’s will would have the best outcome. He was willing to serve his fellow humans and endure any temporary suffering and loss by trusting in the promise of eternal life and shared joy in the future. He was confident that God’s will was good. Jesus showed us how to live.
Jesus’ love was demonstrated in a denial of self – “not my will but thine be done” – but the Father’s love is a little bit different. The Father’s love shown in Jesus was not expressed by a denial of Himself, but an expression of Himself. Jesus was the focal point of His plan to bring about the world that He intended. In Jesus He was reaching out to His creation and providing a way to bring it all back to display His glory. To live through Jesus is to eat his flesh and drink his blood (John 6:51), in other words, Jesus was a meal provided by God, and taking in the life of Christ through faith, gives life. God’s love is life-giving. He brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt, and into the promised land, and His love is extended to those outside the tribes of Israel, even while we are yet sinners, to bring us out of slavery to ourselves. He is “a God of compassion and mercy, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness” (Psalm 86:15 NLT).
God’s love was shown in Jesus because He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Perhaps it may seem strange to connect the love of God with what is often presented in Christianity as a wrathful act – that all the sin of the world was placed on the shoulders of Christ resulting in a savage, humiliating death – God meting out punishment for all of humanity’s sin on one man – as though sin deserved a worse punishment than death. There is no doubt that the wrath of God does have a place in God’s purpose, but John tells us in his letters that it was the love of God that was made known in God sending Jesus Christ, not the wrath and vengeance of God.
The word “propitiation” is connected to the Mercy Seat, a slab of gold resting on the ark of the covenant, where in Old Testament times, God “met” with His people. Once per year, the high priest would enter the holy of holies on the day of atonement and sprinkle blood on the mercy seat. It was the place where the people of God could find mercy and grace (Hebrews 4:16).
The sending of Jesus was not a transaction, but an invitation. God’s love for the world was shown in Jesus by His provision of Jesus as a meeting place between humanity and God. His provision of a living example of His desire for all of humanity, and of what a life looks like in the image of God. His provision of a living example of how sin destroys good, and how good destroys sin demonstrated by the suffering and death Jesus experienced as the result of the jealousy, hatred, pride, and deceit in the Jewish leaders – who thought they were the righteous ones – and a lack of justice in the Romans, which brought them all to the point of crucifying an innocent man. However, Jesus, by obedience even to death itself in laying down his life for the whole world became a sacrifice pleasing to God, and he was raised to eternal life.
The Old Testament law provided a knowledge of sin, a demonstration of the cost of sin in the sacrifice of an animal, and could effect forgiveness, but it could not create a new heart – one that loved God. When sacrifice became simply a ritual to prove how righteous one was, or a dreary obligation, it no longer fulfilled its purpose. However, the life of Jesus brought the law to us in a personal way by demonstrating how the love of God and resulting obedience, could overcome sin – how the love of God could create a clean heart and a right spirit and reconciliation with God. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV)
God’s love shown in Jesus teaches us how to love one another
The love of God is a love that has a good purpose. His love is for everyone, but it is not forced on anyone. His love is gracious and life-giving. His love is forgiving, but does not remove the consequences of actions. And his love offers the opportunity to become something better.
It is by loving one another that God’s love, shown in Jesus, dwells in us and is brought to its intended goal.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV
Article by JS. Photo by Yoksel 🌿 Zok on Unsplash
