In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1Jn 4:9-10).1
When we stop and think about it, the fact that God loves us is remarkable. After all, we are sinners who have displayed our rejection of Him in a multitude of ways. We have gone our own way, like wandering sheep (Isa 53:6); we have sinned and come short of His perfect holy standard (Rom 3:23). We have not loved Him as we should, as verse 10 says, “not that we loved God”; in fact, we hated Him. And yet God loves us! If we look at verse 8, just before the two verses that we’re considering, we’ll see it ends with an astounding phrase: “God is love.” Love is one of His attributes – He is love. So, although we are undeserving of it, God is consistent with Himself in loving us.
Verse 9 tells us that the love of God is “manifested toward us.” God’s love does not exist as a concept, kept to Himself, like an ornament on a shelf. No, it was put into action in the person of Jesus Christ. He “sent His only begotten Son into the world”; this is the great display of His love. That He is called the “only begotten” speaks of the uniqueness of the Son of God to God the Father. There was no one like the Son to the Father, and yet the Son was sent “into the world, that we might live through Him.” We need Him to give us life because without Him we are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). He came that we might have life and have it abundantly (Joh 10:10).
We might ask, how does this display of God’s love give us life? Verse 10 provides the answer: It is through the death of the One who was sent. The Lord Jesus was sent “to be the propitiation for our sins.” Propitiation is a word that is not commonly used, and so we may not be familiar with it. However, it is a vital truth to understand the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. You see, our sins mean that we are deserving of the righteous wrath of God. We deserve judgment and eternal separation from God. However, God “sent His Son.” He took the initiative; He “manifested” His love. Christ came, and at Calvary He was bearing the wrath of God against sin. He bore that awful judgment fully, entering into death; then He rose again, triumphant from the dead.
A popular misconception about God’s love is that it overrides everything about Him – that His love displaces His wrath. But that is not true at all. The truth is far better: God in His love has met His own righteous demands in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Justice is satisfied – and so is love! Christ is the display of God’s love so that now “whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Joh 3:16).
1 Bible quotations in this article are from the NKJV.
