Archive for December 11th, 2008
Carson:
16. As the new birth, the acquisition of eternal life, has been grounded in the ‘lifting up’ of the Son (w. 14-15), so also that ‘lifting up, the climax of the Son’s mission, is itself grounded in the love of God. The mission of the Son and its consequences is the theme of this paragraph, but John begins by insisting that the Son’s mission was itself the consequence of God’s love. The Greek construction behind so loved that he gave his one and only Son (houtos plus hoste plus the indicative instead of the infinitive) emphasizes the intensity of the love, and insists that the envisaged consequence really did ensue;’ the words ‘his one and only Son’ (cf. notes on 1:14) stress the greatness of the gift. The Father gave his best, his unique and beloved Son (cf. Rom. 8:32).
Both the verb ‘to love’ (agapao) and the noun ‘love’ (agape) occur much more frequently in chs. 13 – 17 than anywhere else in the Fourth Gospel, reflecting the fact that John devotes special attention to the love relationships amongst the Father, the Son and the disciples. The Father loves the Son (3:35; 10:17; 15:9-10; 17:2.%24, 26; using another verb, 5:20), the Son loves the Father (14:31); Jesus loves his own, his true disciples (11:5; 13:1, 33, 34; 14:21; 15:9-10, 12; 21:7, 20), and they must love him (14:15, 21, 23f., 28; 21:15-26). They must also love one another (13:34-35; 15:12-13, 17; 17:26). Sometimes John speaks of the Father’s love for the disciples (14:21, 23; 17:23), but more frequently the Father’s love for the disciples is mediated through his Son. The world, fallen and rebellious human beings in general, does not and cannot love God (3:19; 5:42; 8:42).
From this pattern of relationships it is clear that there is nothing in the words agapao and agape themselves to suggest that the love of which John speaks is invariably spontaneous, self-generated, without reference to the loved one. John ‘uses the same words both for God’s spontaneous, gracious, love for men, and also for the responsive relation of the disciple to God, to which man is moved not by free unmerited favour to God (which would be impossible), but by a sense of God’s favour to him,’ (Barrett, p. 215). This does not mean that for John there is no such thing as spontaneous, self-generated love, only that it is not tied to a single word-group. More than any New Testament writer, John develops a theology of the love relations between the Father and the Son, and makes it clear that, as applied to human beings, the love of God is not the consequence of their loveliness but of the sublime truth that ‘God is love’ (1 Jn. 4:16).
From this survey it is clear that it is atypical for John to speak of God’s love for the world, but this truth is therefore made to stand out as all the more wonderful. Jews were familiar with the truth that God loved the children of Israel; here God’s love is not restricted by race. Even so, God’s love is to be admired not because the world is so big and includes so many people, but because the world is so bad: that is the customary connotation of kosmos (‘world’; cf. notes on 1:9). The world is so wicked that John elsewhere forbids Christians to love it or anything in it (1 Jn. 2:15-17). There is no contradiction between this prohibition and the fact that God does love it. Christians are not to love the world with the selfish love of participation; God loves the world with the self-less, costly love of redemption.