1 John 4:7 - Meaning and Application

As the Spirit of truth is known by its teaching, and therefore spirits must be tested by doctrine, it is also known by love. So John follows with a strong and earnest call to holy Christian love: “Beloved, let us love one another” (1 John 4:7). He wants to unite believers in his own love so that they will be united in love to each other. In effect, he says, “Dear friends, because I love you, I urge you to show sincere love to one another.”

John presses this command with several reasons. First, love comes from a high and heavenly source: “Love is of God.” God is its fountain, author, parent, and ruler. Love is the heart of his law and his gospel. “Everyone who loves” in this holy and wise way “has been born of God” (1 John 4:7). The Spirit of God is a Spirit of love, and the new life in God’s children is born from his love. Its character and nature are love. “The fruit of the Spirit is love” (Galatians 5:22). Love comes down from heaven.

Second, love shows a true understanding of God’s nature. “He who loves knows God” (1 John 4:7). “He who does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:8). What quality of God shines more clearly throughout the world than his generous goodness, which is love? The wisdom, greatness, harmony, and usefulness of creation prove that God exists, and they also display his love. Even natural reason, when it reflects on the most perfect being, must conclude that he is supremely good. So the person who does not love, who is not moved by what he knows of God into love in heart and action, does not really know God. This is clear evidence that sound and true knowledge of God does not live in such a soul. Love must shine among God’s brightest and first perfections, because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). His nature and essence are love, and his will and works are chiefly love.

This does not mean love is the only thing we should think about in God. We have already seen that he is light as well as love (1 John 1:5). God is also, in a special sense, love toward himself, and he has perfections that arise from the necessary love he bears to his own necessary existence, excellence, and glory. Still, love is natural and essential to the divine Majesty: God is love.

This is seen in how he has shown that love. First, he loved us as we are. “This is how God’s love was shown among us” (1 John 4:9), among mortal people, among ungrateful rebels. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). It is amazing that God would love people who are impure, vain, vile, and only dust and ashes.

Second, he loved us at the highest possible cost. He gave his own, only-begotten, blessed Son for us: “God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). This title marks Christ out in a special and unique way as the Son of God, the only-begotten. If he were merely a creature or created being, he could not be the only-begotten. But if he is begotten in a natural and necessary way from the Father’s glory, essence, or substance, then he is the only-begotten. And then it is a mystery and wonder of divine love that such a Son should be sent into our world for us. It is fitting to say, “So God loved the world,” in a way that is astonishing and beyond belief.

Third, God loved us first, and he loved us in our worst condition. “This is love,” this strange and unmatched love, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us” (1 John 4:10). He loved us when we had no love for him, when we were in guilt, misery, and blood, when we were undeserving, badly deserving, polluted, and unclean, and needed to be washed from our sins in sacred blood.

Fourth, he gave us his Son for a great service and a great purpose. For the service, Christ became the propitiation for our sins, that is, the sacrifice who turns away God’s wrath. This means he died for us, died under God’s law and curse, carried our sins in his own body, was crucified, suffered in his soul, was pierced in his side, and was dead and buried for us (1 John 4:10). And he was given for a good end, an end full of benefit to us, “that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). We might live forever through him, live in heaven, live with God, and live in eternal glory and blessedness with him and through him. What love this is!

Third, God’s love to fellow believers should stir up our love. “Beloved,” John says, as if he were appealing to them through his own affection for them, “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). This should be an unshakable argument. God’s example should press us forward. We should follow him as dear children. The people God loves should be the people we love too. Can we refuse to love those whom the eternal God has loved? We should admire his love and love the goodness and delight that are in him, and then we will love those whom he loves. God’s general love for the world should lead to a general love among people. “That you may be children of your Father who is in heaven,” for “he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). His special love for the church and for the saints should produce special love among them. If God so loved us, we surely ought, in some fitting measure, to love one another.

Fourth, Christian love gives assurance that God lives in us. “If we love one another, God dwells in us” (1 John 4:12). God does not dwell in us by any visible presence or direct appearance to the eye, for “no one has ever seen God at any time” (1 John 4:12). He dwells in us by his Spirit (1 John 4:13). Since no one has seen God, he does not present himself to us in a way that our eyes can directly grasp. So he does not ask for our love in that way. Instead, he asks for it in the way he has chosen to make himself known and worthy of love, through the display of himself and his love, and therefore his loveliness, in the whole church, and especially in the brethren, the members of that church. God is to be loved in them, and in his presence and work among them. So if we love one another, God dwells in us. Those who love the brothers are God’s temples, and the divine Majesty has a special home there.

Fifth, God’s love reaches its proper aim in us. “His love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). That is, it reaches its completion in and through us. God’s love is not made perfect in himself, but in and with us. His love was never meant to be empty or fruitless toward us. When it reaches its true goal and produces its right result, it can be said to be perfected, just as faith is perfected by works and love is perfected by its actions.

When God’s love changes us into the same image, first teaching us to love God and then to love our fellow believers, that love is, in a real sense, made complete. This does not mean our love is already perfect, or that it is the final goal of God’s love toward us. It means that God counts his love as brought to its full purpose when it produces love among his children, for his sake.

We should therefore deeply desire this brotherly Christian love, because God treats his own love toward us as perfected through it. After speaking of the great honor of God’s dwelling in us, the apostle adds the sign of it: “By this we know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13). This mutual indwelling is greater and more wonderful than we can fully explain. It seems almost too high a thing to say that God lives in us and we in God, except that God himself has said it first.

What this indwelling means has already been briefly explained in (1 John 3:24). Its full meaning must wait for the life to come. But we do know this much, says the apostle, because God has given us of his Spirit. He has placed the likeness and the fruit of his Spirit in our hearts (1 John 4:13). And the Spirit he gives shows himself to be truly his, because he is a Spirit of power, of zeal and courage for God, of love to God and to others, and of a sound mind, that is, a well-taught understanding in the things of God, religion, and his kingdom among men (2 Timothy 1:7).