The word “love” is frequently and haphazardly thrown around today to justify all sorts of decisions and behaviors. As a recent example, Christian music artist Amy Grant defended her decision to host her niece’s same-sex wedding by stating, “Honestly, from a faith perspective, I do always say, ‘Jesus, you just narrowed it down to two things: Love God and love each other.’ I mean, hey—that’s pretty simple.” But is it that simple? Can we wave the word “love” like a magic wand to condone anything that our culture deems good and beautiful? It often seems that the definition of love that Grant and others are operating with is something like: “being with someone who makes me feel good,” or “wholeheartedly encouraging someone to pursue whatever makes them feel good.” Does this line up with the nature of love as we find it defined in God’s Word?
In this article, I want to briefly look at the concept of love as we find it depicted in just one book of the New Testament: the Gospel of John. The Fourth Gospel features one of the most famous verses about love in all the Bible: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Does John’s depiction of “love” differ at all from the understanding of love held by most people in our modern context? To answer this question, I’ll outline a few key teachings about God’s love in John’s Gospel, then I’ll do the same for the Fourth Gospel’s teachings on how Christians are to exercise love.
The Love of God in John’s Gospel
For the sake of space, here are a few brief reflections on the love of God in John.
1. God manifests his love in different ways.
In John’s Gospel, we see at least three distinct forms of God’s love on display. First, we see the intra-Trinitarian love between the Father, Son, and (implicitly) Holy Spirit (John 3:35; 5:20; 15:9–10; 17:24, 26). Second, we see God’s love towards humanity in general, offering salvation in Christ to the world (John 3:16; cf. 1:9–11; 20:21–23). Third, we see God’s love for his elect people whom he has chosen and drawn to himself (John 6:37–39, 44; 10:1–30; 13:1; 15:9, 13; 17:6–26). This should cause us to take care in how we speak of God’s love and avoid talking about it in overly simplistic terms. As J. I. Packer put it, “God loves all in some ways . . . and some in all ways.”[1]
1. J. I. Packer, “The Love of God: Universal and Particular,” in Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware, eds., Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 283.
2. God’s love does not negate his wrath.
While John elsewhere writes that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), he also makes clear that those who “die in [their] sins” (John 8:21, 24) are “condemned already” (3:18) and will receive “the wrath of God” (3:36) as a result of his final judgment (5:28–29). God is holy, and as such, he must finally bring perfect judgment to bear against the wickedness and injustice that perverts his creation. The Fourth Gospel holds out no hope of final salvation to those who reject God’s offer in Christ and instead continue to love “the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (3:19).
3. God’s love for humanity is a saving love.
Whether speaking of God’s genuine invitation to all humanity to believe in Christ or of God’s regenerative work in the hearts of his elect (cf. John 3:3–8), John makes clear that one of the goals of God’s love is salvation from sin. Jesus is declared to be “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29). In his love, God sent his Son into the world to die for our sins “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (3:16), The love of God is not a mere dismissal of sin, as if God simply chooses to look the other way or accepts people’s rebellious hearts as being just fine. Instead, God’s love is manifested in the price he paid to redeem us from sin. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (15:13).
Christian Love in John’s Gospel
In addition to demonstrating and declaring God’s love, John’s Gospel also instructs disciples how to love others in no less than five ways.
1. Jesus is our ultimate example of love.
After Jesus lovingly washed his disciples’ feet (including those of Judas, whom Jesus knew would betray him; cf. John 13:11), which in turn foreshadowed his sacrificial death on their behalf (13:6–10), he told his disciples that he was providing an example for them to follow (13:14–15). Later in the same chapter, Jesus tells them that he is issuing a “new commandment,” namely, “that you love one another” (v. 34). However, since the Mosaic Law clearly commands the people of God to love their neighbor (Lev. 19:18; cf. Matt. 22:34–40; Luke 10:25–28), in what sense is Jesus’s command really new? Jesus himself clarifies in the second half of the verse: “just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (cf. 15:12, emphasis mine). In Jesus, we have the supreme example of love that both fulfills and exceeds the standard of love in the Old Testament. Our understanding of love, then, is not to be based on our culture’s definition and use of the term, nor on our own whims and passions, but rather on the teaching and example of Jesus himself.
2. Love cannot be divorced from truth.
In his trial before Pilate, Jesus told the Roman governor that the purpose of his mission in the world was “to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). In fact, Jesus famously claimed to be “the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6). In line with this, Christ’s followers are expected to worship God “in spirit and truth” (4:23-24). Promoting falsehoods or endorsing sinful lifestyles, then, is not loving. Instead, true love seeks to promote the truth that sets people free (8:32).
3. Love entails obedience to Christ.
In John 14, Jesus tells his disciples,
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. . . . Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. . . . If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (John 14:15, 21, 23)
The inverse is also true: “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words” (v. 24a). Jesus goes on to state in the following chapter: “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” (15:10). It is the height of hypocrisy, therefore, to claim to truly love Christ while living in rebellion against his good commands.
4. Love is practiced in community with other believers.
Jesus makes clear that his disciples are to apply his teachings and example of love to “one another” (John 13:14; 34–35; 15:12–17). He explicitly prays for unity among his disciples in order “that they may be one, even as we [i.e., the Father and the Son] are one” (John 17:11; cf. vv. 20–23). As he emphasized to Peter, love for Christ is demonstrated through caring for the needs of his sheep (21:15–17).[2] Rather than a random assortment of individuals each living their Christian life in isolation from the others, Jesus envisions a thriving church community characterized by Christ-like sacrificial love for one another.
2. Some see significance in the fact that in John 21:15-17, Jesus alternates between two different Greek words for “love.” However, this is likely a stylistic choice, as the two terms are used as synonyms throughout John’s Gospel. See D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 676–77.
5. Love seeks the salvation of those outside the faith community.
Jesus draws a parallel between his own mission in the world and that of his disciples: he “sends” them as he was “sent” (John 17:18; 20:21). As those who are “in” the world but not “of” the world (17:6–19), believers are sent into a lost world shrouded in darkness to offer the salvation that can only be found in the person and work of Christ. In fact, the main purpose of John’s Gospel is that the readers “may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (20:31). As those who have experienced the saving love of Christ, we cannot be content with simply watching our unbelieving neighbors continue down their path to hell. Instead, reflecting the love of our heavenly Father, we look for opportunities to share the gospel, exhorting them to repent and believe in Christ so that they will “not perish but have eternal life” (3:16).
Conclusion
Is love as “simple” as Grant and others have painted it? The answer the Gospel of John gives us is “not at all.” Rather than encouraging two people to rebel against their Creator’s good design—and, consequently, bringing harm on themselves and incurring God’s holy wrath against them—love takes the form of refusing to participate in such a celebration. Love also may take the form of seeking opportunities to show the couple kindness, extend friendship to them, and point them to the forgiveness and salvation that God offers them in the gospel. Like the love of Jesus, this kind of love seeks the good of the beloved without endorsing what is false and sinful, even at the cost of being disliked and rejected by others for doing so—including, perhaps, even the couple themselves.
Today, our culture’s understanding of love is far from the biblical pattern—it is shallow, simplistic, self-serving, individualistic, emotionally-driven, and affirming of anyone’s life choices so long as those choices pursue individual happiness. By contrast, the Gospel of John’s depiction of love is profound, multifaceted, self-sacrificial, active in Christian community, and characterized by truth, holiness, and the pursuit of other people’s ultimate good—reconciliation with God and everlasting life (cf. John 17:2–3). Because of these conflicting views of love, Christians who seek to truly love their believing and unbelieving neighbors should expect to receive scorn from the world rather than praise. “If the world hates you,” Jesus said, “know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18–19; cf. 16:33; 17:14). However, when believers choose to do the hard work of sacrificially loving others rather than the easier path of simply going with the flow of today’s cultural currents, our Lord assures us that he will use our collective witness to draw lost souls to himself (John 13:35; 17:20–23) so they too can experience the perfect, never-ending love of Christ.
