1 John 4:7-21

Good Monday to you, as we begin week 4 of our Community, Purpose, Love series!  Our passage for the week is 1 John 4:7-21; please take a moment now to read through it.

This is a challenging passage to write on.  But not because there is too little in it; there is too much.  John, the author, does not think like us, or write like us.  Rather than writing in the neat, straight lines of Western rational logic and argument, he writes in spirals: he’ll touch on a word or idea, circle around it, then touch on it again – but at a higher (or deeper, if you prefer) level.  He touches, again and again, on the inner life of God, on Jesus as that Trinitarian love enfleshed, with skin on, and on the gift of the Holy Spirit to Christ’s people.  He speaks of love, and love perfected, and about God taking up residence in us as we by faith abide in God.  He addresses a very human and earthly group of disciples, his readers then and us now, who struggle to really, truly love one another.  

And much more.

If this passage is like a spiral staircase, where do we start, how do we get on?  John’s first word gives us the clue: Beloved.  God has set his affection upon you in Christ.  God has welcomed you, embraced you, included you in God’s very life in Christ.  Beloved is the first word …

… because God is love.  The word beloved is spoken over us because God is love.  The same God who spoke Creation into existence speaks you into belovedness because God is love.  For God to be love, the one God must be a community of some kind: there must be the One who loves, the One who is loved, and the Love itself that flourishes in the sweet society of the Godhead.

But how are we to get in on that love?  We can neither pull God down to us, nor climb our way to God.

But God is love.  And therefore, God is a sending God, the God who opens his door to us and sends his love out to find us.  “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (verses 9 and 10).

Jesus the Sent Son doesn’t just come to us, doesn’t merely draw near proximally.  He comes for us, comes to make us at one with God so that we might live.  Our ordinary lives become places where God makes himself at home!

How can we know this?  “We know that we live in him and he is us because he has given us of his Spirit” (13).  The gift of the Spirit is not primarily a feeling or an experience, it is a Person, the Spirit of Christ residing in all who are Christ’s: “God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (16).

Spend time this week on the spiral staircase that is 1 John 4:7-21.  Allow the steps to take you higher, and deeper, into the love God has for you, into the love with which we are to love one another.  Our passage begins with our identity (Beloved) and ends with this command: “Whoever loves God must love his sisters and brothers” (21).

Try “soaking” in this passage all this week.  Each day, set a timer and spend 5 or 10 minutes simply sitting in, sitting with, it.  Don’t try to “figure it out,’ just let it soak into you!