Commentary on 1 John 4:7-10

We move today into the third part of 1 John called ‘The Source of Love and Faith’. It is divided into two parts: the first deals at length with ‘love’ (4:7—5:4); the second is about ‘faith’ (5:5-13). Today John emphasises that the initiative for love comes from God and not from us. God does not love us because we love or obey him.

The word ‘love’ (Greek, agape) in its various forms occurs 43 times altogether in this letter. It is used no less than 32 times in the passages that begin today through verse 3 of chapter 5!

‘Love’ is one of the most used (and abused) words in our language. Our music lyrics use it all the time and there have likely been songs about love since the dawn of music. We use it in all kinds of other contexts too. People ‘love’ chocolate or they ‘love’ spending hours watching football on TV. People are ‘in love’ and they ‘make love’. And so on.

What, then, do we mean by love in our reading today? CS Lewis, the Christian writer, wrote a book called The Four Loves. There he describes four kinds, all of which should be part of Christian living. One of these is agape, the form of love that 1 John is talking about. A definition of agape that captures its essence is: “a passionate desire for the well-being of the other”.

This is the love that God unconditionally extends to all his creatures without exception. It is the love that each of us, too, is to extend to every one of our brothers and sisters—again, without a single exception. It is an outreaching love, an unconditional love. It does not depend on mood, liking or disliking. It is based purely and simply on the need and on the good of the other. It may or may not be expressed sexually, but it is definitely not the love (eros) that most of the pop songs are talking about.

No matter what we do, no matter how evil or vicious we are, God’s love for us remains unchanging and unchangeable. The old hymn (Love it was that Made Us) says it this way:

Love it was that made us and Love it was that saved us…

The reason is simple:

God is love.

Love enters into his very being. God cannot not love—if he did, he could not be God.

It is strange to say (and for some it may be shocking), but God loves the most depraved person we could imagine and Our Lady or one of the saints in exactly the same way. He cannot do otherwise. Is there no difference then?

The difference between Our Lady and the evil person is not in God’s love for them, but in their response to the love offered to them. One person has a closed heart, while Our Lady, from the moment of the Annunciation, gave an unconditional ‘Yes’ which she never withdrew.

All our loving, then, is simply an opening of our heart, a return of the love that God has first shown us. When we reveal ourselves as loving persons, it is because God’s love is working in us and through us. The sign that we are loving him is also that we are filled with love ourselves, love which originally came from him.

As someone once said, God’s love is like electricity. God’s love is only in us when it is passing through us. It can never stop with ourselves. If we keep that love to ourselves, it dies.

The question then is not: Does God love the drug pusher? (He does.) The question is: Does the drug pusher love his brother? (If he does, he is certainly going about it in a strange way.) Anyone who is a deeply loving person to those around him is already full of God’s love. God’s love never changes, but it can be blocked by a closed heart.

God’s love is available in abundance to anyone who opens his or het heart to him. May I be able to do that. But that love, too, must continue to flow out beyond me to everyone I meet. It is impossible to separate God’s love for me and my love for others. We cannot have one without the other.

Our Christian life, then, is about being loving persons, not primarily about orthodoxy or theological expertise, or conformity to rules, or making sacrifices, or carrying out “religious” duties. As St Paul says in his famous passage in the first letter to the Corinthians:

…if I…do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Cor 13:2)

Today’s reading says:

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

If I am not a loving person, all the rest is a waste. If I am a truly loving person, everything else is taken care of. And what is the source of that love? It is not ourselves says John, rather:

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us…

The evidence is that God:

…sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Jesus hanging on the cross is the most dramatic sign of God’s love for us, a love that is totally gratuitous (so we call it ‘grace’) and never earned by any action of ours. Let me today look at Jesus on the Cross, say a big ‘Thank you’ to him and then go and pass on his love for me to everyone I meet.