One facet of the wonder of the incarnation is that Jesus, the God-man, represents perfect humanity. What Jesus told Philip is astounding: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). But this is not all the incarnation represents. Just as he is the pinnacle of God’s self-revelation, so he is also God’s revelation of all that humans are intended to be. Just as he is the incarnation of the God who is Love, so he also embodies the love to which Christians are called. As our passage today says, “as he is, so also are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). Authentic Christianity loves like Christ.
But the love to which we are called cannot be manufactured by sheer willpower. Jesus’s life does show us what human love is supposed to look like, but this standard would only gauge our condemnation if it were not for several other realities John points out in today’s passage.
The most important point to remember is that our love does not start with us. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19)! Jesus gave himself for us in a way that we cannot give ourselves for him or for others. He came to secure the forgiveness of our sins (1:9, 2:2). His coming signaled the end of the old age and the dawn of new light so that we may love one another (2:8–10). He came to destroy the works of the evil one (3:8). Our love for him and for others begins with the utterly unique work of love he came to do for us.
When we come to know and trust this shocking divine love, it brings about love for the God who would draw up such a plan of redemption, of course. But John quickly and securely locks together love for God and love for our fellow Christians: “The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister” (4:21). In fact, to claim to love the invisible God without loving our visible community of believers is a contradiction (4:20).
Inevitably this community of love created by God’s mission of love in Christ is a blessed community—a community that has many opportunities to know Christ’s presence, welcome, faithfulness, and mercy through our presence, welcome, faithfulness, and mercy toward one another. In today’s passage, John exposes yet another blessing that comes from the Christlike love he works in us. As this process initiated by Christ’s love runs its victorious course, as we are transformed by his love, as we begin to love like Christ himself loves, we experience greater, deeper, more unshakeable assurance that we have escaped the fate of judgment that this world faces. So as God’s “love is perfected in us” (4:17), that “perfect love drives out fear” (4:18). Thus, Jesus came not only to free us from punishment on the day of judgment but also to make assurance of that freedom available to us today. Let us seek that assurance together!