1 John 4:7–8

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.