²¹ “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.”

Young or unlearned Christians can stumble over this verse. Does not Jesus teach in John 3:16 that God loves the whole world? And does not Paul lay out clearly that before we ever loved Him, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8)? How then can Jesus teach that the Father’s love for us depends upon our love for Him?

We need to take all of Scripture into account. First, the same chronicler, the “beloved disciple,” in his first letter 40+ years later, wrote that any love we have originates from God: “… love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). Our ability to love is catalyzed by God’s sacrificial love for us: “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” (1 John 4:10). Succinctly he adds, “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). So in what sense does Jesus explain that God’s love is contingent upon our love?

Remember in context Jesus had already told them, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” (vs. 15) The evidence of our love for Christ is our obedience to His commands. It does no good to say we love Him, yet not do anything He asks of us. Love is not a feeling, but a response to Christ. Jesus is simply making a statement that the one who obeys Christ is the one who truly loves Him. Just as loving one another is the evidence that we are Christ’s disciples (John 13:35), so also obedience is the evidence that we love Christ.

But this love is a response to the love of God in Christ. So, yes, God loves the world and everyone in it (see 1 John 2:2)—that is the beginning point. Through faith, His disciples respond to that love by loving God in return and following Jesus. God then responds to our obedient love with a special or increasing love as a Father loves his children. The growing reciprocity of God’s initiating love increasingly energizes our responsive love, so that we “… being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that [we] may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:17–19). So we can say like John, “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:9).

Lord, I love You because You have infused me with Your love through Christ.