Scripture Reference: 1 John 4:7-21

Love is very important for John and he puts emphasis on it throughout this letter. Here he does this by drawing attention to the fact that love is rooted in God, who is, in fact, the very character of love.

Love One Another

John reinforces “let us love one another” with the reminder that “love is of God.” Love, as Christians understand it, is not a human achievement; it is divine in origin, a gift from God. If anyone loves in this sense it shows that that person “is born of God and knows God.” The negative underlines the point: Whoever “does not love does not know God.” The reason for this is one of the greatest statements in the whole Bible: “God is love.” This means more than God is loving, or that God sometimes loves. It means that He loves, not because He finds objects of His creation worthy of His love, but because it is His nature to love. His love for us depends not on what and/or who we are, but on what and who He is. He loves us because He is that kind of God, because He is the very nature of love. This kind of love is not found everywhere, or indeed anywhere as a human achievement. We know it only because God showed or “manifested” it when He “sent His only begotten Son into the world.” His purpose in doing this was to give us life. Life in the full sense comes to us “through Him” alone.

The real meaning of love and the real source of life are discerned only in the cross. It is “not that we loved God.” We will never find what this love is if we start from the human end (“we” is emphatic; not that we loved). We find it in that God “loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation” (in other words, “the One who would turn aside His wrath”). To see what love means we must see ourselves as the sinners we are, and thus as the objects of God’s wrath, and yet, even then, as those for whom Christ died.

It is one of the New Testament’s resounding paradoxes that it is God’s love that averts God’s wrath from us, and indeed that it is precisely in this averting of wrath that we see what real love is. This has real-world consequences. When we see that God loves like this, we (the word is again, emphatic) “also ought to love one another.” The mainspring of our love for other people is the divine love shown to us in Christ’s atoning work. Christians should love, not because all those they meet are attractive people, but because the love of God has transformed them and made them loving people. They should love now not because attractiveness in other people compels their love, but because, as Christians, it is then in their nature to love. Love for other people is very important as is clear from the fact that it is this love and not just love for God that shows that “God abides in us.”

That “no one has seen God at any time” (compare John 1:18) does not deny the visions in the Old Testament (for example, Exodus 24:11). But such visions were partial and incomplete. It is in Christ that we see God. Therefore, when we love, God lives in us. Indeed, “His love has been perfected in us” (made complete), a staggering statement indeed.

To Be Continued

Roland Ledoux is Pastor of the outreach Ministry, Oasis Bible Ministry, specializing in Teaching, Encouragement and Intercession (both prayer and needs) since the early 1990s. He and his wife Sue, live in Delta, Colorado and have been married for over 50 years. They enjoy two adult sons, a grandson and a great grandson. He has been ordained since 1986. Fundamental Full-Gospel, Non-denominational. To learn more about Roland visit his website.

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