If we don’t love others, we don’t love God.

1 John 4.16 - 5.1.

As John famously said in verse 16, God is love. Those who love—legitimately love, and aren’t just using a pop-culture definition of “love,” but are doing the sort of love as defined by scripture—are, whether they know it or not, interacting with God to some degree.

In today’s passage, John adds if we don’t love, particularly if we hate people whom God’s called us to love, we’re not interacting with God. How could we be?—we’re hating the people he loves.

And between loving our family and friends, loving our fellow Christians, loving our neighbors, and loving our enemies, Jesus has pretty much instructed us to love everyone. Indiscriminately. No, not with “tough love,” which is simply anger disguised as love, and also frequently used to justify a whole lot of hateful behavior. Actual love, which is kind and gentle and patient. Which isn’t trying to manipulate people into conforming to the way we think they oughta behave, but bears all things and hopes all things. 1Co 13.7

If we stick to love, actual love, we abide in God and he in us. If we ditch love in favor of society, even Christian society—which, whenever it encourages us to not love, isn’t all that Christian—in what way are we abiding in God? We’re not following him. We’re not fulfilling his love by displaying it to others. We’re not making him known. In fact we’re leading pagans to think the very worst things about the God we believe in. Christians who lack love are monstrous—and the god of monstrous people must himself be a monster, right?

All the more reason we Christians need to exhibit God’s love towards one another, and everyone. And if you’re afraid loving too widely might lead you into error, that’s an irrational fear. Love, done properly, gets rid of that fear. John says that too in today’s passage.

1 John 4.16 - 5.1 KWL

16We knew and believed the love

which God has in us.

God is love,

and one who remains in love

remains in God,

and God remains in them.¹

17This is how love was brought to completion by us:

We can be bold on Judgment Day,

because just as God is,

we also are, in this world.

18Fear isn’t in love.

Instead, a complete love throws fear out,

because fear has negative consequences.

Those who fear

haven’t completed love.

19We love {God}

because he loves us first.

20When anyone says “I love God,”

and hates their¹ fellow Christian,

they’re¹ a liar.

For one who doesn’t love their¹ fellow Christian

whom they¹ were able to see,

aren’t able to love God,

whom they¹ weren’t able to see.

21We have this command from God,

so one who loves God

might also love their¹ fellow Christian.

1All who believe Jesus is Christ

were fathered by God.

All who love the fatherer

also love those¹ fathered by him.

More evidence of our relationship with God: Love.

When we love other people, we have God in us. When we don’t, we don’t.

There are a lot of fearful Christians who wonder whether they’re saved. Other Christians try to placate them by telling them once saved always saved—a belief which isn’t entirely biblical, but is mighty popular. Or they tell ’em, “Have you said the sinner’s prayer? If you ever have doubts, just say it again!” Or otherwise reaffirm your commitment to Jesus by confessing the creeds again, maybe take holy communion, maybe start a bible-reading plan, or something else which feels devout.

These confessions of faith are nice and all, but time and again the scriptures tell us we confirm our salvation by our behavior. No, good works don’t save us; never have. But a true Christian is gonna strive to be a good person. Christians who don’t even try—who don’t do good deeds, don’t demonstrate the Spirit’s fruit, don’t love—don’t have an existing, current, demonstrable relationship with God. They can’t prove they’re Christian.

Oh they’ll claim they totally can, by reciting doctrines or pointing to their “spiritual birthday,” the date they first said the sinner’s prayer. They’ll point to church attendance; they’ll quote a slew of memory verses. But as John said in verse 20, if they hate fellow Christians, they’re lying about that relationship with God.

People who lack God’s love—and therefore, a relationship with God—are all the paranoid, fearful, bitter, angry Christians we see all over our culture. Those Christians who are afraid the government’s gonna get us; the Christians who are afraid if they don’t nag their neighbors into Christendom God’s gonna smite ’em; the Christians who think every unfamiliar spiritual thing is automatically from Satan; the Christians who are constantly on the lookout for heresy and cults and false teachings. Basically it’s every Christian who doesn’t really trust God to achieve his plan without their help. They lack God’s peace, and call it devotion.

I admit I get dragged back into this mindset from time to time. I gotta remind myself: Fearful Christians are simply showing us they aren’t practicing love. Aren’t bringing it to completion by doing it. Are basically telling the world, “I lack faith. That’s why I’m trying to force people into a Christianity I’m comfortable with, instead of obediently doing the good works God already laid out for me to do.” Ep 2.10 In doing those good works, we demonstrate love, and demonstrate we do have a real, saving relationship with God. In not doing those good works, and flailing about in fear, we demonstrate we don’t know God. ’Cause God’s love throws those fears out.

God is love, and his love becomes our love to others. It’s a really basic idea. But you’d be surprised how many people forget God is love, and claim he’s not—claim they love, but God hates. They’ve been listening to hateful people who claim they’re Christian, and either believe their twisted teachings, or refuse to believe in that kind of God. They start developing wacky ideas, like John Lennon’s “God is a concept by which we measure our pain”—and again, as they should, reject that idea. As they should! But they take it too far, and reject God altogether.

So we Christians have our work cut out for us. We gotta reject those false, non-loving ideas of God right along with these naysayers. We also gotta uplift the proper idea of God as love. And we gotta demonstrate his love, and in so doing, reveal him to the world.

Loving the difficult-to-love.

Sometimes it’s very hard to love fellow Christians. Supernaturally hard. Most of the Christians I interact with are striving to follow Jesus; they’re easy to love. Then there are those Christians who really aren’t, and my attitude towards them, too often, is, “They’re supposed to know better, but they’re such… jerks.” And sometimes that’s their attitude towards me in return: I’m supposed to know better, but I can be a jerk too.

Yet God loves us. Loves us enough to die for us. Loves us enough to overlook our sins, despite how jerkish we become towards him and one another. Loves us even when we don’t make the effort to do better, go find fellow jerks to hang out with, bash all the other Christians who sin differently than we do, bash this or that denomination for not practicing the same behaviors we do—in short, loves us even when we don’t love one another.

John correctly points out when we do that stuff, can we honestly be said to have any relationship with God? If we claim to love an invisible God, yet visibly hate visible Christians, are we believable when we claim to love God?

And the command to love God is the greatest command. All else, including all of Christianity, stems from the love of God. If we can’t get love right, it stands to reason we don’t get God right; and we certainly don’t represent him rightly when we can’t love his kids like he does—and ordered us to likewise do.

Look, God chose us to be his kids. Wasn’t acciental. Yes, some Christians look like they stumbled ass-backwards into God’s grace; they totally don’t merit it. (As if any of us do, ’cause if it’s merit, it’s not grace, and it’s all grace.) There are some total screw-ups in Christendom, who are so awful at following Jesus it’s almost as if they’re deliberately trying to offend him. You know how certain spoiled children can behave. But no child of God is an accident. God personally made kids of each of us, and intends to smooth away our imperfections—sometimes with a sander, sometimes with a blowtorch—to fix our flaws, to make us perfect like he originally intended.

We’re all works in progress, and we have no business taking those works-in-progress and being anything but loving towards them. Sure they (and we!) are pains in the tail now, but when we love God, we recognize we’re part of God’s process to bring others to perfection. Hating them only gets in God’s way, and proves we need a few more rounds with the sander. When those fellow Christians don’t make it easy, I have to remember I don’t make it easy for them either—and I’m not being Christian when I don’t love them. I’m not walking in light at those points. I need to get back into the light and love as God does, and keep that relationship with him going, and be Christian. As do we all.