As Christians we know that the greatest responsibility and opportunity we have in the lives we are given is to love God and our fellow human beings (Matthew 22:37-39). But none of us is perfect in this regard; so how do we grow in love for God and others? 

The apostle John gives us an answer to this important question. In his letters, John talks extensively about love, mentioning the concept no fewer than 34 times, including his well-known summary statements such as “…God is love” (1 John 4:8). But John’s teaching on love is not as general as it might sometimes appear. 

In his first epistle, the apostle talks about an easily overlooked aspect of the two directions or dimensions of love – love of God and love of people – that must both be present in our lives. In doing so, John answers the question of “How do we increase our love for God and man?” by answering a slightly different one: “How do we know if we love God and others?”  He gives us the answer first in terms of whether we truly love God or not.  Notice what he tells us:

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister” (1 John 4:20-21).

The proof of our love for God, John says, is that we love others (see also Hebrews 6:10 “the love you demonstrated for his name by serving the saints” CSB).  In the next chapter of his letter, John repeats this fact:  “... everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him” (1 John 5:1).  But the apostle then reverses the direction of this understanding:

“This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:2-3).

The proof of our love for others, John tells us here, is that we love God and are obedient to him. Just as it is not possible to truly love God without loving his children (1 John 5:1), it is also impossible to truly love God’s children without loving him (1 John 5:2). Together, these verses show the two directions that love must work in.  In the first case, our love and obedience to God involves – and is proved by – our love of our brothers and sisters. In the second case, we are told that our love for our brothers and sisters is based on – and proved by – our love and obedience to God.

Simple as it may sound, this two-way definition can be tremendously helpful to us as Christians.  We can see what John says as both admonition and encouragement.  First, there is clear admonition for all of us in the understanding that we cannot claim to love God if we cannot bring ourselves to love all people, and conversely, that we cannot pretend we truly love people if we do not deeply love God.  Love of one without love of the other is not genuine love.

But the encouraging side of this equation relates to our original question – “How can we grow in love of God and others?”  What John shows us indicates we can increase our love of God by loving people more, and if we want to increase our love of others, we can do that through actively developing our love of God.  It may seem counterintuitive, but it is a truth that solidly underlies much of what John tells us.

Why is this? The reason is that unless God is the center of our life – what we love above all else –  we will never  truly love others as much as ourselves, because without God at the center of our lives, we will love ourselves above all else – we will primarily be “lovers of ourselves” (2 Timothy 3:2).  Conversely, if we do not love others as much as ourselves, we are not fulfilling God’s command and our love of him will always be limited.

What John shows us is that as we grow in our love for God, our love for others will naturally increase at the same time.  The closer we grow to God, the more he changes the way we think about ourselves – and others – and the more we begin to love others.  As we grow to love the children of God more, it is a direct reaction that we begin to be less self-centered and our love for God naturally increases as a result.

John’s words on the two directions of love may indeed seem counterintuitive at first, yet they are profoundly true in showing us how we can know and grow our love for God and others.

​“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water,     that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:7-8 ESV).

A plant can only grow upward to the extent that its roots grow downward and are established. To a large extent, as Jesus showed in his parable of the sower and the seed, that will depend on the quality of soil the seeds are placed in (Matthew 13:3-8). If the soil is too rocky (vs. 5-6) or already covered with competing weeds (vs. 7), the seed won’t be able to take root or survive.  But even in good soil (vs. 8), plant growth (“a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown” vs.8b) depends on how far the roots can extend.  That  isn’t referring to  the “hard ground” that seeds cannot take root in at all, but to situations where plants get started, and then run into layers of rock or hard clay. If the roots cannot spread far and wide in every direction, the plant will inevitably be stunted in its growth.

Remembering these basic facts of plant growth help us to better understand the words of the apostle Paul:  “… I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:17-18).

Paul tells us two things here – first of all, what the good “ground” is in which we must be planted. Paul says we have to be rooted in love, but it is clear from what he goes on to say that it is not our own love. The love is instead “the love of Christ” (vs. 18).  Understanding this is a fundamental part of understanding Christian growth.  If we try to grow in the ground of our own human love we will find it is shallow soil indeed. Instead, Paul shows it is the love that God gives that provides deep enough “ground” for real spiritual growth.  How deep is that?  Paul tells us clearly in saying that we need to grasp “how wide and long and high and deep” God’s love is.  In other words, Paul makes it clear that the extent of that ground in which we are to grow – the space in which our “roots” can expand – is virtually infinite.

It’s a principle that Paul stressed more than once. We see it again in his letter to the Colossians:  “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness”  (Colossians 2:6-7).   Here, we see not only the same analogy of Christian growth like a rooted and growing tree, but also Paul’s stress on the fact that it is as we live our lives in Christ that the rooting and growth occurs.

It’s interesting to compare these words of Paul with the earlier words of the prophet Jeremiah, quoted above – which were doubtless based on the words of David in Psalm 1:3.  All three biblical writers use the same analogy of the rooted tree, but all use it differently. David speaks of being rooted in the law of God (Psalm 1:3), Jeremiah speaks of being rooted in trust or faith in God (Jeremiah 17:7), and Paul speaks of being rooted in the love of Christ.  All are true, yet perhaps we also see a clear growth of understanding based on progressive revelation.  We might say that all three “grounds” provide deep soil for spiritual rooting and growth, but the best ground for the deepest growth is, of course, in God’s love.

In his book The Cost of Discipleship, the theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously distinguishes between what he called “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” While Bonhoeffer defined cheap grace as requiring nothing from us and being ultimately meaningless, he characterized costly grace, on the other hand, as something that takes something from us, something that hurts, something that costs:  “the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.”

Exactly the same can be said of Christian love.  Love that does not cost us anything ultimately accomplishes little and has little depth.  It is so often only costly love that makes a real difference in the lives of others. There is a wonderful example of this principle in the Gospel of Luke – though it is one that we often read over – in the story of Zacchaeus the tax collector:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through.  A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.  He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham (Luke 19:1-9).

By way of back-story to this account, Luke tells us that as Jesus approached Jericho he healed a blind man at which the people praised God (Luke 18:35-42).  As he entered Jericho then, Jesus was a hero – beloved of the city’s inhabitants who had gone out to meet him as he approached.  But in Chapter 19 Luke tells us that Jesus was only passing through the town and that he declined to stay overnight. This doubtless disappointed many citizens, especially as Middle Eastern culture meant that as a teacher of God’s word (to say nothing of the fact that he was regarded as a famous prophet who healed by the power of God), Jesus doubtless would have been offered hospitality and would normally have accepted it. 

But as Jesus left Jericho, a strange scene unfolds.  Zacchaeus, the chief regional tax collector for the Roman occupation, desired to see Jesus and so he ran down the road a little way and climbed up a sycamore tree to get a better view.  The fact that it is mentioned that it was a sycamore tree is interesting as those trees usually have a profuse covering of large leaves and it is very possible that Zacchaeus chose the tree as one from which he could see Jesus as he passed by, but not be seen by crowds that thronged around the Teacher.

As the local tax collector and thus a “collaborator” in the eyes of many, Zacchaeus may well have been the most disliked individual in the city.  Tax collectors often charged far more than the actual Roman tax rates and pocketed the extra cash – as Luke tells us was true in this case (Luke 19:8). So positioning himself in the leafy tree might well have been a conscious and prudent decision on the part of Zacchaeus.  A hated tax collector caught in the swirl of a large crowd could easily come to harm.

Yet Luke tells us that when Jesus drew near to where the collaborator was, he called out and not only greeted the man, but openly stated that he would like to spend the night in his home.  We have to concentrate on this situation to really understand the effect of this behavior on the inhabitants of Jericho.  Not only had the teacher declined the hospitality of "decent" citizens, but now, after indicating he would not stay the night, he changed his mind in order to stay in the home of the most hated man in town. Not only was Zacchaeus hated, but as a tax collector he was “unclean” and anyone who entered his home, ate there, or stayed the night, would automatically also be made unclean.

The reaction of the crowd as recorded by Luke is understandable in these circumstances: “All the people saw this and began to mutter, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner’” (Luke 19:7).  Because of his reaching out to Zacchaeus in love Jesus incurred the total displeasure of not just a few, but of “All the people.” The famous prophet and teacher, the beloved healer of one of their own citizens, instantly became an object of local displeasure and perhaps even anger and scorn.

Nevertheless, as Luke shows, the love that Jesus extended to the hated individual was repaid in the man’s true and thorough repentance and his promise to more than restore all of the excess money he had taken from his neighbors (Luke 19:8).  We must remember that Zacchaeus already knew the law of Moses, already knew that it was wrong to cheat and steal.  It was not hearing an exposition of the law that changed the tax collector, but seeing the demonstration of love that Jesus made to him.  Zacchaeus was moved and transformed by that love, but it was not free.  Jesus immediately paid a price for the expression of his love, but he did so knowing full well that the cost of real love is often high.  

In 1 Corinthians 13 the apostle Paul famously defines love for us – he tells us a number of things that love is, and he also tells us a number of things that love is not. In fact, he tells us sixteen things about love and exactly half of them (bolded below) tell us what love is, and half (italicized below) tell us what love is not.  Take a look at his list:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails …” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, emphases added).

Now why did Paul do this?  Why did he not simply list all the good things that love is rather than listing positive and negative aspects of what love is and is not?  Some have guessed that Paul was applying his description of love to the Corinthian church to which his letter was sent –  to what the Christians there were getting right and what they were not.  But 1 Corinthians 13 clearly has wider application that just any one church group, and the previous chapter shows that Paul has the whole church in mind as the context of what he is saying (1 Corinthians 12:27-31).

So what was Paul’s point in giving us this “split vision” of the characteristics of love in this, his fullest description of the greatest spiritual quality?   One simple answer is found in the rabbinic teaching style of Paul’s day and, in fact, throughout much of the Bible.  Positive and negative expressions of important teachings and commandments were frequently put in juxtaposition in this way.  We only have to look at the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) themselves to see the same kind of positive (“You shall …”) and negative (“You shall not …”) expressions. 

The same method is found throughout the teaching of Jesus and is particularly clear in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) –  as when Jesus taught “…when you pray do not … But when you pray …” (6:5-6); “when you fast do not …  But when you fast …” (6:16-17); etc.   Paul also uses this same method on several occasions –  for example, when he speaks of the Spirit of God which “… does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7).

But the fact that this was a common teaching technique of Paul’s day does not mean there is no lesson to be learned from his use of both positive and negative methods of expression in his description of love. We must always remember that Paul’s discussion of the qualities of love, and the whole of the chapter in which it is found, is given in the context of spiritual gifts.  The love he speaks about is spiritual rather than physical love, and Paul’s list reminds us that this kind of love is not like human love. If we look closely we see that his list shows that spiritual love is not about the feelings involved in relationships, but about the actions that take place in them.  Not a single one of the qualities of love that Paul gives is about our feelings for someone. 

Paul’s description of love is actually a powerful corrective to the idea that spiritual love is an amorphous feeling that somehow guides us into being “nice” or “good” people through an elevated form of “liking” or “feeling good” about others. In fact, some of the things Paul says – such as the fact that this kind of love “is not easily angered” and “keeps no record of wrongs” – indicate that it may be applied to people with whom we do not feel much affinity just as much as to people we do like.
 
Part of our inability to recognize the dynamic and much more powerful nature of the spiritual love Paul talks about lies in the fact that in English the word “love” often simply means “like.”  We say we love pizza, or we love the color blue, or we love a person because our concept of love involves our feelings toward something or someone.  But Paul’s use of love, as we see so clearly in his list of its qualities, has nothing to do with feelings toward anyone –  only our actions toward them.  This is something we must always remember. No matter how warmly we feel about anyone, if it is a feeling, it is physical love.  To love with spiritual love is to act toward others– just as God acted when he “… so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son… ” (John 3:16, emphases added).

So Paul’s list of the various qualities of love teaches us that spiritual love is entirely about how we behave and how we treat others. By stressing the negatives that spiritual love protects us from just as much as he stresses the positive aspects of love, Paul shows us that real love produces loving actions and precludes unloving actions.  The great “love list” of 1 Corinthians 13 shows us in a concrete way what spiritual love is and what it is not.

Is God’s love for us conditional or unconditional?  If that seems like a somewhat abstruse philosophical or theological question, realize that it does have important practical applications, and, as a result, it is a subject of ongoing debate for many. 
 
Those who think that God’s love for humanity is unconditional often feel that the alternative would be an invitation to legalism, to trying to save ourselves by meeting God’s requirements that were fulfilled in our place by the life and death of Jesus Christ.  On the other hand, those who see God’s love as conditional often feel that anything else is “cheap grace” that amounts to an invitation to sin because we feel we are unconditionally loved despite our behavior.

If we look closely at what the Bible teaches, however, we find that the answer to this question does not lie on either side of this debate, but on both!  Many verses show that God’s love for us is indeed unconditional and not based on our meeting some standard.  The apostle Paul summarized this when he wrote: “… Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8, emphasis added here and below).  

Yet other scriptures show just as clearly that God has a conditional love for us. Notice the words of Jesus himself: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them” (John 14:21) and “The Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God” (John 16:27).

So what are we to do with this apparent contradiction? The Bible clearly teaches that God loves us both conditionally and unconditionally!  The answer can be seen in our own human experience that there are different kinds of love.  For example, as parents we still love our children even when they misbehave and we have to correct them.  Normal parental love is unconditional in the same way that God loves us unconditionally.

On the other hand, if a mate is unfaithful or unkind to us, we may well lose our feelings of love toward them. That is no different from the conditional love that God expresses to us based on our faithfulness and love of him. 

This comparison is more than just a simple analogy because the Bible specifically compares God’s love for his people to both that of a parent (1 John 3:1, etc.), and that of a spouse (Hosea 2:19, etc.).  To say that God expresses both kinds of love – what we might typify as parental and marital love –  is no different than saying God expresses both unconditional and conditional love toward us.

When we understand this, we see that in one way –  as our heavenly parent –  God will always love us no matter what mistakes we might make.  Even if, in his love, he has to punish us (Hebrews 12:6), his actions will still be based on the kind of unconditional love a parent has for a child.  But the fullest and richest human love that we can know, that of individuals bound in total love of each other, is the kind of conditional love that God gives us according to our relationship with him. 
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In a way, this description of God’s love for us is a summary of the gospel itself. The first half of the gospel is that God, through his unconditional love, determined to save us (as we saw in Romans 5:6-8). The second half of the gospel might just as well be said to be that through his conditional love God is pleased to reward us (John 14:21).   God loves us both unconditionally and conditionally.  We cannot change the first kind of love, but the second kind of love that God feels for us is determined by the love we show for him (John 16:27).

​The New Testament contains a profound and beautiful story that illustrates exactly the three aspects of care, acceptance and respect that underlie godly love. The Book of Luke records that Jesus was invited to the home of a Pharisee named Simon. While he was there, a woman who was a prostitute slipped into the house and, weeping at his feet, wiped her tears from him with her hair before kissing his feet and pouring expensive perfume onto them. When Simon began to think that Jesus surely could not be a prophet of God or he would have known the sinfulness of the woman, Jesus rebuked him by comparing her behavior with that of the Pharisee:
 
“Look at this woman,” he said. “When I entered your home, you didn’t bother to offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You refused me the customary kiss of greeting, but she has kissed my feet again and again from the time I first came in. You neglected the usual courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has covered my feet with rare perfume. Therefore her sins – and they are many – are forgiven, for she loved me much; but one who is forgiven little, shows little love” (Luke 7:44–47 as paraphrased by The Living Bible).
 
It is a story of heartfelt agape love and its results.  Agape means to love actively and deeply, sometimes even sacrificially (John 3:16) – as this woman clearly did, considering her actions and the economic sacrifice she must have made in her gift of expensive perfume. But if we look closely at the story, we find that it highlights three of the key aspects of agape love and how it is expressed to others.  Notice the three specific things that the repentant woman did:
 
Care – She washed Jesus’ feet:  This was a physical need in the hot dusty climate of Jesus’ world, though it was something that the Pharisee did not even provide for – although this was a common courtesy at that time.  But the woman’s actions signified, in Christ’s words, the fact that with her tears she expressed love by caring for another.  We care for others when we are concerned for them and when we “take care of them” by helping them.
 
Acceptance – She kissed him:  In doing this the woman expressed total acceptance of the one whose feet she kissed. It was also customary in that culture for a host to greet guests with a kiss to the cheek to express acceptance and welcome.  In her actions the woman expressed the aspect of love which addresses acceptance – one of our deepest emotional needs.
 
Respect – She anointed him:  By pouring extremely costly perfume on him the woman showed great respect – an area in which the Pharisee also failed by not even providing the customary (and relatively  inexpensive) anointing of olive oil to honor his guest.  Giving respect to another person addresses the underlying mental need for personal significance that all humans have.  This is not the same as pride, but it is part of what it means to be human and part of God’s love (Psalm 138:6).
 
Significantly, then, the woman’s expression of love addressed the  physical, emotional and mental needs of the human condition – all things the woman herself doubtless rarely received; but these were the qualities of care, acceptance and respect she had probably seen Jesus give, unreservedly, to many like herself who were rejected and despised by many religious people of the day.
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The story not only paints a clear picture of these three qualities, it also reminds us that all of these qualities are necessary.   We can interact with others without caring for them. We can provide care to others without really accepting them. We can accept people without truly respecting them.  But the repentant woman’s actions showed all three things:  the care, acceptance and respect that constitute the most fundamental aspects of the expression of love to others – as Jesus affirmed in his acknowledgment of the woman’s deep and godly love.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5).
 
The biblical command to love God “with all your heart…” given in Deuteronomy and quoted by Jesus as the most important of all commandments (Matthew 22:37) lies at the very center of the Christian Faith.  But knowing exactly what loving God with our “heart” means is not as simple as many people presume.   Love is so fully equated with the emotions and the heart in modern society that it is easy to think that the command simply means  to love God “dearly” or “from the heart.”

The many biblical passages that speak about the heart can easily be misunderstood if we are unfamiliar with the way the term was understood and used in the world in which the Bible was written. Both the Hebrew word lebab (or leb) and the Greek word kardia that we find translated “heart” in our English Bibles had a very different meaning from our modern idea.
When these biblical words are used metaphorically –  as opposed to talking about the physical organ we call the heart –  they rarely have anything to do with emotions. In the Old Testament, for example, lebab primarily refers to thought, understanding, or memory, and even things such as awareness or courage. 

In other words, “heart” in the Old Testament usually refers to things of the mind rather than the emotions.  That is why we find biblical verses such as “As [a person] thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7),  or “…the Lord has not given you a heart to understand …” (Deuteronomy 29:4), and why Solomon prayed “… give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong…” (1 Kings 3:9).  That is also why many modern Bible versions translate the word “heart” in these verses as “mind” (NIV, Holman, etc.).

Although on the surface some uses of “heart” in the Old Testament may seem to relate to emotions, the essential idea is almost always one of thought rather than feeling.  In fact, when biblical writers wanted to refer to “feelings,” they usually spoke of them as being located not in the heart, but in the lower organs – the intestines (1 Kings 3:26, etc.)! 

In the New Testament we find the word “heart” (kardia) has the same metaphorical usage as lebab – most frequently meaning  “mind” –  as when we are told “Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, ‘Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?’” (Matthew 9:4) and “For out of the heart come evil thoughts” (Matthew 15:19).  In fact, when the New Testament writers seem to be speaking of the heart and mind as two separate things –  as in the verse “All the believers were one in heart and mind” (Acts 4:32) –  they are usually using a common Jewish expression which was literally “one heart and one soul” – meaning they were completely unified (Jeremiah 32:39, etc.).

As we saw with the use of the Hebrew, when New Testament writers wanted to speak of the emotions they usually used a term for the lower organs, just as the apostle Paul wrote that we should put on “bowels of mercies” (Colossians 3:12 KJV), meaning we should have compassionate feelings toward others.  
 
When we understand this background, we realize that modern versions of the Bible may sometimes actually confuse us. In other words, when the Bible speaks of the heart, we must be careful to determine whether we are reading a verse giving the modern meaning of “emotions” or the ancient meaning of “mind.”  This can be important in many cases.  When the Old Testament tells us that David was “a man after [God's] own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) and this is repeated in the New Testament as “a man after my heart” (Acts 13:22), we must realize that God’s “heart” means his thoughts and attitudes rather than his feelings. 

This fact is especially important in understanding the greatest commandment of all –  that we must love God with all our “heart.”  Easy as it may be to see this command in modern terms as referring to deep feelings and emotions for God –  good as such feelings may be –  the Bible actually means that we must love God with all our mind.  Loving God with all our “heart” means not leaving the slightest part of our minds separate from the rule and influence of God.  This is what Paul was speaking of when he tells us we must “… take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
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There is no place for any kind of divided affection in the command to love God with all our heart.  Just as Jesus stressed that “No one can serve two masters” because we will invariably love one and “hate” or love the other so much less by comparison (Matthew 6:24), loving God with our whole heart means having a love that includes nothing short of total and complete dedication of mind.  Only when we give our minds – our very selves –  completely to God are we loving him with all our heart. 

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“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
 



For many Christians John 3:16 is their best known and most loved verse in the Bible. It has been called the “golden verse” of Scripture, one of the Bible’s most succinct summaries of the gospel, and the ultimate single-verse summary of God’s plan for humanity.   But many do not realize just how much meaning is packed into this one short verse –  its very familiarity often obscures its richness –  and it can be profitable to look at each part of the verse more closely:

“For…” The word “For” with which this verse begins points back to John’s previous statement that: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him” (John 3:14-15). This refers, of course, to the bronze image of a serpent that God instructed Moses to place on a high pole for the healing of the Israelites who acknowledged their sin in the wilderness (Numbers 21:4-9). In that story, everyone who “looked at” the serpent was granted life, and in John’s Gospel we see Christ made it clear that in the same way whoever “believes” on him is granted eternal life (John 3:16).  Looking and believing are equal in these accounts of the same story –  faith is “looking” without the eyes, or beyond what the physical eyes see, to a reality that saves (see our article “Seeing Is Believing: The Serpent on the Stake” here).  That is the background to John 3:16 – that our belief is not just the acceptance of an abstract idea about God and what he has done, but an active looking to the Person who is salvation.

“God so loved…” We should also realize that when this verse tells us that God “so” loved the world, it does not mean God loved the world “so much.”  Instead, the Greek in which the verse was written clearly means God loved the world “in this way.” In other words, “God loved the world in this way – he gave his only son …” It’s an important difference.  The Old Testament often stresses God’s love (Isaiah 63:9; Hosea 11:1-4, etc.), but John 3:16 shows the way in which that love was expressed.

“the world…” The Greek word translated “world” is kosmos which can mean not just the physical world or universe, but also –  as in this case –  all the inhabitants of the world. Rather than just telling us that God loved people in general, “the world” emphasizes the all-inclusive and universal love that God displayed – love of everyone without exception.

“that he gave…” Giving is, of course, characteristic of the nature of God –  it is one of the things that most clearly defines him –  and the gift of his son is his greatest gift, eclipsing all others (Romans 8:32).  The gift was foreshadowed in the prophets, as Isaiah wrote: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given…” (Isaiah 9:6).  

“his one and only son...” In this phrase John stresses that God’s love extended to giving his “one and only" son – a sacrifice that reminds us of the story of Abraham’s willingness to give up Isaac (Hebrews 11:17).  Here the expression marks the unique nature of the gift that God was willing to give (1 John 4:9).

“that whoever believes on him…” The word “whoever” signifies “everyone” and stresses again the universal nature of God’s gift and its availability to anyone who will accept it. John reiterates this truth a little later in the same chapter: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life …” (John 3:36).  Unseen in our English translations is the fact that the word “believes” is a “present participle” in the Greek of the New Testament – a verbal form that stresses continuity of action. The required belief is not just associated with a one-time emotional occurrence – it is ongoing, and it only those who continue to believe who receive the gift (Matthew 24:13).

 “shall not perish but have eternal life.” Here we see as much stress on God’s desire that we do not perish (2 Peter 3:9) as on his desire to grant us life. The specific words “eternal life” are typical of the teaching of the apostle John, who uses them more than twice as many times as all the other Gospel writers combined. John here uses the expression in the present tense to stress that the life God offers us is not just life that we “shall” have at some future time, but spiritual life that begins now, in the present, and continues eternally from now.

The total message of this great verse is echoed by John in his first epistle: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). But it is only in John 3:16, the verse we all know but do not always appreciate to the full, that the great message is so clearly and thoroughly explained.

 The two unmistakable themes of the Gospel of John are belief and love.*  Although John sometimes stresses these concepts separately, he also frequently connects them, as we see in verses such as John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (emphases added here and in the following scriptures). John also shows how the two great themes of love and belief were tied together in the words of Jesus himself: “… the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God” (John 16:27).

When we move beyond John’s Gospel to his epistles, we find the same two themes are also linked there. For example, the connection between belief and love is perfectly summarized in a single verse in the apostle’s first letter: “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us” (1 John 3:23).
 
But although these two themes are clear enough in John’s writing, we do not always notice that he is teaching us an important lesson regarding them: that the one spiritual quality affects the other.

Belief Increases Love

Notice what John says regarding the first aspect of this interaction – that of belief affecting love.  In 1 John 4:19 the apostle tells us: “We love because he first loved us.” Although the word belief does not appear directly in this verse, the concept is obviously implied – we come to love God because we believe God first loved us.
   
John connects belief with love in many other verses in this letter –  such as 1 John 5:1 where he tells us: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.” 

But John evidently did not feel the necessity to elaborate on the connection between belief and love, as it is not a difficult one to see for ourselves in our own personal experience: the more we come to see and understand God and believe in him and his nature, the more we come to love him.   Put simply, the more we come to know God, the more we come to love him.

Love Increases Belief

But John also shows this principle is reciprocal: the more we love God, the more our belief is strengthened. Consider the following verses.

“Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4: 7B).

In this case, love is mentioned first and then knowing God – our belief in him –  comes as a result. It is easy to read over this verse without seeing the connection John is making, but it is clear once we focus on it.   The apostle makes the same connection in other verses. For example:

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12).

What proof do we have of God? John asks. His answer is straightforward –  if we truly love one another, then God is living in us and we experience him in our lives in this way.  John looks at the other side of this situation a few verses later:

“… whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).

This obviously has vital relevance for Christian life and belief.  As we come to love, John tells us, we come to experience God –  and so to believe in him.  Near the end of his letter, John unites the two principles of love and belief once again:

“In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands… This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:3).

John is not alone in making this connection. The New Testament shows on many occasions that spiritual qualities, such as belief and love, do not exist in a vacuum.  The apostle Paul, for example, wrote on how belief interacts with love: “…The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6). John’s epistles show the same truth from both directions –  the more we come to truly believe, the more we will also love; and vice versa, the more we truly love, the more we will come to truly believe.

Ultimately, for John, love and belief cannot be separated. We cannot develop the kind of love God exhibits without believing, or truly know and believe God without loving.  As has been wisely said, “Belief is the eye of love, love is the heart of belief.” Both are necessary for the eternal life that, John tells us, God has desired to give us from the beginning (1 John 2:24).
 
 * See the chapter on these two themes in our free e-book Inside the Four Gospels. 

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God”   (2 Timothy 3:1-4).

It is often said that what we love in life shows more about us than anything else.  In his second letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul gives us some particular insight into that truth.  Paul lists a number of characteristics that he says will be prevalent in “the last days.” But we should understand that from the perspective of the apostle’s writings (as is also found in other Jewish writings of that era), the “end times” could be any time from the first coming of the messiah to his second coming.  In this sense, the “end times” included the day in which Timothy was living, as Paul says specifically that Timothy should “… Have nothing to do with such people” (2 Timothy 3:5); though the traits Paul lists would also continue and perhaps worsen over time.

But if we read Paul’s description carefully, we see that the characteristics he mentions all revolve around one thing: love – or the lack of it. Love is specifically mentioned six times in just these few verses, and the repeated use of the word seems to form a pattern.

Paul stresses that many people will love: 1) themselves,  2) money, and 3) pleasure.   On the other hand, the apostle tells us, these people will not love: 1) others, 2) good, and 3) God.  The negative versus positive characteristics are clearly interlinked in verse 4 which speaks of “lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God,” and it seems clear that Paul is making a comparison with the other characteristics as well. He seems to indicate that people will be:

1. Lovers of themselves rather than of others
2. Lovers of money rather than of good(ness)
3. Lovers of pleasures rather than of God

​These selfish characteristics may seem bad enough, along with the negative corollaries that Paul also lists with them – being boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient, etc. – but what we may miss in our English translations, in reading about these aspects of self-centeredness, is the degree of intensity Paul says will be seen in them.  The Greek word for “terrible” (chalepoi) that he uses in saying “There will be terrible times in the last days” means almost uncontrollably “harsh,” “fierce,” or “savage” and only appears one other time in the New Testament – where it is used to describe the two demon-possessed individuals who were so violent no one could go near them (Matthew 8:28).  In other words, Paul warns that the degree to which many people will put themselves, money and pleasure first in their lives will have terrible consequences. 

But what Paul says also has a positive application. We can turn his words around to provide us with antidotes to the problems he describes.  By increasing our focus on loving God, goodness, and others, we find a sure way to avoid placing too much emphasis in our lives on money, pleasure and our own selves.
​ 
As we said at the outset, what we love in life often shows more about us than anything else.  Carefully thinking over how much of our lives we dedicate to money, pleasure, and ourselves – above what is necessary – can tell us a great deal about what we love. Paul’s words to Timothy also help us to see the consequences of what we love and to provide us with antidotes to the poisonous traits that characterize excessive self-centeredness.  It’s a sobering but positive message. Sometimes the beginning of loving rightly is coming to see what we really do love. ​

When we think of faith, hope, and love, we think, of course, of the apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13:13: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love …” 

It’s a scripture every Christian knows and one of the first ones we may memorize. But many do not realize how important these three qualities are in the writings of Paul. He is the only New Testament writer who groups faith, hope, and love together in quite this way, though the Book of Hebrews – which was clearly heavily influenced by Paul, even if he was not its author –  is the only other New Testament book that does group the three qualities directly (Hebrews 10:22-24).

For Paul, faith, hope, and love were more than just the topics of an important section of his letter to the Corinthian church.  The three qualities appear grouped together in almost every one of the apostle’s letters, though we may not always see it.   Paul sometimes mentions only one or two of the three concepts in a given verse, so it may not be obvious that they are all present in the same chapter or letter,  but the three qualities permeate almost everything Paul wrote and  are frequently found bound together in the same way we find them grouped in 1 Corinthians 13:13. Consider these three verses:

“… the faith and love that spring from the hope …”  (Colossians 1:5).
“… your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope” (1 Thessalonians 1:3).
“putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet” (1 Thessalonians 5:8).

Sometimes Paul includes faith, hope, and love in longer lists of spiritual qualities, and we may not connect them as we read the list, but the main reason we may not see how frequently Paul uses this great triad in his writing is that he often varies the expression faith, hope, and love by replacing one of the qualities with a related one which suggests the same thing from a specific angle.  In these cases we can learn much regarding how Paul thought about faith, hope, and love by seeing what words he uses to substitute for these qualities.

​Take, for example, the way Paul often substitutes “endurance” for hope (just as we saw them connected in 1 Thessalonians 1:3, above): “pursue … faith, love, endurance …” (1 Timothy 6:11); “… your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing… we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring” (2 Thessalonians 1:3-4); “Teach the older men to be … sound in faith, in love and in endurance” (Titus 2:2).

The concepts of hope and endurance are clearly related, and by writing endurance instead of hope, Paul stresses that particular aspect of hope in what he is saying. Sometimes, just as he uses “endurance,” the apostle uses “patience” as another synonym for hope (2 Timothy 3:10, etc.).

If we look at another example: “… faith, love and holiness …” (1 Timothy 2: 15), we find holiness taking the place of hope, and these two qualities are also connected, as Paul shows in speaking of the hope we have in the promises of God: “Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves… perfecting holiness out of reverence for God” (2 Corinthians 7:1).

So too, when Paul writes of “… sound teaching, with faith and love” (2 Timothy 1:13), he uses sound teaching in place of hope – which might seem strange, but right teaching gives us hope, and if we look carefully at the context in which Paul writes this to Timothy, it  is, in fact, one of hope (vs. 12). 

As a final example, notice the way Paul uses “good conscience” as the basis for  hope in his letter to Timothy: “The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5).  Paul’s point is clear in making this substitution – it is only when our consciences do not condemn us that we have true hope.
 
We have only considered variants of “hope” in these examples, but if you look for them you will find that Paul frequently varies the words he uses for each of the three great qualities.  We can learn a great deal by being aware of this fact and letting it teach us.  So next time you see faith, hope, and love – or something similar – in the writings of Paul, think about it. Ask yourself what you can learn about these vital qualities of Christian living through Paul’s choice of words and how they may illuminate the context of what is being said. 

Often this small technique can open up unexpected insights into some key areas of Paul’s teaching.  It’s a way we can come to better understand the three things that Paul tells us – repeatedly – matter the most.
 
* Download our free e-book on faith, hope, and love and read it on any computer or e-reader and on many smart phones!   

​As Christians we know that the greatest responsibility and opportunity we have in the lives we are given is to love God and our fellow human beings (Matthew 22:37-39). But none of us is perfect in this regard; so how do we grow in love for God and others? 

The apostle John gives us an answer to this important question. In his letters, John talks extensively about love, mentioning the concept no fewer than 34 times, including his well-known summary statements such as “…God is love” (1 John 4:8). But John’s teaching on love is not as general as it might sometimes appear. 

In his first epistle, the apostle talks about an easily overlooked aspect of the two directions or dimensions of love – love of God and love of people – that must both be present in our lives. In doing so, John answers the question of “How do we increase our love for God and man?” by answering a slightly different one: “How do we know if we love God and others?”  He gives us the answer first in terms of whether we truly love God or not.  Notice what he tells us:

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister” (1 John 4:20-21).

The proof of our love for God, John says, is that we love others.  In the next chapter of his letter, John repeats this fact:  “... everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him” (1 John 5:1).  But the apostle then reverses the direction of this understanding:
“This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome” (1 John 5:2-3).

The proof of our love for others, John tells us here, is that we love God and are obedient to him. Just as it is not possible to truly love God without loving his children (1 John 5:1), it is also impossible to truly love God’s children without loving him (1 John 5:2). Together, these verses show the two directions that love must work in.  In the first case, our love and obedience to God involves – and is proved by – our love of our brothers and sisters. In the second case, we are told that our love for our brothers and sisters is based on – and proved by – our love and obedience to God.

Simple as it may sound, this two-way definition can be tremendously helpful to us as Christians.  We can see what John says as both admonition and encouragement.  First, there is clear admonition for all of us in the understanding that we cannot claim to love God if we cannot bring ourselves to love all people, and conversely, that we cannot pretend we truly love people if we do not deeply love God.  Love of one without love of the other is not genuine love.

But the encouraging side of this equation relates to our original question:  “How can we grow in love of God and others?”  What John shows us indicates we can increase our love of God by loving people more, and if we want to increase our love of others, we can do that through actively developing our love of God.  It may seem counterintuitive, but it is a truth that solidly underlies much of what John tells us.

Why is this? The reason is that unless God is the center of our life – what we love above all else –  we will never  truly love others as much as ourselves, because without God at the center of our lives, we will love ourselves above all else – we will primarily be “lovers of ourselves” (2 Timothy 3:2).  Conversely, if we do not love others as much as ourselves, we are not fulfilling God’s command and our love of him will always be limited.

What John shows us is that as we grow in our love for God, our love for others will naturally increase at the same time.  The closer we grow to God, the more he changes the way we think about ourselves – and others – and the more we begin to love others.  As we grow to love the children of God more, it is a direct reaction that we begin to be less self-centered and our love for God naturally increases as a result.

John’s words on the two directions of love may indeed seem counterintuitive at first, yet they are profoundly true in showing us how we can know and grow our love for God and others.

​Scriptures in Question:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them” (1 John 2:15).


The first clue we have that there is no contradiction between these seemingly opposing verses is that they were both written by the same person – the apostle John. This alone indicates that it would be unlikely that the two statements were at variance. 

The word “world” (Greek kosmos) found in both these verses is one John uses frequently – an amazing 79 times in his Gospel and a further 25 times in his epistles –  more often than any other biblical writer.   But the word does not always have exactly the same meaning in each case.  Just as we can use the word “world” in English to mean the planet Earth, the world around us, everything in the world, or just the people of the world, so the Greek word could be used with many of these same meanings.  We can see this range of meaning in some of the verses where John uses kosmos in his first epistle:

The planet Earth: “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world” (1 John 4 : 9).

The people of the world:   “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you” (1 John 3 : 13).

The world around us:  “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

The way of the world:  “For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world” (1 John 5 : 4).

When John tells us in his Gospel that God loved the world, he is clearly referring to the people of the world (as God did not give his Son for the sins of the planet or the things in the world).  John uses “world” in exactly the same way in his epistle when he writes “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

On the other hand, when John tells us in his epistle that we must not love the world, it is equally clear, when we read the verse in context, that he is talking about the system or way of the world.  We need only look at the following verse to see this: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world” (1 John 2:16).
​
So, we must carefully distinguish between the various meanings of kosmos when John uses the word “world,” though this is not usually difficult.  His context usually makes it clear which meaning he has in mind.  In the seemingly contradictory examples we looked at, John is talking about two very different things –  humanity and the way of life of humanity. 

For John, the “world” in the latter sense is synonymous with darkness and evil (John 3:19), just as he tells us God is synonymous with goodness and light.  John’s point is that we must choose to love either darkness or light, the way of the world or the way of God.

The following paragraphs were first published well over one hundred years ago – in 1891 – by the British missionary, Henry Drummond, in his essay "Love: The Greatest thing in the World," though the form  in which they appear here is taken from Paulo Coelho's retelling of the story as The Supreme Gift  (Barcelona:  Sant Jordi Asociados, 1991).

"A man’s message of Faith lies in the way he lives his life and not in the words he says. Not long ago, I was in the heart of Africa, near the Great Lakes. There I met men and women who remembered with affection the one white man they had encountered: David Livingstone. And while I followed his footsteps through the Dark Continent, people’s faces lit up as they told me about the doctor who had passed through there some three years before. They could not understand what Livingstone said to them, but they felt the Love that was there in his heart. Take that same Love with you and the work you do will be fully justified. ...Then our souls will grow gentler, not because we took out aggression, but because we put in Love ...

Love begets Love. If you place a piece of iron close to a source of electricity it will, by a process of induction, become electrified. If you place it close to a magnet, it will become a magnet for as long as the other magnet is there. Remain close to Him who loved us and you will be magnetised by that Love.  Anyone who seeks the cause will feel the effect." 

In his book, The Love That Made Mother Teresa (Sophia Institute Press, 2014), David Scott tells of experiences Mother Teresa shared of heroic love in the lives of others.  One of these examples is particularly moving:

“She told us of the sacrifices made by leper parents, who must give up their newborns immediately upon birth or risk infecting them for life with the disease. She told us the story of one couple saying good-bye to their three-day-old baby:

Each one looked at the little one, their hands going close to the child and then withdrawing, trying, wanting to kiss the child, and again falling back. I cannot forget the deep love of that father and mother for their little child. I took the child, and I could see the father and mother as I was walking. I held the child toward them, and they kept on looking until I disappeared from their eyes. The agony and pain it caused! . . . But because they loved the child more than they loved themselves, they gave it up.”

This story is heartbreaking in itself, but equally heartbreaking – in fact far more so because of the sheer numbers involved – are the children destroyed before birth by parents who may choose to part with children out of some form of self-love rather than from love of the child. 
​
Perhaps one of the greatest indicators of if we are actually living as Christians is whether we are giving up things for the sake of others, rather than for our own sake. The things we give up in this way may be our own convenience, plans, preferences, or ultimately even our personal happiness or well-being.  If we are to truly follow the Christian way of life, we must look at our own  lives and ask what we should be giving up for love.   ​

​The story of how the resurrected Jesus reinstated and recommissioned the apostle Peter after his earlier denials of his master is frequently told, but we do not always notice its significance for us:
  


​When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”  Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17).

It is frequently pointed out that while, in his first two questions, Jesus uses a form of the word agapé – godly, unconditional love – Peter replies with a form of the word phileó – meaning only brotherly love or affection.  To paraphrase the question and answer: “Do you have love for me?” “Yes, I have affection for you.”  In his final question (verse 17) Jesus lowers the level of love to ask “Do you have affection for me?” to which Peter again replies “…you know I have affection for you.”
 
It is possible that by repeating his question three times Jesus is subtly reminding Peter of his disciple’s three denials, but it is clear that Peter, in his shame, could not bring himself to say he loved Jesus to such a high level as unconditional godly love, only to a lesser, human degree – to which Jesus finally lowered his question. But while the element of shame may have affected Peter’s answers at that moment in time, we certainly need not “lower our sights” as to the level of love it is possible to develop and to direct to God and to others.
 
A great many scriptures in the New Testament show that it is the highest unconditional agapé love that we are to have toward God and others.  In two extremely poignant scriptures, Peter himself tells us that we must move beyond human love:

“Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere love [phileó] of the brethren, love [agapé] one another earnestly from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22).

“add ... to godliness, mutual affection [phileó]; and to mutual affection, love [agapé]” (2 Peter 1:7).

It is perhaps significant that Peter included this thought in both his epistles:  we must move beyond human love to a godly love that is both deeper and higher than human affection. Peter had learned the hard way that human love – even the love of closest friends – is not enough to fulfill God’s law of love.  It is a lesson that Peter had clearly grasped, and one that we must also learn. 

​“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love…” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Probably every Christian knows the apostle Paul’s summary of the greatest Christian virtues found in 1 Corinthians 13:13.  As new believers, it is one of the first verses we learn and one we always remember.
​
The meaning of Paul’s statement is simple enough.  Like towering mountain peaks that still stand after the surrounding landscape has been eroded down or like three “rock hard” pebbles that remain when a stream has washed away the softer sand and soil, these three qualities “remain.” 

But our new e-book, These Three Remain, helps you see scriptures speaking of these qualities when you might otherwise read right over them. It looks closely at each of the three key Christian attributes and examines how they interact with each other in your life.  In fact, as you read this book, you may find that faith, hope and love are even more important than you ever realized.  You can download this new free e-book here.

 ​Every Christian knows that when Jesus was asked which was the “Greatest Commandment” (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27), he quoted Deuteronomy 6:5:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” 
​
But how exactly are we to do that – what is it we do to express love to God?  Many Christians would say that we show love to God in our prayer, praise, worship, and so on.  While this is true, of course, and we can express love in these ways, it is interesting that the Bible itself mentions only two specific ways that we love God.

Obedience

The first way the Bible teaches love for God – in the words of Christ himself – is through our obedience.  Jesus made many statements to this effect:  “If you love me, keep my commands… Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me …Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching….” (John 14:15, 21, 23).  The same principle is reiterated in the later books of the New Testament (“… if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them” – 1 John 2:5,  “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments…” – 1 John 5:3, etc.).

This is something  we also find throughout the Old Testament as well as the New – for example, in Deuteronomy 30:16: “For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws…”   We see the correlation between love and obedience throughout the Pentateuch and then continuing through the Book of Joshua (Joshua 22:5) and beyond.   In fact, there are more verses correlating our obedience with our love for God than those showing any other aspect of our relationship with God.
 
Service

A second specific way the Bible shows we express love to God is found in the Book of Hebrews: “God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them” (Hebrews 6:10).   This principle is not always immediately obvious because showing love to others may not seem the same as loving God, but the two are inextricably connected.

Jesus showed this, of course, in the Parable of the Judgment in which he said:  “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’“ (Matthew 25:40).  It is a fundamental concept of the Christian Faith that God holds our love given to others as equivalent to love given to him.

Totality

But we can also go beyond the specific teachings the Bible gives regarding loving God through obedience and service. If we look closely at Jesus’ words that we “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” we can see not only the idea of degree – that we love God as much as we can – but also the idea of extent – that we love God in every aspect of our being.  

The aspects of our selfhood that Deuteronomy 6:5 enumerates represent an ever-widening circle. Our heart represents our inner thoughts, emotions, and will; our “soul” represents our physical being as a living person; our “strength” is the power we exert toward something. But our “strength” can have a broader meaning, too.   The Hebrew word used in Deuteronomy 6:5   can sometimes be translated as an adjective – as “very”–  or it can be a noun (as it is in this verse) – as “muchness” or “abundance.”

In other words, loving God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength  encompasses loving God with our inner thoughts, our outer being, and even the extended circle of that which we own – our “abundance.”   If we want to know how to love God, the full answer is that we can love God in every expression of every one of these areas – in the totality of our being.

​Despite its diminutive size, the shortest book in the Bible – the Third Epistle of John – carries a powerful message.  On the surface, the epistle is a short exhortation from the apostle to the believer Gaius encouraging him to give hospitality to another believer, Demetrius (who may have carried this letter as an introduction), because a powerful local church leader, Diotrephes, was forcibly denying hospitality to members from outside his congregation.

This is perhaps all that we might expect to see in a “book” that is only 14 verses long, but John seems to have used the opportunity of this letter to convey a simple but profound truth regarding the interaction between the Christian qualities of love and truth – which are mentioned in combination, directly or indirectly, ten times in the letter’s 14 verses.

Beginning in the first verse, John salutes Gaius as someone “whom I love in the truth” (3 John 1:1), setting the theme of his message. In verse 3, and then again in verse 4, John juxtaposes joy with truth, and we should remember that joy is associated with love in many biblical passages – so that the pairing of joy and truth can be seen as an indirect expression of love and truth. In the following verses there are other indirect correlations between the qualities of love and truth, such as verse 8 where hospitality and truth are related.

John then uses the unhospitable Diotrephes as a negative example of the failed connection between love and truth by writing: “Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not welcome us. So when I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, spreading malicious nonsense about us” (3 John 1:9-10a). While it is easy to read over the connection here, we should read the statement in the context of John’s stress on love and truth throughout the letter.  Diotrephes’ failed love – his love of self and self-aggrandizement – is paired with his failed truth – his spreading of malicious lies.
   
This pattern is repeated when John then writes “…he even refuses to welcome other believers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church” (3 John 1:10b), showing Diotrophes’ failure of love has a direct connection to his subsequent failure of truth in twisting doctrine so that true members of the faith are expelled.

Next, John says, “Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good” (3 John 1:11a), and then gives two corresponding examples using the faithful Demetrius who is to be imitated.  In this case, John says, “Demetrius is well spoken of by everyone—and even by the truth itself” and “We also speak well of him, and you know that our testimony is true” (3 John 1:12).  In other words, Demetrius is clearly liked and loved as a result of his behavior – his love – and the result is his right relationship with the truth.

So, in the course of his short letter, John repeatedly shows that we cannot express – or fail to express – love without it affecting the truth in our lives.  Conversely, he tells us, we cannot express – or fail to express – the truth without it relating to the love we show.  This is a principle that extends far beyond the particular circumstances in which this little letter was written – one that applies to all of us in every aspect of our lives.  John tells us that love and truth are interconnected:  we cannot weaken or strengthen one without the other being weakened or strengthened also.

“ … speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).

It’s easy to miss the substance of what Paul writes in this verse both because it is such a well-known scripture, and because most major English versions of the Bible  translate it in essentially the same way. The idea of “speaking the truth in love” has thus taken on a kind of life of its own – a kind of  poster scripture for the idea of spiritual “tough love,” which is based in concern, but doesn’t hold back on the truth.

To some extent, this idea is contained within what Paul writes in Ephesians 4, but it is only a small part of it at best. If we look more closely at verse 15 and consider it in context, we see the verse carries far more meaning – both specifically and in a broader general sense. Looking at the context of “speaking the truth in love” is not as obvious as it may sound in regular Bible reading because the context actually begins quite a few verses earlier.  But we need not guess what the context is. If we patiently read backwards from verse 15 we will come upon the specific  subject Paul was discussing, and we find that subject in verses 11-12:
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“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up”

If that doesn’t immediately connect in our minds with “speaking the truth in love,” notice the very next verse (Ephesians 4:13):

“until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ”

Do you see it?  Verses 11 and 12 say Christ gave the various offices of the Church to prepare and equip his people for service – until we come to maturity in him (vs. 13), which is exactly the reason Paul gives in verse 15 for speaking the truth in love.

But let’s look at that expression a little more closely.  The Greek Paul wrote is “alētheuontes  de en agapē” which is literally “being true, yet in love.”  The first word there – a form of alētheuō – can mean to speak the truth, teach the truth, or live the truth.   This is important because the second meaning – to teach the truth – is obviously involved in the context of Ephesians 4.  Paul is talking about the various types of preachers and teachers in the Church, and he doesn’t just mean they should not lie, but that they should teach the truth – that’s how the Church then grows into the stature of Christ (vs. 15). 
 
Notice that the third meaning of alētheuō is that of living the truth.  This may apply in this verse also. Clearly, it is only as we live the truth, not just profess it, that we grow towards the stature of Christ.  That is why the Revised version, in Ephesians 4:15,  gives an alternate translation of “speaking the truth”  as “to deal truly,” and the Douay Rheims version translates it “doing the truth in charity.”   The Amplified Version expands on this aspect of the verse by paraphrasing:  “let our lives lovingly express truth [in all things, speaking truly, dealing truly, living truly]” (AMPC).

So when we look closely at Ephesians 4:15, the focus of the verse in context is one of the responsibility for those who handle the word of God to teach the truth, and the responsibility all of us have to make truth a part of our lives of love.  The emphasis is not on our telling others the truth they need to hear – as in the “tough love” kind of truth we give – but on the true love kind of truth we live.

“From His right hand came a fiery law for them.  Yes, He loves the people”
(Deuteronomy 33:2b-3a NKJV).
 
It is surprising how many people visualize the God of the Old Testament as an essentially stern God dispensing laws and their strict penalties. This God is seen by many as a God of law and commandments. By contrast, some think the God of the New Testament and his son, Jesus, are typified by love and not law.  It is believed that somehow God changed in his approach to humans.

But what the Bible clearly shows, when we look at it closely, is that the God of the Old Testament is no different from the God of the New.  Theologically, of course, it seems clear that in many instances the pre-incarnate Jesus was actually the one called God in the Hebrew Scriptures (John 1:1-10, 1 Corinthians 10:4), but the point is that the character of God does not change (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 6:17, Hebrews 13:8).  God has always been a God of law and love.

We can see this dual aspect of the character of God in many examples throughout the Old Testament.  Take the words of Moses, for example, in the Book of Deuteronomy (which means “second law”) as it recounts the re-giving of the law of God to ancient Israel.  Deuteronomy focuses on the law of God as much as any book of the Hebrew Scriptures, yet we find frequent expressions of God’s love as well as his commands and laws: “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments” (Deuteronomy 7:9).  Repeatedly, God’s love is stressed just as much as his law, as we see also in the quotation from Deuteronomy 33 above.  

And that is not just an Old Testament perspective.  When we look closely at the life and teachings of Jesus, love and law are never separated. Not surprisingly, after the Book of Psalms, the Book of Deuteronomy was the book most frequently quoted by Jesus. When asked which was the greatest law, Christ replied that the law is that we love God and our neighbor (Matthew 22:35-39).  When he showed love by not condemning the woman taken in adultery, Jesus nevertheless still told her “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11).

God’s law did not somehow disappear after the death of Christ because he paid the penalty for our breaking the law – any more than a speeding law disappears if someone pays our speeding fine. And even though we are not saved by our keeping of the law (Galatians 2:16), Paul stresses that the law is a guide to us (Galatians 3:23) and that “The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good” (Romans 7:12).  Paul continues to show us why the law is good:

“…for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:8-10).

So the principle of God’s use of law as well as love is still alive and functioning throughout the New Testament, as the writer of the Book of Hebrews reminds us: “… the Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Hebrews 12:6). We would not think a human parent did not love his or her children because the parent gave them rules or disciplined them, and we must realize that God works with us in exactly the same way.

As we grow in understanding of God, we come to see that law and love are actually not opposites, but complementary aspects of his character. His commands are given out of love to protect our relationship with him and with others. God’s love does not somehow negate the purpose of his laws, and the purpose of his laws does not somehow cancel out his love. 

​God is indeed a God of law and love.

Sometimes God speaks to us …. despite everything.

Matthew sat alone in his cell staring at the letter.  Imprisoned in a country not friendly to Christianity, Matthew (not his real name) was kept in relative isolation and the only contact he had with the outside world was in the form of occasional heavily censored letters he was allowed to receive from his family. The letters had any words of encouragement – especially scripture quotations – completely covered over by the heavy black markers of the government prison censors.

In the long months Matthew had been imprisoned he had come to deeply resent those patches of blackness that cut him off from the love of his family.  Until today.  Now, Matthew looked at the patches of black obscuring much of the latest letter he had received and smiled.  Matthew was a happier man.

The truth of the situation had dawned on Matthew like a personal revelation. He had come to see that the black marks and patches on his letters did not obscure his family’s love for him – they highlighted it.  He saw that every obscuring black mark was not a denial of the love felt for him, but proof of it.  Sometimes he could guess that there was a scripture behind the blackness from quote marks not obscured at the beginning or end of the marking. If the censors blacked out words individually he could guess from a short word blacked out after the quote marks that it was probably the reference to a quoted verse in Psalms, which his family knew was his favorite book of the Bible. Very occasionally, if he held the letter up to what light he had, he could make out faint traces of what was written and have some idea of what was being said  to him.

As time progressed, Matthew came to resent the black marks less and less. Sometimes he would take out a letter and just look at the marks, because he knew that behind them was the love of his family, and understanding what lay behind the black marks – even though he could not see through them – sustained Matthew until he was eventually released.

Sometimes, when we go through the trials of life, it’s hard to see God’s love for us.  We may even come to resent the black marks and clouds of life: the illnesses, job losses, persecutions, or whatever seems to obscure God’s love and concern for us.  But if we learn to see them as we should, we can come to see behind the black patches in our lives.   On occasion we may be able to make out the writing of loving correction in things that go wrong (Hebrews 12:6), but this is not always the case and often, like Job, we may see that we are being given an opportunity to learn or grow. But, again like Job, we don’t always see God for the storm – until we realize we are being taught something and we hear the voice of God speaking through the dark clouds (Job 38:1), or through the dark patches that seem to come between us and him.  

In fact, if we come to see the black patches of life as we should, we realize that once we have committed ourselves to God, we can know that his love is always behind them even if we do not see it clearly (1 Corinthians 13:12).  We can remember that every dark patch of life, although it might seem to obscure God's love,  in reality is being used to teach, guide and form us, or to help others in some way. We come to realize that the black patches of life do not deny Gods’ love for us; they actually affirm that it is there.  

Global warming continues to be a topic provoking concern, debate and cries for action among many. We are used to meteorologists making accurate forecasts of the temperature even many days in advance – often to the precise degree – and so we listen when climatologists forecast dangerous temperature changes for the next hundred years or so.  

But what would you think about a forecast that predicted temperatures several thousands of years in advance?

Some two thousand years ago the Son of God made such a forecast regarding moral and ethical temperature declines at the end of the present age, saying: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12).

Perhaps there has always been evil in this world, and a resulting coldness in human hearts and interactions, but Christ clearly stated that there would come a time when the love of most would grow cold. The Greek expression (ton pollon) translated “of many” in some Bibles  is better translated – as in the NIV – “of most” or “of the majority,” showing that this coldness was something that would eventually be widespread  and would be the norm rather than the exception.

Spiritually, the problem our world faces is not global warming, but global cooling. We see this moral chill every day in news reports of atrocities committed not only by religious and political fanatics, but also even by parents against their own children and spouses against each other.  Just as frightening is the fact that the immediate context of Christ’s forecast is not necessarily only talking about the unconverted of the world – it seems to apply to religious people as well.

If you or I heard a forecast of impending unbelievably cold physical temperatures, we would doubtless take action to do what we could to survive the situation and help offset the cold as best we could. But do we take Christ’s moral forecast seriously enough to take action in that regard? And what, if anything, can we do to offset the growing lack of love this world seems even now to be experiencing – and which unavoidably affects Christians also?

Fortunately, the same book that forecasts the cooling of love indicates things we can do to turn that climate change around, even if only in our own lives.  Consider these four Christian climate warmers:

1)  Forgiveness: The Gospel of John tells us the story of the woman who anointed Christ in the home of a disapproving Pharisee.  Jesus told the Pharisee that although the woman had sinned much in her life, those who are forgiven much, love much (John 7:46-47).  We can apply that principle to ourselves in terms of looking at those around us in the moral wilderness in which we live.  As society worsens around us, it’s easy to become judgmental – like the Pharisee – if we are not careful. But reminding ourselves of how much we have been forgiven can help us feel and show more love to those whose lives are still in the grip of sin.

2) Prayer: We can and should be praying for God’s love, of course, but sometimes we have to remind ourselves to break that prayer down.   Something that can help in this regard is to put names to the prayer. Praying for help to love person X and Person Y can be far more effective than praying for the “idea” of love.  Try it and see for yourself.

3) Study:  Regularly studying the life of Christ may be one of the most valuable climate warmers at our disposal.  Actually seeing God’s love  in living everyday action through the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus shows us love in a way in which we don’t usually see it.  It can help us by providing both a model and an inspiration.  Notice these words of the apostle Paul:  “… the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5 Holman).  Frequently focusing our study of God’s word on the topic of love becomes more important the colder society becomes around us.

4) Encouragement: The Book of Hebrews contains these important words:  “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds … encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:23-25).  These verses make it clear that encouraging one another is directly related to spurring one another to love. The fact that this is said to be all the more vital as we see the end of the age approaching ties directly to Christ’s warning of the love of the majority growing cold in the last days.

In some ways these pointers seem so very basic, yet they are so very true. The Bible is clear that love is increased, fanned like a flame,  by these specific things – and each one is something we can do personally if we are determined to do so.   The important thing for us in the cooling world in which we live is to be sure to utilize them – to increase the love in our lives – and not to become numbed by the cold around us.