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What is Jesus’ love?

by | May 21, 2021 | Jesus, Questions

The cross: the ultimate act of Jesus' loveChristians have always put great emphasis on Jesus‘ love for us, and rightly so! The love of Christ is a central theme of the gospel and a driving force behind all of redemptive history. From their youngest years, children in many Christian families sing songs like “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tell me so.” And it does tell us just that. Yet, it is also important for us to let the Bible define the nature of this love. What does it mean that Jesus loves us? This is worth exploring further.

Love as self-sacrifice

Perhaps the clearest definition of Jesus’ love is located in Jesus’ own words to His disciples, where He said:

“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends,” (John 15:13).

This is the kind of love with which Christ loves His people. Not a feeling, a passion, or a sentiment, but rather an action. A true willingness to die for another which is realized in an act of total self-sacrifice for the other’s benefit. The book of Revelation praises Jesus for this very thing in words like:

“and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood,” (Revelation 1:5).

Our faith is a trust in this self-giving love of Christ, as Paul writes:

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me,” (Galatians 2:20).

And our ultimate hope is secure in the unchanging faithfulness of Jesus’ love:

“Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Romans 8:33-35).

The love that brought Jesus to the cross on our behalf is also held up as an example for us to imitate toward one another:

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma,” (Ephesians 5:1-2).

Even the imperfect love I have toward my wife ought to be modeled after and point toward Jesus’ love for His church as expressed in His atoning death on the cross:

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,” (Ephesians 5:25).

Yes, our lives ought to come under the control of this perfect, self-giving, redeeming love of Jesus Christ displayed in His torturous death on the cross for our sins:

“For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf,” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).

Jesus’ love, the greatest and most perfect of all loves, is His giving up His own life to rescue us from sin, death, and hell. This is how we, too, ought to love.

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren,” (1 John 3:16).

Best interest rather than happiness

Jesus’ love is not primarily concerned with our happiness, pleasure, or comfort. Rather, He is primarily concerned with our ultimate well-being, even if it hurts us here and now. That Jesus loves His people does not mean that He wants us to always be happy. It does mean that He gave His very life to pay our sin debt and to grant us forgiveness and eternal life. In the end, happiness will certainly follow from that, especially in the age to come. But faith, trust, and holiness are far more needful to us than pleasure, and often our Lord puts us through difficulties because they are in our best interest.

One great example of this is the story of Lazarus and his sisters. Lazarus had fallen ill and was on the verge of death. Jesus, of course, had the power to heal him. Jesus was in another location teaching at the time, and the sisters sent word for Him to come. We then read something almost shocking:

“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was,” (John 11:5-6).

Jesus loved them, so He stayed where He was for two more days. This delay meant Lazarus’ death, and yet Jesus’ love was the reason He delayed! Allowing Lazarus to die, allowing these sisters to bury their dead brother and weep over his grave for days, was actually an act of love! Jesus could have come immediately and healed Lazarus. He could have even restored the man’s health without coming, as He did with the centurion’s servant (Matthew 8:5-13) or the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter (Mark 7:24-30). Yet, Jesus chose to wait, willfully allowing Lazarus to endure all the suffering of sickness all the way through death and then for the sisters to endure the wailing grief of losing their brother and mourning that loss for days. And Jesus did this because He loved them. He knew that, in the end, it would actually be better for them to go through all of this and then see Christ’s great work on the other side of it. It wasn’t going to be happy. It wasn’t going to be pleasant. It was going to be agony, at least for a time. But it was what was best, for them and for others (even us reading about it right now). Jesus’ love always puts what is ultimately best for His people above what would merely make them happy.

Jesus’ love and rebuking sin

As we can perhaps already see, the love of Christ is not the tender, touchy-feely sentimentality we might sometimes imagine it to be. This is clearest when we consider the matter of our sin. Modern notions of love often assume that someone who loves us will accept us just as we are. This is certainly not Jesus’ conception of love. Jesus does not wink at our sin, nor does he redefine righteousness to include our favorite vices. It doesn’t matter how central to our current sense of self-identity we may think a certain sin to be, Jesus says that love demands rebuke and correction of that sin:

“Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent,” (Revelation 3:19).

We likewise see this in how Jesus loved the rich young ruler:

“Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me,'” (Mark 10:21)

Far from leaving the man as he was and merely “accepting” him, Jesus’ love for the man came in the form of a demand for quite radical change! The scriptures urge us to recognize this aspect of true love and to receive it as such:

“Let the righteous one strike me — it is an act of faithful love; let him rebuke me — it is oil for my head; let me not refuse it. Even now my prayer is against the evil acts of the wicked,” (Psalm 141:5).

Love does not turn a blind eye to sin in order to keep the peace:

“Love must be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good,” (Romans 12:9).

The best thing we can do for someone who is in sin, the only way to love them, is to urge them to turn from their wicked ways:

“My brothers, if any among you strays from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his life from death and cover a multitude of sins,” (James 5:19-20).

This is the way Jesus loves us, and likewise the way He commands us to love one another.

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