Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
1 John 4:7-14
Christians who do not participate in the life of a local congregation of believers, be it a traditional church style or a house church, cannot experience the love of God as God intended it to be experienced. The commandment here is to love one another, which is a communal exercise. You can’t love one another all by yourself unless, of course, you are an extreme narcissist, and the world revolves around you. ( I trust you catch my sarcasm).
John, in this passage, gives us a way to discern love. We were already exhorted by him to test everything to be sure it is right and real and not a lie. This is an extremely important test in our present cultural environment because many claim love where love does not exist.
As Dr. Peter Jones of truthXchange says, there are only two religions in the world, oneism and twoism. Twoism is Biblical Christianity. God is the creator, and everything else is his creation. Thus, God and creation: all is two. According to Romans 1:24-25, humanity exchanged the truth of God as Creator who is to be worshipped for the worship of creation. According to Oneism, there is no God outside of the universe. All is one. In Oneism, we find truth inside of ourselves, not in a God who exists separate from us.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Romans 1:24-25
In this world of Oneism, love is not defined with any reference to the Creator God since we now worship the creation instead. And we are part of that creation and define love as something that is limited to human experience. Love is love. We get to make up our own definitions of reality since there is no outside-of-creation paradigm of reality (like a Creator God). This is, of course, false. It is a lie. All is, in fact, two: Creator and creation. The two are always separate from one another. The creation gains its identity and meaning from the Creator God.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:7-8
God is the origin of love, and love cannot be known apart from him. Humans are created in the image of God. So, the extent to which we are in God’s image is the extent to which we can experience love in some form. Unfortunately, due to the fall of man in Adam, we are tainted by sin, and our love is corrupted from the pure love of God. So, the “love is love’ refrain is a deeply corrupted understanding of love.
The Biblical definition of love involves God’s self-sacrifice for us that we might live.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:9-10
Our requirement to love one another is a moral imperative that logically follows from God’s demonstration of love for us that we might live.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 1:11
There are two critical words in this sentence, so and ought. The word, so, means in the manner demonstrated in the last thought. That is, God loved us by sending his Son to die for us so that we might live.
The second word is ought. Ought is a moral imperative. God loved us in this sacrificial way so we can live. This love that gives us life also produces the moral obligation on our part to love one another. It is our duty to love one another as well as a natural outflow of God’s love being shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Love for one another is one identifier of salvation.
…whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:7b-8
John’s style of writing is radically different from that of Paul. Paul writes like an attorney writing a legal brief, all logical and connected through his argument to his conclusion. There is a clear flow to Paul’s writing. John writes like the less-educated fisherman that he is. His writing lacks connecting thoughts and jumps right to another thought. Here is an example.
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:12
While this verse appears to be disconnected logically, it is connected thematically. Why bring up the fact that no one has ever seen God (the Father)? Because he wants to introduce the fact that when God’s people love one another as they ought, that love demonstrates God’s presence. In a sense, we can see God when we see the people of God loving one another. This self-sacrificial love demonstrates that God abides or lives in us.
There is a second product of our loving one another that John mentions, his love is perfected in us. What is meant by “perfected?” According to The Analytical Greek Lexicon, it means “to be fully developed.” It is clear from our experience as believers that it doesn’t mean that we all now love perfectly and without flaw. I believe there are a couple of applications of this phrase. First, at the personal level, when God abides in us, the process of perfection has begun and will be completed in us. The other, in light of the context of a communal life of love, is that as the gospel is spread from people group to people group, God’s intention, his love is perfected in the global church or people of God.
For the earth will be filled
Habakuk 2:14 (also Isaiah 11:9)
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
God is then “seen” in both a particular congregation of believers and also across the globe and brings glory to the Creator God.
How do we know that he abides in us? John answers that with “because he has given us of his Spirit.” We all know the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
God loved us by sending his Son to become human, live and die for us, be raised for us, and pour out of his Spirit on us. The indwelling of his Spirit pours out the love of God in our hearts and as we spread his gospel message around the globe to every people group on the face of the earth, we see his love perfected, being fully developed in global human experience.
