The Love of God – 1 John chapter 4
God is Love:
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:7-11
Love is the easiest of His attributes to understand, but the hardest to comprehend. Then what are we to do with that love of God?
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Frederick Martin Lehman (1868-1953)
Several motivations to love:
Why are we to love? Because of His love. Because He is love, self-sacrificing love. No optional extra: all Christians are to love this way. It was inconceivable to John that it should be about other way.
The greatest example of love:
God shows us His love. He loves all He made, and sent His son to redeem. His love gives life. His love is unconditional, His love is lavish, wondrous love.
The command to love:
34 ‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’
John 13:34-35
Christ-like love is what must distinguish His followers from the world. We must love our brothers and sisters. And this is how others will see God’s love. This is how God’s love will be displayed to the world.
12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
How practical this is, for we all crave to loved, to be cared for. Yet human love fails us. There is only one love that is complete, and never fails. It has no bounds, no limit, and can never be taken away.
Spend time together! Human society has built many walls: hostility and fear. As followers of Jesus, build bridges, and not walls.