GOD IS LOVE
GOD IS LOVE
1 JOHN 4:13-21
Our attitude toward the people we see daily is a sure sign of our attitude toward God whom we have never seen.
At this point John pauses and picks up some of the strands of his message. 4:13 looks back to 3:24; 4:14 to 1:2; 2:2; and 4:15 to 3:23f. The basis of everything is that the Father sent and the Son saved. We accept this in our confession of Jesus as the Son of God, and to us the proof of this is the possession of the Holy Spirit.
“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us” (4:16): the climax of our union with God is a fusion of experience and faith, not concerned with abstract theology but with the expression of God’s love, not merely to me, but also to others.
A new section begins with “God is love.” We may not qualify this in any way, but equally we may not preach it to those who have not experienced it. Since it is an abstract statement, we must make it concrete in Christ and in our own lives, otherwise people will interpret it by their own concepts of love. Where humanity and God are linked in love, the love of God flows to humanity, and through them out to others and back to God, so causing “the day of judgment” (4:17) to take on another aspect. Even in this world we show by our love that we are like him. To those who are strangers to God, or who have just come into living contact with him, we have to demonstrate that Christ’s death was more than just the tragic death of a very good and noble man. When caught up in the sphere of love, both doubts and fears vanish.
“There is no fear in love” (4:18) does not exclude the possibility of God’s discipline or even of the tendency of the old nature to shrink back. “Punishment” here is almost fear of the consequences, for it is the punishment of retribution and not discipline (see Hebrews 12:5-11), that is being considered. In God’s love this is excluded for those who are linked to him by the bonds of love. There is not even the fear of our love breaking down, for it is his love (4:19). Human love can discriminate; God’s does not, so to hate my brother or sister is to make a mockery of the love to God I claim (4:20). In any case, my attitude toward the one I see daily is a sure sign of my attitude toward the One I have never seen.