For anyone who has spent any time in a church context or has encountered some form of Christianity, the significance of the story of Jesus is often assumed and then summarised in the single best-known Bible verse: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16[1]). Sometimes it is not even the text of this verse, but simply “John 3:16” that has become a kind of slogan or logo in itself, whether on billboards, signs in crowds, bumper stickers or other merchandise.
What is love?
Love is one of those words that has so many different meanings as to sometimes seem meaningless. It can refer to our preference for a particular flavour of ice-cream or our appreciation of a sunny day. Love can be directed toward a child, a pet, a spouse or a football team—all of them different. It can be used to describe a brief infatuation or appreciation, or a lifelong committed relationship. Too often the word has come to mean something abstract or ethereal.
But, in Jesus, God’s love had an action and direction to it. What is believed to be an early Christian hymn summarised the movement in the story of Jesus in this way: “Though he was God, He did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, He gave up his divine privileges; He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being” (Philippians 2:6,7). This is what theologians call the “incarnation”—God becoming human “and made his home among us” (see John 1:13).
Such self-giving, love-directed action reframes and redeems our idea of love. It is stronger than all the brokenness of our world, more powerful than all our injustice, violence and rage. This love works toward the setting right of all things. As academic and activist Cornel West famously expressed it, “Justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private.” In the most public way, at that pivot point of our world’s history, God’s love points us back towards justice and His original intention for all of our lives, relationships and the world.
Love in a person
However, for all its prominence in more contemporary Christian witness and teaching, one of the things we should notice about John 3:16 is that Jesus never preached this message in public. The story in John 3 is of a late-night conversation with an educated religious leader by the name of Nicodemus, in which Jesus challenged him about his own need for spiritual renewal.
By contrast, when Jesus introduced Himself and His work publicly, His sermon in His hometown synagogue had quite a different tone. Invited to read, He found, in the scroll of the writings of the prophet Isaiah, a particular passage that is no less profound but has a strong impulse towards what love looks like in public. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favour has come” (Luke 4:18,19). Jesus’ exposition of these verses was both succinct and bold: “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” (Luke 4:21). Jesus was announcing that this was who He was—and that this was what He was about.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, at times various Christian voices have sought to spiritualise what would seem to be a clear statement of mission and intention. While many people believe and have experienced that Jesus does heal, set free and restore people in a spiritual sense, it is also obvious that Jesus was talking about His practical work of healing people, setting them free from captivity and oppression, and demonstrating that God was acting for people—not against them.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favour has come”
LUKE 4:18,19
Sometime later in the gospel story, we hear again from John the Baptist, who had been so strident in announcing that Jesus was someone special, sent from God to restore our relationship with God and with others. Then imprisoned for his own “troublesome” preaching, John sent some of his followers to Jesus to ask whether He really was the Messiah that John had proclaimed Him to be. Surrounded by crowds of people who were being healed, set free and lifted up, Jesus responded to this question by simply asking them to look around: “Go back to John and tell him what you have seen and heard” (Luke 7:22). Then to prove His point, Jesus offered a list that strongly echoed the list He had used to first introduce Himself publicly.
Jesus’ life and ministry unmasked and critiqued the oppressive powers of His day. From His birth, His healing miracles, His teaching and His acts of resurrection, there are many examples of Jesus working to undermine the sense of inevitability that must be overcome before the status quo can be challenged. While Jesus focused primarily on the oppressed with whom He identified in so many aspects of His life and experience, “There are never oppressed without oppressors.”[2]
In turn, Jesus challenged each of the powers that maintained the political, economic and religious oppression of the people. In place of the numbness that is often a mode of survival amid ongoing injustice, Jesus practised a compassion that was all-encompassing and “a radical form of criticism, for it announces that hurt is to be taken seriously, that hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness”.[3] These are the sermons that Jesus preached and enacted in public.
Love has a purpose
The mission, purpose and work of Jesus was one of exposing evil and injustice, at the same time as working to undo them and restore our human relationships with God, ourselves, each other and the rest of creation. This is how Jesus introduced Himself publicly and worked publicly throughout His life. This is how God has loved our world. At a specific place and time in history, God’s love was introduced into our world in a walking-around, life-changing, world-transforming Person. To adapt from Cornel West’s statement, “Jesus is what God’s love looks like in public.”
In light of this understanding of Jesus, I have come to appreciate another description of Jesus that was also borrowed from the prophet Isaiah by another of Jesus’ biographers to explain what Jesus was doing. It describes both the tenderness that Jesus expressed towards those who suffer, with a special concern for those who are weakest and most vulnerable, at the same time as proclaiming the redemptive and transformative justice that He embodied and enacted:
“Look at my Servant, whom I have chosen.
He is my Beloved, who pleases me.
I will put my Spirit upon him,
and he will proclaim justice to the nations.
He will not fight or shout or raise his voice in public.
He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle.
Finally he will cause justice to be victorious.
And his name will be the hope of all the world (Matthew 12:18–21).”