Verse 1: See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Behold and Be Amazed
John begins chapter 3 with the simple command: see. However, this doesn’t bring out the full effect of what John is trying to emphasize. The Greek word means to look, to open the eyes of one’s mind and perceive. It is a command that we behold and pay strict attention to what John is about to disclose regarding this particular love which the Father has imparted to us.
The phrase ‘how great’ is one Greek word, an inquisitive adjective meant to encourage the reader to contemplate. There is a word in the Greek for ‘great’, but it is not what John uses here. This word questions “of what sort,”1 implying a sense of awe, amazement, admiration, astonishment, otherworldly. The word is used only 7 times in the New Testament (Matthew 8:27; Mark 13:1 (twice); Luke 1:29; 7:39; 2 Peter 3:11; 1 John 3:1). It is as if John is saying: “Wow! Behold, how amazing is this love the Father has bestowed on us?” R.M.L Waugh notes:
The more the aged John meditated on the love of God, the more he was filled with wonder at the uniqueness of it. There is something unearthly about the divine love. The New Testament writers cannot help using a distinctive word (agape) to indicate its rare quality. Human love is so often kindled by love of a friend; but divine love is utterly and absolutely unselfish.2
In his gospel, John declared the intensity of God’s amazing love:
For God so [in this manner] loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
John goes on to explain why we should be astonished by this unearthly love: that we would be called children of God! Believers are presently in a relationship with God, Who intentionally desires fellowship with us; otherwise, He would not have provided His Son’s death in our place on the cross to satisfy His just demands for the atonement of our sins. Now we can understand why John expressed awe of the Father’s love by the phrase how great.
The fact that the Father loves us was proclaimed by Our Lord in His Upper Room Discourse:
"For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father." (John 16:27)
This love is eternal, as emphasized by the word bestowed, it remains in us forever; it cannot be lost nor can it be forsaken by the believer. The Apostle Paul explained this thoroughly when he wrote:
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38–39)
Even if we were ever to be faithless, He remains faithful (2 Timothy 2:13). Our salvation, our eternal life is secured in the Father’s love for us. We can never lose our salvation. Our Lord asserted this:
“And I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (John 10:28–29)
The authority for Our Lord to give eternal life was granted by the Father (John 17:20), Who ultimately gives eternal life (1 John 5:11) and is the promise Our Lord made to us (1 John 2:25).
The phrase and such we are appears simply in the Greek: ‘and we are,’ describing our absolute state of being—that we indeed are undeniably the Children of God because of our spiritual birth (cf. Romans 8:16). This serves to underscore the finality of this issue.
The Destitute World
What John means by the world is not with regard to God’s creation. For what God created was deemed “very good” (Genesis 1:31). What he is referring to is the present world order ruled by Satan: ‘the evil one’ (1 John 5:19), ‘the prince of the power of the air’ (Ephesians 2:2), ‘the god of this world’ (2 Corinthians 4:4). He is the deceiver of the whole world (Revelation 12:9) so that the people who reside in this world are agnostics, atheists, unbelievers—the mass of unregenerate mankind. Remember, there are only two categories of people who populate the world: those who believe in Jesus Christ, the God of the universe; those who knowingly or unwittingly follow the delusion of Satan and his minions.
Having this understanding of John’s use of the word world, we are able to perceive the significance of this last phrase of this verse.
For this refers to the preceding statement—the fact of God’s love bestowed upon us and that He calls us His children. This is specifically what the world does not know about us. The Greek word for know means “to come to know, recognize” or “to understand completely.”3 The world does not recognize nor does it understand this intimate relationship we have with the God of the universe. Lenski explains that,
We are utterly foreign to the world because even our Father is utterly foreign to the world. The world has no conception of what we are as those who are born of God and thus God’s actual children.4
The Apostle Paul tells us that the unregenerate “natural man” in their ignorance considers the “word of the cross” and the “things of the Spirit of God” as utter foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18; 2:14). They regard us as the foolish oddities of the world. It is the reason the Apostle Peter could state that,
In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you (1 Peter 4:4)
By surprised Peter means “to be astonished by the strangeness of a thing.”5 In essence, we are considered to be irrational abnormalities in today’s culture. In fact, Van Ryn asserts that “the world not only does not understand the believer in Christ; it resents him if he lives to please the Lord.”6
But Peter gives us sound advice for how we are to live in this present world:
But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. (1 Peter 3:15–16)
John concludes with an explanation for the worlds’ failure in understanding us: because it did not know Him—the Father. Jesus declared that “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), so neither does the world know Jesus Christ. For this was established by John in his gospel account.
He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. (John 1:10)
[1] Robertson, A.T. (1934). A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, p.741.
[2] Waugh, R.M.L. (1953). The Preacher and His Greek Testament, London: The Epworth Press, p. 25.
[3] Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson, 2.346.
[4] Lenski, R.C.H. (2001). Commentary on the New Testament, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 11.450.
[5] Vine, 2.203.
[6] Van Ryn, August (1948). The Epistles of John, New York, NY: Loizeaux Brothers, p. 84.
© 2025 David M. Rossi
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