The fact that the Trinity is involved in these statements leads naturally to the second of John’s reasons why Christians must love other Christians. The second reason is God’s gift of Jesus Christ His Son for our salvation. The parallel between this and the first of John’s reasons is striking. If we know God the Father, we will love. If we know the Son, we will love. Or again, if we know God’s nature, we will love. If we know God’s gift, we will love. In these verses John reminds us that spiritually we were dead men and women before God the Father sent Jesus to die for us. But when Christ died for us and when by the work of the Holy Spirit we were made alive spiritually, we were able to believe on Christ and recognize the love of God in Christ which stood behind His sacrifice. Consequently, having thus come to know love and take the measure of love, we are to love. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
There are three aspects to the love of God in the gift of Christ that give us this measure. First, there is the fact that God gave his Son (v. 9). That is, God gave the best there was to give. Nothing could be greater than this. Nothing that can possibly be imagined can exceed this gift, for this is that “unspeakable gift” for which Paul can only give thanks as he writes to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 9:15).
The second factor that enables us to measure the great love of God in Christ is that God gave His Son to die (v. 10). If God had merely sent Jesus to teach us about Himself, that would have been wonderful enough. It would have been far more than we deserved. If God had sent Jesus simply to be our example, that would have been good too and would have had some value though, of course, nobody would ever have lived up to that example. These things would have been good.
But the wonderful thing is that God did not stop with these but rather sent His Son, not merely to teach or to be our example, but to die, and that the death of a felon, that He might save us from sin. This is the fact that overwhelms the biblical writers and emerges almost without fail whenever they speak in depth of the love of God. “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? …For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any creation, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Rom. 8:31, 32, 38, 39).
