This Is Love

On this Mother’s Day, it is appropriate to talk about love. We all know a mother’s love is unmatched. Nothing could separate the child from a mother’s love — not a tragedy, disaster, the fall from the sky, or the flames that followed, not height or depth, nothing in life or death.

The exceptional mothers mirror the love of Jesus for all of us. Just as he left the safety of heaven, humbling Himself for our sake and shielding us with the sacrifice of His own body, the best mothers embody this selfless love. God's love for us is unwavering, a love that will not let us go. In this way, the best mothers are a glimpse into the heart of God, their love a divine reflection.

Today’s passage contains some of the most moving and profound teachings on love in the New Testament. The depth and power of the three words “God is love” are often lost on us because of the abundance of contradicting conceptions of love all around us. We tend to make gods out of love and equate all love with God.

First John, in a unique and distinctly Christian manner, discusses love. Love is not God, but God is love. This means believers are called to comprehend love on God’s terms and by His character. John weaves theology and ethics together, describing Christian confession as inseparable from Christian conduct. Those who truly know God demonstrate His love through their love for others. The divine love, most perfectly manifested through the love of God in Christ, is not just a concept, but a transformative reality that God yearns for us to comprehend, witness, embody, and share. It is a love that can change lives, heal wounds, and bring hope, inspiring us all to strive for this transformative love in our own lives.

The source of perfect love

In our culture, love is too often understood in selfish and sexual terms. But the Word of God paints an entirely different picture. Here, the words “sacrificial” and “supernatural” jump at us. Ultimately, love comes from God, the source of all perfect love. It is seen most clearly in the death of Jesus on the cross as He takes on the sins of the world. This perfect love surrounds us, guides us, and gives us confidence in our faith, reassuring us of God's unwavering love for us.

I am not saying lost people, non-Christians, cannot love. Sadly, they sometimes love better than some Christians do. This should not surprise us. Never forget that all persons are made in the image of God. All persons, despite their depravity and sinfulness, will give reflections of the One whose image they bear.

A child will bear something from their mother, whether they are an adoptive mother, godmother, or a mother-like figure; someone who has a God-fearing mother will reflect her. Further, in some measure, God’s grace and goodness are shared with the whole of His Creation.

Even with God’s perfect love, we should not fear or be held back by our inadequacies in loving one another. Act lovingly, even if imperfectly. The love and the perfection come from God, whose perfect love casts out fear. We can honestly admit that we are not yet perfect in love, for God’s love makes us loving, and God’s perfection is making us ever more holy.

The one thing we cannot do is to claim to love God while refusing to love the sister or brother in front of us. Love and hate cannot mix. We tell lies to ourselves when we claim we can love and hate at the same time. Here, John points us to the two great parallel commandments: love God and love your neighbor. John tells us that these two are tied together. Not only must we obey them both, but it is impossible to obey the first without also obeying the second.

Why do we “love one another”? One reason John gives this is “because love is from God.” Real love, true love, always has its source in God. And whoever loves with a “God kind of love” proves they have been born of God. Regeneration, the new birth, being born again, unites spiritually dead, selfish hearts with God’s loving heart so that His life becomes our life and His love our love.

Our love for God is not the condition or basis for God’s love for us, nor do our actions make us right with God. Only “Jesus Christ the righteous” (2:1) could demonstrate God’s love profoundly and ideally on the cross. Thus, our love for others demonstrates our fitting and grateful response to God’s immeasurable love for us: “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”

The experience of perfect love

How do we know that we can experience this perfect love? It is one thing to talk about love. It is something else to show love. The Christian God is not just a talking God. He is an acting God, a doing God, and a serving God.

Today, we meet hurting people wondering, “Does anyone love me?” They have been abused, abandoned, betrayed, lied to, mistreated, and deeply wounded. You may be like this, where you can barely ask the questions, but still, you do, “Does anyone love me? Will I ever be loved?”

The gospel's good news provides a resounding “Yes!” to those questions. You are loved and will always be loved by a God who is loved and who wants to shower you and deluge you with His love. How do we know? He sent His Son. God sent His Son for you and me.

This world of humanity was in rebellion against its loving Creator. God sent His Son. This world of humanity was not looking for God and even hated Him. God sent His Son.

Too often, Christians are not known for their love of others. Sometimes, the criticisms are unjustified. Unfortunately, at other times, we are guilty as charged. Recent research by Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman reveals that the lost often see us as “hyperpolitical, out of touch, pushy in our beliefs, and arrogant.” And yet, Jesus said love for others is how people know we are His disciples. He also says to love our enemies and to pray for those who hate us and would harm us if they could.

The great and challenging application of these commands is that we must go to those who don’t want us there, share a gospel they don’t want to hear, and love those who may hate and even kill us in return. Because we are connected to Jesus through the new birth, we must go and live like Jesus among our friends and our enemies. When we experience the perfect love of Christ, we must go and do likewise.

The confidence of perfect love

Christians must progress in their understanding of love. It is good to love one another simply out of a sense of duty, but it is even better to love out of appreciation (rather than obligation).

God’s perfecting love helps us love one another despite our sinful nature, so we need not be afraid to love, however imperfectly. By repeatedly showing up to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, we demonstrate that God is inhabiting us so that his way of love becomes our internalized second nature—something we were born of God to do.

While 1 John focuses not on loving those outside the Christian community, his logic flows from the same source. How can we say we love the God who “so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16) if we do not love our brothers and sisters dwelling right in our midst? We cannot. But we can continue to love one another in messy ways, confident that our actions speak louder than words and find their source in God's inexhaustible, perfect love.

The better we know God’s love, the easier it will be to live as a Christian.Bible knowledge alone does not replace personal experience of God’s love. It can be a dangerous substitute if we are not careful. For example, Helen came home from a youth retreat greatly enthused by what she had learned. “We had some terrific sessions on personal devotions,” she told her sister Joyce. “I plan to have my devotions every single day.”

A week later, while Joyce was running the vacuum cleaner, she heard Helen screaming, “Do you have to make all that noise? Don’t you know I’m trying to have my devotions?” And the verbal explosion was followed by the slamming of a door.

Helen still had to learn that personal devotions are not an end in themselves. Our personal devotions accomplish little if they do not help us love God and one another. The Bible is a revelation of God’s love, and the better we understand His love, the easier it should be for us to obey Him and love others.

A second consideration is that if we love the lost, our verbal witness to them will be helpful. The Gospel message is a message of love. This love was both declared and demonstrated by Jesus Christ. The only way we can effectively win others is to declare the Gospel and demonstrate it in our lives. Too much “witnessing” today is a mere mouthing of words. People need an expression of love.

One reason why God permits the world to hate Christians is so that Christians may return love for the world’s hatred. “Blessed are you when men revile you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me … But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:11, 44).

“Pastor, the Bible tells us to love our neighbors, but I doubt anybody could love my neighbors,” Mrs. Barton said at the close of a Sunday School lesson. “I’ve tried to be nice to them, but it just doesn’t work.”

“Perhaps ‘being nice to them’ isn’t the real answer,” the pastor explained. “You know, it’s possible to be nice to people with the wrong motive.” “You mean as though you’re trying to buy them off?”

“Something like that. I think you and I had better pray that God will give you true spiritual love for your neighbors. If you love them in a Christian way, you’ll not be able to do them any damage,” the pastor pointed out.

It took some weeks, but Mrs. Barton grew in her love for her neighbors; and she also found herself growing in her own spiritual life.

“My neighbors haven’t changed a lot,” she told the prayer group, “but my attitude toward them has changed. I used to do things for them to try to win their approval. But now I do things for Jesus’ sake because He died for them—and it makes all the difference in the world!”

In this paragraph of his letter, John has taken us to the foundation of Christian love—and that is love!