1 John 4:7-21

God Is Love

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives 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. ¹⁴And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. ¹⁵God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. ¹⁶So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. ¹⁷Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. ¹⁹We love^* because he first loved us. ²⁰Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters,^* are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister^* whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. ²¹The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters^* also.

Today, there are many misconceptions about God and this has had an even more drastic impact on the world as people have decided to reject God with dramatic consequences. The following are a sample: firstly, it has meant that many people find that their lives are meaningless and unfulfilled and so they have fallen into a state of rampant individualism and materialism; secondly, communities are suffering from injustice and neglect and poverty spreads needlessly as resources that could relieve it with relative ease, are used for selfish gain; thirdly, many people are without hope. There is much more to be said on this, but this is not the place for it here. But suffice it to say that the message of 1 John could not be more relevant because it speaks of God in a way that is accessible and meaningful to modern readers – in fact – it is timeless. It makes people realise that today most people reject – not God – but a caricature of God of their own or other’s making and when confronted with the truth about God as represented in 1 John, many come to realise that they do indeed believe in God.

The author of 1 John begins his letter in Chapter 1 with the idea of God being light[1] and the exhortation for Christians to walk in the light. The implication here is that God is goodness and so belief in God is less about philosophising and mystical experiences (the claims of the Gnostics) and more about following the example set by Jesus. Price Love explains that if God was only light, that light would be unbearable.[2] John now adds another important dimension and that is ‘love’. We know that central to the paradigm of Jesus is his command that we ought to love one another because this love should follow from the love God shows us by sending his Son into the world. The author now expands on this assertion by stating that God is love, note, not God is ‘loving’ i.e. God has a loving disposition “... but that his very essence is love ... All love inheres in him.”[3] Our human nature could never create love; real love originates in God, as A E Brookes explains: “Human love is a reflection of something in the divine nature itself.”[4] This means that we are never nearer to God than when we love. Clement of Alexandria suggested that “The real Christian practices being God!”[5] The essence of being human is that we are made in the image and likeness of God[6] so to become what we are meant to be, we need to love.

But it is only by knowing God that we can learn to love and it is only by loving that we learn to know God. This quandary is resolved for us by God loving us first and showing us the way in Jesus Christ. We cannot see God because he is spirit, but we can see God’s effect in the same way that we cannot see wind but only its effect – and the effect of God is love.[7] It all falls into place: “We perceive God as light when we love one another.”[8] So, God is known by the effect he has on us which leads Barclay to suggest that “A saint is a person in whom Christ lives again ... the best demonstration of God comes not from argument but from a life of love.”[9] And God’s love is demonstrated supremely in Jesus Christ (verse 9). Jesus reveals that God holds nothing back – God gave his only Son in his love for humankind - and his love is free and wholly undeserved. Our love for one another must be self-giving. Without God’s love in our lives we would be filled with fear, because close analysis of those things that lay people low are the result of a lack of love. But love, “... so far as it is perfected in our lives, completely casts out fear ...” While psychology and science can explain and deal with many of our fears “... the deeper dreads of life can only be cured by love alone.”[10] Fear is an emotion of someone who expects to be punished and will result if we see God as only judge, king and law-giver. We are all aware of our weaknesses and shortcomings and when we are honest with ourselves we acknowledge that we do in fact fall short of our own standards, let alone those of God, “... but once we know God’s true nature, fear is swallowed up in love.”[11] And it is all linked together – love of God, love of people love of self.[12]

If God loves us, it is our bounden duty to love each other and it is “... our destiny to reproduce the life of God in humanity and the life of eternity in time.”[13] The only way to prove to ourselves that we do in fact love God is by the way we love the people whom God loves.

For Christians God is not an abstract philosophical notion and therefore an abstraction, God must be seen as personal, because we cannot be loved by an abstraction or by anything less than a person. To say that God is love is therefore “... attributing to God an activity which is radically personal.[14]

Everything that God does comes from love: If he creates, rules, judges “... all that he does, is the expression of his nature, which is to love.”[15] Christianity therefore began with God’s loving action as expressed in John 3:16-17 for God so LOVED the world ... This loving action of God is recognisable in history – God’s specific action in history. This makes Christianity unique in its understanding of God. Secular thought on love stems more from the Greek idea of eros and erotic mysticism; Plato’s ideas are about sexual desire, the passionate craving for beauty. The Christian understanding of love (and therefore God) is beyond physical beauty, beyond the beauty of the mind – and even the soul – to beauty itself as expressed in Jesus Christ who became for all the incarnation of Love.

William Barclay maintains that all this explains a great deal and teases out some of what Dodd has been saying.

Love explains Creation. Why did God create the world if he knew all the problems that would result? “If God is love, he cannot exist in lonely isolation. Love must have someone to love and be loved itself.”[16] Love explains free will. Unless love is a free response, it is not love. If God had been only law, he could have created us like robots, having no more choice than a machine – and I suppose a great deal of suffering might not have come into being as a result. But this would also mean no chance of a personal relationship with God and others. “... God, by a deliberate act of self-limitation, had to endow men with free will.”[17] Love explains redemption. If God had been only law and justice, he would have left us to face the consequences of our sin. “But the fact that God is love meant that he had to seek and save that which was lost.”[18] Love explains eternal life. If God were only creator, we might all live our brief lives and then die forever. If this were the case, a life ended early would be an absolute tragedy. But, because God is love, “... the chances and changes of life have not the last word ... His love will readjust the balance of this life.”[19]

This passage says a lot about Jesus. Jesus is the bringer of life (verse 9) – he came so that we might have life and not just existence. The eagerness with which people seek pleasure shows that they are searching for something. Jesus fulfils the deepest of all needs and gives us something to live for. Jesus restores the lost relationship with God (verse 10, 14). We are all conscious of our weakness and helplessness and Jesus comes to save us. Salvation is not about being spared punishment; we need to be saved from ourselves and the habits that enslave us, our follies and mistakes. “In every case Jesus offers us salvation; he brings that which enables us to face time and meet eternity.” It tells us that Jesus is the Son of God (verse 15). People always find it difficult to express what this means, but what we do know is that Jesus is in a relationship with God “... in which no other person ever stood or ever will stand. He alone can show what God is like; he alone can bring people to God’s grace, love, forgiveness and strength.”[20]

This passage teaches us of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the Trinity – and makes it all real for us today: it is because we have the Spirit that we know we dwell in God, it is the work of the Spirit that makes us aware of God’s presence, it is the work of the Spirit that gives us assurance that we are at peace with God.[21]

And we know all this is true – when we love one another with the agape love of God.