The Love Principle - Study 31: Love as Salvation
- 2 days ago
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John 3:16-18 NIV
[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. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. [18] Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.3.16-18.NIV)
Sikatuna might sound like a cry of revulsion against canned fish, but it’s actually a small town in central Bohol, Philippines with an unusual claim to fame. You see, although Filipinos are mobile than ever, the vast majority of then will never have the opportunity to see the great landmarks of the world like Big Ben, Tower Bridge, the Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty, the Golden Gate Bridge and the like. Sikatuna Mirror of the World brings these attractions to them, but in miniature. So Filipinos who can’t see these sights can journey to Bohol and pose next to smaller versions of them and take pictures. Then confused relatives can say to them, ‘Well, it can’t be that important a place – that landmark is really small’.
There are similar places in China, where European towns and villages are replicated almost to the tiniest detail – but everything is fake – so that Chinese people can feel like they’ve been to Europe, but they haven’t.
Then, when they show their pictures to their confused relatives, those relatives will say, ‘See? We Chinese truly conquered the world. We are everywhere – even in small villages in Europe!’
Why am I mentioning these interesting tourist attractions?
Because they are fake. They are not the real thing. They might look like the real thing. They might feel like the real thing. But they are fake.
To get the real experience, you need to see the real thing.
Everywhere you look in our modern world, there are fakes.
I don’t just mean fake clothes or shoes or watches or jewellery or electronics. I mean something more evil, more insidious than that.
I mean fake love.
Over the last twenty-nine studies, I have tried to right a serious wrong: not just in the world or the church, but often in our hearts. We have forgotten what love is. We have forgotten what it looks like. Even though it’s love that saved us and made us who we are, we have turned away from it. We form cliques and friendship groups that despise outsiders. We build an intricate web of transactional relationships to ensure that we rise while others fall. We set high expectations for what we want even from our marital relationships, and if our spouse cannot fulfil them anymore – for whatever the reason – we show them the door.
Other people’s needs become an inconvenience and an irritation.
We even refer to the sexual act as ‘making love’. How utterly backward is that? Sex is not ‘making love’! We do not make love. We cannot make love. It existed before we did, because God is love.
Besides, sex should be an expression of the love that already exists between two people.
Love should not be created between two people when they have sex.
Do you see how we have become so very confused? How the fakes around us have stolen our sense of what is real?
That’s why, towards the end of this series, I thought it would be a good thing to look again at the best model of what love truly is, in the verse that convinced me as a little five year old child to follow Jesus.
We are going to look at John 3:16. We are going to look at the verse that sets the bar to which all others loves should be measured. We are going to see what this love can do.
Let’s behind by looking at The Cause.
The Cause
John 3:16 NIV
[16] For God so loved the world...
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.3.16.NIV)
On August 17, 1999, I got quite the surprise. I was lying on my bed when it began to shake quite violently. I leapt off it and ran to the window. It was strange. There was no damage or debris: life was continuing as normal.
Later that day I checked the news. There had been a massive earthquake in Istanbul, Turkey: 7.5 on the Richter scale. At least 18,000 people had died. I was hundreds of miles away, in the city of Pitești, Romania, but my bed was somewhat rickety and had moved with the vibrations from the tectonic plates colliding, which had woken me up.
I had been jolted awake. I’d wondered why. There had been an earthquake hundreds of miles away.
The Gospel is a message that has shaken the world. It is far from insignificant. It is far from irrelevant. For centuries, human beings in countries across the world set the calendars by it.
So powerful is the salvation that Jesus wrought for us on the cross that it literally shook the earth (Matthew 27:51-53). There has been, and never will be anything like it. No other religion and no other message contains the reality of a god willing to give His life to save His creation from the consequences of their sin.
It is thoroughly unique and wonderful and special.
Yet the question remains: ‘Why? Why would anyone do such a thing?’
In this verse, John explains why:
Love.
God loves His creation. God loves the people He has made. God loves you. That is why He did what He did.
Romans 5:6-8 NIV
[6] You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. [7] Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. [8] But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/rom.5.6-8.NIV)
1 John 4:9-10 NIV
[9] 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. [10] This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/1jn.4.9-10.NIV)
There used to be an advert for a quite fancy shampoo that had the tag line ‘Because you’re worth it’. Since most shampoo is based in the same chemical, it was a little bit of a stretch.
However, what we see here in these verses is that God did what He did because we were not worth it, because of our sin, but because of His love, we were made worth it. His love makes all the difference.
The Gospel has no hidden agenda. The Gospel has no ulterior motive.
It happened because God loves us. He loves us with an everlasting (Psalm 103:17; Jeremiah 31:3) 1 Corinthians 13 love.
That is what makes the difference.
Apart from the cause, we also see The Action.
The Action
John 3:16 NIV
[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.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.3.16.NIV)
When my daughter was younger, we used to love travelling through Amsterdam Schiphol airport. I know it’s not everyone’s favourite place. However, what we used to enjoy was the airplane nose and cockpit in the transport hub next to arrivals and departures. It was a brilliant place to pose for pictures.
It looked like a plane, if you touched it then it felt like a plane, but it was not a plane because it didn’t fly anywhere.
We saw earlier that the Gospel was motivated by love. Like that plane in Schiphol airport, love cannot just sit there. It isn’t love it if is just an attraction for selfies.
No, love must result in action or it isn’t love.
God’s love resulted in Him giving a gift to us. Our love often does that. The exception being is that none of us could possibly afford the gift He gave:
His Son.
Some people do grand gestures to show their love, like great works of architecture (the Taj Mahal), or hire a pilot to do skywriting, or carry out some grand romantic gesture.
God’s gift beats every one of them.
That gift is the biggest sign of God’s love for us that there could ever be. Look at what Paul said:
Romans 8:31-32 NIV
[31] What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? [32] He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/rom.8.31-32.NIV)
In other words, because God gave Jesus for us, we can be confident in His love and care for us.
Many modern Christians cannot fathom how or why God would do such a thing. They read verses like this and are reply troubled:
Isaiah 53:10 NIV
[10] Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/isa.53.10.NIV)
But we must interpret this verse in the light of other verses that tell us why God did it:
Romans 6:23 NIV
[23] For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/rom.6.23.NIV)
Do you see it? God gave Jesus to pay off the sin debt we owed, and He did it, not out of a sense of grudging, half-hearted obligation, but out of love. He gave His very best to save the least.
That is love at its most loving; grace at its most graceful.
We have seen, then, that God was motivated to do what He did out of love for us, and what He did was give the most previous thing He had – the most precious thing in all of creation – to pay off the debt our sin had accrued.
What we see next is The Response: how we should respond to this amazing truth.
The Response
John 3:16-18 NIV
[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. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. [18] Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.3.16-18.NIV)
This verse has an aspect that has been widely misunderstood.
It states that whoever believes in Jesus will receive eternal life. This is often thought to mean that if we believe that He exists, then we will be saved.
Not true. Not according to James:
James 2:19 NIV
[19] You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/jas.2.19.NIV)
The Jews of Jesus’ day also had no trouble believing that He existed. After all, He was standing there, right in front of them. But they weren’t all following Him.
You can even intellectually assent with all the basic tenets of the Christian faith – that Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died a sinner’s death, rose from the dead and will return some day – and it can still make no difference at all to how you live.
You have to do something with it.
Allow me to explain.
I love travelling through transport hubs: bus stations, railway stations and especially airports. I always have. There’s something that feels adventurous about passing alongside stances, platforms or gates, or staring at arrivals and departures boards, and seeing where all those vehicles are headed. It makes you feel that you could have an adventure too.
And the more far-flung the hub, the better. Airports like Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore or even Istanbul are always a lot more exciting because of all the exotic places you can get to from there.
Now, if I see an interesting place on an arrivals and departures board, I have no issue with agreeing that there is a vehicle which will take me there. I believe the transportation provider.
But for me to actually go there, my faith has to be exercised. I have to actually buy a ticket, check in and get into the vehicle. Otherwise my faith makes no difference to me at all.
James 2:14-26 makes it plain that a saving faith is an active faith. It does something.
Likewise, believing in Jesus’ Name did not just mean believing that He existed. It meant trusting to His reputation, His power, His authority. It meant following Him, serving Him and entrusting Him and Him alone for salvation. It meant taking the name of ‘Christian’ and seeking to live like Him.
Let me take you back again to some verses we looked at in a previous study:
John 13:34-35 NIV
[34] “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. [35] By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.13.34-35.NIV)
Believing in Jesus is not about believing that He was there, or even that He said those words, it is about heeding and obeying this commandment.
Fundamentally, it is about loving.
But where does this leave us?
Romans 10:9-13 NIV
[9] If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. [10] For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. [11] As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” [12] For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, [13] for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/rom.10.9-13.NIV)
These verses have often been abused in the past. Preachers and evangelists have been seeking for people to simply make a confession of faith and then, bada-bing, bada-boom, they’re saved.
That is not what these verses teach.
It says here that we must confess Jesus as Lord. As it says elsewhere:
1 Corinthians 12:3 NIV
[3] Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/1co.12.3.NIV)
But these words are not a magic incantation to ward off hell. They are meaningful, weighty words. What they mean is that Jesus is Lord over you. That He has the right to tell you what to believe and what to do. These words for a Roman set Jesus at least equal to the Emperor and for the Jew made Him equal to God.
They were not to be taken lightly.
Paul also said that we must ‘believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead’.
Why the heart? Why not the head?
Because our belief in the resurrection ought to change how we feel: the things we now love and no longer love; the people we love, and the God we love. It can’t just be a historical or theological or philosophical assent. It has to be a belief that changes our heart.
That belief demonstrates our faith in Jesus Christ who justified us on the cross. Our confession of Him as our Lord causes us to be saved because we are not ashamed to own Him as our Lord, despite the cost (Mark 8:34-38).
So we are saved by grace through faith in God’s love for us (Ephesians 2:8-9). That will never change. But for that faith to be proved genuine, it must change our heart, change our affections and change our actions. It can’t just be faith in name only.
Hence Ephesians 2:10.
John 3:26 has often been described as ‘the Gospel in a nutshell’. Unfortunately, a wrong understanding of this verse has often led to allergies: allergies to Christianity and the Gospel triggered by those who believe they can claim their free place in heaven by saying a few words like some form of incantation and then live as if God never existed.
That is plainly wrong. Belief implies action. It implies not just believing that Jesus exists, or that He died on the cross for our sins, but that He is truly Lord and we must follow Him.
That is truly what being a Christian is all about.
Conclusion
John 3:16-18 NIV
[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. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. [18] Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
(Read the full passage at: https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.3.16-18.NIV)
When I was just five years old, this was the verse that convinced me to follow Jesus Christ. It became my favourite verse, even as such a young child.
The reason why was simple. My family loved me. I was sure of that. But I was brought up in a somewhat hostile environment: in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Europe, among people who misunderstood my faith and that of my family, and who saw fit to vandalise our house, smash our windows, terrorise us when they saw fit, and generally make our lives miserable.
For seventeen years.
So to hear that someone from outside my family had made the conscious choice to love me and send His only begotten Son to earth to save me by dying on the cross to save me?
It was obvious what I had do.
That October night way back in 1980 I gave my life to the Lord and committed myself to following Him.
I would be the very first to admit that I haven’t always followed Him as closely as I should, and at times have ran in the opposite direction. However, when I stray, I repent, I recommit myself to God and I keep going, because there never will be anyone who loves me like God does.
Every Christian will say the same thing.
But there is something we need to know.
Yes, God’s love is the cause if everything we believe is true. However, that love must have an effect on us. It must cause us to take action. Otherwise God may as well not exist, and the glorious story of salvation might as well be a fairy tale.
I once heard of a senior politician in the UK who said that she didn’t believe in God, but was a ‘cultural Christian’. That concept doesn’t exist. There should not be a thing as ‘Christian’ culture. Christianity is not about language or food or clothing or habits. It’s about way more than that.
It’s about love.
If being an adherent to ‘Christian culture’ makes you a Christian, then everyone who ever dressed up as a mascot is in trouble, because dressing up as a chicken would make you liable to lay eggs, or as a bear would cause you to have a major problem with facial hair. And I feel really sorry for the guy in the West End of Glasgow who dresses up as a cartoon thistle.
Christianity is first and foremost, above all other considerations, about following Jesus Christ and seeking to live like Him. Jesus loved. He loved us all the way to the cross.
So we must love too.
Otherwise we are not Christians at all.
Because we don’t really believe in Jesus.
And these verses are all too clear about what happens to those who do not believe.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You for coming to die my death on the cross because You love me. That is such a wonderful truth! I want to follow You. I want to love like You. Show me how I can demonstrate Your love to others. Amen.
Questions for Consideration
Why did Jesus come to earth to die on the cross? What caused Him to do this?
What does it truly mean to believe in Jesus? Do you believe in Jesus?
What do those who believe in Jesus receive in return? What about those who do not believe? Which do you choose?
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