The words of a famous song composed by Burt Bacharach tell us, “What the world needs now is love sweet love, it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” As trite as those words may appear, no truer words could be spoken. The world had far too little love back in 1965 when the song was first sung, and the world has even less today. No matter where we look, there seems to be a lack of this precious commodity—with one extraordinarily important exception.
The Apostle John penned in a very few words the story of the greatest act of love in all the known history of the universe: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
But what is love?
The New Testament primarily uses two different Greek words that are translated into English as love. Agape or agapao (found in John 3:16 and 1 John 4:9) describes the kind of love God has for man, and that is also the kind of love we are commanded to show toward God and our neighbor (Matthew 22:37, 39). Phileo refers to tender affection or, as it is more popularly rendered, brotherly love.
A famous and classic example of the difference between the two types of love is found in Jesus’ question to Peter, “Do you love (agapao) Me?” Peter replies, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love (phileo) You” (John 21:15–17).
Though agape implies a deeper level of love than phileo, both words imply caring for the well-being of another.
John wrote in his first epistle that “God is love”—a statement he made twice in the same chapter (1 John 4:8, 16). And he stated in the most unambiguous terms that we, though human, must grow to love as God does: “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (v. 8) and “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (v. 16).
Many professing Christians today make the mistake of pitting love against obedience to God’s law, as if these were conflicting ideals. No doubt this is partly because people often view love simply as an emotion. Yet, although most people think of love as how they feel, the fact is that godly love requires action. “Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. It is never glad about injustice, but rejoices whenever truth wins out. If you love someone you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7, The Living Bible).
Note that the word used for love in this passage is agapao. While emotion may accompany some aspects of love, here we see that love is defined by the way we treat others and the way we react to others. Love requires action on the part of the one showing love. Love is not how we feel, but rather what we do to serve the other person. Love is never self-centered. Love is outgoing concern.
Love and the Law
John is often described as “the Apostle of love” because love—especially the love of God—is a key theme in his writings. Considering what he wrote, it may seem odd that so few readers recognize the connection John makes between God’s love and His law. For example, it is John who records Jesus’ explanation of how we show love to Him. On the night He was betrayed, Christ said: “If you love Me, keep My commandments.… He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me” (John 14:15, 21). John also recorded these comments of Jesus: “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (John 15:10).
Some professing Christians sincerely believe that Christ did away with His Father’s laws, including the Ten Commandments, and substituted a new set of laws that are sometimes referred to as “the Law of Christ.” What does this change amount to? When you boil down all the mental gymnastics, it is basically another way of saying: “Throw out the Ten Commandments, and resurrect nine of them.”
Few professing Christians are willing to argue that it is acceptable to have other gods before the true God, that it is fine to bow down to images and idols, and that it does not matter if you take God’s name and run it through the gutter, or dishonor your parents, kill, commit adultery, steal, lie or covet. Only if you insist on treating the Fourth Commandment like the other nine, and assert that we must observe the seventh-day Sabbath as instructed in Scripture, then you are accused of “legalism.”
Opponents of the seventh-day Sabbath reason that if you try to keep the Sabbath, you are trying to save yourself by your works. But do they honestly use the same logic regarding any of the other commandments? If you honor your parents, are you trying to save yourself by works? What if you do not commit murder? If you refrain from adultery or stealing, are you trying to save yourself apart from God’s grace? If one insists that keeping one commandment is an attempt at “salvation by works,” then how can one avoid applying the same reasoning to the other nine?
Very clearly in his writing, John disagrees with those who would try to reason around God’s law. In his first epistle, he writes plainly about the connection between law-keeping and love, and he shows that we cannot separate the two: “Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked” (1 John 2:3–6).
So, how did Jesus walk? What commandments did He keep? The New Bible Commentary Revised (Third Edition) makes these interesting comments about 1 John 2:3–6: “3 Next comes a test by which men can know whether, in spite of their failures, they are in right relationship with God, and walking in fellowship with Him. The test is whether they keep his commandments. It is impossible for men who really know God to be unaffected in their daily living by this knowledge.… For John the knowledge of God is not some mystic vision or intellectual insight. It is shown if we keep his commandments. Obedience is not a spectacular virtue, but it is at the basis of all true Christian service. 4 The man who claims to have this knowledge but disobeys his commandments, John says forthrightly, is a liar. He underlines this with the addition, the truth is not in him. 5 By contrast, love for God is perfected in the man who keeps his word. Word signifies God’s commandments in general.”
In two short verses, the Apostle of love defines the love of God, explains how we can know that we love the children of God, and refutes the fallacy that the law of God is burdensome. “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:2–3).
Has someone told you that God’s laws are burdensome? If so, which laws are such a burden? The ones against idolatry, murder and adultery? Or is it that one about remembering the day God sanctified and blessed at creation (Genesis 2:1–3)? If you have not already done so, please read our booklet, Which Day Is the Christian Sabbath? to learn more about this vital commandment. John makes no distinctions between the commandments when he declares: “And His commandments are not burdensome.” So, whom should we believe: the Apostle John or some modern cleric?
Love, Law and Sin
It is only in understanding sin and its relationship to God’s law that we can fully understand John 3:16. John wrote: “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4, KJV). Consider a powerful comment on this verse from The New Bible Commentary Revised: “The false teachers seem to have held that knowledge is all-important, and that conduct does not matter. So John insists that sin is evidence of wrong relationship to God. Sin, he tells us, is lawlessness, the Greek construction implying that the two are interchangeable. The law in question is, of course, the law of God. The essence of sin, then, is disregard for God’s law. It is the assertion of oneself against God’s revealed way for man.”
What do love, law, and sin have to do with John 3:16? Everything! Love is defined by the way we live, and the law defines how we are to live. Sin is the transgression of the law, and its transgression brings about a penalty: death. Christ paid that death penalty on our behalf. Now, consider: if Christ died to pay the death penalty for you—a penalty imposed for transgressing His law—could He apply that sacrifice to you if He knew you would continue disregarding that law? When we understand what sin is, this comment on 1 John 3:5–6 makes perfect sense: “5… Christ came to take away sins, which indicates complete hostility to evil. In Him there is no sin. 6 This has effects in the Christian, for no one who abides in Him sins. We must not water down statements like this. The Christian has no business with sin and he must never be complacent about it, even about occasional sin” (NBCR).
Our sins have cut us off from God, who told mankind from the very beginning that death would be the penalty for those who might choose to live according to the dictates of the heart (symbolized by partaking of a tree that represented both good and evil), apart from God’s holy and righteous law (Genesis 2:17). Romans 6:23 confirms this: “For the wages of sin is death.”
For a law to be effective, there must be a penalty for its violation. The penalty for breaking God’s laws is death. Sin also cuts us off from God: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2).
Christ’s sacrifice resolves both problems. First, He willingly gave His life in exchange for ours. He paid the penalty that we had earned through sin. “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). And, “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Christ paying the penalty for us is what we call justification. Second, through Christ’s sacrifice, the breach between man and God has been repaired. We are reconciled to God through Jesus’ sacrifice. “And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight” (Colossians 1:21–22; 1 Peter 3:18).
Saved by His Life
The words justification and recon-ciliation are widely misunderstood. Justification is the forgiveness of our sins, and is the result of our faith in Jesus’ having given His life in exchange for ours. One easy way to understand justification is to see how it is used in word processing. The margins on this page, for example are lined up on both the right and left sides. This is called full justification. In the theological sense, justification involves being “lined up” with God. Our sins took us out of line with Him, but we are brought back into line through faith in Christ’s shed blood.
Because our sins are forgiven, we are now reconciled with God. But what does this mean? The blood of Christ is essential for us, yet salvation is not just a past event. Salvation is past, present and future! You can read it for yourself in your own Bible: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Romans 5:8–10).
We shall be saved by His life! Consider again Colossians 1:21–22, but complete the thought with verse 23: “And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel.”
Yes, we must “continue in the faith.” We are reconciled to God by the death of His Son, by faith in His shed blood. We can never earn that reconciliation. It is God’s free gift, which we often describe as grace. Yet that reconciliation is not the final matter, as “much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Romans 5:10).
So, what does this mean? In what way are we saved by His life? Romans 6:1–7 shows us that through baptism we enter into a covenant with God, to put to death the old ways and begin living a new way of life, thinking like Christ (Philippians 2:4–5), and walking as He walked (1 John 2:6). The Apostle Paul explains how we are given help in this, through Christ dwelling in us by the power of the Holy Spirit: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, KJV).
Ask yourself, then, what kind of a life would Christ live in us? Would it be a life rejecting the very life He said He lived (John 15:10)? Or will Christ live in Christians today the way He lived on this earth, developing in them the same character, based on God’s law, which the Apostle Paul calls spiritual, holy, just, and good (Romans 7:12, 14, 16)?
God gave His Son on our behalf because He loved us. There is nothing we can do to earn that love or repay God for that precious sacrifice (1 Peter 1:17–19). Yet we should not despise that sacrifice by failing to take seriously the law that brought the penalty upon us in the first place. To do so would be like walking out of the courthouse, after being pardoned, and thinking you were now free to commit the same crime that put you in the courthouse!
John records these words of Jesus on the night in which He was betrayed: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:12–14). John 3:16 reminds us that God the Father loved us so much that He voluntarily gave His Son to be our Friend—to empty Himself of His divine privileges that we might escape death and have eternal life. Could there be any greater love in all the universe than what was expressed on that Passover Day nearly 2,000 years ago?