The one who has been born of God loves others (4:7-8). John is expressing the second greatest commandment, love for one’s neighbor. This is drawn from Jesus’s own teaching, but it is also part of Second Temple period Judaism. Love for God and love for one’s neighbor often expresses a summary of the whole law.
Once again John says the one who has been born of God (a perfect passive verb). The order is important: we are born of God, then we have knowledge of God and then we express our knowledge of God through loving acts toward one another.
The love of God is clear when he sent his son into the world (4:9). It is important to clarify at the beginning of this section on God’s love that God’s love is not at all like the human emotion of love. John Peckham asks, “Does God’s love include affection, desire, or enjoyment?” In other words, his is love merely agape love, or can he experience eros, enjoyable love? In order to make this question make sense, Peckham includes a chapter on the meaning of agape and eros in order to avoid confusion caused by popular preaching on God’s love (The Love of God: A Canonical Model (IVP Academic, 2015).
As with most theological ideas, to say God’s actions in sending Jesus as an atoning sacrifice is “love” is to use an analogy so humans can understand something of God’s character. God’s love is something like our love for a spouse or a child, but God’s love is exponentially greater and more complex. In fact, the love of a parent for a child is a better analogy than romantic love between spouses. There are many examples of human parents sacrificing everything so that their children might be safe.
The love of God is demonstrated by God’s gift of his son as a propitiation for our sins (4:10). Sending the son into the world was not a response to humanity’s desire for a relationship with God. John is clear, it is not that we loved God!
John called the death of Jesus an atoning sacrifice in 2:2. A propitiation (ESV) or “atoning sacrifice” (NIV) is a sacrifice which turns away the wrath of a god. The noun (ἱλασμός) and related words are used in the LXX for the Day of Atonement (Lev 25:9) In the Old Testament the word and its cognates almost always refer to appeasing the wrath of God (Lev 1:4, for example).
In the Greco-Roman world, a god might be calmed by human or animal sacrifice, but other rites of purification or prayers were also common. Sometimes ritual dances and games dedicated to the god could please the god and turn aside wrath. What is remarkable about the atoning sacrifice in 1 John is that God himself makes the sacrifice, and God himself is the sacrifice! No god in the ancient world would act on behalf of his worshipers in this way. Rather than vent his wrath on his creation, God demonstrated his love for his creation by turning aside his wrath himself.
John is not far from Paul’s words in Romans 5:6-8. While we were powerless to help ourselves and in a state of enmity with God, Paul says God sent his son to die for us. The ultimate demonstration of God’s love is therefore the ultimate self-sacrifice of his own son in order to provide forgiveness to people who would never know or care that this gracious act even happened!
John tells his readers they ought to love one another, but they cannot begin to love one another until they have accepted God’s gracious gift of forgiveness. By experiencing this gracious act of love from God we then are able to demonstrate that love to others.
hearing this verse this morning I got goosebumps because I church yesterday where they talked about selfishness and loving our neighbor and now I read this! God is working in special ways. Love is the answer!
According to Jobes, “’God is love’ does not simply mean that God does loving things, but that everything that God does originates in his love for his creation” (p. 428). God sent His son to die for us because He loves us, but He also judges us because of His love for us. 1 John 4:7 says that we should love because “love is from God”. It is because God is love and loves us that we are able to give love in return, both to Him and to other people. Once we understand that God is the definition of love, we can be more inclined to love others. As Jobes says, the idea that God is love “is used as a foundational principle for ethics” (p. 428). In other words, all of our ethics as Christian’s stem from this idea of love. This is not simply an idea that modern scholars have interpreted, but it is actually stated in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” and Jesus himself says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39). Because God is love, we must love God, those around us, and ourselves. This idea of love should influence every decision we make as Christians, and we should always strive to show the love of God to those around us.
I think a big thing to remember from this article would be the order of love towards God that we as believers live: “we are born of God, then we have knowledge of God and then we express our knowledge of God through loving acts towards one another.” I think when a believer understands these it is extremely helpful to understand the love of God. It is also very impactful to sit back and overlook the Gospel story and think what Christ’s sacrifice was. If you take a step back and think, God sacrificed His son. That fact is mind blowing to me to think in the future me sacrificing my only son to be tortured and beaten to death. God’s love for us is really that impactful and large that he sent his son to be tortured and killed on our behalf so that we, his creation, has a chance at redemption. Everything that God does is to show His love for His creation. “God is love’ does not simply mean that God does loving things, but that everything that God does originates in his love for his creation” (428). Everything that God does he does because of his love for his creation. All love in the world originates from God alone.
For us to do anything good, we must first receive from God. This is especially true when it comes to loving others. As you, (P. Long) say, true love for others requires receiving God’s “gracious gift of forgiveness”. In describing love for others Jobes’ says “love for others is a way of behaving toward them that is rooted in how God defines the moral life” (429). So loving others must include an understanding of the way God defines morality. But according to John 4, even intellectual understanding God’s definition of the moral life is not enough. We must receive from God before we can give to others, “for love is from God” (1 John 4:7). And then going on a little further to verse 12, we see this verse: “if we love each other, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us”. This indicates a circle of love that just keeps getting better. It starts with God showing his love to us, then we receive that love, then we love others, and as we do that, God continues to perfect that love in us and on and on it goes. This is reassuring as we remember that we don’t love perfectly right away, but that God is perfecting his love in us. And we do not have to worry about producing that love all on our own, but know that our source of love is God.
As the article says, John expresses the second greatest commandment which is loving our neighbors. I agree with P Long that love for God and love for others is a summary of the whole law.1 John 4:7-10 talks about loving one another because love is form God. Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins, He got sacrificed on the cross because He loves us and cares about us. Those people who have been born of God know God and those who don’t love others don’t know Him because God is love. One thing that caught my eye in the article is that “we are born of God, then we have knowledge of God and then we express our knowledge of God through loving acts towards one another”. I think that is a good reminder that to show love to others you need to have God in your life and when we are born again into Christ’s family, we get the knowledge and share that with others around us. I agree with John that for you to love others you have to have accepted God’s love of forgiveness and that is also a form of love. He doesn’t have to forgive us but He chooses too because He loves us and wants us to recognize when we are in the wrong and confess it to Him. When you experience God and know His love for you then you can act out that love by passing it onto others that you come in contact with.
Learning from this article, as believers we ought to live and love towards God. “We are born of God, then have knowledge of God and express our knowledge of God through loving acts toward one another” (Long, 2020). We have to learn to love one another like God loving his people. God sending Jesus to sacrifice for us is love, redemption, and being forgiven. The love is for humans to understand God’s character. God’s love is greater, and it is powerful. We all have to learn to love our family, spouse, child etc. 1 John 4:10, for God’s love, he demonstrated his son as a propitiation for our sin. Not only was God’s love but it was sin and the law. Jesus sacrificed for our love and for our sins to follow the law. People took the law into different ways and made it their own. Reading from the blog about the Greco-Roman world that they did human or animal sacrifice that a god will calm and find other ways to please god to turn aside from wrath. Without God or not knowing God, we can be powerless to help ourselves. God did send his son to die on the cross for our sin to be saved. God demonstrated the world to us for his love. John is not wrong about not learning to love another because there are people who have not accepted God’s gift to forgive and turn our life over. Christians should share that with people who do not know God by showing them how much we care whether it is a family, friends or loved ones which we need to act on
Learning from this article, as believers we ought to live and love towards God. “We are born of God, then have knowledge of God and express our knowledge of God through loving acts toward one another” (Long, 2020). We have to learn to love one another like God loving his people. God sending Jesus to sacrifice for us is love, redemption, and being forgiven. The love is for humans to understand God’s character. God’s love is greater and it is powerful. We all have to learn to love our family, spouse, child etc. 1 John 4:10, for God’s love, he demonstrated his son as a propitiation for our sin. Not only was God’s love but it was sin and the law. Jesus sacrificed for our love and for our sins to follow the law. People took the law into different ways and made it their own. Reading from the blog about the Greco-Roman world that they did human or animal sacrifice that a god will calm and find other ways to please god to turn aside from wrath. Without God or not knowing God, we can be powerless to help ourselves. God did send his son to die on the cross for our sin to be saved. God demonstrated the world to us for his love. John is not wrong about not learning to love another because there are people who have not accepted God’s gift to forgive and turn our life over. Christians should share that with people who do not know God by showing them how much we care whether it is a family, friends or loved ones which we need to act on
I often think that love is from God because we are still alive today and His giving us a chance to know the gospel and on top of that God is using his people to spread the gospel. If God doesn’t love humanity, then I can’t imagine all the consequences humanity has to face against God. It’s interesting how John mentioned that the love of God is clear when he sent his son into the world according to John (4:9). It is important to clarify at the beginning of this section on God’s love that God’s love is not at all like the human emotion of love His love is beyond human comprehension. God is all-knowing and His love is expressed as infinite love. John also mentioned in 1 John 4:10 that God is love because He gave us his son as a gift to basically atone us from sin. Jobes also mentioned that “the concept that God is love is found among many religions and is used as a foundational principle for ethics.” Jobes also mentioned that since God is love, we are also called to love one another, we are supposed to help out those who are in need, whether in financial situations, spiritual, or even ethical and moral. I believe that the love of God has already proven to us how to love one another. Now, this is the reason why Apostle John tells his readers to love one another until they accept Jesus Christ.
This is so true, God is love. How can we love without getting to know God, who is love? Who is the Only One to enable us to truly love others. There is a saying that marriage is a school where we learn to stop being selfish and to love others sacrificially. But I believe marriage is just the training part of it, the real school is when you have a kid, just like mentioned in the blog above. There is so much that changes when you have a life depending on you. And the truth that even as you have a family, have a spouse and a kid to be able to actually love them in a way that brings glory to God and not to ourselves is by seeking God, by relying on Him. Because often when we try to love people by our own understanding we often are tempted to be concerned with how those relationships define us, and we tend to control, we are constantly tempted to be concerned with how the relationship is fulfilling our own needs. However, when we understand that it is only Jesus that can fulfill our hearts, it gives us freedom to not seek that in somebody else. It gives us peace, to freely love others, putting their needs first and not holding expectations. “The order is important: we are born of God, then we have knowledge of God and then we express our knowledge of God through loving acts toward one another” (Long, 2020).
What does it mean that love is from God? Jobes (2011) suggests, “First John does indeed twice affirm that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), but it is wrong to see that as an identity whose predicates can be interchanged. . . “God is love” does not simply mean that God does loving things, but that everything God does originates in his love for His creation” (p. 428). To accord to God all manner of love as if it is His only penultimate quality ignores those characteristics of justice and righteousness that are integral to His perfect personality. According to Long (2020), “This is drawn from Jesus’s own teaching, but it is also part of Second Temple period Judaism. Love for God and love for one’s neighbor often expresses a summary of the whole law.” Second Temple Literature witnessed wisdom as Torah observance, which not only concerns practical advice for ethical behavior and development but also love for God and neighbor (Jobes, 2011, pp. 209-210). Long (2020) offers, “The order is important: we are born of God, then we have knowledge of God and then we express our knowledge of God through loving acts toward one another.” Theologically speaking, Jesus’s exemplified love is best likened to a parent who would sacrifice everything so that their child may be safe and secure. Fundamentally, love for God expressed through love for neighbor abounds a wellspring of faithful life which permeates every measurable and immeasurable aspect of a believer’s life. Jobes (2011) accentuates, “Love as Jesus defines it does not have to do with warm fuzzy feelings toward another person, but rather with treating that person rightly” (p. 205). Wayne Grudem (2018) writes that fatherly discipline is a natural consequence of love such that “Jesus says to the church in Laodicea, ‘Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent (Rev 3:19)’” (p. 134).
This form of love is definitionally posited best as agape. The best definition of agape love is, “God so loved the world that He gave his only Son” (John 3:16). The “agape” love is the central most important characteristic, the very essence, of God (1 John 4:8, 16). Love’s outward manifestation is grace. It is God as love that defines God and all else about Him, such as justice and righteousness tempered with kindness. There exists significant biblical evidence and a paradigm for this gentle and righteous love. This principled love of God (1 John 4:8, 16) is to be imitated by all Christians (John 13:34, 35) and is motivated by God’s love for us (1 John 4:9, 10, 19-21, 2 Cor 5:14). Thus, love is quintessentially Christian and reached its zenith when God gave Jesus as the solution to the sin problem (2 Cor 5:14, Eph 2:4, 3:19, 5:2, John 3:16). Therefore, Christians should have as their primary focus love of and to God (Matt 22:37, Deut 6:5) and secondarily love to fellow humans (Matt 22:39, Lev 19:18).