“HELL IS OTHER people.” That’s a famous line from the incredibly depressing play No Exit by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The premise of the play is that three people condemned to hell are placed together in a room. They’re expecting to be tortured, but surprisingly, no torture comes. Eventually, as they begin to confess their crimes to one another, it dawns on them: they are to be each other’s torturers.

But what is the nature of that torture?

Personally, I read the play the way a family therapist might, seeing within it a self-perpetuating pattern of relationship. Each of the three condemned souls knows his or her own guilt. Each of them has confessed that guilt to the others. And each desires absolution or forgiveness.

But no one wants to make the first move. No one wants to take the risk of offering grace to someone else without knowing for certain that they will receive grace in return. They are all, therefore, at an eternal, soul-killing stalemate. Each person holds what the others want and need, but none of them will ever get it, because no one will take the initiative to offer forgiveness with no strings attached.

Hell is other people, therefore, not necessarily because human beings are intrinsically and hellishly hateful, but because we are constantly tempted to withhold from each other the love and grace we all so desperately need. It’s Sartre’s existentialist and relational twist on the Greek myth of Tantalus, the king for whom hell was to be forever hungry and thirsty while looking at a fruit tree that stays just out of reach and standing in a pool of water he can’t drink.

We’ve probably all done it; we’ve all intentionally withheld the love others need. Think about it. You’re having an argument with someone, and things are getting heated. Then some still, small voice tells you what you can do to make things better. Instead of merely blaming the other person for the problem, for example, you can take responsibility for the part you played. Instead of getting louder and insisting on being heard, you can quiet yourself and listen — really listen, really try to understand the other person’s point of view.

But then another voice tells you that they should be the one to make the first move. The attitude becomes, Sure, I’ll do the humble thing if they humble themselves first. I mean, I know I made a little mistake. But this is mostly their fault. So, me, apologize first? Hell, no.

Exactly.

JOHN, AS WE’VE seen, teaches his readers that the love tangibly expressed between believers is a mark of their discipleship, a sign that they are indeed abiding in God and God in them. This is not a matter of perfectionism or having to anxiously earn God’s favor by being unfailingly loving. Rather, they should be reassured when they see how God is already at work in and among them to achieve the goal of the Father’s love being embodied in his children for all the world to see. Whatever his readers may have been told by the angry people who left the community, seeing God’s love at work should drive out whatever fears they had about their eternal destiny.

John then adds the following pithy and well-known saying to the conversation:

We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19, NIV)

It’s such a simple statement, but it’s not for that reason any less profound. John doesn’t say, “We love because we’re nice that way.” Nor does he say, “We love because we finally found within ourselves the strength to do the right thing.” No, “We love because he loved us first.” Having just reassured his readers that their love for one another is evidence of the authenticity of their relationship to God, John reminds them that the initiative in that relationship was God’s, not theirs.

AGAINST THE BACKGROUND of Sartre’s atheistic vision of selfish humanity, then, I’m reminded here of a contrasting vision from the apostle Paul:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:6-8)

Paul recognizes that most of us would never give our lives for someone else, not even for a good person. Following Sartre, we might add that we wouldn’t even offer grace to someone who needed it unless we had the guarantee of being given grace in return — and maybe not even then.

But God is different. God is love, and the concrete demonstration of that love is the cross. Jesus didn’t die for us because we’re good, righteous, or admirable people. Paul’s point is that he died for us despite the fact that we are ungodly sinners, powerless to do anything to help ourselves, incapable of reciprocating in any way that would make us worthy of that grace.

At the risk of being slightly sacrilegious, though, let me offer a qualification to Paul. I agree that few of us would die even for a righteous person, but many of us, I think, would sacrifice ourselves for the sake of someone we loved. Such stories are easy to find: a child is in danger and a parent risks everything to save them, without hesitation, and dies in the process. These are sad but heroic and inspiring tales of loving sacrifice.

What we don’t hear much of in the news is a person sacrificing themselves to rescue an enemy. But that’s precisely what God did. “While we were God’s enemies,” Paul insists, “we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (Rom 5:10). After all, as I’ve mentioned before, Jesus himself taught that a truly righteous love, one that reflects the character of our heavenly Father, is embodied in a love of one’s enemies (Matt 5:44-45). This is what it means for us to be “perfect” as our Father is perfect (vs. 48): to grow up to be more and more like him in love.

John, of course, is familiar with that teaching. He is under no illusion that we love one another because we are intrinsically loving, or that others are just so dang lovable. Even within the Christian community there will always be reasons to think of some of our brothers and sisters as enemies. What then? Will we love them anyway?

We can, because God took the initiative to love us first. And with that in mind, we too can take the loving initiative to be reconciled to those who may be waiting for us to make the first move.