Characteristics of Divine Love; 1 John 3:16-17

1 John 3:16 ^NASB “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” He is saying that we know what love is because Jesus Christ as the creator is the personification of love and we can only know what love is if we look at who He is and what He did at the cross. Any discussion of love that doesn’t start there is just some sort of abstract human opinion of love but it is not understanding what it is as defined by the creator who has the right to define and determine what everything is. So we know what love is because of the concrete manifestation of it at the cross; we know what righteousness is because of the concrete manifestation of that in the life of Christ as he walked on the earth.

But what about Old Testament believers? They had their manifestations as well. For example, in the garden of Eden there was the pre-incarnate Son of God coming and spending time with Adam and the woman before the fall. He taught and instructed them every day. He was instructing them on the nature of reality. So as they spent time with the Lord Jesus Christ in His pre-incarnate state they learned about the character of God in a concrete manifestation of God. God is love because He is, not because of some abstract definition of love. He is righteous because that is who he is at the very core of His character, not because He fits some external pattern or standard outside of Himself. Therefore we know love only by looking at the cross; we know righteousness only by looking at the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Eight observations on John 13:34, 35

1. The command to love has to do with something objective. Love here is not subjective, not something based upon our feelings or emotions, on having a certain kind of attraction to the object of love. Particularly this is focusing not on people who are attractive but people who are obnoxious. Cf. Romans 5:8: “… while we were yet sinners.”

2. The identifying characteristic of a believer, and advancing believer, a maturing believer, is not some external symbol.

3. This love is not to be confused with emotion, sentimentality or any other kinds of feeling. In fact, at the time you are exercising this kind of love your emotions may be going 180 degrees opposite. Nevertheless, because of the objectivity that doctrine gives you, you know that you are going to behave toward them in the same way that God behaved because you understand that it flows from His integrity and not your integrity. It isn’t some kind of concept of superficial friendliness.

4. This love is based on character, on integrity. It is based on character that is developed from walking by the Holy Spirit, taking on the Word of God, applying it, and over time God the Holy Spirit is the one who produces this in us.

5. It challenges unbelievers. When unbelievers see this they know what it is, that it is different; they know that they have never seen anything like it. That is what Jesus is saying here. It is a challenge to unbeliever because unbelievers can’t imitate this. It is something that is genuine, something that comes bearing the very testimony of God because it is produced by God.

6. John 13:35 presupposes that the world can and will know this, and that they can identify it. “By this all men will know …” The question then: What comes first, doctrine or love? With the unbeliever emotional love comes first. Ultimately that is all they can have, even though there may be areas of love based on character. When it gets to the most difficult situations all the unbeliever can ever produce is some sort of finite, fallible love. For the believer doctrine comes first, and this kind of love is an outgrowth of the doctrine that has been assimilated into the soul.

7. This is the greatest apologetic or defence for our faith.

8. This is a challenge to the arrogant doctrinal believer who thinks somehow that Christianity is just nothing more than what you know and the doctrine that you have accumulated. While it is true that you can’t get to this kind of love without knowledge, knowledge without love is meaningless.

God initiated love in eternity past; man did not initiate it. It is aggressive; it asserts itself in confidence and boldness. That does not mean it always expresses itself the same way. It is not trying to curry favour or generate approbation. It is humble, i.e. it is under authority. Humility is strength under the control of divine authority. It is intense, there is a zealous determination to achieve the goal that God has set before us. It is steadfast and loyal—not loyal to the object of love, not loyal to one’s self, but loyal to the character of God. There is a dedication there. At some level there is the recognition that this is our task, a command given us as believers, and we need to fulfil the mandate. And there is a level of devotion, that we are going to give or apply our time, our attention, our resources to a particular activity. All of that is inherent in the concept of love.

Now we are going to get a practical application here. John is going to take the concept of divine love as exemplified at the cross and apply it to us. 1 John 3:17 ^NASB “But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” This begins with the relative pronoun “whoever” which includes any believer, and “has,” the present active subjunctive of echo [e)xw] meaning whoever might have. It is potential: maybe you have it, maybe you don’t. The object of the verb is “the world’s goods.” In the Greek that is ton bion tou kosmou, i.e. the life necessities of the world. It refers to the means or the manner of life, the means to sustain life. So what this says is: “Whoever might possess the means to maintain life.” It is not “the world’s goods, any kind of material possession. Then, “and sees his brother in need.” There are two verbs here that are compounds and we have to understand that it is “whoever has and sees.” Now some folks just don’t have, and there is a principle here that you can’t give what you don’t have. But whatever you have positively—and that may not be money; it may be time, or even your own spiritual gifts to support the local church ministry. Giving is not something that is just related to finances. “His brother” is another believer, “in need.” That is, if there is some genuine, legitimate need that this other believer has. “… and closes his heart against him” is a terrible translation. It is not “heart” here, it is the Greek word splanchnon [spagxnon] which means the bowels or the kidneys, and it is used in the Old Testament as a gut feeling, a concrete representation of emotion, both good and bad. The idea in our passage is compassion. Compassion is the application of grace. Compassion has nothing to do with feeling sorry for someone, it has to do with understanding their need, what they are going through, and being able to help them or encourage them in the midst of a difficult circumstance. It has an objective base in the grace of God and not in subjective emotion.

We have to understand the difference between genuine compassion and pseudo compassion. Pseudo compassion tries to motivate by emotion, by guilt, always focusing on trying to give people money, by feeling sorry for people and how terrible they have it. We don’t have that example at all in the Scriptures. Jesus had compassion but He didn’t run around healing everybody, He didn’t solve everybody’s poverty problem or physical problem, their unemployment problem. But this is about a legitimate problem where we might have the means to help in that situation and you don’t. It says, “and closes his heart [compassion] against him.” The verb here is kleio [kleiw] which means to shut up, lock away, or to erect a barrier against. This is to refuse to admit any responsibility in taking care of this. The question is: “how does the love of God”—a subjective genitive meaning God’s love, not love for God but the love from God—“abide in him?” The word “abide” is meno [menw] which means fellowship here. We need to remember that fellowship is a two-way street. In this case the love for man is not abiding. The point is that if we are not exercising impersonal love in terms of this level of compassion and meeting legitimate needs that other people have, then that is not a demonstration of a believer advancing to maturity, a believer who is in fellowship with God. In fact, it is an indication that he is not in fellowship and then is not advancing in maturity. The believer who is in fellowship and walking by the Holy Spirit is going to be applying this principle in their daily life. It is a principle of grace. Grace means that we are generous, not because we know who the other person is but because of who we are. We have a generous spirit based upon our understanding of God.

There is a priority here. First of all, the local church, including missionaries. Then there is a second tier of giving and that includes charities, hospitals, medical research, and other legitimate non-profit organizations. Then there is a third level of giving and that relates to individuals, friends, family, and those who are in legitimate financial need. We are not to shut our compassion off from them; if God has given us the means we are to help them.