Meditation

Hi there,

We're kicking off this week with a very familiar passage that encapsulates the theme of this season: 'God is Love.'

The full passage we'll copy out this week covers three distinct elements to help us fully comprehend God's love and what it means for us. They are the nature of God's love, the nature of a relationship of love with God, and the commandment to love.

John, as always, packs a lot of detail into a small space, but as I copied this out, one thing stood out most clearly.

Jesus is both the highest expression and the ultimate proof of God's love.

Love is the essence of God and informs all that he is and does. But love is also a gift. A gift we can only fully receive and then express when we accept the gift of Jesus's atoning sacrifice.

Today's text is 1 John 4: 7-11 (and is called out in black)

For context, I've provided the full passage up to verse 21, which we'll complete in subsequent days.

God's Love and Ours

⁷  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

¹⁰  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. ¹³ This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.

¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ¹⁷ This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Encouragement

Love is an essential quality of God's character that colors and informs every other aspect we can know of Him. But Love does not trump His holiness, righteousness, or His justice.

Instead, we know the justice of God is loving, and the righteousness of God is loving, and the holiness of God is loving. There is no hierarchy of His attributes. Each informs and animates the other.

Everything God does, in one way or another, expresses His love.

​
​Andy

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