What can we learn from 1 John 4:7, "Beloved, let us love one another"?

In taking up afresh the theme of love's activity, the apostle begins by exhorting to it. He says: "Beloved, let us love one another" (ver. 7). 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. Instead of developing the life natural to us, we should develop the life divinely communicated to us. And, let us notice, the love which our apostle exhorts us to practise ourselves in is the love which is of God — not mere human or natural love, but of the new nature, which we have as born of God. New birth confers a new relationship with God, a relationship in which God is definitely before the soul, whatever the measure in which this is realized or enjoyed. Every one therefore who loves, who practises the love that is of God, is born of God and knows God; while every one in whom this activity of love does not exist at all, does not know God — is not in this new relationship with God (v. 8).

Love in God is active — He loves. Those who are born of Him have in them His active nature. He is love, and therefore loves. They love therefore because He loves. In saying this, I am not forgetting the hindrances in us to the manifestations of love. In God, love is unclouded. Alas, how clouded it is in us! Yet, even so, love's activity in us is of the same kind as it is in God. While it differs (how much!) in degree, it is the same in kind.

Now the activity of love in God has been manifested in our behalf. God has shown it in sending His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him (ver. 9). As naturally born, we are under sentence of death: we are appointed to death (Heb. 9:27), which implies abandonment to an eternal doom. To what wrath we are thus subject in our life of alienation from God! But God is love. In sending His only-begotten Son into the world He has manifested the activity of His love in providing a way for us to pass out of death into life. In the activity of His love, He gives us a new life. The incarnate Son of God put Himself under our sentence. Appointed to death as we were, with judgment coming after death, He made for us a way out of that position and condition into a new position and condition in which we are no more subjects of death and judgment, but of life in community with God.

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” This love is pure, unfeigned, unselfish, divine; not sentimentalism, not mere natural affection, but the active warm energy of the nature of God. The children of God are to exercise it toward one another, for it is the very essence of the nature that is communicated to them by new birth. If this love is present, it is a proof of being born of God: therefore the love itself is a far higher thing than all those things that might pass for love among men; for every man loves something in some kind of a way, but the apostle will not count this as love at all, unless it is that in which the very nature of God is active. “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” If this love is absent, then the knowledge of God is absent, for love is His very nature: “God is love.” Blessed resting place for the renewed soul!

Nothing is left here to mere human. deduction, and no room allowed for man’s false conceptions of this precious subject, for it is guarded from every angle. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.” In the incarnation of the Lord Jesus this love is manifested toward us. The Father has sent Him into a world utterly contrary to His nature, in which sorrow and suffering could be the only result for Him. This is unselfish, real concern for the welfare of others. Moreover, it is His only-begotten Son He has thus sent, the unique Object of His pure delight. In this is no mere feeling of affection, but supreme self‑sacrifice for the sake of His rebellious creatures, “that we might live through Him.”

1 John 4:7. Love to one another is to be expressed, because love finds its origin in God Himself; and love can only be shown by those who are born of God and know God. 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 possess the nature of God, the only nature in which love exists: but we do not look within for love's expression, or to seek its origin. We know God as the source of love; and know Him because we have His nature, for it is impossible to know God unless we live in the life of God, the life of love that we have derived from Him.

It is remarkable to see how the apostle guards from mysticism by bringing the mind back to the plain statement of the gospel. "We have seen, and do testify, that the Father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world." In the seventh verse be begins by saying, "Beloved, let us love one another." 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, and being divine it is much above angels, although they are higher creatures.

Verse 7. Now he reminds the beloved that love is of God, and therefore we should love one another; if love is of God, every one that loves must be born of God. It is a matter here of nature, the divine nature, consequently God can only be known in that nature. (Ver. 8.) "He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love," and "Who, of men, knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him; thus also the things of God knoweth no man, except the Spirit of God." God is known by participation in His nature, and by the Spirit. Blessed be His holy name! He is His own interpreter. The vain babblings and oppositions of false-named knowledge have no place here; he who knows God, knows that they are not of Him. No one can say, "Lord Jesus," unless in the power of the Holy Ghost. Oh, the comfort of the divine word, and the blessed assurance that it is all His own! The word of a God whom we know in this wondrous way, possessing, through endless grace and love, His nature and His Spirit. Alas! for the Gnostics of our time, and of all time. This they willingly are ignorant of, that it is in the wisdom of God, that the world by wisdom knew not God. We cannot know what God is in nature, save in possessing that nature. Through ignorance of this, these schools of thought fail utterly. They do not teach the knowledge of God, nor yet to say, "Lord Jesus." This is the work of the Holy Ghost; but the doctors prefer the operation of the "natural faculties," and in place of revealed truth tell us of "natural religious shadows projected by the spiritual light within!"

(Vv. 7, 8). The love of God toward us. In the enjoyment of this new life, the Apostle addresses believers as “Beloved”, and he says, “Let us love one another.” In order to draw out our love toward one another, he reminds us of what God is and what God has done. God is love, and God has acted in love toward us. Thus there is a twofold motive for loving one another. Firstly, the very nature of God is love, and, being born of God, we partake of His nature. By loving one another, we give a practical proof that we are born of God and know God. If we have no love for the brethren, it would prove that we are strangers to God.

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” Can we sufficiently emphasize that little word “so”? Such unselfish concern, issuing in sacrifice so amazing, should so captivate the heart as to expand it to serve the need of others in utter self-denial. If love calls for it, and motivates us, what can be too great a sacrifice for His sake and for the need of others? What possessions of our hands should not be willingly committed to His hand for disposal?

“No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.” The apostle here is speaking of a practical response to, and effect of, the love of God. If that love is to be evidenced, it is to be evidenced toward the children of God, because no man has seen God at any time. A careless, self‑centered man will assume he loves God without that professed love taking any practical shape, because he does not see God. But the test of this is in whether or not he loves the children of God. This is the proof of God’s abiding in us; and His love hereby is perfected in us, that is, it is producing its properly matured fruit. He is not speaking of how much we love one another, but of the fact. But a fact will always manifest itself. The degree will depend on the individual’s degree of enjoyment of God’s love, but the apostle does not here speak of this.

1 John 4:10. But we were not only in a state of death before God, unable to enter into His thoughts or do one thing that pleased Him; we were guilty sinners, having done many things displeasing to Him; ever having sought, in sin, to please ourselves. Love has come in to deal with our sins as well as with our state: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation for our sins." Love is indeed of God, so richly, so perfectly made known towards us; manifested at infinite cost to Himself, and to His beloved Son. God's love has been measured in all its infinitude by the gift that it gave; measured in the unfathomable depths of sorrow and judgment into which His dear Son went to accomplish this great work of propitiation. The Son Himself is the propitiation, for all the wonderful efficacy of the atoning sacrifice abides in Him where He lives before the Father: Himself, as the propitiation, the abiding witness to God's infinite and eternal love. What sovereign love! There was not a single feeling of love towards God that prompted the love to send His Son: in our natural estate as guilty sinners we did not love Him: all originated in God's own heart; the work was completed on the cross that enabled God to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, long before we thought of Him.

1 John 4:11. Well does the Apostle say, "If God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another." What a motive to inspire the heart of the Christian! The Apostle does not say, Now that you have the divine nature you should love one another: no, he bids us look away from ourselves altogether to the wonderful expression of the love of God; the love that thought about us in all our ruin and need, in death and guilt; the love that made the fullest provision for our eternal blessing; the love that cost God His only begotten Son. In verse 7 we are exhorted, "Let us love one another:" now it is "If God has so loved us, we ought to love one another." We must not plead that there is no motive to love: what motive prompted the love of God towards us? The motive for us is surely that the God Who so loved us desires us to show our love to one another. We have been brought into a circle of divine affections, there to learn what love is in God Himself: and there to respond to that love in expressing it to one another.

If such is the nature and character of love in God, if He loves in such a fashion as we have been contemplating, it is fitting that we should love one another (ver. 11). In saying, "If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another," we must not understand the apostle to be teaching that loving one another is a mere duty. Duty it surely is; but that is not the spirit of the love which the apostle exhorts us to exercise. He urges us to a love patterned after that which we see in God. "We ought also to love one another," means, then, the exercise of that divine life we have received — the practice of it toward one another. The measure in which we fail in this is the measure in which we fail to manifest the divine bond in the family of God.

Now I want to say a word about the application. We read in verse 11, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." First, let me remind you of a distinction: it never says that we ought to love God, but it does say that we ought to love one another. The law said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, etc.; but in Christianity no such obligation is laid upon us; it is only our brethren whom we "ought" to love. The reason is obvious. We love God because He first loved us, and we do this as the consequence of the activity of the Holy Spirit, who has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts. This is the response which He produces when He brings before our souls the wondrous character of the love of God in Christ Jesus. We love Him, I was about to say, because we cannot help ourselves, and hence loving God is the normal characteristic of every believer — as the apostle Paul speaks, "To them that love God, the called according to his purpose." You may say, as indeed we all have to say, we know very little about it. This may be so, but still do not forget that it is the characteristic of all believers, and that the more we are occupied with His ineffable love, that love which was told out in the death of His Son, the greater will be the response. We had never known love otherwise: hereby perceive we love, what love is, because He laid down His life for us; and the marvellous thing is, as we said just now, that it was shown out in all the darkness of death. What we need therefore is to let this blessed love flow unhinderedly into our hearts, until they are flooded with it, and then that which has flowed down from the heart of God will, in the power of the Spirit, becoming within us a springing well, rise up to its eternal source.

But, as we have already reminded you, there is an obligation to love one another. If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. The nature of the obligation is simple: it is that we should act towards one another as God has acted towards us. So in the previous chapter, after the apostle has shown that love is seen in Christ laying down His life for us, he adds, "And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." The obligation thus reaches, if the occasion arise, to the manner and the measure of the love of Christ! We may therefore say that it would not be righteous if we did not love one another. Happy is it for us that every one who possesses the divine nature does love his brethren, for he that loveth Him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of Him; only do not forget that the apostle speaks of love in manifestation towards one another, as is seen by his specifying the case of a brother in need. Let us remember this; for while it is good if you love me in your heart, I shall never benefit by it if you never let me see it in manifestation.