In other words, love is the act of your will to put the need, the concern, and the interest of someone else ahead of your own. He's already repeated it three times and will continue to do so in the remainder of the epistle.Ī few weeks ago I told you love is the ability to treat someone whom you don't like as if you do like them.
If you are to love like God, then we need to ask a question: what is love? Don't you think that's appropriate? If we are to love we ought to know what love is so we can distinguish whether or not we're doing it. So today John is again going to show us that while you and I might not perfectly love like God we can nonetheless love like Him. Who among us today can say I love like God loves to the degree God loves? None of us would dare say that. Quite a bit different, isn't it?Īs we have gone through these commands to love, starting in the second chapter, we have no doubt felt incapable to love like God. What John is saying is that Christians are to love like God loves. He acknowledged they have the ability to love. Even Jesus said the ungodly could love those who love them. Well, the objection is given: everyone is supposed to love, not just Christians. Because you are a Christian you are to love others. "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God."Ĭhristians are to love one another for the very fact that they are Christians. I want to direct your attention to a difficulty John no doubt is experiencing, and it is certainly my experience this moment, the difficulty to define love. When we love one another it is, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, the greatest opportunity for the church to demonstrate the Gospel. It's so crucial for the glory of God, for the evangelism of sinners, for the unity of the church that Christians love one another.
We will find this is not the last time he commands them to do so. It is that important that he repeats it again and again. This is the Apostle John's third time to command the churches to love one another. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
9 In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
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