What does it mean that love is of God (1 John 4:7)?

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.

Coming now to the passage I have read, you will see that three words in verse 8 are the foundation of all that follows. All the rest clusters around the statement — the blessed statement — that GOD is LOVE. This is the setting forth of what God is in His own nature; He is also light, it is true, but this is said relatively to darkness — "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5) We also say that God is righteous, that is righteous in His actings and ways, but when the word of God speaks of what He is absolutely in His nature, one word describes it, and that word is LOVE. If we enter into this, we shall have no difficulty in understanding that "love is of God," for in truth it could not be found elsewhere in the universe. I do not deny, in any wise, that much natural affection may be seen in fallen man, that, husbands and wives, parents and children may be knit together very closely by it; but we are now speaking of divine love, what only, in fact, is really love; and this we say proceeds alone from the heart of God because it is nowhere else found. Love, then, is of God, and consequently the love that fills our hearts tonight has come down into them, through the Lord Jesus Christ, from that blessed and sovereign source. We had therefore never known love otherwise; and this indeed is what the apostle says, "Every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love." It is thus an absolute necessity to be born of God before we can love, and know God.

He begins with the fact that 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 fulness. This is the doctrine which makes everything depend on our participation in the divine nature.

Now this might be transformed on the one hand into mysticism, by leading us to fix our attention on our love for God, and love in us, that being God's nature, as if it was said, love is God, not God is love, and by seeking to fathom the divine nature in ourselves; or to doubt on the other, because we do not find the effects of the divine nature in us as we would. In effect, he who does not love (for the thing, as ever in John, is expressed in an abstract way) does not know God, for God is love. The possession of the nature is necessary to the understanding of what that nature is, and for the knowledge of Him who is its perfection.

Verses 7, 8. "Let us love one another; for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God … for God is love." The source of love is in God only, it is God Himself. But through infinite grace this love finds room in a human heart and renders it capable of loving. It is no question here of human affections, but of the love of God, the presence of which in the heart of a man proves that the man is born of God and knows God. How immense is the privilege which raises us thus to the blessing which belongs to the nature of a God of love!

We are exhorted to love one another, “for love is of God; and every one that loves is born of God, and knows God” (4:7). All true love has its origin in God, the love that exists in nature comes from Him, but sin has vitiated natural affection; the love of which the Apostle writes here is the divine love that sin cannot touch, that which comes from God in the new birth, that which is of heaven and belongs to Him. Those who exhibit this divine love show that they have been born of God, and have the nature in which God is known, for “God is love.”

God dwells in those who manifest His love, and His love is known in the hearts of His children as it was seen in Jesus here, for it found its perfect manifestation in Him, and it is in Him and in His death that we learn it and know it. Those who are mere professors cannot claim to love God if they do not love His children, for hatred of the life of God in the Christian is hatred of God Himself. When Jesus was here the Jews claimed that God was their God and Father, but their hatred of His Son manifested that they did not know God, or love Him. God demands that those who claim to love Him show love to His own.

“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!

This is the natural outcome of the fact that we are Christians, for "love is of God". Love originates with Him and it flows forth from Him. As we have already stated, love is His nature - and as Peter tells us "we are partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). So we are 'born of God', we 'know God' and we have the 'nature of God'. That means that all this should be exemplified by our love for one another.

In the first passage, where the apostle speaks of the manifestation of this love, he does not go beyond the fact that one who loves is born of God. The nature of God (which is love) being in us, he who loves knows Him, for he is born of Him — has His nature and realises what it is.

But the precious fact as to the love that is of God is this: the entire motive is His own goodness; as man has the reverse of that in his nature. The believer receives grace as a lost sinner in all its sovereignty as its object, and having life eternal in Christ has it flowing out habitually. It is therefore of the Spirit acting on the new nature, as being begotten of God. He is entitled to boast in God as well as in God's love without any motive but the good that He is, which He delights to communicate to others. Such are Christians who by the faith of Christ are filled, firstly with being loved of His love, and secondly, carried out in the exercise of that love to their brethren (for this is the direction here) by the Spirit of God. But the principle is quite clear: to love is inseparable from being born of God; and so he that loves proves by this very fact that he is a child of God. It has nothing at all to do with natural affections, which everybody ought to know may be strong in the most wicked men and women. Deadly enemies of God, given up to base lusts and passions, yet they may have much natural sweetness and warm benevolence too. None of these things is His love, nor in the least spoken of here, nor anything but that which shone in the Lord Jesus. "Love," says the apostle, "is of God." Whatever is of ourselves is not of God. But this love is not of ourselves, even in a believer. He derives it entirely from above; he is born of the Spirit; and what is so born is spirit and not flesh. He is born of God; and God is love.

John would encourage us. He says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God.” All natural affections are of God. Natural love is of God, and in spite of the fall it has been preserved in the hearts of human beings, otherwise the world could not exist. But when he says, “love is of God,” he meant it is His nature. It is divine love which has been manifested, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, so that we love Him. Our love to Him, and to one another, is only just the faint springing up of that love that has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit of God. Love is of God, and he that loves has God’s nature. What does that mean? He is born of God. More than that. He knows God. We know men. We have no difficulty about that, because we are men, and we know what men are. We do not know what angels are, fallen or unfallen. We could not give any account of them. If we wanted to approach an angel, or get a favour from him, we should not know how to address him. We should not know how to affect him at all. We know how to approach men, and we know how to approach God. We know God. He that loves is born of God. God is his Father. He is a child of God. God knows us perfectly, He knows all those that are His. He knows the one that loves, but the one that loves knows God. What a wonderful thing that we in the midst of this world of darkness, can say, “We know God.” Not only do we know Him, but we know Him a very great deal better than we know ourselves. We sometimes think we know ourselves very well, but after all, most of us who are converted to God would have to say, “We never conceived the depths of evil that lay in the flesh as we do now that we have been brought to the knowledge of God.” You cannot tell so well how things are in the darkness as you can in the light. We are brought out of darkness into God’s marvellous light, and there we see things as they really are. I say our knowledge of God is greater than our knowledge of ourselves. It is only as we know God that we do know ourselves. It is a wonderful thing, but it could not be otherwise that our knowledge of God is always in advance of our knowledge of ourselves.