Do you know what love is? Think you know enough? Or maybe there are blind spots in your knowledge—blank areas on the roadmap of love you haven’t explored yet. Let’s journey into 1 John 3 to fill in that map more clearly.
From 1 John 3:16, we can come to know what love is—and on top of that, we can know this love in the intended sequence. Here’s the verse:
By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
Here we see that Jesus laid down his life. I believe this refers to two parts. First, Jesus laid down his life daily while he was on earth. He sacrificed his time, prayed for people, healed the sick, had compassion on the multitudes, taught with authority, and did many more things. He wasn’t obligated to do these things. Daily he chose to give up his life, his time, and his energy in acts of love for us. Second, this refers to his willing death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.
Based on this verse, there are five steps in the sequence by which we come to know love. The order matters just like cause-and-effect. Imagine telling your child you will start loving them once they love you first. This is wrong. Children need their parents to love them first because it is difficult for children to discover what love is—let alone how to love others—without the love of the parents first shown.
1: We can know that love exists and what it is.
“By this we know love.” We can’t give something to others that we don’t first have ourselves. And more foundationally, it’s possible to have something without knowing what it is or why it matters. Therefore, the first step in our knowledge of love is to know that love exists, even if we feel it’s out there somewhere and not in our possession. Among other things, this verse exclaims, “Love really does exist!” We can’t know love if it doesn’t exist. The created world from God has a place for love that makes sense. It is much easier to explain love in the Christian worldview than in secular, evolutionary perspectives that explain love using scientific terms. Some may believe God doesn’t exist. But even rarer is the individual who believes love doesn’t exist.
Now that we’ve affirmed love exists, what is it? This passage shows us the preceding example of Christ laying down his life for us in acts of love. The blank areas on the roadmap are beginning to fill in. Whether love is a few things or many things, we can know this one thing: it is sacrificial. If “laid down his life” isn’t sacrificial, nothing is.
As the other facets of this love come into focus, this is where love as God’s Word has defined it must win the day. We look to God’s Word to guide us into all truth and form our hearts around the good and the true. Thankfully, we are only just beginning the sequence in our knowledge of love.
2: We can know that God truly loves us first.
So far from this passage we know that love exists, and we have some idea of what it is. But don’t miss the fact that God truly loves us. “…because he laid down his life for us.” He committed an act of love by his sacrifice. This demonstrates overwhelmingly that he truly does love us. Love exists, it is sacrificial, God knows about this, and he has chosen to sacrifice for us. Therefore, God truly loves us.
Let’s think on this order. God’s love for us always precedes our love for him and others, both in terms of chronology and weight. Because God existed before us (and because God is love, as 1 John 4:7 states), God was the first one to know love and the first one to show it. He is the parent, and we are the children.
Three acts of love demonstrate this chronology. The first is the act of creation. God made the world in love, and without his initial act, we wouldn’t even exist. Next, the death of Jesus on the cross—the focus of 1 John 3:16—precedes all Christian acts of love. Finally, the rapture of the church and resurrection of believers to eternal life precedes all future knowledge and acts of love in heaven. This last act has not happened yet but will follow the same pattern as the acts of love already shown.
The weight of God’s love in 1 John 3:16 comes from being an example already shown. God’s act of love on the cross was the most important act of love, as it atoned for the sins of the world and made salvation possible for those who believe in him. John 15:13 states, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus’ death on the cross precedes our own deaths for the brothers. Consider how much less we would be motivated to love others if we weren’t intimately aware of God’s own love for us.
3: We can know it is possible for us to receive God’s love.
We know love exists, and we know God has loved us. But keep in mind we can know that God loves us without believing we can receive it. This is its own important step. We can see a package left outside our door and know that a friend sent it to us, but we must believe it’s possible to receive this love and take the package into our house. Some people believe they can’t receive love because of their past sins and mistakes, or perhaps because their own human parents didn’t love them sufficiently. First John 3:16 says God’s love is “for us” meaning God’s love is never un-receivable! In fact, the Gospel emphasizes that even though our sins make us unlovable and God-hating, God still loved us anyway. Our sin doesn’t disqualify us from receiving God’s love simply because God loved us for the very reason that we are sinners!
Don’t think you can’t receive God’s love. You can, and you must receive it in order to continue in the sequence of your knowledge of love.
4: We can know it’s possible for us to love others, too.
We’ve spent our time observing God’s act of love for us. This is what we should do as children. However, God has shown us all this for a reason—not just that we will receive it, but that we will allow it to change us in what we do. The chief way we demonstrate this is first to realize that we can love similarly. This step matters because if we don’t know it’s possible for us to love, we will miss out on the last half of 1 John 3:16 and break God’s intended sequence of love.
But remember too that it’s only because we have received God’s act of love through belief in the Gospel that we can know it’s possible for us to love others, too. Loving requires a previous example. If the apostle John didn’t intend for us to love others too, he would have said something like, “And we ought to only think of love in the abstract and just move on.” But he says, “And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”
As children grow up and see more and more examples of love from their parents, it becomes easier for them to consider loving others. They realize the parent intends for them to mature and someday become something like what the parent is now.
Put another way, this passage shows us we aren’t unable to love. We have been given the capability to love. This step declares, “You can love others, too!” We are qualified and given the goal of loving. The great mission of loving God and loving others now comes into view. We can give out the very thing we have received. Luckily, it isn’t finite and there is always enough of it to go around.
5: We can know how to love others.
Ever been told that you need to do something, but not how? “You need to get a job.” You respond, “Great. But how do I do that?” John gives us the instructions we need—not only the “what” of loving God and loving others but also the “how.” And this marks the last step in the sequence. Our knowledge of love culminates in how we show it to others. It demonstrates that we know love. After all, we can’t give what we don’t have. And we can’t express to others what we don’t truly understand. How would you be able to write an essay on the U.S. Constitution if you didn’t know it existed, studied it, understood it, and discussed it with others? God’s love is much more magnificent than the Constitution, but you can’t willingly give what you don’t have and what you don’t know.
Jesus’ death shows us how we can love others. Just like Jesus laid down his life in terms of daily sacrifices and his death, we can do the same. I don’t believe God will call most of us to give up our physical lives for other believers via death. Therefore, when John says, “We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers,” he is probably referring to daily sacrifices and not death. Verse 17 describes giving the world’s goods to our brothers. How can we do this if we are physically dead? John goes on in verse 18 to say we should love not “in word only, or with the tongue only, but in deed and truth.”
Knowledge of love filled in
1 John 4:7 demonstrates the sequence of knowing love we have just completed. “Beloved, let’s love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God.” See the logical sequence here?
Breaking this sequence doesn’t work. If we try to love others without knowing and receiving God’s love first shown to us, it will be in our own strength, it will be motivated by desire for self, and it will ultimately fail. If we don’t believe we can receive God’s love, we malign God himself and spurn his act of love; he loved us specifically because of our sin and because we were unlovable by fellow humans as a result. If we receive God’s love and don’t act on it toward our brothers, we aren’t properly stewarding the knowledge of love God has given us. Of this person John asks, “How does God’s love remain in him?”
All these examples demonstrate the danger of acting out of sequence in following 1 John 3:16 to its conclusion. This verse shows us the proper order of knowing God’s love: knowing that it exists and what it is, that God shows this love, that we can receive it, that we can also give it back out, and how to do so. Let’s worship God and thank him for showing love for us first as an example—and not only an example, but the greatest example of all time. As a bonus, God continues to show his love to us every day by sustaining us and providing for us. We get to show love to our brothers and sisters in imitation. Pretty cool stuff!