True Love Sends (1 John 4:7–14 from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Love gets a lot of press. It seems to have about as many definitions as there are people in the world. How I understand love may vary quite a bit from how a neighbor understands it. So when I begin to discuss love I must not presume that everyone has the same thing in mind anymore than if I mention barbeque while visiting in Texas or Kansas or California, it conveys the same texture, aroma, and taste that a Memphian has in mind.

John once again takes up the subject of love. In a sense, he circles back several times to various facets of love. He does so by starting off this paragraph with a premise—and what a loaded premise! Love is evidence of the new birth and the ongoing knowledge of God. So he doesn’t hesitate to tell us to continue loving one another. He knows that such love is natural and normal for those that God has birthed into His family.

Yet the kind of love that he’s talking about is not sentimental or squishy or merely an attitude or a warm feeling. He ties love to its divine roots. So it’s a holy love. If it’s real love then it has to be from God and will bear evidence of His indwelling life.

But admittedly, that’s far from how a lot of people perceive Christianity. Some consider Christianity a religion of hate because we call breaches of God’s law sin. They even call us hypocrites because we refuse to countenance immoral and unethical behavior. They say that we really don’t love or else we would approve of any kind of behavior that a person desires to practice.

John, though, has already declared that if we love the world the love of the Father is not in us (2:15). Why is that? True love and holy living never oppose each other but manifest the love of God. And yet this love is not rigid, inflexible, and even harsh. It flows from the wounds of Christ, so it acts selflessly toward others for their good.

Notice that in 3:23, John declared the way of assurance: “we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another.” He goes on to explain in 4:1–6 what it means to believe in the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ. We listen to the apostolic gospel and confess Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh to redeem us from sin at the cross. Now he moves in 4:7–5:4 to an explanation of what he means by loving one another. We’re not left to fill in the blank on what John means by love. Its basis originates from the nature of God, the manifestation of God sending His Son, and the effects of this love through Christ. That kind of love now marks us as those born of God and knowing God. How can John be so dogmatic that the one who does not love does not know God? Let’s give that some thought as we consider this text.

1. The premise

John can exhort the church, “Let us love one another,” because “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” We understand that Jesus gave us clarity in John 3 that if we’re to enter the kingdom of God we must be born from above. There must be the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit entering into those dead in trespasses and sins, and raising us to life, invigorating and illumining our minds to hear and believe the gospel of Christ. So through the Spirit and the Word we’re brought to life in Christ. Consequently, we know God, i.e. we enter into a living, ongoing, experiential, and lively relationship to Him. We don’t just know about Him—we know Him in the intimacy of relationship.

So what is as natural as rain being wet and snow being cold is that those born of God and knowing God (present tense) love one another. It’s not that love produces new birth and knowledge of God. Rather, as he’s already argued, love for one another is an evidence not a basis for relationship to God (2:7–11; 3:9–18). So we don’t love to be rewarded with eternal life—otherwise Jesus would not have gone to the cross. Instead, He went to the cross so that we might be united to God as forgiven people, and in that union, we might love on[...]