Part 3 - The Model of Love

This Article is part of a multi-part Study Series called The Nature of Love.

“In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation (payment) for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10)  

John’s 1st epistle begins with the general statement that ‘love comes from God toward us.’ Then he begins to write of the specific manifestation of that love in God sending of His only Son. God's love is a model for how and why we are to love each other. John emphasizes the visible manifestation of God’s love in verse 9 in the person of the Son whom He sent. This reveals the active and redeeming character of His love. Love’s ultimate definition is seen in in terms of God's action, not ours (v. 10).

First, just as God's love was manifested in the sending of the Son, so John expects that we will demonstrate love in action to others (compare 3:16-18). Christians will live out their love in kindness, generosity and service to others. But, second, John's argument moves quickly beyond the example that God's love provides for us an examination of its active and redeeming character (vv. 9-10). God has loved us in a way that has given us life. The atoning death of Jesus provides the means by which believers come into a life-giving realm where love is received and expressed (Jn 3:16). We do not simply gaze at the painting on the wall; we are touched by the hand of God and given life-giving love. And, third, because life and love come from God, it is God's activity and not our own behavior and efforts that defines the essence of love.

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected (runs its course) in us.” (1Jn 4:11-12)

Because God's genuinely saved children have experienced such love. The instruction that comes to genuine believers to love each other is not the "ought" of external compulsion but the "ought" (v11) of internal constraint in recognition of our ‘indebtedness.’  On its own, any instruction by the preacher to love can’t provide the incentive or the power to fulfill it. In fact as a “law” it might foster either discouragement or indifference. But those who are in touch with the very source of love, who have been shown what love is and who are the recipients of a great and healing love, can receive the encouragement to love one another with hope and joy. For they are not encouraged to do something that is alien to their own experience or beyond their ability “in Christ,” by His life.

John had confidence that genuine believers will fulfill this modeling. He writes that mutual Christian love manifests the presence and action of the invisible God. By the words ‘mutual Christian” love, I refer to His love loving us so that we have His love for loving and giving ourselves to others.

John wrote that “no man hath seen God” (v 12). He is not trying to tell us what God looks like, but how God is to become knownby seeing Him in us. God is known not only in “the revelation of the mystery” of Christ in us in accord with Paul’s grace gospel, but also by the manifestation of our love for each other (1 Jn 4:12). The love of believers makes evident and concrete the activity of God in and among them. John wrote that this is how God's love is made complete, he means that it fully runs its course and reaches its intended goal when God’s love flows from God, through us, to our fellow believers. The love with which God loved us must in turn be extended to the fellowship of believers.

In short, God not only instructs us to love but He has also modeled for us what true love is. This was seen when Jesus modeled His love for his disciples when he washed their feet before his death (Jn 13:1-17). Love that does not express itself concretely and in service to others is not real love (1 Jn 3:16-18). But even more, God empowers us to love by the indwelling “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” When we received the Son whom God sent, we are born of God. We’ve come to know God, who is love (v 7) and we are given Christ’s loving life (v 9). We as genuine believers are fully empowered to extend the same kind of life-giving love to others.

Paul here defines this kind of love. “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” (1Cor 13:4-7)