The Love of God Is Self-sacrificing

 

We marvel (I hope) at John 3:16, but do we marvel at John 3:16 along with 1 John 3:16 and with John 17:18 and 20:21?

 

“We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16). God’s love commands us and impels us to lay our lives down for our brothers and sisters in Christ, as Jesus says, we are to love one another as He loves us  - He is the measure of our love for one another, He is the Nature of our love for one another, He is the model of our love for one another.

 

But we are not only called to love our brothers and sisters as He loves us, we are called to love the world as God loves the world, for this is how Jesus Christ sends us into the world.

 

“As You sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).

 

“So Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (John 20:21).

 

This understanding gives us an expanded way to read John 3:16, for God not only so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, but He so loves the world that He gives and gives and gives again, His begotten corporate Son. God the Father continually gives the Body of Christ, of which Jesus Christ is the Head, to the world. God does this generation after generation; God gives us again and again and again, for just as the Father sends Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ sends His brothers and sisters. “As the Father sent me, so send I you.”

 

O dear friends, are we indeed going into the world as Jesus went into the world? Are we loving one another as Jesus loves us? Can we say with Paul, “But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God”? (Acts 20:24).

 

That message that “God so loved the world that He gave…” is not only rooted in eternity, it is not only rooted in history, but it is rooted in God’s present sending of His Corporate Son into the world with each rising of the sun. God’s giving is ever present, the laying down of our lives should be ever present, our confession of the Gospel of the grace of God ought to be ever present.

 

Did not Jesus commission us by saying, “Go into all the world”?

 

Even as the Father sent Jesus, Jesus has sent us. He has sent me…He has sent you.

 

What does this look like in my life today?

 

In the lives of our congregations?

 

What does it look like in your life?

 

When we read John 3:16 let us see the Father sending Jesus Christ to us, and Jesus Christ sending us to others.