Reading: 1 John 4:7-13.
Love is a prominent component of human life. We love to love, and we love to be loved. Also, we naturally tend to love those who love us or those who are lovely. This fact about human love is what sets the love of God so high above it. God’s love is of a different kind. It is of the highest, purest form. In this passage John offers a description of God’s love.
First, he says that God’s love is a self-originated love. In the world of manufacturing, one cannot have outputs without inputs. This is not the case with God’s love. His love is not like a product. He does not need anything outside of himself in order to “produce” love. Rather, his love is essential to his being. He loves simply because “God is love” (3:8).
Second, God’s love is a self-initiated love. He doesn’t love in reaction or in response to our love for him. “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us” (3:10). This sets God’s love for us so far apart from our love for him. In fact, anyone who claims to love God can only do so in response to God’s love for them and by God’s enabling Spirit (Rom. 5:5). Our love for God is not self-initiated.
Third, God’s love is a self-giving love. We are sinners and sin is loathsome to God. As such, God’s love does not overlook our sins. Instead, it bears the cost of our sins. Therefore, “God has sent his Son into the world” (3:9) in order “to be the propitiation for our sins” (3:10). A propitiation is a wrath-averting, justice-satisfying sacrifice offered to God. The coming of Jesus in the flesh and his crucifixion on the cross for our sins were the climactic expressions of God’s self-giving, sacrificial love for undeserving sinners. What manner of love is this!
Beloved, as we meditate on God’s self-originated, self-initiated, self-giving love this advent, it ought to call out some reasonable responses from us. The purity and benevolence of God’s love compels us to action. The first action is to love him (3:16). So, do you love God? If so, how do you know that you do?
John tells us that the inescapable proof of love for God is love for “one another” (3:7, 11, 12). You see, when we love other believers, we are only giving what we have first received because all “love is from God” (3:7). Further, love for one another proves our new birth (3:7), our true knowledge of God (3:7c), and our ongoing fellowship with God (3:12).
Only understanding and delighting in God’s love for you can truly energize your love for other Christians. Indeed, God’s love is what compels our love for others. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (3:11).