How God shows us his love.

1 John 4.7-10.

You might’ve noticed when I translate bible, I split it into clauses and format it like poetry. Largely it is poetry; the Hebrew sort, which repeats ideas instead of sounds.

I actually got the idea from Peter Marshall. (The Senate chaplain, not the game show host.) In his wife Catherine’s biography of him, she included some of his sermons. He wrote them out by clauses—likely so they’d be much easier for him to follow while preaching. She noted it made them look more poetic. I thought so too, and started writing out my own sermons the same way. And whenever I quoted bible verses, I wrote them out the same way too.

I noticed other bible translators, like Everett Fox, doing that with scripture, and figured I should just do it too. So I do. Again, much easier to follow.

Now, in today’s passage, the editors of the UBS Greek New Testament already put John’s lines into this format. So I’m just following along with how they did it. (Although I’d break up verse 9 a little differently.) Here it is:

1 John 4.7-10 KWL

7Beloved, we should love one another,

for love is from God,

and everyone who loves was fathered by God,

and knows God.

8One who doesn’t love, doesn’t know God,

for God is love.

9This is how God’s love is revealed in us,

for God sent his only-begotten Son

into the world so we might live through him.

10This is how love is—

not that we loved God,

but that he loved us,

and sent his Son

as a sin-offering for our sins.

Now, what John meant by it.

Personally, I consider this a significant scripture, because God’s love is the lens I use to understand both Christianity and the scriptures. God and love are so interconnected, one can legitimately say, as John does in verse 8, God is love. Our definition of love comes from a proper understanding of God, and a proper understanding of God requires us to recognize nothing he does lacks love.

Admittedly this makes some parts of the bible really hard to understand.

Theodicy and God’s love.

You see, it’s God’s prerogative to judge humanity, to let us suffer the consequences of our actions. But sometimes the way these events unfold, make us wonder whether God really is good, or is love. Wiping out humanity in the Noah story, wiping out the Amorites in the Joshua story, dumping plagues upon Egypt, all the horrifying visions of Revelation, permitting Satan to do terrible things to Job. Heck, just standing by while nasty diseases or tragic accidents kill people.

Christian apologists are gonna argue God’s absolutely not evil, and is totally in the right when bad things happen. I gotta admit when they practice theodicy—the defense of God’s goodness despite the existence of evil in his universe—I don’t care for much of their reasoning. Often they insist God had nothing to do with the destruction and mayhem… but sometimes the scriptures tell us God totally takes credit for it.

Isaiah 45.7 KJV

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

That’s not a mistranslation. God said, through Isaiah, he creates darkness and evil. And light and peace; but sometimes their opposites.

For good reasons, insist apologists: When misery, suffering, and so forth happens to people, these folks deserve it. Calvinists will eagerly say because we’re all sinners, we totally deserve hellfire; even “good people” deserve to burn in everlasting fire, and it’s only because God is so very gracious we don’t. Thing is, the Job story shows sometimes people really don’t deserve it. Heck, the Jesus story definitely shows this.

I don’t always understand why these things, including the things written of in the bible, happen. I’m not gonna be one of those know-it-all idiots who claims he has God neatly sorted out, then bends scriptures and monkeys with logic in order to blame sin, the devil, humans, nature, anything else, for atrocities, genocides, hate, death, and so forth. I’m so very tired of the Christians who do this, who try to pull some slight-of-hand with any of the earnest questions a skeptic might have, and give pathetic, inadequate answers full of arrogance and plotholes.

I know ex-Christians who demanded a satisfactory answer, didn’t hear one, and quit Jesus in frustration. (I myself think most of ’em were just looking for any excuse to quit him, and this’ll do.) Sometimes they mock me for still believing. I point out I’ve seen stuff—and so have they!—and I’m not gonna dismiss my God-experiences just because God hasn’t granted me omniscience. I can be petty sometimes, but I’m not that big of a dick.

I trust God will make everything right in the End. In the meanwhile, those folks who wanna know, “Why does God allow such things?” have me wondering about the answers right along with them. I’m fairly sure it’s a big-picture sort of thing which I may never get to see. I trust God enough to not presume he’s going about it all wrong. But if you want a satisfying answer from me… sorry, you’re just gonna find a fellow wonderer.

Even so, God is love.

The relationship between God and love is so close, such that properly-defined love 1Co 13.4-7 cannot be experienced unless God is a foundational part of that love.

Even pagans who love one another have a connection, within their love, to God. They may not understand God; they may not even understand love correctly, and think “love” only means that fleeting emotional response they have for someone they’re attracted to. Nevertheless: When authentic love takes place, God’s in it.

God’s love isn’t just defined by Paul, but by God’s own acts of love: Despite humanity’s depravity, despite our own self-centeredness and unworthiness, God (the Son, who’s still God) limited himself, stepped down from heaven, and became one of us. Not temporarily, just in order to save us, after which he’d go back to being unlimited eternal God. Permanently. Jesus has a body now. He intends to keep it in order to live with us forever. You thought his incarnation was just a temporary deal? If so, you really don’t understand how far God is willing to go for love.

Love didn’t wait for us to become worthy of God’s affection; love makes us worthy of it. Love didn’t forgive us while ignoring the problem; love dealt with the problem, and got killed for it, and defeated it by undoing death.

Love is more than just an attribute of God. Love’s the defining core of his being. Love’s his nature. Love’s his only motivation for everything he does; he has no other. Love’s the lens through which he looks at us. Love’s at the center of every command he gives us. Really, love’s the foundation of the universe; it’s the one thing which holds the seams of the universe and society from flying apart.

The reason love’s so central to Christianity, so demanded of us Christians, so expected of everyone who claims relationship with the Holy Spirit (it is one of his fruits you know Ga 5.22) is because the absence of love is antithetical to everything God attempts to do in Jesus. It’s so contrary to God, we can’t claim any relationship with him when we lack love. Of course we should love one another; if God’s really among us, how could we not?

Yet we frequently don’t. Which begs the question whether God really is among us.