Monday
1 John 4.5 “They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them.”
For John the world is not the earth, or the whole created order. He thinks of the world as the way the world is organised against God. The human structures of power, the ways the world of people, nations, cultures, and institutions use power, acquire wealth, impose control. That is the world. This organised life of humanity is hostile to God, ruled by greed, sinful in its appetites and in desperate need of saving. So a Gospel with a saving message that calls for confession of sin, repentance and changed ways, and faith in the Son of God who died for the sins of that God-loved world – not going to happen, says a world resistant to the claims of God. As Apostle John says, the world chooses to listen and dance only to the beat of its own music.
Tuesday
1 John 4.6 “We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.”
The confession of Jesus as Son of God and as Lord marks a clear line of allegiance to Jesus. To be born of God is to know God’s love lavished upon us – we are children of God. There is a strong family likeness in Christian believers, a common language of the Kingdom of God, a shared love, loyalty and commitment to Jesus. All of this only makes sense to those who know God dwells in them by his Spirit. They recognise the truth when they hear it, because it is spoken and interpreted to their hearts by the Spirit, who “bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
Wednesday
1 John 4.7 “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”
John keeps coming back to this. The test of life is our capacity to love. Loving others as Christ loves us is a God given capacity, enabled by the Spirit who dwells in us. Self-giving love is the authenticating DNA test of the child of God. Perhaps reminding ourselves of I John 3.16 is all the commentary we need here: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” John is a practiced exponent of the logic of divine love.
Thursday
1 John 4.8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
And so, finally, John raises the argument to its highest level. Love that is generous, forgiving, costly, truthful and faithful is essential evidence of knowing God. Yes, knowing about God is important. But John is saying so much more. God is love, and that means God is the God who calls us into personal relationship and communion. We know the love of God because we know the God of love. Don’t lose the wonder of those words. “God is love.” Be astonished. Let worship grow out of adoration.
Friday
1 John 4.8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
God is love. The eternal loving communion and holy interaction of Father, Son, and Spirit, overflows in the love that creates, redeems, sanctifies and enables the Christian community to embody that love. The incarnation of Christ, the cross and resurrection, and the eternal intercession of the Son of God; God’s whole unfolding drama of redemption, is rooted and grounded in the eternal truth of who God is. As Charles Wesley’s hymn declares: “Thy nature and thy name is love.”
Saturday
1 John 4.9 “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 John’s paraphrase of his own words in John 3.16. God is love, but the love that God is, comes to us as grace and gift. The love of God is an outpouring of grace, love becoming visible as grace incarnate in Jesus, the eternal reaching out of the heart of God to a fallen creation on which God has never given up. The purpose of the coming of the Son of God, John has already made clear. Jesus is the word of life. God is light, and Jesus is the light of the world. God is love, and Jesus is the personification and demonstration of the lengths to which divine love will go, the depths to which God’s love will reach, the scale and scope of God’s grace, justice and mercy, even to us.
Sunday
1 John 4.10 “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
God’s love always comes first. The initiative in our salvation rests entirely with God. The love of God is from all eternity, so we are held within a loving purpose that has created us, came looking for us, called us, and has always and ever loved us beyond our knowing. Our love will always be response to God’s love that first found us. John knows the inner dynamics of the human heart. That phrase “an atoning sacrifice for our sins” tells in concentrated form of the self-expenditure of God in Christ. Reconciliation is the healing of hurt, the removal of guilt, the restoring of love, and all of that by the grace, mercy and love of God. And why? Because God is love.
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