“In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” —1 John 4:10-11
What Is Love?
By and large, people recognize the importance, beauty, and power of love. You won’t find people protesting in Washington, claiming that we need to improve our society by having more loneliness, more hate, and more conflict. People instinctively know that love is important for personal fulfillment and societal wellness. But even though people agree that love is something we should all aim for, there is widespread disagreement and confusion over what love is and what real love looks like.
Without even thinking about it, we tend to piece together our own definition of love based on our emotions and experiences. Our definition may be influenced by the type of care we received from our parents, or by romantic comedies, or by modern psychology. And at the end of the day, we may define “love” in a way that’s radically different from our classmate or co-worker.
This raises some important questions. Whose definition is right? Who ultimately gets to define what love is?
The Real Love of God
In 1 John 4, verse 10, the Bible tells us, “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us…”Notice here, the text is telling us where we can find an accurate understanding of what love is. We don’t learn what love is by looking at the qualities of our human experience of love toward God (or our love for something else). Instead, we see the true nature of love when we see how God has loved us. Human love is impure, shallow, and often confused. But the real love of God is unspoiled, deep, and certain.
So what is love, as defined by God? What has He revealed to us about it? Consider, again, 1 John 4:10: “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Three key attributes of divine love appear in this passage.
First, divine love is freely given, not earned. You’ll notice in the passage, God didn’t love us because we loved him. He loved us in spite of our failure to love him. He loved us even when we hated him, when we ignored him, when we were still living in disbelief, selfish desires, and sin. This means that real love isn’t contingent upon the integrity of the recipient, but instead rises from integrity of the giver.
Second, divine love is visibly active, not passive. His love is not only a feeling. His love is not only words recorded in a sentimental letter. Instead, the undivided loyalty and affection God has for his people prompts him to act for their everlasting welfare and security. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, who has kindly intervened to save His people. And what does Jesus lovingly save his people from? Something called sin.
And so the third thing we should note here is that, divine love is against sin, not affirming toward it. The text says that God sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. In other words, God, in his perfect goodness and justice, has been deeply offended by our sin. Our lies, our back-stabbing, our insincerity, our hypocrisy, our narcissism – it has all provoked God to anger, because we have rejected His goodness in exchange for ungodliness.
Yet God, out of his great love, initiated a solution to free us from the penalty and power of sin. And that solution is Jesus. Jesus was sent to be the propitiation for our sins, meaning that Jesus has fully appeased God’s anger against our sin. He has singlehandedly absorbed the just penalty we deserved for our sin. As a result, the demands of God’s law are satisfied. God has no more anger toward those who have trusted in Christ for their rescue. Instead, out of his great love, he has intervened to end sin’s enslaving power over us, so we can now live for him.
Love One Another
And verse 11 explains why this is all significant for us. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Now that we know what real love looks like – now that we have experienced his kindness firsthand (assuming you’ve encountered the saving power of his love) – we should show it to others. How can we not, now that we have this good news? Why would we want to embrace lifestyles of self-centered, stubborn ugliness when God has invited us to a life of rightness and beauty?
This has implications for marriages, for parenting, for relating to our bosses and coworkers, for the care we show for our neighbor, for getting involved in a church, and for engaging with God himself. If we think, “I’ll love them if they (fill in the blank),” then it shows that we’re still thinking about love as a social transaction. We’re still thinking that love is something people must earn from us instead of recognizing that genuine love is always a gift given freely, since this is how God himself defines and expresses love.
The Divine Glory of Real Love
The more we see the depths of our corruption and brokenness, the more it helps us to see the astonishing extravagance of God’s love. No one was twisting his arm, compelling him to show us kindness. We certainly didn’t deserve it – there was nothing special about us that God needed in order to be happy or complete. He could have easily destroyed the universe and created something clean and new without getting himself dirty with our human problems. And yet God’s Son stepped down into our darkness. He bore our crimes, and died for them in our place. And Jesus has risen from the dead, promising that He will likewise raise up those who trust him. He’ll raise us out of our misery, our failures, our perversion – even out of death itself – and will give us eternal life in paradise with God.
The love of God for us is an unearned gift. He has demonstrated it visibly, tangibly. And as a result, the power of sin over us is broken so we might live for Him. If we truly love others, our love will look like God’s love. It will be offered with freeness, demonstrated with potency, and directed toward godliness. As you consider what it means to be beloved by God, make it your highest aim and greatest joy to display this same love toward others.
