By Mark W. Christy, PhD
Among Christians, most would agree that Christ exhibited a love that was self-sacrificial. That being said, it is important to understand the biblical contours of His self-sacrificial love and the necessary divine constraints placed on such love by His other divine attributes. This article will discuss the relationship of Christ’s self-sacrificial love to the world and believers, and its connection with the fullness of God’s divine being.
Christ’s self-sacrifice on the cross is the ultimate example of self-sacrificial love. In a sense, His death was a display of such love on behalf of all humanity (John 1:29, 34; 3:16; etc.).[i] Christ Himself announced in John 15:13 that “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”[ii] In v. 14, however, He limits his friends to those who follow Christ’s commands. In John 14:21, Jesus describes these friends in more detail, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”
Based on the aforementioned passages, Christ’s self-sacrificial love is particularly applied to those whose love is expressed via their faithful obedience to His Word. This love, though exhibited to the world through Christ’s public sacrifice and made known through gospel proclamation, is directed in a particular way toward God’s people. To put this another way, their reception of Christ’s sacrificial love is made evident by their love expressed through obedience to the gospel. With this in view, Christ’s self-sacrificial love has been rendered complete and available to all, though all will not receive it.
As the Second Person in the Trinity, Christ’s display of self-sacrificial love reveals, in part, the nature of God’s love. But, just as Christ’s love is limited effectually by the alignment of its recipients with divinely revealed truth in His commands, God’s love works in conjunction with the fullness of His being which incorporates not only His love but also His holiness. For this reason, Paul, in his description of love, writes, love “does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor 13:6).
A proper understanding of God’s holiness allows one to affirm John’s teaching that “God is love” while also upholding ample evidence, especially in the Old Testament, that God hates sinners (1 John 4:8). For example, the Psalmist, in speaking about God, emphatically states, “You hate all who do iniquity” (Ps 5:5; cf. 11:5; 26:5). While less direct, similar teaching is found in John’s gospel when he states, “God so loved the world,” but then also mentions that the world in part fails to receive this love: “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (John 3:16; 1 John 2:15).
In conclusion, Christ demonstrates that God’s love is at its core self-sacrificial. Nevertheless, persistence in sin limits people from experiencing this love directly even while they may experience it indirectly through the hearing of gospel proclamation. Those who heed such proclamation and align themselves with it, however, will indeed receive the fullness of God’s love because their righteousness through Christ makes ready soil for such love.
[i]In general, both Calvinists, Arminians, and Traditionalists agree on this point. While Arminians and Traditionalists typically argue that Jesus did indeed die for all and His death becomes effectual for those who respond via repentance and faith, Calvinists perceive Christ’s death as the ultimate example of self-sacrificial love exhibited by Christ and displayed through gospel proclamation to the whole world. Nevertheless, his sacrificial death remains ineffectual for the Non-Elect who are not sovereignly enabled by God to repent and believe the gospel.
[ii]All Scripture references are taken from NASB1995.