What Makes God, God? His Love: John 3:16

John 3:16- "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

When I was in seminary, we learned that every theological system has a central belief that drives every other belief. Back then, I believed that God's holiness was the appropriate center for everything I understood  about God. However, I have changed that viewpoint. I believe today you cannot understand how and why God does what He does without first understanding and experiencing His love. 

When someone struggles with believing in God, that is not a holiness problem. It's a love problem.

This key verse in John is one of the most frequently quoted verses in the Bible. It succinctly summarizes the Gospel in 25 words. It makes several points that helps us understand the nature of God through love. 

First, there is a distinctive look to God's love. The verse starts by stating that "God so loved..." The word for so means that God's love looks a certain way. There is a look to God's love that is distinctive from how we love. 

God's love looks empty. While it is true that the Creator is altogether distinct from His creation, God's love required Him to empty Himself for you and me. It's as if God took a bit of Himself and gave Himself to us. 

Next, every time God relates to us He gives a little of Himself away. In fact, John 3:16 tell us that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..." Isn't this what Jesus did? Philippians 2:7 reveals that Jesus "emptied Himself" (Philippians 2:7), meaning He became something that was categorically distinct from His nature, all because of His love for the world. 

The emptying love of God required the sacrifice of His Son to perfectly express His love for the world. What is your most precious possession? Imagine giving it away for someone who you knew ahead of time would betray you. That is what God did when He gave His Son. 

It's one thing to say that God sacrificed His Son for someone who would return the favor. But God gave His Son for the world, who John later described as one consumed by the "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16). It was because of love that God travelled down a dark path called death to give away His most precious possession for this corrupt, inexcusable world. God who knows no death briefly succumbed to death so that the world could have life through His Son. 

Life Application

And that incomprehensible love of God knows no end! The psalmist wrote, "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever" (136:1). Our response to God's love for us should be thanksgiving to Him. 

As you learn how to respond to God's love, consider what it means to give thanks. Thanksgiving seems like an empty response for something so emptying to God. It's easy to assume that giving thanks could be so hollow as a "thank you." It's so much more! 

In the Old Testament sacrificial system the Hebrew people offered a thanksgiving offering. The thanksgiving offering included leavened bread (Leviticus 7:13), indicating that all things, including that which comes from evil (1 Corinthians 5:6-7), was to be offered to God as a grateful response. 

So we can offer a thanksgiving offering to God in response to His love for us. However, we do not thank Him by offering leavened bread to Him, but by offering the leavened parts of our lives to Him. 

Leaven symbolizes that which is sinful or evil so followers have been taught to avoid the "leaven" of life (1 Corinthians 5:6-7). Most commentators explain the inclusion of leavened bread in the thanksgiving offering as a type of giving thanks to God for even the bad things that happen in our lives. I think it goes deeper than that. It goes back to the emptying nature of God's love for us. 

God gave His all for us, including His Son, by descending into death's pit. So to truly express thanks for God's emptying love for us, we too must empty ourselves of the guilt and shame from the hidden or leavened things of our lives. 

We must die to those leavened things by crawling on the altar of repentance to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, including those "leavened" things that no one else sees, but we consider more than God (Romans 12:1). They could be pornography, an affair, or an addiction to food or drugs. Or they could be those more acceptable things in our Christian circles, like jealousy, gossip, prejudice, or self-sufficiency. 

Here is the principle: Our sacrifice of the most precious things that come before God offered on the altar of repentance and surrender is our grateful response to God's love for us. Every day we must pass through death to live. We must agree with the wrath of God toward the sin in our lives before we can know the love of God for us. How do we pass through wrath to find love?

We address the hidden part of our lives (i.e. that part of our lives represented by the leaven) by offering it to God through transparent confession and repentance. Only through confession (1 John 1:9) can we find God's grateful response to us in forgiveness. When you truly agree with God's disdain for that sin (i.e. confession), He may lead you to go deeper by confessing that sin to your spouse or to a friend. Or He may simply throw that leavened part of your life away never to revisit it, presupposing that you will never revisit it through shame, guilt, or practice. 

What is the leaven in your life (i.e. those dark, hidden things) that you need to offer to God as a grateful response to His love for you? 

Scriptures for further study

Leviticus 7:11-15

John 3:1-21

1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Ephesians 5:20

Colossians 3:15-17