"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us"
A closer look at 1 John 3:16.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. - 1 John 3:16 (ESV)
Introduction
Probably the most popular Bible verse of all time is John 3:16:
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” - John 3:16 (ESV)
These words were spoken by Jesus Himself and recall part of a conversation he had with Nicodemus who was a Pharisee. They beautifully and simply present the His gospel, the gospel of God, the good news, in a way that can very easily be understood and remembered.
The message is simple. God loved the sinful people of the world so much that He gave His only Son up to save these people. And for these sinful people to be saved, they simply have to “believe in him.” All they have to do to escape perishing - spending eternity away from God - is to trust in the work that Jesus did for them.
This is an incredible and important message delivered by Jesus, captured by the Apostle John who was under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
John, again under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, also wrote four other books of the Bible as well - 1 John, 2 John, 3 John and Revelation.
Our study today looks at 1 John 3:16, a verse that has a similar reference to the most popular verse of all time - 3:16 - and also has a very similar message. In today’s study we will look at these similarities, and will also see how John takes this message one step further.
“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us”
In chapter 3 of 1 John, John is on a roll.
He begins this chapter with a reminder of our calling to be God’s children and in verses 4 through 10, he provides examples of what it looks like to be a child of God. He also tell us what it looks like to not be a child of God, to be a child of the devil. Those who “practice righteousness,” who do not make a “practice of sinning,” show themselves to belong to God. These are God’s children. Those who don’t practice righteousness, those who are described by their actions of “not lov[ing] his brother” belong to the devil.
In the next section, verses 11 through 15, the discussion related to love and hate continues. He reminds us that the world will hate those who belong to Christ. And with this warning in mind, he provides a stark contrast between the Church of God and the world:
13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." - 1 John 3:13-15 (ESV)
Love and hate.
Love and death.
Love and murder.
Love and eternal death.
He wants us to see these differences. Love does not look anything like hate, death, murder and eternal separation from God.
What does love look like?
In verse 16, he tells us we already know,
“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.”
We know what love looks like because we have seen it in the work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself describes it this way:
13 “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” - John 15:13 (ESV)
In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul tells us another way:
8 But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8 (ESV)
And John reminds us again here in 1 John 3. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.” We know what love looks like and we know that Jesus loves us because He laid down His life for us.
This type of love is known as agape love. It is not brother love, it is not erotic love, and it is not family love. It is agape love, the self-sacrificing kind of love that is the essence of who God is. As GotQuestions.org notes,
Agape is almost always used to describe the love that is of and from God, whose very nature is love itself.
Inspired by the Holy Spirit, John wrote John 3:16. He was obviously intimately familiar with “for God so loved the world, that he gave his only son.” John knew what God gave us to show us that He loves us, and John was a close friend of Jesus. He felt the direct impact of Jesus laying down His life for His friends. When he wrote in 1 John 3:16, “by this we know love,” he literally knew.
“And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers”
And because he knew what it meant for Jesus to demonstrate agape love by laying down His life, he also knew the implications of the next line he wrote:
“And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”
John is calling upon us, as followers of Christ, to demonstrate the same kind of love the Jesus Himself did.
In the previous two verses, John specifically identified the person who is now a part of the kingdom of God and there person who is not:
14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. - 1 John 3:14-15 (ESV)
What signifies the passage from eternal death to eternal life, the passage from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God? “Lov[ing] the brothers.” Loving is not what saves us, but is present in those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. As we are reminded in Galatians 5:22, one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit living inside of us is love. And John makes clear that the opposite of love is death. He tells us that the person “who hates his brother is a murderer.” He reminds us that, “No murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” These are very different images, love and death, love and murder**. And these comparisons are made for that reason. John wants us to see the utter and complete difference between the life of someone following Jesus Christ and the life of someone who is not.
The person who does not belong to Christ is described as a murderer, someone who takes life. Christianity is radically different from this. Instead of taking life, our Savior instead gave His life as a ransom for others. And for Christ’s followers, our lives should follow the same example of sacrificial love for those around us instead of a life that “hates and murders.” This type of life is describe by the Apostle Paul in Philippians 2:
3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. - Philippians 2:3-8 (ESV)
In 1 John 3:16, John is repeating a similar message found in John 3:16, but he is also expanding this message. He is reminding us that Christ indeed laid down His life for us, that God sacrificed His only Son. And this was a demonstration of the essence of God’s love, a display of His agape love for us. He not only did this for us, He also gave up the glories of heaven. He did not hang on to those things that He rightly deserved to experience. He did “not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.”
And Jesus did all of this for us. The message in each of these two verses confirms this. But if we believe this message, we not only have the promise of eternal life in heaven with God, we also have a purpose bestowed upon our lives. In 1 John 3, John describes this purpose as “to lay down our lives for the brothers.”
This does not mean that our lives are not valuable, that we should not try to accomplish other things with our lives, or that we should never think of ourselves. But it does mean that the calling on our lives is radically different than the way we often live our lives. The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 that we are not our own that we “were bought with a price.” When we belong to Jesus, our priorities are changed. We move from the selfishness described by John as hating and murdering to the essence of love, laying down our lives for others.
Application
I often feel like a hypocrite when I write these articles and this verse reminds me all over again of just how badly I live my life for Christ. Even as this verse has been on my brain during the several days it has taken to craft this post, I have struggled and failed miserably to get this right.
For example, I have recently started a new job and I have used this change as an opportunity to refocus my purpose for working. Daily I think of these verses and how I should love:
37 “And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” - Matthew 22:37-39 (ESV)
As I think about loving God with all of my heart, I daily pray to work for my employer as if working for the Lord (because I am). (Colossians 3:23) And I think about working for clients as if working for myself. But though this is my prayer, I daily battle with the selfishness through my super power of rationalizing. And many days I lose this battle.
It is frustrating for sure. I want to do better, but I struggle over and over with the opportunities that are presented to me. Daily, it seems, I find agreement with the Apostle Paul when he says:
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? - Romans 7:24 (ESV)
And when in this frame of mind, Paul’s next verse really hits the spot when he writes, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” As I remember these verses am I once again practice the art of rationalizing my sin? Or am I practicing righteousness, as John reminds us, by realizing my sin, confessing it to God and being reminded of His grace towards me?
Perhaps it is some of both, but regardless of which, we are forced back to the cross of Christ. And we are reminded to start again. We remember the act of selfless love displayed by Christ toward us. We return to Him. And we heed His call to selflessly love others.
** The Apostle John is describing life in Christ and reminding us that this life looks completely different than life of those who do not belong to Jesus. He is making the point that the follower of Christ follows the example of Christ. He or she loves and lays down their own life for the benefit of others. To help us understand this type of love, he uses two things that are opposites of love, hate and murder. Those who make a practice of hate and murder do not practice righteousness and do not make a practice of loving their fellow man. John is not saying that people who hate and murder cannot know God. We know that Moses murdered an Egyptian, King David was responsible for Uriah’s death, and the Apostle Paul was a persecutor of the Christian church before he was the Apostle Paul. obviously, these people are spending eternity with God, so what John is saying must mean something else.