What does it mean that we love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19)?

"As he is, so are we in this world," not only in the same standing as to acceptance with God in Christ, but we are brought by the communication of His life into the same relationship as Himself. While in the beginning of the epistle the foundation is laid deep and wide in the blood which cleanses fully, still the grand subject of the epistle is the place into which we are brought. "Herein is love with us made perfect." If my heart has seized the truth that God as a Father is acting in grace towards me, there is no place for fear. If I have fear I fly to Him, instead of being afraid of Him. If I sin, I fly to Him to pardon it. I could not in my sin fly to my judge, but I have confidence in my Father's love, and I fly to Him because "perfect love casteth out fear." The proof of God's love is that He has given His Son; the perfection of it is, that we are as He is; and fear is cast out even in view of judgment. But if we ask how this came to pass, the answer is, "We love him because he first loved us" (v. 19). There we are brought back to the simplest principles: we love God because He first loved us. We did not come to God because of His loveliness; "we love him because he first loved us." We do not come in by loving God (this we do after), but we come in as sinners, as debtors to His grace; and then, having come in, so finding God to be what He is - love meeting us in our every need - then we love Him.

81 The proof of God's love is, that He has given His Son; the perfection of it is, that we are as He is; and fear is cast out even in view of judgment. If we ask how this came to pass, the answer is, "We love Him because He first loved us." (v. 19). There we are brought back to the simplest principles - we love God because He first loved us. We did not come to God because of His loveliness: "we love Him because He first loved us." We do not come in by loving God, but we come in as sinners, as debtors to His grace; and then, having come in as such, and finding God to be what He is - love, meeting us in our every need - then we love Him.

“We love because He has first loved us” (JND). This is a spontaneous, essential reaction. No human effort is involved in this at all, no pressing of myself, no stirring up of my emotions by artificial means. Love must be a spontaneous thing, or it is not love at all. “I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake [my] love, till he please” (Song of Solomon 2:7). The roe, or gazelle, is the very picture of timid sensitivity, while the hind, climbing with sure‑footedness to heights above the common level, tells the same story, of avoiding the pressures of danger. Love cannot be produced from our own hearts by a process of stirring them up: this will fail, for our hearts are no fountain of love at all: we must look elsewhere: “we love because He first loved us.” The reception of the love of God is the only source of love toward God or toward others. Let us but believe His love to be what it actually is, and this produces a glad and willing response, unfeignedly, unaffectedly. The law says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself” (Luke 10:27). But every effort of man to do so only issues in utter defeat: it is against his nature. What is the use of putting all our energy into pumping to draw water from a well that yields only poison gas? Let us forget such a well as our own corrupted hearts, and turn to the living, flowing fountain of the heart of God; and without effort, without human operation, our hearts will become filled with His love.

On the whole then it appears to me that the reading left absolutely is both impressive in itself, and gains rather than loses by the absence of an expressed object which would tend to limit rather than enlarge the sense. For as it thus stands, it means that we love [both God and His children], because "He loved us." Christ was the source in our souls of divine love, whatever its object or direction. It sprang up not from ourselves in any wise. Love is of God. We in unbelief think that it must begin in us to draw out His love. But not so: we were dead, we were sinful, and in any case love was not, nor could it spring up from us. Our spiritual history, our being in reference to love and to God, is simply this: — "We love, because He first loved us." We own it to be the truth to our shame; we gladly acknowledge it the truth to His glory and to our blessing for ever. The Spirit opened our hearts by the word to the Son sent by the Father to give us life and salvation through His atoning death, and now to be one spirit with the glorified Lord, to be as He is in this world, now and henceforth abiding in love, and so in God and God in us.

1 John 4:19. To the revelation of such love there has been, there is, a response from the heart of the believer; but it was divine love that produced this response — "We love because He has first loved us." The love of God is a cause-less love; the motive was in the heart of God; there was nothing in us on which God's eye and heart could rest with pleasure; it was altogether a sovereign love. That love, shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit, finds its response from the divine nature that God has given us, and is empowered by the same Spirit by which we know the love of God.

But the One who is begotten of God loves Him that begat. We love the Father and the Son, and we love the brethren. It is natural for us to do so. That which the law, by all its threatenings, could not get from the mere child of Adam, God has gotten by His work of grace in our hearts. The law demanded love from man, but never got it. But God has got it by the revelation of His great love to us in the death of His only begotten Son: “We love Him because He first loved us.” It is not because we are compelled to do it by threatenings of wrath. This never produced love in any human heart. Terror it did produce, but not love. Love begets love where that love is appreciated; and when the love of God, as it has been brought to light in the death of Jesus, is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, we love Him.

We have got back to God with a sense of more love a great deal than if we had never sinned, for we see God not sparing the best thing in heaven for us. Now I can joy in God for myself. You will find warnings afterwards: still that is what we have here. You will soon find your conscience and responsibility exercised with what follows here. Not merely are we fit to go to heaven; but when I go to God by Christ, I believe in His perfect love, and I have a perfect conscience so that I can enjoy Him. That is the reason I find a very touching thing in John's epistle; 1 John 4:9-19. First he speaks of the way in which God's love has been manifested. He has given His Son, given His Spirit to dwell in us, made His love perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; then he goes on to say, "We love him because he first loved us," not we ought to love Him. The heart has drunk in all that this love has brought, eternal life, as well as propitiation for our sins, the Spirit given, boldness in the day of judgment, because we shall be like the Judge; all this streams into the heart, so that we can say, "We love him because he first loved us." The sense of this love is reconciliation. If you hear a child saying, "Oh, if you only know my mother, her love, her tenderness, and though I am so foolish, she is always the same"; that child loves his mother, though the mother's love is always the superior. "We love him because he first loved us" supposes reconciliation.

In its actings thus, whether upward towards God or out towards others, love will be found in us, this principle of confidence and of imitation. And the Spirit teaches us that to judge ourselves to be "lovers of God" without this confidence and this imitation is practising a deceit on ourselves; for I read these two sentences - "We love Him because He first loved us;" "He that loveth God must love his brother also." The first of these holy sentences tells us this, that we can only love God as knowing that He first loved us; that is, we love Him because we have confidence in His love to us. Were it otherwise, it would be an assumption that our love is greater than God's. If we assert that we have affection towards Him more surely than we are confident He has towards us, it is saying that we are better than God. Therefore, the only true, spiritual, evangelical love of God springs from confidence in His love towards us. So the second of them tells us, that to assume that we can love God without loving one another is a reflection on God. For how can we think that he will accept the affection of one who has it not for his brother? This would be another way of making ourselves better than God. We would reject such affection ourselves.

The apostle never reasons from man up to God (which is what men are constantly doing), but from God to man. I once asked a young preacher what that verse meant, "the love of God shed abroad in our hearts." He immediately commenced to reason upward, as he had been accustomed to do, from himself to God, and, after thinking some time, replied, "Well, I suppose it means that, the more we love God, the more He will love us." He put himself first, and God second. Now, as to our loving God — supposing I do — but I walk along the street, and look into a shop window, and something attracts me that I would like to have, where is my love to God? How soon I forget God! My love is not to be depended on; but does God's love vary, or ever change? Thus the Holy Ghost puts God first, and man second. If I know that He loves me, then I love Him who first loved me. It is not by trying that we love God. Who ever knew such a thing, even in human affections? Who ever heard of a mother trying to love her child? I never heard of a man who tried to love his wife but one — who would give a straw for his love? And as to the mother loving her child, why, she cannot help doing so. But in our case with God, it was when we were enemies, when there was distrust and dislike in our hearts to God, that He loved us. "If when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." (Rom. 5:10.) If God only loved us as we love Him, He never would have loved us at all. I know that many dear Christians doubt this. They think that God does love them because they love Him, and that if they feel cold toward God He will cease to love them.

Another thing also needs to be remembered if we are to apprehend the full character of the love of God. To accomplish His purpose, to attain the end He had in view, to secure the desire of His heart, He sent the very best He possessed — His only Son. This is the measure of the love of God. His Son stands to Him in a relationship immeasurably dear — His priceless Treasure; but God willingly sent Him into the world that we might live through Him!

God having thus manifested the love that is in Himself, we are enabled to know it, and in what it consists. This the apostle does in saying, "Not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation concerning our sins." The apostle thus guards us against making the love of God consist in our love of Him. Our love of Him is the fruit of His love. It is not natural to us; it is produced in us. A power outside of ourselves has acted upon us and caused in us love for God. But love in God was not caused by something without Himself: it is in Him abidingly; it is His nature. The motive to love is in Himself. To contrast love in God and in us, as I have been doing, is to emphasize the difference — an essential one.