1 John 4:11-21 NKJV
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 19 We love Him because He first loved us.
20 If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? 21 And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.
When we first heard and believed the Gospel and were baptized into the name of Jesus, we sprang forth from Jesus as branches from a vine. In John’s Gospel, we heard Jesus say to His disciples, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). How do we know we still abide (that is, remain) in God and God in us? We continue to believe and confess that Jesus is the Son of God, along with all the other articles of the Christian faith. We know what and in whom we believe. We abide in the faith.
But there is an additional way to know that we abide in God and God in us. “He who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” That love is first for God. Standing on His promises of forgiveness and acceptance through Christ, we no longer cower in fear before our Father. We love Him, because we know for certain that He loves us and that all punishment and condemnation has been removed from us for the sake of Christ, who made atonement for all our sins.
But we’re fooling ourselves, John says, if we think we can love God while hating a child of God, a brother or sister in Christ, one of our fellow Christians. We claim to love a God whom we have never seen with our eyes or heard with our ears. But we do see our fellow Christians in the world. It should be easier to love the one we can actually see and interact with. But seeing our brothers also means seeing their weaknesses and their flaws and their needs that require our attention. The sin that still dwells in us makes it harder to love the ones we can see.
So if you find that you lack genuine love for your brothers here, don’t make excuses for it. Admit it. Repent of it. See in Christ God’s love for you and for your brother, and then return to your daily task of overcoming your natural lovelessness and replacing it with the love of your Father. When we love our brothers, that love then becomes a piece of evidence assuring us that we do, in fact, abide in God and God in us. Let us pray: Heavenly Father, abide in us with Your love, and, by Your Spirit, help us to abide in You always. Amen.