I’m looking forward to the next 7 weeks. I get to be loved by a friend as she drives me back from Bible study. Being somewhat older now, I get so tired after work that driving home at 9 at night, when honestly I’d rather be sleeping… can be a tad bit dangerous. I enjoy the bible study, but if I had to drive myself back and forth I probably wouldn’t attend. But my friend loves me enough to drive me home. 🙂 We have the best conversations sometimes on the way home.
Why do I tell you this? Because when I read the verses for the day… that’s what immediately popped into my head. The tangible love demonstrated to me for 8 weeks a couple times a year. It is fantastic!
1 John 4:7-12
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Everytime I read this verse I remember a friend who believed that God is love and love is God. She always kept flipping it like that. But that is NOT what this passage is saying.
This passage tells us where love comes from. FROM GOD.
True love comes from God and only those who know God can truly love each other.
You know, it’s not easy to love the people around us. I struggle mightily with it at times. Some people it’s hard to love them, or to look past their foibles, to the person behind them.
But God’s love is what draws us together, helping us to look past the difficulties we might have, helping us to seek out ways to reconcile, and truly be the family he has called us to be.
spark of the knowledge of God
As I’ve pondered this passage, I’ve considered this fact. You know how every person has a spark of the knowledge of God in them? If wonder if that spark is our ability to love others even if we don’t have a relationship with God? That, God’s care for his people, not just his faithful followers, but for people in general, is that he gives us an ability to love, even when we won’t acknowledge that it comes from God.
John is clear with us. Love is FROM God. Not from ourselves, not from some evolutionary building up, or learned behaviour, but FROM God himself.
God loved us and sent his Son
John is again clear to his writers. God loved us enough that he sent his Son, his very deeply loved Son, to be a propitiation for our sins. What does propitiation mean? Propitiation is the act of gaining the favor of or making things right with someone, especially after having done something wrong. In other words, Jesus is God’s way of helping us to make things right with him. He’s the only one who could do it.
Through Christ we live. It’s the only way we can truly have life. The more we know Christ which is God’s love made real for us, the more we truly live.
So why wouldn’t we want to share that with others? Love each other well, and you will show God’s love to them and those around them. Isn’t it good to copy God? Loving each other and living out life truly to the best.
God abides in us
Catch this “if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”
Do you see it?
Do you see God at work?
As we love each other, as we practice loving each other, copying God’s love for us, he abides with us. Abiding is patient being with someone. It’s more than just living with someone, it holds the connotation of one a patient and steadfast companion. Our love shows God’s faithfulness in being in relationship with us. And…. as we love, his love is perfected in us. Isn’t that amazing? Oh, to be able to love in a glimpse of the way that God loves.
An example
I remember reading a book as a teen about a guy who was missionary in a rough and tumble neighbourhood. He was threatened with death, which he didn’t flinch from. He told the gang’s leader that yes, he could kill him and cut him apart bit by bit, but every bit would say “I love you”. The depth this missionary was able to display to that hard gang leader is what I imagine when I think about God’s love being perfected in us. That solid determination to show love to a people fighting against it.
It’s exactly what God does with us isn’t it? So Beloved Let us Love One Another. Let us show God in action won’t we?
I really appreciate the words here, as you dig deep into the heart of love.
Thank you, I learned much