Br. Jamie Nelson

1 John 4:7-12

Sometimes the metaphorical language used in scripture is so densely layered that it’s hard to see what exactly the writer is talking about. We come across images and symbols that feel distant from our lives, and we must hold them patiently, asking what they might be pointing towards.

That’s not the case for today’s reading from the first letter of John. Here there are no riddles to puzzle through. The same word keeps repeating again and again: love. In six short verses, the word comes up 15 times.

So what does it tell us about love?

Let’s start with God. In telling us about love, we learn something foundational about who God is. Not just what God does, but who God is at the deepest level. “God is love,” we read. Love describes God’s very nature.

And God acts in love. That divine love is directed toward us in Word and in deed. The deed was this: that God chose to send God’s son Jesus into the world at Christmas to live among us, taking on the form of love in a body. Jesus revealed embodied love every time he healed lepers, ate with tax collectors and sex workers,  shared conversation with Samaritans, and proclaimed reconciliation and grace for all. Again and again, he proclaimed that the Kingdom of Heaven has a place for each of us no matter our stories. In Jesus’s choice to die for us on the cross, we see just how far God is willing to go in love for us.

The love we feel for another does not begin with us. It originates in the love we receive from God. God’s love was first, from the beginning of time. It flows into something deep at the heart of our createdness. From there, it flows through us out towards those we love. We love, because God first loved us.

The Greek language that this letter was originally written in has many words for love. The particular Greek word for love used here for all 15 instances is agape (ἀγάπη). Agape love is a particular quality of love. It is a choice to seek another being’s flourishing. It is love that acts for the good of another, even when it is costly or invisible.

No one has ever seen God, the letter writer tells us. But we can witness love’s movements. Think of hearing leaves rustling in the wind, or seeing gravity pull an apple from a tree to the earth. We cannot directly observe the forces of wind and gravity, but we can notice their effects. God is made visible in the world through love, through ordinary, imperfect people’s choices to say yes to love.

So how can we respond to this knowing?

Here are a few possibilities to carry with you this week:

Above all, remember, “let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:12).

Amen.