“NO MAN HAS ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). Here we use another verse where it is “God abides in us” instead of “Christ abides in us.” The amazing thing is that in the New Testament Christ and God are interchangeable. Jesus is called God: “in the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:1). In experience I can’t tell where Christ ends and God begins, or where God ends and Christ begins. They blend in experience. This verse says, “No man has ever seen God,” and yet Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Contradiction? No, the word “God” is unqualified; no man has seen the unqualified God. In Jesus we see the qualified God—God qualified by Incarnation. Jesus is the human life of God, God simplified, God approachable, God lovable, for He is God loving.
This verse says: “if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” This is an interesting addition: if we love one another, His love is perfected in us. We don’t have to perfect our love—that makes us self-conscious and therefore unloving and unlovable. If we simply and sincerely love each other and show it in loving deeds and attitudes, then God’s love is perfected in us. Our love is not perfected; God’s love is perfected in us. We begin to love with a love not our own. We begin to love impossible things and impossible people. I do not have to perfect my love, I simply let His love be perfected in me. The way it is done is by simply and unselfconsciously loving people. That takes the strain out of trying to perfect our love, for where there is straining after being loving, we are not loving. Agape love loves and thus lets the love of God be perfected in us. It is unselfconscious, therefore love, therefore the divine agape.
O love of God, so pure and changeless, let me love with Thy love. Then it will be simple, genuine, and unpretentious, and as I love, my love will be perfected by Thy love. Oh let me love as Thou dost love. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I do not have to perfect my love; I have to love people and let the love of God be perfected in me.
