1 John 4:10, “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.”
Everyone wants “love” to be on their side of the argument. Everyone wants to appeal to the “loving thing” to do, or to say that “love” would dictate this or that. And this a reasonable thing to desire! Because of God’s grace to all of His creatures, even amidst the blinding evil and tortured perversions of life under the fall, “love” remains something universally affirmed and recognized as an intrinsic good. Of course we want to be on the side of “love.”
But this brings us to the absolutely critical point: what is love? How is it defined? Most people would say that true, deep, real love is inherently selfless…most people would probably–if they thought about it–say something along the lines of:
“love is seeking the best for someone else, even at great cost to yourself.”
And I think that is a good–biblically defensible–definition. However, the crucial term–“best”–remains undefined and so this particular definition of love simply becomes a servant to a person’s understanding of “the best,” aka, to a person’s god. Thus, in a culture–like ours in 21st century America–where personal autonomy in all spheres is revered as lord and god, “love” becomes the servant of the god “Ego” or “Self,” and the “loving thing to do” is seek our own and others maximal personal freedom in every conceivable dimension of existence.
This is not biblical love. Not because the base definition is wrong, but because the “best” that is sought, the “god” that this love manifests is not YHWH, it is not the One True God, but instead is a creaturely imposter (Rom.1:22-23).
What then is Love? For that answer, we need to look to the white-hot center and living spring of love itself, and where do we find this? Well, we find it in the eternal fellowship of love within the Trinity. But how do we see into that supreme holy of holies? By looking to its incarnate manifestation at the cross of Jesus Christ (John 15:9, Hebrews 9:14).
And when we look to the cross, how is love defined for us? I think there are two elements that we need to consider in order to come to a definition. First, the act of love at the cross, and second the goal of love at the cross.
The ACT of love at the cross
1 John 4:10 explains this to us. This topic, of course, deserves—and has received—volumes of thought and will enthrall regenerate minds for the endless ages of eternity, so I’m not going to do it justice in this brief entry. However, we can say from 1 John 4:10 that the act of love at the cross entails both the sin-bearing and the wrath-absorbing death of God the Son on the cross. I get both the terms “sin-bearing” and “wrath-absorbing” from the word translated “propitiation” which might also be translated as a “wrath-absorbing sacrifice.”
In other words, God shows His love for us in that He sends His Son both to bear (indeed, become, 2 Corinthians 5:21) our sins and then—in our place—to exhaust the full measure of wrath due to those sins. This means that a true definition of love must affirm both the monstrosity of sin and the reality of wrath, since God Himself places these two factors at the core of His revelation of love to us. Love says “sin is horrific” because it becomes sin in our place and is marred beyond recognition under its effects. And love says “wrath is real” because the supreme act of love is for the Son of God to endure, encompass, and exhaust the full extent of damnation within Himself in His sacrificial death on the cross.
If our definition of love leads us to simply accept or tolerate sin—as defined in scripture—as though it were not sin, or if it causes us to diminish or deny the wrath of God, then we are not getting our definition from Calvary.
But secondly, lets consider the GOAL of love at the cross.
What does the love of God seek for the beloved? Why does Jesus become our sin and drink our hell? The initial definition of love provided above said that we ought to give ourselves for the other person’s “best.” So, another way of asking the question “What does the love of God seek for the beloved,” is to ask, “What does God think is best?” Do we have an answer? Yes, I think we can see it—among other places—by reading John 3:16 and 17:3 in light of one another:
“For this is how God loved the world, that He gave His only son so that, whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” – John 17:3
What we see in John 3:16 is that the goal of God’s love—the best that He seeks for His beloved ones—is eternal life. But, lest we start thinking eternal life means “generic heaven,” John 17:3 reminds us that eternal life is a intimate, knowing-and-loving fellowship (entailed in the word “know”) with the living God as He is revealed to us in the person of His Son (John 1:18, 12:44-45, 14:9), by—I would add—the ministry of the Spirit (John 16:14).
So, what is the “best” that God’s love seeks for the beloved? It is that they might know and love Him as He is revealed in His Son who dies and rises again, by His Spirit. Or, in brief, God’s love causes the beloved to know and love God. The “best,” then, is God.
But, love does not seek to give others a generic God, it does not validate our subjective conception of God. Rather, the God whom love seeks to communicate to the beloved is solely and precisely the God who is revealed in the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. This God—the true God, the God whom love seeks to communicate to the beloved—is the God who is most perfectly manifest to us in the sin-bearing, wrath-absorbing death of the Son viewed in light of His resurrected life. And so, not only does True Love refuse to dismiss sin or diminish wrath, it holds that the sin as horrible and wrath as damning are both integral to love since they are both integral to the revelation of the God who is Love, the God who reveals Himself to us by becoming that horrific sin and by bearing that damning wrath to the full in our place.
And so—to draw to a conclusion what is too short for a discussion of these topics, and too long for a Patreon message—I would submit a definition of love that goes like this:
Love gives itself so that the beloved might know and love the God who bears the damning weight of our sins and swallows the consuming hell of holy wrath in our place, as the supreme revelation of Himself to us.
Or, more simply,
Love gives itself so that the beloved might love the God who gives Himself.
