I am not particularly familiar with the Bible, especially the New Testament, as I had a mostly secular upbringing.
Does the Bible actually say that Jesus loves us - in those exact words? Is this actually given as the reason why he sacrificed himself so that people could be freed from sin? If so, in what verse(s) does it appear?
ever heard of that thing they call football and seen the john 3:16 deal?
OK, so God loves us. It still doesn’t answer my question as to whether Jesus also loves us.
well, you’re getting into a semantical realm. according to trinitarians, God, the holy spirit and Jesus are all one and the same, so “god” is jesus and jesus is god and so on and so forth.
as for any quotes from the bible that where jesus says he loves you–no.
john 3:16 are as close as you’re going to get.
thishas some varying verses, but there’s really nothing where jesus talks about his love for man. the system set up was: God loves us, so He came up with the passion play to save mankind, aka sacrificing Jesus. Jesus seems to love his Father–God–and did it all for Him (not us). get back into the “all three are the same” and it starts getting pretty existentially impossible to grasp on a wide scale rather quickly.
OK, thanks. I did know about the trinitarian concept but I was mainly curious as to whether the Bible directly stated that Jesus loves us. That pretty much answers my question.
I think saying Jesus and God are the same and thus if God loves you, Jesus loves you, is the semantic twisty-tie. I too find it curious that it never says Jesus loves you.
I didn’t check that link but what about Luke 23:34?
So here we have Jesus defending humans.
I just imagined Jesus busking on a street corner, singing “I’m My Own Grandpa.”
Or looking into to the mirror and saying “damn that is one hot god”!
Jesus, to his disciples:
Paul, in his epistles, makes reference to the “love of Christ.” Examples:
Ephesians 5:2 says that Jesus loved “us”.
To me that pretty clearly gets at what you’re after. If you want some other verses though, Galatians 2:20 expresses a similar sentiment:
I suppose you could argue that technically that passage only says that Jesus loved the author himself (Paul the Apostle), not necessarily everyone. But I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to interpret that as meaning that Jesus loves everyone who “lives by faith” in him. Romans 5:8 comes pretty close to what you’re after as well:
That says that God loves us, not necessarily Jesus, but it answers your question about whether the Bible explicitly states that the reason Jesus died was for our sins and because of God’s love. Similarly Ephesians 2:4:
Ephesians 3:19 is close too:
Since that was addressed to the Ephesians it seems to make it clear that everyone can experience the love of Christ, not just the disciples (although I guess it also suggests that Christ doesn’t automatically love everyone, and that it has to be earned).
Thank you! This is great. It sounds like yes, the children’s song is accurate.
The standard (Catholic, Orthodox, and most Protestants) interpretation of John 1:1 is that it is saying that Jesus IS God.
So, it becomes a matter of logic. For another example:
Premise 1: Obama is black.
Premise 2: Obama is the President of the US.
Conclusion: The President of the US is black. QED.
so it should be “jesus loves me, this i know, for the bible indirectly and obfuscatedly tells me so??”
i find it curious that all the “as christ loved you…” stuff comes after-the-fact, not from him in his teaching and proselytizing, but much later by his disciples. “hey, that dude LOVED you.”
all of this cane from people who sought to establish christianity as a…thing.
it was some time after christ’s death that he was deified. you know. like 300 years, the council of nicaea and all that–so before that he was not “God,” at least not by consensus.
it’s curious there’s no direct quotes from jesus about how much he loved all of mankind. granted, he did kind things that portrayed him as loving and compassionate and all that, but the bible is less than explicit.
considering early christians didn’t view jesus as one-in-the-same as God, i find it hard to interpret all the “God loves you” stuff as meaning JESUS loved you. these are applied attributions.
Yeah, but the black president didn’t get with himself and become his own son.
I don’t know what that is, but it sure ain’t logic.
Also
Which shows a parental love towards rebellious children.
Sounds to me that he wanted to get the flock out of there.
Do you have some kind of long form birth certificate to prove that he isn’t his own father? I haven’t seen one.
Have you read the Gospels? They clearly spell out his own claims of divinity in his life time.
The question was ‘‘Does the Bible tell me so?’’. While you may question the Bible, honesty compels the the answer to be yes. Your alleged events 300 years later are irrelevant to that question to what the Bible says as are discussions about when and who wrote it.
Are you leaving Paul out as an early Christian? Peter? John? They clearly regarded Jesus as the son of God.
no i’ve never read the gospels. i only grew up in church and my father and brother were both ministers but i’m totally unfamiliar with the bible.
are you familiar with the actual history of the new testament…? the council of Jerusalem and the council of Nicaea? i think it’s totally relevant that there was no consensus on christ’s divinity until some 300 years after he died.
yes, he claimed to be the one true prophet of God. so did muhammed, john smith, david corresh, and all these people.
i dont think a claim means anything–nor does a third-party asserting your claim. self insistence does not make things true…and we can stop that debate here because christianity is faith-based, not facts-are-facts based.
that’s not the point, tho.
if you look up the history of the song, it is based not on the convoluted scriptures provided, but rather on john 3:16, exclusively.
that’s the genesis of the “jesus loves me” song. not the other verses, which are as i pointed out, rather convoluted. the biggest thing about the bible is you and every other american are interpretting things from an interpretation that even in the purest form was an interpretation of many individual men. there’s a LOT of faith being scattered about across a lot of men you’ve never met.
when you ask a christian “how do you know christ loves us?” the reply is not, “because he told some dudes to love each other as he loved them.” it’s not because “he wrote a letter to the ephesians that is applicable to, you know, all of us even tho it wasn’t for us…”
no. it’s never this stuff.
it’s “because he chose to die on the cross for your sins.”
that’s the cited reason.
but there’s a rebuttal to that: he asked God (who is the same person–so essentially christ created himself, decided himself to die, decided he didn’t want to die, asked himself not to die…and asked himself why he had forsaken…himself…??) he flat out asked god to “take this cup from [him].” so, for clarity: jesus tried to worm out, if at all possible. is that undying love? that’s about how much i’d be willing to die for someone else–“if at all possible, can i not?!” and i’m a TERRIBLE human being. just the worst.
i’m, again, not saying jesus didn’t love mankind. i’m saying the Jesus Loves Me song is based on john 3:16 and based on him giving himself to die. both of which are kind of confusing if you really think about it too much.