*We* love because *he* has first loved us.
God's love is the beginning of the whole story, and our love is only the echo. It settles that order for good. It also shows why every try at loving God out of our own strength collapses.
The verse answers a question about where love comes from. It tells us how love for God ever started in hearts that had none.
The proof of God's love is that He has given His Son; the perfection of it is that we are as He is; and it drives fear out, even when we face the day of judgment. But how did this happen? The answer is, "We love Him because He first loved us." That brings us back to the simplest truths. We did not come to God because of His loveliness. We do not come in by loving God; that comes later. We come in as sinners who owe everything to His grace. Once we are in, we find God to be what He is: love that meets us in our every need. Then we love Him.
The law demanded love from people. One writer shows the difference between a demand and a revelation of love.
The law demanded love from people, but never got it. But God has won it by showing His great love to us in the death of His only Son: "We love Him because He first loved us." Our love is not forced out of us by threats of wrath. Threats never produced love in any human heart. They produced terror, but not love. Love produces love, wherever that love is valued.
Notice that John does not tell his readers to start loving. He reports what has happened to them.
First he shows how God has displayed His love. God has given His Son. He has given His Spirit to live in us. He has made His love perfect with us, so that we may have boldness on the day of judgment. Then John says, "We love Him because He first loved us." He does not say we ought to love Him. The heart has drunk in all that this love has brought: eternal life, propitiation for our sins, the gift of the Spirit, and boldness on the day of judgment, because we will be like the Judge. All this streams into the heart. So we can say, "We love Him because He first loved us."
Some people try to work up warm feelings toward God. One writer explains why that fails, and where to look instead.
This reaction is spontaneous and natural. I put no effort into it at all — no pushing myself, no working up my emotions by artificial means. Love must be spontaneous, or it is not love at all… Our hearts are no fountain of love. We must look elsewhere: "we love because He first loved us." Receiving the love of God is the only source of love for God or for others… What is the use of putting all our energy into pumping to draw water from a well that yields only poison gas?
Many readers know the verse as "we love Him." One writer says the shorter reading, without "Him," takes in more, not less.
You may have noticed that the true reading of 1 John 4:19 is, "We love, because He first loved us." You may feel, as I did, disappointed that the old familiar words have changed. But the true reading still includes the old words we all love so much, and it takes in much more. It is a wide, absolute love. It includes love for Him, love for one another, love of the Word, and love of prayer… And the only way for that love to grow is to know more and more of His love to us.
The same reading, another writer argues, works as a check on spiritual self-admiration.
All is included in "we love." Yet none of it would be possible unless we begin in the dust of death, "because He first loved us." So these words correct us, and our hearts badly need it. They strip away our focus on self and our admiration of self.
One writer asks what our love for God actually rests on.
This holy sentence tells us that we can only love God when we know He first loved us. We love Him because we trust His love for us. If it were the other way round, we would be assuming that our love is greater than God's… So the only true love for God grows out of confidence in His love toward us.
- First — God loved first, and His love is the cause of ours. We came to Him as debtors to His grace, not as admirers of His loveliness.
- Given — The proof of that first love is the gift of His Son. With Him come eternal life, propitiation, the Spirit, and boldness for the day of judgment.
- Received — Love is not pumped up from our own hearts; it is the spontaneous return of a love taken in. The law demanded it and got terror instead.
- Spread — "We love" is left wide open: love to God, to one another, to His Word and to prayer, growing only as we know His love better.
- Tested — Real love for God rests on confidence in His love for us, never on admiration of our own love.
If any one say, I love God, and hate his brother, he is a liar for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
The verse puts a claim under a test. Anyone can say the words "I love God", so John sets a visible person in front of the speaker and asks what he does with him.
The claim costs nothing, because no one can see the God it names. One writer exposes the excuse behind it.
The natural heart will grab at any excuse. A man will quite easily claim to love God. It suits him that God is out of sight, so he avoids real, serious dealings with Him. But he must deal with his brother. If God's love has truly entered his heart, how can he help loving his brother? If he does not, then he does not love God either: he is a liar. What a dreadful name! It is not simply that the man has been untruthful on one occasion. When he takes the hypocritical position of professed love for God while hating the children of God, this is the very spirit of antichrist. Antichrist is a liar, as is his father the devil.
Why does John point to a brother? Because God shows Himself in someone born of Him.
If I myself am born of God, then everyone else who is also born of God is a brother to me. The God whom I cannot see is presented to me in the one who is begotten of Him — this brother whom I can see. That being so, the test John's question puts is impossible to escape.
Where those qualities stir nothing in us, the answer is plain.
We have not actually seen God, but we can see something of God in our brother. If the qualities of God in His people do not draw out our affection, it is obvious that we do not love God.
Older translations end the verse with a question. One writer explains what that question does.
The apostle does not only brand such a person as "a liar", making a false profession. He would have us realise that it is utterly impossible for that profession to be true. "No one has ever seen God", he says. God is invisible. How can someone who does not love the children of God whom he sees love their Father whom he does not see? The question form only adds force in the conscience: it is impossible, and the profession is not true.
Is the verse too harsh? One writer sees the severity as protection.
The severity of 1 John 4:20 is right; God would guard us against all hypocrites and all hypocrisy. It is a crushing rebuke where one is needed, and its form challenges the conscience.
The verse is not aimed at the believer who loses his temper. One writer draws the line.
When the apostle speaks of hating his brother, he is not thinking of some sudden outburst of temper, provoked or unprovoked. We may be sure he would not excuse that. He would call it sin without hesitating, and it interrupts, for the time, the flow of fellowship between the Father and His child. But the apostle is not dealing with that subject here. He is speaking of what we might call the steady activity or state of the soul, its continuous habit. Anyone marked by hatred of God's children speaks falsely when he says that he loves God.
Can anyone argue himself into love? One writer says no, then shows where God places the test.
Logic never produced love, and never rises above a mental conclusion. But the new nature, with Christ acting on it, produces the result according to God. God arranges matters so that we have practical tests around us. A brother may act wrongly. Am I not to love him? Certainly I am. His conduct may give a different shape to your love, but love always has to be exercised as in the sight of God.
That has a practical edge. The person watching for love to arrive has the test pointing the wrong way.
We might say that we love God, but it is what is of God in the world that tests us. We may go about looking for love from our brothers and sisters, and complaining because we do not seem to get as much of it as we would like. This is a sad state to be in, and it shows a heart that is not enjoying the love of God.
- Seen — God is out of sight, so a claim to love Him costs nothing. The brother stands in plain view, and he tests the claim.
- Shown — God shows Himself in the brother. If what is of God in another draws nothing out of us, we do not love God.
- Settled — the verse targets a continuous habit of hatred, not a sudden outburst. An outburst is sin, and it breaks fellowship for a time, but it does not prove a false profession.
- Severe — "liar" is a brutal word, and it is meant to be. The question presses the impossibility onto the conscience and guards God's people from hypocrisy.
- Sourced — no one argues himself into love. It comes from the new nature with Christ acting on it, and it shows in giving love, not in complaining about what we do not receive.
And this commandment have we from him, That he that loves God love also his brother.
John closes this chapter by tying two loves together in one command. Can anyone love God and still hold back love from the people God loves?
Many people assume that kindness toward others counts as love for God. The verse puts the two in the other order.
This is just the common thought of people. If a man loves his fellow men, then he loves God. People accept that as true gospel, and take the "golden rule" for granted as something that works. This robs God of His claim on His creatures. But Scripture says, "whoever loves God must also love his brother." This reverses man's thought. It gives God His rightful place of supremacy and control — or rather, it recognises that these are already His.
Love here comes as a command. One writer notes that this was true even of Christ.
Even love itself does not get out of the place of obedience when it acts. However blessed the workings of the divine nature in us may be, it is always in the shape of obedience. This was true even of Christ. He speaks of His own death, where His perfection came out in full. There He says, "I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father." It was still the commandment, as well as love. So love makes us serve and love the brothers and sisters, and yet it is obedience.
This command is not aimed at the flesh. God gives it to a nature that already wants what He asks.
Love toward his brother flows from the heart of the Christian on its own. God now commands it. It may not flow when we let the flesh act. But it is the normal flow from the nature born of God. God gives it to us as a commandment so that the divine nature may find its joy in obeying what it delights in. No one could obey such a command in the flesh. The law showed clearly that man in the flesh could not love God, or love his neighbour as himself. Now we love God as the fruit of His own grace toward us and of His nature within us. The divine nature gives the capacity to love our brother, and the Holy Spirit gives the power to express it. So there is deep delight in having such a commandment from God.
The command names someone I must love. So who is my brother?
Love to the brothers and sisters is characteristic. I ought to love every poor sinner. But love to the brothers and sisters flows from a specific relationship, and that shows the value of what Christ loves. This is not the activity of evangelising grace. It is something distinct: we love a certain set of people for the sake of Another to whom they are dear, whatever their own character may be. So it cannot be outside obedience. Who are they? All God's children, "everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ." Then comes a counter-check: "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments." It is not loving people we happen to know, but loving the children of God as such. I know I love them because I love God.
What about someone who claims to love God but shows no love for his brother?
All the commandments in John's letter are absolute, and this one is too. Disobeying it means there is no life present. There is no real love toward God without love toward believers also. And if the principle is absolute, then let the practice match it.
This reaches into worship too.
Our Father will not value our offerings, as children and as worshippers, unless we are cultivating affection among brothers and sisters. This is exactly what John says: "whoever loves God must also love his brother." There is perfect harmony between them. Our Father is working to fill a kingdom with children and with brothers and sisters. They are citizens who will know Him as their Father and each other as family.
- Source. Love starts with God and moves outward. The common idea that loving people is loving God reverses the order and robs God of His claim.
- Form. Even at its warmest, love keeps the shape of obedience — as it did in Christ.
- Capacity. The law proved that flesh cannot love God or neighbour. The nature born of God can, and it delights to obey what it already wants.
- Reach. Your brother is anyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ. You love him for the sake of Another to whom he is dear, whatever his character.
- Result. The rule is absolute, so the practice must match it. That reaches even to worship: God does not value the gift of a worshipper who is not cultivating affection in His family.