Love – An Enduring Attribute of God’s Nature

1 John 4:11-21

Love is an enduring attribute of God’s nature. First John 4:8 says that he who does not love does not know God for God is love. We are children of God so why are we struggling to love one another? We are the crown of God’s creation, made in His image for His glory and the fulfillment of His purpose. However, because of man’s fall from the perfect state in which God made him, while we were yet sinners, God manifested His love for us, sending His only begotten Son to sacrifice his life so that whoever believes and trusts in him as the Savior of the world will not perish, but have everlasting life. It is God’s will that we have a steadfast relationship of love with Him because that’s the only way we can love one another. That’s how we know that we abide in Him, and He abides in us.

 “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another (v.11). No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (v.12) because He has given us of His Holy Spirit (v.13). So then, why are we struggling to love one another? We confess to knowing God, and Scripture commands us to let love be genuine without hypocrisy (Romans 12:9). There’s nothing in the Father’s nature that we inherited at the new birth that causes us not to truly love one another.

God is not partial with His love, and He doesn’t want us to be either. He gives us the power to love one another because He first loved us (19). What about those of us who say we love God and hate our brothers and sisters? We are liars; for those of us who do not love a brother or sister whom we have seen, cannot love God whom we have not seen (v.20). God commands that we who love Him love our brothers and sisters also (v.21). Love is eternal because God is love.