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God Is Love

1 John 4:7-21

Good News Translation (GNT)

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  7  Dear friends,
   let us love one another, because love comes
   from God. Whoever loves is a child of God
   and knows God.
  8  Whoever does not love does not know God,
   for God is love.
  9  And God showed his love for us by sending
   his only Son into the world, so that we might
   have life through him.
  10  This is what love is: it is not that we have
   loved God, but that he loved us and sent his
   Son to be the means by which our sins are
   forgiven.
11  Dear friends,
   if this is how God loved us, then we should
   love one another.
12  No one has ever seen God, but if we love
   one another, God lives in union with us,
   and his love is made perfect in us.
13  We are sure that we live in union with God
   and that he lives in union with us, because
   he has given us his Spirit.
14  And we have seen and tell others that the
   Father sent his Son to be the Saviour of the
   world.
15  If we declare that Jesus is the Son of God,
   we live in union with God and God lives in
   union with us.
16  And we ourselves know and believe the love
   which God has for us.
   God is love, and those who live in love live in
   union with God and God lives in union with
   them.
17  Love is made perfect in us in order that we
   may have courage on the Judgment Day;
   and we will have it because our life in this
   world is the same as Christ's.
18  There is no fear in love; perfect love drives out
   all fear. So then, love has not been made
   perfect in anyone who is afraid, because
   fear has to do with punishment.
19  We love because God first loved us.
20  If we say we love God, but hate others,
   we are liars. For we cannot love God, whom
   we have not seen, if we do not love others,
   whom we have seen.
21  The command that Christ has given us is this:
   whoever loves God must love others also.

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Commentary taken from
'The Applied New Testament Commentary'
(Kingsway)

God's Love and Ours

     1 John 4:7-21

Whoever loves his brother, lives in the light. God is love. Everyone who loves has been born of God.

Only those who walk in light (faith) and love are born of God. His nature is love. He doesn't love us because we are worthy to be loved, but because it is His nature to love.

This is the great news of the Gospel of Christ! In order to know God, one has to meet Him personally. One must be able to call Him Father. We must receive love into our hearts; otherwise, we cannot know love.

It is not enough just to receive love; we must give it. To the extent that love flows out from us, to that extent love will flow in from God. Notice, all true love comes from God. We don't love others with our own human love, but with God's love.

True love is spiritual; it comes not from man, but from God. God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Jesus died for us. He died for our sins and offered up His own life as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. How can we refuse to love others, whom Jesus loved so much?

God is in our hearts. We don't need to look for Him with our eyes. As we continue to obey His word - his love is made complete in us. God doesn't give an unlimited measure of His Spirit to men. God gave His Spirit without limit to Jesus.

God is in our hearts. We testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world.

Not everyone in the world is saved. A person must acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God. To believe in Him - is to live in God. To know God is to have eternal life.

Because God lives in us, we experience it, and rely on it. As God's love is made complete in us, we become more like Jesus.

That is the main goal of our Christian lives. When His love is made complete in us, then we will have confidence on the final day of judgment. We will not have to fear God's judgment; for us there will be no condemnation, no punishment.

In this world we are like him (Jesus). Because of sin, we cannot be fully like Him in this life. Only at the end of the world, when Jesus has come again, will we become completely like Him.

If we fear God's judgment, it means that we have not been made perfect in love; it means that Christ's love has not been made complete in us,

To become a child of God, we begin to fear God. We begin to experience God's love, but fear still remains. Finally, we lose our fear; only the love of Jesus remains.

Then we will have confidence before God, because we will know with certainty that we are indeed His children.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The 'fear', mentioned in Proverbs, is more a feeling of awe and respect; such 'fear' comes from an awareness that God knows everything about us, and that He has the power to punish those who disobey Him.

We cannot truly love until God has poured out His own love into our hearts. It is only because God first loved us and gave us His Holy Spirit that we can now love Him and love others.

Love for God and love for others cannot be separated. If we truly love God, we will also love men. In one way, it is easy to love God. He is a Spirit. We can't see Him. "I love God" is easy to say.

But to love men is different. Men give us trouble. They oppose us. They make us angry. It is difficult for us to love them. So we say: "I love God, but I can't love men." We can only show our love for God by showing love to men.

All men are made in God's image. There is something of God in every man. If we cannot love the image of God (man) which we can see, how can we love God Himself, whom we can't see?

To love God is the highest and most important and most difficult work in all the world. How, then, can we love God?

We can love Him, because He has poured out His own love into our hearts. It is only as we receive God's love that we are able to love Him and to love others.

We love, not with our own love, but with His love.

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