“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” — 1 John 4:7

“God is love” may be one of the best-known statements in Scripture—and one of the most misunderstood. We are often tempted to define love according to our own desires and then imagine that God must love in the same way. But if we want to understand love rightly, we must begin not with ourselves, but with God.

The apostle John tells us where love originates, how God has made His love known, and what that love must produce in His people. His message is wonderfully simple: Because God is love and has manifested His love in Christ, we must love Him and one another.

Love Begins in the Nature of God

“God is love” (1 John 4:8).

This does not mean that love is God's only attribute, or that His love somehow overrides His holiness and justice. Everything God is exists in perfect harmony. His love is always holy, wise, righteous, and good.

Nor does John merely say that God has love. Love belongs to His very nature. He is its eternal source.

God did not become loving when He created the world. Before anything existed, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit enjoyed perfect love within the Trinity. Jesus spoke of the Father's love for Him “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). God did not create us because He lacked love or needed someone to complete Him. He created us to know and enjoy the love that has always existed in Him.

This matters because we so often look to other people to provide what only God can supply. We expect a spouse, child, friend, or church family to satisfy the deepest longing of our souls. Yet even the most faithful human love is limited.

People are streams of love, not its fountain. When we demand infinite, perfect, unchanging love from another person, we place a burden upon them that no creature can bear.

The Lord Himself is the fountain. His love does not run dry, diminish with exhaustion, or fluctuate with His circumstances. And for those who belong to Christ, His love is not reluctant tolerance. Scripture speaks of “the great love with which he loved us” (Ephesians 2:4). Our heavenly Father has adopted us and delights in us with a settled affection that does not rise and fall with our performance.

God Has Made His Love Visible in Christ

We do not have to speculate about whether God loves us. He has made His love visible in history.

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).

Notice where love begins: God sent His Son. He did not wait for sinners to become worthy, seek Him first, or demonstrate that they could change. John makes the point unmistakable: “Not that we have loved God but that he loved us” (v. 10).

God's love takes the initiative.

And consider whom He sent. The Father gave His only Son—the Son He had loved perfectly from all eternity. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,” Paul writes, will surely give His people everything necessary to accomplish His saving purpose (Romans 8:32).

Why was such a gift necessary?

John says God sent His Son “to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Propitiation means that Christ, in His sacrificial death, satisfied God's righteous wrath against our sin. Divine love did not brush aside evil or compromise God's holiness. Love moved the Father to send the Son, who willingly bore the judgment sinners deserved.

At the cross, God's love is not merely described. It is demonstrated.

And that love does more than offer an example for us to follow. It gives life. Though we were dead in our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ because of His great love (Ephesians 2:4–5). Salvation begins not in our ability to reach God, but in His gracious power to bring dead sinners to life.

If you belong to Christ, you are loved with a saving love that you did not earn and cannot improve by your performance. Your assurance rests not in the strength of your love for Him, but in the greatness of His love for you.

His Love Must Be Seen in Us

John does not leave us admiring God's love from a distance. He draws the necessary conclusion:

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11).

The love we have received becomes the pattern for the love we give.

God loved us when we were undeserving. Therefore, we must not withhold love until others prove worthy of it. God took the initiative. Therefore, we should not always wait for someone else to make the first move. God gave sacrificially. Therefore, our love must be willing to bear inconvenience, cost, and pain for another's genuine good.

This is more than warm sentiment. Love becomes visible.

It may mean forgiving an offense rather than rehearsing it, welcoming someone who cannot repay us, carrying a burden without recognition, initiating a difficult conversation, or serving when our plans are interrupted. Sometimes love speaks a hard truth with tenderness. Sometimes it quietly gives time, attention, or practical help.

We must never become a church that prizes sound doctrine while neglecting the love that sound doctrine should produce. The God we worship is love, and those who have been born of Him must increasingly reflect His character.

Our love for one another does not earn God's saving love. It is the fruit of having received it.

We Love Because He First Loved Us

The call to love can expose how far short we fall. Our patience is limited. Our affection can grow cold. Our willingness to sacrifice is often smaller than we imagine.

But John directs us back to the source: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

We do not manufacture Christian love through determination alone. We return again and again to the God who loved us first, behold His love at Calvary, and depend upon His grace to make us more like His Son.

So look to Christ. See the Father's great love in the gift of His Son. See the Savior's willing sacrifice for undeserving sinners. Receive with gratitude the love that has brought you from death to life.

And then let that love take visible form in the way you love God and the people He has placed before you.

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” — 1 John 4:11