Today’s Road Map for the Journey: 1 John 4:7-12; SOAP: 1 John 4:7-8
7Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
1 John 4:7-8 NLT
Today’s LGG journal entry begins with some pretty significant words for our journey through the Fruit of the Spirit. The author points out that “Before we can love well, we need to understand where love actually comes from.” The point is valid, for how are we to love others, and I mean really love them, not just pretend to love them (as Paul warned his readers in Romans 12:9)? For believers to love well means to love like Jesus has loved us (Jn. 13:34). He left a throne for a stable…wore a crown of thorns instead of a kingly crown of gold and jewels…hung on a criminal’s cross though he had never sinned…took the form of a servant though He was God in the flesh…loved His enemies and prayed for those who persecuted Him… and the list goes on and on, including obedience to God…even though it meant death on a cross.
Oh, how He loves you and me, oh, how He loves you and me, He gave His life ~ what more could He give? Oh, how He loves you, Oh, how He loves me ~ Oh, how He loves you and me.
I love this old hymn. It flooded my mind as I wrote the list of how well Jesus loves us and all of the ways He demonstrated that love. It’s not just Jesus who demonstrated love for us, but God the Father demonstrated His love as well when He “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son into the world, not to condemn the world but to save the world (John 3:16-17). Actually, John doesn’t just write of how God loved the world; He wrote that love comes from God, because God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). To borrow another quote from the journal, “Love is not simply something God does. It is who He is.” And, because we live in God and He lives in us ~ not only are we loved by God, but we are empowered to love Him and others!
“We love him, because he first loved us.”
1 John 4:19
- 1 John 4:8: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
- 1 John 4:16: “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.” [1]
Friends, so that we don’t miss the importance of understanding that God is love, I’m borrowing one more final quote from today’s LGG Journal: “Love is essential to Christian living because it is an essential part of God’s identity.” Read it again, write it in the front of your Bible or wherever you keep important notes. Hold on to its amazing truth ~ for it is the key to carrying out the mandate that we read in today’s passage: “…continue to love one another, for love comes from God (1 John 4:7).
Reflection and Application
Have you ever said, ‘I hate this person or that person; I could never love them’? Regardless of who they are or what they have done, if the love of God is truly in you/us, John writes that: “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?” So let us love well, as Christ has loved us. It won’t always be easy, but when we remember that we were unlovable before He rescued us and that we were His enemies, and yet He loved us enough to give His life for us. How then, can we not also forgive those who have hurt or angered us, or even sinned against us?
The More We Know
Meaning and Context
- God Initiates: Our ability to love God and other people does not start with us. It begins as a response to God loving us first through Jesus. [1, 2]
- The Source of Love: God’s unconditional love gives us the power and example to show love and kindness to others. [1, 2]
- Connected Command: The surrounding verses (1 John 4:20-21) explain that if we truly love God, we must also love our brothers and sisters. [1, 2]
Do you know Him? If you don’t, please visit the link to KNOW THESE TRUTHS, for we cannot truly love God and others if we have not been saved by God. And unless we have been saved, we cannot have a relationship with God and experience His love,
