God is Love- 1 John 4

 

1 John 4: 7-21; John 15: 1-8

You might have heard that there are different words used for “love” in Greek- eros, stergo, phileo, and agape. Eros is sexual love, as you can probably guess from the word “erotic”. It is an asking, begging, demanding kind of love. It seeks its own fulfillment. Stergo is the love that exists between parents and children, or between members of a family. This carries a sense of devotion to the family group. Phileo is love between close friends. This is the love between two people who are well-matched.

Agape is the word that is mainly used in the New Testament to talk about the love of God. This is high-level love. It is a word that translators have often struggled to translate. It almost needs to be capitalized. It comes with deep emotion. It deeply values the person. Agape holds the beloved in great awe, respect, and admiration. The beloved is precious. Agape is a giving love. It drives the lover to action- even self-sacrificial action.

Eros is self-seeking. Stergo is limited to a person’s family group. Phileo is mutual, reciprocal, and can be disappointed. … The Greek scholar Rick Renner describes Agape this way, 

“Agape is a love that has no strings attached. It isn't looking for what it can get, but for what it can give. Its awe of the one who is loved is so deep that it is compelled to shower love upon that … person regardless of the response. This is the profound love God has for the human race, for He loved man when he was still lost in sin with no ability to love Him back. God simply loved mankind without any thought or expectation of receiving love in return.”

“When you love with such a pure love that you expect nothing back in return, it is impossible for you to feel hurt or let down by the response of the recipients of your love. You don't love them for the purpose of getting something in return; you shower them with love simply because you love them.”[1]

When discussing the command to love your neighbour with someone wanting to place limits on that love by narrowly defining “neighbour”, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, where someone (who should be an enemy) stops to help a man who had been beaten and left for dead. Through the parable, Jesus teaches us that the neighbour we are called to love includes the person before us who is in need.

Jesus seems to apply the command to love without condition. He even tells us to love our enemies. There doesn’t seem to be any limits, where we are permitted to stop loving. Jesus lived this way of love even to the cross, and calls us to pick up our own crosses to follow him. Jesus is all about Agape love.

Our reading from 1st John is dripping with the word “love”. He is primarily speaking about the love of Christians towards one another. In our 14 verses, our reading says “love” 28 times. When we look at the Greek, we see that the word “beloved” appears twice. The Greek word for “beloved” is “Ἀγαπητοί” (agapetoi). The word used for love is “ἀγάπη” (agape). So, the letter is addressed to the “agapetoi” (Ἀγαπητοί) and it is about “agape” (ἀγάπη). “Beloved” is a good word to use in English if we hear the word “love” contained within the word.

Our reading begins, 

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 Jn 4:7-8).

 It is a beautiful statement, and amazingly broad. Wherever you see love, there is God. It is the kind of statement we would be happy to put on a T-shirt. Lots of different kinds of people can get behind a statement like that.

But then John moves from the general to the specific. What is this love? It is this- 

“God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 4:9-10).

 This love isn’t a feeling without an action. This love has an expression- an action towards the beloved.

John says that God’s specific act of love should inspire us in our love for one another. As verse 11 says, 

“Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn 4:11). …

As we deeply contemplate the love of Jesus, especially as his love is expressed on the cross, we find within ourselves a growing love towards others in our life. As we watch Jesus praying for forgiveness for those who are killing him on the cross, don’t we find mercy towards the driver who cut us off? … Can you hold the image of Christ loving and forgiving on the cross in your mind, and also find yourself justified in your wrath towards the other driver on the road? Isn’t our wrath only possible if we allow the image of Christ to fade from our mind? … Don’t the everyday offenses we endure each day seem like small things to endure when we think about what Christ endured?

I know there are bigger things in life that challenge our ability to forgive. If we are called to love our enemies, perhaps we can practice by loving those who annoy us. Maybe that’s actually the path to learning love for our enemies.

We seem to be encouraged to take offense at the smallest whiff of unfairness. Social media is full of nit-picking the lives of others, searching for comments or posts that can be give offense. … Mercy, grace, and forgiveness, are the fruit of love. The love we see from Christ on the cross is not a fair exchange. It’s not something human beings reserved. … To imitate Christ will mean that we sometimes endure unfairness.

Verse 11 says, 

“Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (1 Jn 4:11).

 Our model for love, is Christ on the cross. That means treating others with grace. We trust that people have the best of intensions. That means treating others with mercy. We believe in second chances. A community marked by this kind of love is one where we are constantly working for the good of those around us, and one where we aren’t constantly walking on eggshells around each other, because we know that our motives are trusted. We can handle misunderstandings and disagreements because we love each other, and forgiveness flows easily.

Verse 12 says, 

“No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 Jn 4:12).

 John ties together our treatment of each other and God presence within us. Looking back at verse 8 we read, 

“Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).

 If we love, God lives in us. If we do not love, then we do not know God. Verses 20 and 21 say, 

“Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

 … So, if we love, God lives in us. If we do not love, then we do not know God. To love God means also loving our brothers and sisters in Christ. … Our treatment of one another is intimately related to our relationship with God. We express our love for God by how we love each other.

This isn’t something we can do on our own. We know that. It requires abiding in Christ. In our Gospel reading, the branches need to be nourished by the vine. A branch cut off from the vine is dead. Jesus has promised to always be present with us. He has promised to nourish us with his life and power, but we can’t expect that to happen without abiding in him to receive that life. We are to seek a continuous connection with him. It is only as we constantly draw our attention to him in prayerful gratitude for what he has done that we will learn to love this way. … And as we learn to love his way, we will see God more and more clearly, because “God is love”. AMEN

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[1] Sparkling Gems From the Greek Vol. 1 (entry for July 23)