1 John 4:18–21

March 14, 2010 in 1 John with 0 Comments

18 Such love has no fear, because per­fect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of pun­ish­ment, and this shows that we have not fully expe­ri­enced his per­fect love. 19 We love each other because he loved us first.

20 If some­one says, “I love God,” but hates a Chris­t­ian brother or sister, that per­son is a liar; for if we don’t love peo­ple we can see, how can we love God, whom we can­not see? 21 And he has given us this com­mand: Those who love God must also love their Chris­t­ian broth­ers and sisters.

Don’t Lie

Okay, okay, we get it, John. Love God, love oth­ers. Time to move on, buddy.

And yet, John seems to save his biggest state­ment to the end. After spend­ing more than a chap­ter of his let­ter chal­leng­ing his read­ers to love God and love oth­ers, he throws out a very rad­i­cal state­ment: If you claim to love God but don’t love oth­ers, you’re a liar. Wow. Don’t hold back, Johnny.

Of course, he’s right. You can’t do one with­out the other. To truly love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, you have to love the things that God loves. And God loves peo­ple. So, if you don’t love oth­ers, you are not grasp­ing the heart of God. You are miss­ing the point, and you are not lov­ing God fully.

The more we love God, the more our hearts will be drawn to lov­ing oth­ers. It’s just that simple.

In fact, if you want a mea­sur­ing stick to deter­mine how you are doing in your rela­tion­ship with God, just look at how you treat oth­ers. If you are some­one who attacks, crit­i­cizes, gos­sips, and tears down other peo­ple, then you are not some­one who loves God. Sorry, you’re not. You may be some­one who loves reli­gion or loves the “idea” of God, but you’re not lov­ing God.

So, love oth­ers. In doing so, you’ll dis­cover you love God more and more. And, vice versa, love God and you’ll quickly fall in love with people.

My prayer: Lord, this is always a chal­lenge. To love you more will mean lov­ing oth­ers more. To love oth­ers more, will take lov­ing you more. It’s an amaz­ing jour­ney we are on. Today, I choose to love. Amen.

Until tomor­row.