JOHN IS THOUGHT by some to have been the youngest of the disciples. He was probably no older than his early twenties when he started following Jesus, and may even have been a teenager. Like many other young Jewish men, he learned a trade, joining his father Zebedee’s successful fishing business.

In the gospels, we get glimpses of his personality. Jesus nicknamed John and his brother James the “Sons of Thunder” (today, we might say, “Thunder Boys”), possibly for episodes like the one described in Luke 9, when they wanted to rain heavenly fire on some rude Samaritans just to teach them a lesson. But tradition also identifies him with the unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved,” as well as the anonymous disciple mentioned in John 18, who was known to the high priest. John may have been a familiar face in the high priest’s household because of Zebedee’s fishing business. If so, then John was the one admitted into the courtyard after Jesus was arrested, while Peter remained outside. John was the one who brought Peter in from the cold, while Peter then denied knowing Jesus three times. And many believe John was the one who remained near the cross while the other disciples remained in hiding.

I imagine John having been raised as a good and faithful Jewish boy, taught the traditions by his parents. If he was on good terms with the high priest, we might also expect that he attended the festivals, knew about ritual sacrifice, and was familiar with the Jerusalem temple. This, then, is the John who writes repeatedly of God’s love as demonstrated through the cross. So let’s speculate a bit: how would someone with his heritage understand what God had done? How would John have understood love?

Hint: it’s not about the warm fuzzies.

I AM NOT Jewish, and chances are, you aren’t either. As I’ve suggested before, we have our own modern ways of thinking about love, and there’s always the possibility that we may mistakenly read our own cultural meanings into John’s words. The risk is unavoidable when, by God’s design, divine revelation is given to us through human language. But we should still do our best to come to Scripture on its own terms.

When I try to imagine what the word “love” would have meant to John, especially when thinking about God’s love, my mind goes back to the Psalms. One of the most frequently used words for love in the Old Testament is hesed, generally translated as love, kindness, lovingkindness, or mercy. Psalm 63 is a good example of the word applied to God:

Because your love is better than life,
    my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
    and in your name I will lift up my hands.
I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
    with singing lips my mouth will praise you. (Ps 63:3-5, NIV)

These are uplifting words, praising and glorifying God for his love, which is better than life itself. But the words come in the context of a plea for help. The psalm is attributed to David, read as a prayer offered to God when David was in the desert fleeing for his life from Saul. He is thirsting, longing for God, desperate for God to save and vindicate him as an innocent victim of Saul’s hatred. What sustains him through this constant trial? His trust in the lovingkindness of God.

In its general sense, hesed can mean the kindness people show to each other. But when applied to God, it suggests God’s loving faithfulness to the covenant relationship he established with his people. He made a promise to Abraham and intends to keep it, even if the people are unfaithful, even if they don’t hold up their end of the relationship. God, in covenant mercy, will hold up his end. The people may need to be disciplined, sometimes severely. And as the writer of Hebrews insists, even the faithful may not see the day that the promise is completely fulfilled. But over and over, in a way that points forward to that day, God shows kindness to his stubborn and disobedient people. That’s hesed. That’s love.

And that, I think, is where John’s understanding of God’s love probably begins.

But it’s not where it ends.

AGAIN, I IMAGINE that a Jew of John’s day would read John’s words about love differently than we might as Gentile Christians living in the 21st century. So let’s listen again to what John says in chapter 4:

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:9-10, NIV)

“This is how God showed his love.” John isn’t saying, “This is how God shows how much he likes us.” He’s saying, “This is the concrete demonstration of God’s covenant mercy.” The story of God’s covenant love and faithfulness is one in which the people repeatedly demonstrated their inability to be faithful to God and to the covenant. God’s hesed is given even when it’s not deserved. That idea in itself is not new.

What is new is the embodiment of God’s hesed in the person of Jesus Christ. I imagine John endlessly marveling at this as he thought back on his relationship to Jesus. The ultimate expression of God’s love was to send his one and only Son to be an “atoning sacrifice for our sins.” This is not the first time John has said this. Remember how he began chapter 2:

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:1-2)

The phrase “atoning sacrifice,” again, means propitiation — something done to appease anger. A holy God has every right to be angry at sin, and Moses taught the people when and how to bring their sin offerings, which were typically animal sacrifices. John himself may have been taught this as a child.

But can we imagine how amazed John was to be able to write these words, words that we may take for granted because the idea has become so familiar to us? John had been raised to believe in the mercy of God, in God’s faithful covenant love. Ideally, the people would respond with gratitude and obedience, keeping carefully to the covenant themselves. Perfect obedience, however, was not possible, and the people would have to keep bringing their sin offerings to God to say sorry.

That is, until Jesus himself became the atoning sacrifice, once and for all. Listen, for example, to what the writer of Hebrews says:

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. (Heb 10:12-14)

Jesus, the ultimate High Priest, offered the final and definitive sacrifice: himself. Again, try to see this from John’s perspective. Instead of the people endlessly bringing their sacrifices and sin offerings to God to restore the relationship, God restores the relationship from his side by making a sacrifice of his Son. On the one hand, it turns everything that John had learned about the necessity of ritual sacrifice inside out. But on the other hand, it’s the ultimate demonstration of what John already believed: that God is a God of covenant love and mercy. John would have been both astonished and grateful, and wanted the same for his readers.

That includes us. I hope that with a little imagination, we can be just as astonished, and just as grateful.