You Can Know God Loves You
Mark Twain repeated a famous line: "There are three kinds of lies — lies, damned lies, and statistics." Fair enough. But every so often a number actually helps. Here's one: across fifteen verses in 1 John 4, John uses the word love twenty-seven times. Only Psalm 136 and 1 Corinthians 13 come close. You don't need a Bible degree to see where he's pointing us.
But there's a detour first. If the passage started at verse 7 — "let us love one another" — it would flow perfectly. Instead John opens with a warning about false prophets and that unsettling word from chapter 2: antichrist. It can feel like two unrelated conversations got stapled together. They weren't. And seeing why they belong side by side is the key to the whole chapter.
God's love isn't something we keep up. It's something we were caught by — before we ever thought to reach back.
The Test of Truth Is Confessing Christ
"This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God." — 1 John 4:2 (NIV)
John was writing decades after Jesus, as the eyewitness generation was dying out and competing messages about Jesus were spreading fast. So how does a church tell truth from counterfeit when false teachers look and sound spiritual? John isn't anxious about it — he believes his people can discern it. He just gives them the test: What does this teacher say about Jesus? Do they confess that he has come in the flesh?
That's the center of the whole faith. The great creeds carefully defining the person of Christ were still centuries away, but the core was already clear: Christianity is the confession that Jesus is who he claimed to be. Take Jesus away, or fundamentally change who he is, and whatever's left simply isn't Christianity anymore.
God Is the Source of Love — and We Love in Answer
"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God... because God is love." — 1 John 4:7–8 (NIV)
Here's why the two halves belong together. John spends six verses on where things come from — the world, or God. Then he says love comes from God, too. In fact, God is love — its very source and definition. That sounds obvious to us after 2,000 years of Christian influence, but it was startling in the ancient world. You could find gods described as generous or merciful; what you couldn't find was a God who personally loves humanity like this.
And notice the order John insists on: our love is always an answering love. "We love because he first loved us" (v. 19). That's why he can say our love for God is proven not in how we love God, but in how we love people — actual, imperfect, sometimes-irritating people. "Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar" (v. 20). John won't let us love the God we can't see while refusing the brother or sister we can.
The Cross Is the Proof — and God's Love Comes First
"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." — 1 John 4:10 (NIV)
When John finally shows us what God's love looks like, he points straight back to Jesus coming in the flesh — the very truth he told us to confess. That's why the two sections aren't a detour at all: the truth we confess is the truth in which God's love was revealed. And the order matters enormously. The cross didn't turn an angry God into a loving one. Sending the Son was the result of his love, not the cause of it. God's love is the cause of our rescue.
So many of us live as if God's love is something we maintain — a good week earns his pleasure, a bad one earns his disappointment. Andrew put it this way: the night his daughter was born, he held her at eleven hours old and would have done anything for her. She hadn't earned it — she'd mostly just cried. She was loved before she could ever love back. That's a small glimpse of "not that we loved God, but that he loved us." His love precedes our performance.
The Bigger Story
John doesn't leave us with "try harder to love." He anchors us in the God who is love and who has actually moved in: "if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us" (v. 12). No one has ever seen God — but when his people love each other, the invisible God becomes visible through them. That's not willpower; that's the God who is love living inside us as the power by which we love.
Will loving people be easy? No — some people seem gifted at making it hard. But a bird ought to fly and a fish ought to swim; it's simply what their nature does. We've been born of God, his life is in us, so love is becoming our family resemblance. And as we live in that love, we're becoming more like Jesus — until one day we'll stand before him without fear.
Share This With Someone This Week
You know someone stuck on the performance treadmill — sure God is pleased on their good weeks and disappointed on their bad ones. This is the news that stops the striving: "not that we loved God, but that he loved us." His love came first, before they'd done anything to earn it. Passing this along could be the moment they finally rest. Sharing it is an act of love.
What Are You Going to Do About It?
Read 1 John 4:7–21 slowly this week, and memorize verse 10. Then sit with two questions:
- Where am I trying to earn a love God has already given me first?
- Who is one person I could love this week not with words, but with a concrete act?
Pick that one person, and do the concrete thing — the meal, the call, the help, the forgiveness.
Discover How You're Gifted
Not sure where you fit? The best way to find your gifts is to listen for God's voice and step into the opportunities in front of you. Start by taking our spiritual gifts assessment, expand your knowledge with our spiritual gifts course (Find Your Fit), then find a place to serve and jump in.