Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.Sort of familiar, at least?
So there I am, reading my way through 1 John, and I come across this passage. Lots of familiar stuff, actually. You know, that whole "love" command which Jesus and, consequently, John repeats ... repeatedly. And lots of this epistle is dedicated to knowing God, or, at least, how you can know if you know God. That's a common theme here. Oh, and look! There's that "born of God" phrase again. We saw it over in chapter 3 where John warned, "No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God" (1 John 3:9). Apparently "born of God" is not a small issue. In fact, it is a huge issue in chapter 5, where we learn that "Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God" (1 John 5:1) and "Whatever is born of God overcomes the world" (1 John 5:4). Yeah, that "born of God" thing sets you out from the rest of the world, apparently quite literally. Okay, so, what do we know? Well, from the text we can see that "everyone that loves is born of God and knows God." Okay, good! So ... do you know anyone who does not love at all? I don't. So apparently this is John's Gospel, John's "good news" -- everyone is born of God and knows God!!!
Of course, that cannot be what John is saying here. John is not aiming at universal salvation. Based simply on the text here, it cannot be the case. He wouldn't offer a class of people ("He that loveth not") that doesn't exist. It would make the text meaningless. "All Americans are air-breathing humans. Any humans that do not breathe air are not Americans." Umm, okay, of what use is that information? And the correct answer is "None." No, John intends this to be a limitation, not an all-encompassing embrace. So how does that work?
Well, I think with a simple reading of the entire epistle of 1 John you can see that John is not talking about single events; he is talking about lifestyles. He speaks of "if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). Obviously no one never walks through darkness, so this is an indication of an ongoing condition, a lifestyle, a trend in a person's life. "I am writing these things to you that you may not sin" (1 John 2:1). A lifestyle. How do I know that? Because the very next phrase begins, "And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father ...". That is, "Yes, we will all sin, but the aim, the lifestyle, the trend should be not to sin." Comparing this to 1 John 3:9 clearly gives the same result. "No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." Well, of course everyone commits sin as evidenced by "if anyone sins", so the point is that there is a trend, not a single event. Thus, in 1 John 4:7-8, John is not saying "Whoever loves ... once ... is born of God." No, he is talking about a lifestyle. Jesus said, "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35). Not once; as an ongoing life direction.
So John here is not saying, "Everyone who loves (pizza, their mothers, their children, their favorite pair of jeans, their country, whatever) is born of God." He is saying that those who are born of God are marked by a lifelong tendency to love.
A lot of people would like to twist this very pleasant, very well-known passage into something it is not. "Oh," they might say, "John is simply saying that there is no being called 'God'; He's saying that what we call 'God' is actually just love. And if you love, you are connected to 'love' and 'God'." I've actually heard that. One church (which I cannot classify as Christian in any way) took it to the next obvious step. "Well, since 'love' is 'having sex with someone', we're going to have a lot of sex with each other for religious purposes in order to know 'God'." Now, obviously that's a serious stretch, but you can see that it's easily possible to twist this passage to places it cannot go. So what you need to ask yourself is not "Do I love?", but "Is my life marked by love for others?" Jesus seemed to specialize that love for the brethren. So you should ask yourself, "Does my life demonstrate and ongoing trend toward loving other believers as well as my neighbor and my God?" He who does not love as a lifestyle does not know God. It's an important question.
2 comments:
In regard to that passage, it starts with "let us love one another", so the following references to love would not be in a vacuum but in reference to "one another". So he that loves not would not be someone that doesn't love anyone, but doesn't love fellow believers. And as you said, its a lifestyle, trend, tendency toward.
Wonderful example of critical thinking at work.
While it is not hard to recognize that our commands are 1) to love God and 2) to love our neighbor, it is equally clear that Jesus (and John) made a very obvious (e.g., 1 John 5:2) preferential statement calling Christians to love Christians. I would still say, however, that this "love" we are supposed to be evidencing as our "born of God" mark is love for God and love for neighbors ... with a particular emphasis on love for the brethren. As a lifestyle.
(And I am following this one with another tomorrow because "love" is one of my "neon words", one of those overused, commonly misunderstood ones that cannot be left for individual evaluation.)
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