He Loved First
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” — 1 John 4:16 (NIV)
There are things we know, and then there are things we actually rely on.
I know plenty of things that make very little difference to how I live. I know I should go to bed earlier (working on it). I know checking the weather app for the seventh time will not change the weather. Knowing something and arranging your life around the truth of it are two different skills.
John says that Christians are to do both with the love of God:
“we know and rely on the love God has for us” (1 John 4:16, NIV, emphasis added).
That word rely matters — John has spent much of chapter 4 talking about agape, the self-giving love that comes from God. He has already told us, “love comes from God” (1 John 4:7, NIV), and then makes the even greater statement, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, NIV). Love is not something humanity invented and God happens to be very good at. Its source is God Himself.
And before John tells us what our love should look like, he makes sure we understand where it begins—Not with us.
“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, emphasis added).
God did not wait for us to love Him properly and then respond in kind. He initiated. He loved first. Paul says the same thing another way:
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, NIV).
That changes what Christian love is. If loving other people depended entirely upon how lovable they were, we would all be in trouble (you know I am right). If loving God depended entirely upon our ability to generate enough affection for Him, we would not fare much better. John keeps directing our attention away from the quality of our love and back toward the certainty of God’s love.
“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19, NIV).
Our love is response. That is important because there will be times when God's love does not feel apparent. Circumstances change. Feelings change. We fail. We sin. We suffer. Prayers seem unanswered. There are days when our emotions enthusiastically cooperate with what Scripture says and days when they obviously did not receive the memo. But the love of God is not established by how loved I happen to feel today—It was established at the cross.
John connects our security in that love to something we may not immediately expect: judgment.
“This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment” (1 John 4:17, NIV).
Confidence. On the day of judgment.
Those two things do not naturally seem as though they belong in the same sentence. If standing before a perfectly holy God depended upon our record, fear would be the only reasonable response. We know ourselves far too well to be overly confident about presenting our own righteousness as evidence for the defense…we would be convicted every time.
But Christians do not approach judgment trusting their own record — We approach it belonging to Christ.
“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1, NIV).
Jesus has already borne the judgment our sin deserved. That is why John can immediately say,
“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment” (1 John 4:18, NIV).
John is not saying that Christians never get scared. He is not suggesting that sufficiently mature believers become completely unfazed by medical tests, financial problems, frightening circumstances, turbulence, or the mysterious noise downstairs at two in the morning (it. is. the. ice. maker...).
He tells us exactly what kind of fear he means: fear that “has to do with punishment.”
The person who knows and relies on God's love does not have to live wondering whether God is waiting for an opportunity to condemn them. We do not have to wonder whether one terrible failure has finally exhausted His mercy or whether we will arrive before Him one day and discover that Christ's sacrifice was somehow insufficient.
His love gives us confidence because our confidence is in Christ.
Paul asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” and then names trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger and sword (Romans 8:35, NIV). His conclusion is that absolutely nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39, NIV).
That security does more than make us feel better! It changes the way we are able to love other people — Real love costs something. It requires us to give when repayment is unlikely, forgive when we have actually been hurt, serve when nobody notices and care about another person's good rather than constantly protecting our own. Love makes us vulnerable, which gives fear plenty of opportunities to object.
What if they hurt me? What if they reject me? What if I give and get nothing back? What if I am taken for granted? What if loving them costs more than I wanted to give?
Those fears can make us turn inward very quickly.
But John keeps returning us to the same place:
“we know and rely on the love God has for us” (1 John 4:16, NIV, emphasis added).
We can loosen our grip on constantly protecting ourselves because our lives are held by Someone else. We can love without requiring another person to perfectly return that love because they were never its ultimate source. God is. And when loving someone is difficult, the answer is not simply to stare at ourselves and demand that we become more loving. We return to the love that came first. We look at Christ. We remember that God “sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9, NIV). We remember that He loved us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8, NIV). We remember that the cross was not our idea, our achievement, or God's response to something impressive He found in us.
He loved first.
The more securely we know and rely upon that love, the less we have to live terrified of losing it, earning it, or proving ourselves worthy of it. And, from that security, we are increasingly free to turn outward and give to others what we ourselves first received.
Our love will sometimes be inconsistent. His is not. Ours will still be growing. His is already perfect. And when ours feels particularly lacking, John does not tell us to begin by looking harder at our own hearts—He points us back to God’s love for us.
So spend some time there. Know the love God has for you, as John says, but also learn to rely on it (1 John 4:16, NIV). Return to the cross. Remember who loved first. Let the certainty of His love quiet the fear that makes you hold back, protect yourself, or keep score.
Then, secure in a love you did not earn and cannot manufacture for yourself, look for someone you can love from the abundance of what you have already received.
“We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19, NIV).
bytaylormcgee
