I know that it’s not a good idea to take verses out of context, so I hope that you have a moment to read a larger passage surrounding the following verse, like 1 John 4:13-21. If you do, I think that you’ll find that the message of this verse still stands on its own, but is made even richer with context.
We love because he first loved us.
1 John 4:19 NIV
This goes back to what was mentioned in an earlier article about verse 10. We can appreciate and show gratitude for someone who saved our lives, and even grow to love them because of what they did for us. However, Jesus didn’t wait for us to love Him first, before He was ready to demonstrate love to us. Jesus loved us and died for us first, making our love a response: a mirroring of the perfect love that God had for us in the first place. It’s a natural reaction on our part, upon having received such un-merited love from Him.
Let’s continue in this chapter, to see what the implications are of us loving God because He first loved us.
Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
1 John 4:20-21 NIV
Well, there it is: You can’t truly love God and harbor hate for your brother or sister. That is not a trivial fact, and something worth pausing for a bit to ponder.
Hating a fellow Christian doesn’t align with what it means to love God. (Hating anyone else, even outside of the church, might also show that we aren’t truly loving God, but this specific passage seems to be talking about others in the body of Christ.) And, love for God includes keeping His commandments, and He was pretty clear about loving others (see Matthew 5:43-48, for instance, as well as Luke 10:25-37).
So, perhaps when Jesus referred to the commandments about loving God and loving our neighbor as being the “greatest” (see Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-34, and Luke 10:25-28), maybe they weren’t two different things that we should do.
Maybe they were just part of the same love that we reflect from God: reflecting His love back to Himself and out to others. Maybe, as John writes here, we can’t have one without the other. After all, loving God means that we must obey His commandment to love others, and loving others (at least, in the way that God loved us) is going to be pretty difficult without His help, which we receive by loving Him and abiding with Him. So, do you love God today? Do you love your brother and sister? If you are harboring hate for either (and, let’s be honest, some Christians – including me, sometimes – can be challenging to love in the way that God loves them), today is a good day to line up both of those things with God’s will in your life!
From Sunday School lesson prepared for March 9, 2025
References:
- 1717 Bible Studies, 1, 2, and 3 John, © 2025 Christian Standard Media.
- Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
- The College Press NIV Commentary – 1, 2 & 3 John, by Morris M. Womack. © 1998 College Press Publishing Co.
Those Who Sin Differently 