This week’s “Wednesday Word” is a summary of Brice Land’s exposition of 1 John 4:7-21 given on Sunday, August, 9, 2009.
This week we return to the topic of loving your brothers for a third and final time. This time, John openly pleads with the readers with the loving, pastoral words, “Beloved, let us love one another.” His grounds for this request: God is love. But what does this mean? What does it look like? Well, John is not going to leave it up to us to interpret. He tells us what God is love means. It means that Jesus was sent to be an atoning sacrifice for a people who had hatred in their heart for God. John’s point is that there is no greater display of love than this, for there is no greater gift than that the God of the universe would humble himself and die for his enemies. This is unprovoked, unconditional love.
If God loves us like this, then we should at least love our brothers. And, if we do actively love our brothers as we are commanded, then we have evidence of God dwelling inside of us. John explains that we have the testimony of the Spirit and of eyewitnesses, both confirming one another’s account that Jesus is the Son of God come in the flesh to be the Savior of the world. If someone will just receive this dual testimony and confess that they believe it, then they can have confidence that God dwells in them and they in God. The believer then gets to experience God’s love being perfected or being proven perfect inside them, resulting in the removal of all fear of judgment. There is no fear because judgment has already been handed out and the punishment executed. Therefore, the believer can stand before the judge with confidence because they have died on the cross with Christ and are now standing not as themselves but as the risen Lord!
With this great reminder of the incomprehensible love of God, the unprovoked love, the love that is being perfected inside of us, it should be impossible for us not to love our brother. It would be to go against the very core of our being. That is, if we have truly been transformed by the love of God lived out on the cross. That is why we have the commandment from Jesus that whoever loves God must also love his brother. It is not just because a godly person should love others. It is more than that. God is love. Therefore, if we truly have God dwelling in us, then we have love perfected dwelling inside of us. And it is impossible for love like the love that God showed us to stay dormant inside us!