God is Love

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In 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. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So 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. Love 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. There 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. We love because he first loved us. Those 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. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

- 1 John 4:7-21

Today I chose to focus on the epistle reading because it is one of the most remarkable passages I know of. John's epistle speaks of love, continuing the thoughts from John's gospel about love, relationship, and what it means to abide in God.

Love itself is a difficult subject. We all seem to think we know what it is, but just try to define it with a set of rules and you will see how difficult it is to pin down just what love is. In this epistle reading, John declares to us that God is love. The first paragraph in this quoted passage alone is worth thousands of volumes of theology. Perhaps the first thing we could say is remarkable about it is the very notion that love itself is from God, and that those who love are born of God and know God; and those who don't love, therefore, don't know God. John goes on to say that we know God loves us because God sent his Son to us... and if that love is to be perfected in us believers, then it must be born in us among us and for one another.

I say that love is a puzzling subject because it can't be divorced from judgment and truth. It doesn't just mean indulgence, that everything we do is okay and that there is no correction, never a loving rebuke for bad behavior. But John distinguishes here between punishment and judgment. If we know God's love, then it will cast out fear of punishment, and we may have boldness on the day of judgment. So, I am reminded once again, that we must distinguish between a rebuke from a loving God or Savior, and the notion of fear of punishment. This establishes, in my mind, a whole host of differences between discipline, truth, and judgment made in love, and the enslavement and fear in sin.

To enslavement and fear I think we can add hatred, as John does here. I think it is one thing to call something wrong, to avoid it (or the person from whence bad behavior comes) or to deny that an action has merit - and it is another thing to hate. Hatred, violence, envy - all of those things so caught up with aspects of what we'd call evil in our world are things that don't belong with a just rebuke, or loving behavior between brothers and sisters.

How much we have to learn! What does it really mean for love to be perfected among us? What does it mean for me to be the loving person that John, following Jesus' words at the Last Supper, exhorts me to be?