Beloved, let us love one another; because love is of God, and every one that loves has been begotten of God, and knows God.
John comes back here to his great theme: love among believers. He bases the call not on duty but on where love comes from. That raises three questions. What kind of love is meant? Why does loving prove new birth? How does loving connect to knowing God?
Love Has One Source
The verse begins with a statement about God before it says anything about us. Commentators read "love is of God" as a statement about His nature.
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.
If that is true, love cannot start anywhere else. Human affection is real, but it is not this love.
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.
Not Ordinary Affection
That source narrows what the word "love" means here. Everyone loves something, but John will not call that love.
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.
Use the Nature You Received
The call to love one another is an appeal to use the new life, not to strain after a rule.
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.
This nature does not force love for others. It draws it out.
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.
Knowing God from Within
The verse ties loving to knowing God. Writers explain that link through shared nature, not through information about Him.
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.
Yet the source of love stays outside us, even though the nature is within.
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.
A Test That Cannot Be Faked
Loving proves birth from God. So this calls for honest self-examination.
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.
Summary
- Source. Love starts in God — it is His nature, and it exists nowhere else in the universe, so it reaches us only from Him.
- Kind. This love is not sentiment or natural affection. It is the active energy of God's own nature. The apostle will not count ordinary human fondness as love at all.
- Birth. Receiving that nature makes loving possible. The call is to cultivate the new life instead of the old.
- Knowledge. We know God by sharing His nature, not by study — yet we look to Him, not inward, for love's origin and supply.
- Proof. Love is what the new nature does. Its presence shows new birth; its absence warns of self-deceit. This decides whether we are Christians at all.