1 John 4:7–11

He begins with this: love is of God. It is His nature: He is its source. Therefore he who loves is born of God, is a partaker of His nature. Also he knows God, for he knows what love is, and God is its fullness. This is the teaching that makes everything depend on our sharing in the divine nature.

Once we grasp that God in His very nature is love, we have no trouble understanding that "love is of God." In truth, it could not exist anywhere else in the universe. I do not deny at all that we may see much natural affection in fallen man. Husbands and wives, parents and children may be bound tightly together by it. But we are speaking here of divine love, which alone is really love. This love, we say, comes from the heart of God alone, because it exists nowhere else.

This love is pure, sincere, unselfish, divine; not sentimentalism, not mere natural affection, but the active warm energy of the nature of God. God's children are to show it toward one another, for it is the very essence of the nature He gives them in new birth. If this love is present, it proves that a person is born of God. So the love itself stands far higher than anything that might pass for love among men. Every man loves something in some way. But the apostle will not count that as love at all, unless the very nature of God is active in it.

He would have us exercise ourselves in the nature we have received from God. Instead of cultivating the old nature, he would have us cultivate the new. And notice: the love the apostle urges us to practise is the love that is of God. It is not mere human or natural love. It belongs to the new nature we have as those born of God.

Here we have the love of God in exercise in the new nature, and the characteristic of this nature is to recognize it in another. If I have this divine nature, I cannot help liking it in another. I may have many prejudices to overcome, but there is an attractive power in the thing itself. I do not speak of it as a mere duty; it is there in the nature.

This is a matter of nature — the divine nature. So we can only know God in that nature… We know God by sharing His nature, and by the Spirit… We cannot know what God is in His nature unless we have that nature.

We are directed to God as the source of love, not to ourselves or to others in the family of God. It is true that we have the nature of God, the only nature in which love exists. But we do not look within for love's expression, or to find where it comes from.

He had shown that love for fellow believers is a divine affection. It is not merely something to be desired. It is so serious that it really decides whether we are Christians or not. So it matters greatly that we beware of self-deceit.

Notice, it does not say merely that God is loving, but that He is love. It is not only that love is an attribute of His character, it is the very activity of His nature. We do not read that God is justice, or holiness; He is just and He is holy. But it would not express the full and blessed truth to say that God is loving. He is much more — He is love itself.

"God is light" and "God is love." These two are His essential qualities — His very being. We know that power, dominion and authority, wisdom and riches belong to Him. But Scripture never says "God is power" or "God is wisdom." We know God is holy, righteous, and just. We know He is good, gracious, and merciful. But these divine qualities are only the visible results of what God is in Himself, that is, "Light" and "Love."

Then notice another truth: anyone who does not love does not know God. No one knows God without having the nature of God. Without it there is no power to grasp Him. You may look at His works and say there must be a God, but is that knowing Him? I must have God's nature to know Him, because no one can know love except by loving.

Such a person has not one sentiment connected with the nature of God. How then can he know Him? No more than an animal can know what a man's mind or understanding is when it does not have one.

This might be turned, on the one hand, into mysticism, by leading us to fix attention on our love for God and on love in us — since that is God's nature — as if it said, Love is God, rather than God is love, and by trying to fathom the divine nature in ourselves. Or on the other hand it may lead to doubt, because we do not find the effects of the divine nature in us as we would wish.

We cannot reverse the statement, as many try to do, and say "Love is God." That makes love into God. It makes everything of love, until God no longer rules and can no longer punish sin. All is love, love, love and nothing else. In reality it is a false love, not the real thing at all.

Some say the one and only definition of the Almighty, self-existing, supreme God is that He is Love. That is not true. John writes about this more than anyone else, and he is careful to tell us in 1 John 1 that God is Light. Only in chapter 4 of the same letter does he tell us He is Love. Light is the pure nature of God. It shows up everything and everyone as they really are. Love is the energy of His nature. It goes out in active goodness. To leave out Light is to imagine a false god who lets sin and sinners go free.

If God is indifferent to evil and is not righteous, then there is no love in showing grace to the sinner. If He hates evil and cannot allow it in His presence, then His dealings with us as sinners show the most perfect love. Suppose I have ten children and they go wrong, and I say, "Well, I must show love to them," and take no account of their evil ways. That is not love but carelessness about evil.

Love in God is active — He loves. Those who are born of Him have His active nature in them. He is love, and therefore He loves. They love because He loves. In saying this I am not forgetting the hindrances in us to love's expression. In God, love is unclouded. In us it is clouded. Yet love at work in us is still the same kind of thing it is in God. The degree is far smaller, but the kind is the same.

John speaks of the one who loves as born of God and knowing God. That might have thrown the soul right back on itself, to search for love there and fall into mysticism. But the Spirit of God clearly lays down this sharing in the divine nature. At once He turns the eye of faith to what is wholly outside us. So we may have the proof of divine love and learn its character... I was dead then — I live through another. It was pure and perfect love in the mind of God Himself. It expressed what He is in this love, for there was nothing in me to attract it or awaken it.

There was no life here, and no one else could give it. It was not enough to point to the Son in heaven; that would not satisfy God. No, God sent His Son into the world that we might live through Him; and this is the way souls do live. He sets this One before us, and tells us who the Son of God is. He is Jesus — truly the Son of Man, but also the Son of God. He is the only-begotten Son of the Father, yet God just as much as His Father.

Men may guess about other worlds. But no one has any real ground to say that God has ever revealed Himself except here... It is here that He sent His Son; it is here that He sent Him to be a man — a witness of His grace towards man beyond all words! — and remember, when man was fallen. Not until then was there the smallest word of it from God; but man had no sooner fallen than He speaks.

Without the new life it would have been impossible for us to respond to God's love. The sweetest music, the finest beauty, the most delicate perfume — none of it stirs desire or wakes pleasure in a corpse. And by nature we are spiritually dead towards God, unaware of Him. But with God's gift of life we have gained a capacity for enjoying Him, and our hearts can now enter into His love.

When God did send His Son into the world, it was to deal with sin and with Satan. It was to bring in what man could find nowhere else — LIFE, eternal life! Life that could feel according to God! Life that could take pleasure in His presence, and delight in His will. Life able to know and enjoy God! And where was this found? Is it in man's heart? In religious ceremonies? Nowhere but in the Son of God!

The name "Almighty" does not carry eternal life. "Jehovah" fulfils promises, but does not give eternal life. But the Father sent the Son, "so that we might live through him."

For we were dead towards God, and in Him alone was the life that could serve God, which we entirely lacked... But even this possession of life in Him does not satisfy His love, any more than it fits us to enjoy, serve, and worship Him. There is a burden which nothing on our part could remove. So it follows: this is love — not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins.

God is love. That is a firm statement. If people look for proof of it in the sinful and disordered world around them, they will fail to find it. We must look in the right direction. There has been a perfect display of God's love, but only in one direction, as verses 9 and 10 so plainly state.

Love has come in to deal with our sins as well as with our state... The gift God gave measures His love in all its infinite greatness. So do the depths of sorrow and judgment His dear Son entered to do this great work of propitiation — depths beyond our understanding... No feeling of love toward God on our side prompted the love that sent His Son. In our natural state as guilty sinners we did not love Him. It all began in God's own heart. The work was finished on the cross long before we ever thought of Him. That work enabled God to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation for our sins." Indeed He loved us beyond compare, and doubly. We were dead in sins; and God's love was shown in sending His only-begotten Son, that we might live through Him. We were guilty sinners; and He sent His Son as the only and effective sacrifice for our sins.

The Bible does not teach that God is set against us. He is not a frowning God who has to be kept calm by sacrifices that change His feelings toward us. That is the corrupt pagan idea... Far from our having to change His heart toward us by a sacrifice, His heart, which is toward man, is the very source of all our blessing. Our sins had made propitiation necessary, but He Himself provided the necessary sacrifice.

But we were guilty also, as responsible beings before Him. Here His love has met us. He has given His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. It is not law, nor duty, though duty was there... Love is not that we love God. That is what we must look for in our hearts if we seek the proof of life there — but then we are under law, and the law required just that, and required it justly. Love is that God loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. It is not requiring from us what we ought to be, but putting away, making a holy propitiation for our sins. We are dead in sins, and He gives us life. We were guilty, and He has given Him to make propitiation for our sins. He has met our whole case, in both its aspects as sinners.

John does not speak of the Son here as making propitiation, but as being a propitiation. God sends Him as the One who, in His own Person, is able to do this great work that no one else could do. All the power of propitiation stays in Him, and it is available for all. We could never have received or enjoyed divine life if our sins had not been put away. The conscience must be free from all sense of guilt and defilement first. Only then can we enjoy the relationships and affections with God that He, in His great love, has given us.

In the gospel God removes this distress. He purges the believer's conscience and fills him with peace through faith in Christ's sacrifice. That is why 1 John 4:10 adds, "In this is love, not that we have loved God" (which we surely do now, living in Christ), "but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." This alone is fully effective. The Spirit seals us on the strength of it, and grace brings us into liberty and spiritual power.

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." Can we emphasize that little word "so" enough? Such unselfish concern led to such an amazing sacrifice. It should capture the heart and enlarge it, so that we serve the need of others in complete self-denial.

The Apostle does not say, "Now that you have the divine nature you should love one another." No — he tells us to look away from ourselves to the wonderful expression of God's love. That love thought about us in all our ruin and need, in death and guilt. It made the fullest provision for our eternal blessing. It cost God His only Son… We must not claim that there is no motive to love.

First, let me remind you of a distinction. Scripture never says that we ought to love God, but it does say that we ought to love one another. The law said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart," and so on. Christianity lays no such duty on us. It is only our brothers and sisters whom we "ought" to love. The reason is obvious. We love God because He first loved us… We love Him because we cannot help ourselves.

We ought to love one another; it is a debt that we should constantly be paying. If God has so loved us, we owe to one another to love, as being born of God. We will never pay this debt off. But we owe it to one another to love — even though we should take on no other kind of debt.

When the apostle says, "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another," we must not take him to mean that loving one another is a mere duty. A duty it certainly is. But that is not the spirit of the love he calls us to. He urges us to a love shaped after the love we see in God. "We also ought to love one another" means, then, using the divine life we have received — practising it towards one another. However far we fail in this, we fail that far to show the divine bond in the family of God.

The nature of the obligation is simple. We should act towards one another as God has acted towards us… So the obligation reaches, if the occasion arises, to the manner and the measure of the love of Christ!… Only do not forget that the apostle speaks of love shown towards one another. You can see this from the case he names: a brother in need… It is good if you love me in your heart. But I will never benefit from it if you never let me see it shown.

It is a wonderful word, clearly connected… with what John 1:18 says. There Christ stands as the display of God in love. Here God calls the saints to be no less. Dear friends, how far do we display our God and Father by this divine love? It never seeks its own. Whatever the cost, it is set on the good of those it loves — His children, yes, all, even enemies.