A devotion on love: 1 John 4:7–21 

What does true Christian love, true “agape”, look like? 

1 John is one of the best places in Scripture to think about the love that propels us to love our neighbour. In this letter, John has already tested his people’s love twice — in 2:7–11, making sure it comes from the true light of Christ, and in 3:11–18, where love is the evidence of eternal life in them. In this passage, our mutual love manifests God’s own identity and his “loving activity in Christ and in us.”¹

John’s point is that mutual love is our duty because, as one commentator puts it, “God is love in himself (8, 16); God has loved us in Christ (10–11); and God continues to love in and through us (12–13).” Linked to this, here are four (and a half) observations.²

1: God is love 

Verse 8: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” Love for God and for each other isn’t a by-product of belonging to Him; it’s proof we’ve been born again through Christ’s atoning work. 

2: No one has ever seen God 

Verse 12: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us.” Our love for each other is the test of our love for God. As John puts it in verse 20, if you don’t love the children of God you can see, how can you claim to love the God you can’t? 

We’re animated by God’s own Spirit — verse 13: “This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.” God, who loved the world enough to send his only Son, lives in us. So if we recognise Jesus Christ as Lord, how could we not love? 

3: We know and rely on God’s love for us 

Verse 16: “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.” 

This is not a call to grit, but to dependence. Our love is only ever a small answer to God’s great love — one we depend on completely. God is love, and love only comes from Him. 

4: We are called to perfect love 

This love is defined by two things: confidence before God, and love for our brothers and sisters. 

Verse 17: “This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment…” — because in this world, we are like Jesus. We can live knowing we’ll be safe on judgment day, and love our siblings under our Father’s sure, powerful love. We’ve been set free from fear by the love of God, and that frees us to love in return. There is no fear for those who are “in love,” John reminds us, for they are “in God.” 

And a half: Love for the world 

This passage focuses on love between brothers and sisters in Christ, but its implications go further. As John makes clear in verses 9, 14, and 17, God’s love came “into the world” — and in this world, we are like Jesus, God’s love made visible. 

Final thoughts: Love is not selective 

In Life Together, Bonhoeffer reminds us that life with God as the Church never turns into a movement, an order, a school of piety, or a holy club. It participates in God’s reality and so cannot be a self-centered project: 

“The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door.”Bonhoeffer, Life Together and the Prayerbook of the Bible, pp. 45–46. 

This would have rung particularly strong in the context of the Nazi regime in Germany. But I believe it’s a challenge for everyone at all times and in all places. Bonhoeffer is pointing here to the sheep and the goats parable in Matthew 25, where the Son of Man separates those who served him by attending to their brothers and sisters from those who ignored them. The Church is never my project or yours; it’s God’s creation, and it might not look like either of us. 

I’ve been encouraged to see this kind of love on the move in our own congregations; the Mobile Community Pantries and Jesus Club. And I pray we keep learning to love those from a different background, socio-economic reality, nation or tribe. 

God is the one gathering His sheep. We want to receive our brothers and sisters as given to us by God, not as a select club of chosen members. The Spirit of Christ, who raised him from the dead, is alive in all who have turned away from their sin and run into their Saviour’s arms. 

It’s by the love we show one another that the world will know that we follow Christ. 

Benji Vaytet 
Community Pastor

1. J.R.W. Stott, The Letters of John, TNTC, p. 160. ↩︎
2. Ibid., p. 161. ↩︎