He that loves not has not known God; for God is love.
Two short clauses in this verse carry the whole weight: a test applied to us, and a statement made about God. The first says that a person who does not love does not know God. The second gives the reason, and says something about God that Scripture says of nothing else.
Not an Attribute but a Nature
The wording is exact. There is a real difference between saying God loves and saying God is love.
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.
Other qualities we give to God trace back to this deeper level of what He is in Himself.
"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."
Why Loveless Means Godless
If love is what God is, then a person without love lacks the one thing that makes knowing Him possible.
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.
The gap is total, not partial. It is a matter of kind, not degree.
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.
Not Reversible
Because the statement is about God's nature, it can be twisted in two opposite ways. One is to turn inward and study the love we find in ourselves. The other is to sink into doubt when we do not find it there.
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.
Reversing it is not just a word game. It changes what God is able to do about sin.
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.
Held Together with Light
John wrote this letter. Earlier in it he made another statement about God, and the two belong together.
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.
This is why overlooking evil is not the love the verse describes.
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.
The Same Love, at Our Scale
What is in God without limit appears in His children in smaller measure, but it is real.
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.
Summary
- Is, not does. Scripture never says God is power or wisdom. Love, like light, is what He is in Himself, and every gracious act flows out of that.
- Therefore likeness. Since love is His nature, only those who have that nature can know Him — no one knows love except by loving.
- Therefore not reversible. "God is love" is a statement about God; "love is God" makes love the deity and leaves God unable to deal with sin.
- Therefore never alone. The same letter says God is light; drop light and what remains is a false god who waves sin aside.
- Therefore visible. Love in the believer is clouded and small in degree, yet the same in kind as the love that is God Himself.