By James Riley Strange, Ph.D.
Professor of New Testament, Samford University
SURE OF GOD’S LOVE
1 John 4:7–13, 19–21
John wants his readers to take lessons in the Gospel of John to heart, particularly Jesus’ “new commandment” at the Last Supper (John 13:34). The commandment is old for John’s readers (1 John 2:7; 3:11), yet it is new (2:8) because they apparently have forgotten it.
Otherwise, why would John repeat it so often? John deals with the reality that believers do not like some fellow believers, and others they outright dislike.
He even deals with hate. We know what he is talking about, don’t we?
Reread 2:7–11 and 3:11–22. Read 4:7–5:5 for context.
We know we are loved because God sent Jesus. (7–10)
We do not love one another because we are lovely. We love “because love is from God.”
Indeed, we love because “God is love.” This love, therefore, comes not from us but from God.
Furthermore, it makes us like God (4:17), who sent Jesus for those who are mean, spiteful and nasty just as for those who are kind, gentle and just.
Jesus came for us apart from our dispositions and deeds. He came because of God’s love alone.
Taken out of context, “love” could mean many things, but John makes it clear he is talking about the coming of Jesus.
John’s Judaism taught him that all God’s people were creations and hence were “born of God” and “children of God” (2:29–3:3; see Ex. 4:22; Hos. 11:1).
John adds the idea of Jesus’ atonement, which he calls living “through Him.”
Therefore, living includes both existing by the word of a loving God (Gen. 1:26–27) and the “eternal life” given by God (1 John 1:2; 2:17, 25). Eternal life begins now (1 John 5:11–13; John 3:16; 5:24). It is life regulated by the love of the One who loves the world.
We must love others. (11–13)
Therefore, loving one another cannot be separated from living “in Him and He in us.”
If you have been wounded by another Christian, you know why John never bases love on the character of the ones we are to love.
Rather, he repeats that we love because God loved us. (The past tense refers to Jesus’ earthly mission.)
We know how miraculous this love is because we know what we have done and what we would do if we gave reign to our emotions and appetites.
We must not hate. (19–21)
John shifts to more comfortable teachings in verses 14 through 18: Jesus is the “Savior of the world,” we “confess that Jesus is the Son of God,” “we may have boldness on the day of judgment” and “perfect love casts out fear.”
Then comes verses 19–21, which starts well enough — “We love because He first loved us”— after which John returns to his topic: We must not hate a fellow Christian, for if we do, we do not love God. Who among us is not convicted by this teaching?
Who among us does not wish John would let it go? Does John think we are dense? Not dense, just sinners who will do as we please unless we are reminded of what God requires of us.
By not permitting us to claim to love God, whom we have not seen (also see John 1:18), if we hate one another, John suggests we love God by loving one another. Jesus taught a long parable about this that ended with, “ ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me’ ” (Matt. 25:40).
Let us then love God “with actions and in truth” by the ways we love one another, even when we are unlovely.
Let us begin living eternal life now.
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