1 John
1Jo 4:7-11 - What is Love? How do you Show it?
by Joe Holder
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. (1Jo 4:7-11)
As with our last chapter, Christian views and opinions are often so varied as to leave one amazed that God Himself could preserve His truth through the ages. Increasingly I am convinced that our view of Biblical authority and interpretation may well represent the most important issues to a healthy faith. If you compromise the authority of the Bible or if you adopt a mystical or private method of interpreting the Bible, you will reach faulty conclusions, all the while thinking you stand on safe Bible ground. In the last chapter it was necessary to steer a safe course between two extreme and unbiblical views; we need to follow the same course here as well.
On one occasion a few years ago I heard a man quote this verse and make this application. According to the view, anyone who shows compassion for his animals and treats them with kindness is a child of God. After all he is doing righteousness. Do you agree? I hope not! As we investigate this passage, we must define love by Biblical usage. We must also define righteousness according to the Bible. You see once again we discover people drawing their own conclusions conveniently and then going to Scripture for support instead of going to Scripture for their conclusions. One person will read this passage and try to force it to teach salvation by human righteousness. Another will read it, much like the man who assessed righteousness by how you treat your pets, and attempt to make all mankind children of God. Neither view will stand the test of Biblical examination.
On several occasions during our exploration of 1John, reference to the Bible definition and use of the word love has been made. Although written by another inspired writer, you could not find a better definition of love than from Paul in 1Co 13:1-13. Not once in the chapter did Paul define love by how you feel toward someone. Beginning to end, Paul's view of love appears through what we do, not by how we feel. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." (1Co 13:4-7)
Perhaps John in our study passage gives us an even more powerful example. How did God manifest His love for us? Did He remain safely and remotely in heaven and tell us how much He loved us? Or did He do something specifically and directly to convince us of His love toward us? How did God manifest His love? By sending Christ in human flesh to suffer for us! It was an act of love, not remote words, that God chose to convince us of His love. He serves as our example. We show our love by what we do, not be what we say. Words are important to love, but they become a mockery when they appear alone. Actions must prove love.
Do not forget the error John has been confronting throughout this letter. According to advocates of Docetic gnosticism, we cannot know God. He remains too aloof to be knowable or approachable. How do we know that love is of God? That everyone who loves knows God and is known of God? How can we assert with any authority or evidence that any mortal is actually born of God, embraced in God's personal and beloved family?
Occasionally we might think that our theology, our view of God, has little to do with our daily life. Nothing could be more wrong. We will mirror our views of God in our daily life. Therefore our view of God must grow out of Scripture and rational thinking based on Scripture. What would your worldview be if you built it around the premise that your God is unapproachable and unknowable? In vivid contrast what should your worldview be, given your belief in Scripture? John and other New Testament writers clearly teach that God remains intimately and permanently involved in your life. Should that knowledge give you a different view of life and of the world around you? Should it frame your view of the world to come? Will these ideas impact the way you live? The Bible Knowledge Commentary offers wise thoughts from this passage. "Love stems from a regenerate nature and also from fellowship with God which issues in knowing Him (see 2:3-5). The absence of love is evidence that a person does not know God."3
God intended to leave no doubt in our minds of His love toward us. He sent His only Son to be the propitiation for our sins. This profound act of God proves His love for us. John's commentary her both rejects the Docetic gnostic error of his day and the many errors of our time that confuse God's love and the effect of Jesus' death. Did God love every human being potentially or prospectively, making the propitiation, the satisfaction for sin, in Christ only potentially or prospectively available to them? If so, then His love was not committed love that accomplished our peace with God. It actually accomplished nothing other than opening an opportunity for us, if this is the correct view of God's love. Others will make God's love embrace all humanity. This idea appeals to our human perspective, but it must deal with heavy philosophical baggage. We must all agree with Malachi that God is unchangeable. (Mal 3:6) If God loves all humanity today, and if He will eventually judge and condemn many to eternal separation, an indisputable Bible truth, will He continue loving them in hell? Or will He hate them? Ps 5:5 says that God hates (Notice the present tense of the verb.) all the workers of iniquity. When did His universal love turn to hate? At that precise moment we compromise God's immutability, His unchangeableness! Try as we might, we cannot escape the consequences of our view. God's love cannot be viewed as simply a mirror reflection of our conduct, for then God becomes a mirror of us! We become more like the gnostics John rejected than like John and the Christians to whom he wrote. Justify His change in sentiment as you wish, if He loved you yesterday and hates you today, He changed! Such a changeable being is not the God of the Bible. There can be no doubt that many mysteries about God transcend our minds. We cannot begin to grasp all the dimensions of their reality. But when the Bible makes clear allegations about God, we do well to believe and embrace them. God will give us all of eternity to ask Him questions and to understand them better. But He has revealed certain core truths to us now, not contingent on our understanding of them, but as living faithful promises from Him to us. We need those promises as our secure foundation for life with and for Him.
If God so loved us makes God's love the example for our love. Throughout these verses A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, identifies the Greek verb tense as what he fondly calls "timeless aorist." Adding a cumbersome, but communicative addition to the translation of the text to convey this verb tense, he suggests "keeps on loving" for the positive act and "keeps on not loving" for the negative wicked act. What John has in mind here refers to a lifestyle, not isolated or occasional moments of time and conduct. The person who "keeps on not loving God" and not doing righteousness does not know God. The actuating force behind his life is not God. And the person who "keeps on loving" is born and actuated of God.
Despite all the teaching of the Bible, we too easily slip back into our sinful self-absorbed habits of thinking and acting. We want to love people who love us, treat them with kindness who show kindness to us. This attitude reflects the opposite of God's love in this lesson. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us.... This whole process of salvation, of assurance and of knowing God did not begin with my loving God. Nor did it begin with God merely knowing in advance that we would love Him, for that view fails to escape the logical relationship John rejects here.
The actuating force of conduct for the godly believer comes from God as a first cause, not as His reaction to us. We cannot claim our conduct as a first cause for God's work, either factually or in terms of God anticipating our work. In either of these events we become the first cause and violate the truth John teaches here. That makes His love the example for ours!
1Jo 4:11-13 - How Do You Know You Know God?