God’s Love Made Perfect In Us

We come to the climax of John’s letter exhorting us to love one another in the love of God.  The verse at the core is arguably the most famous, though often misconstrued verse in the Bible, “God is love.”  A seminary classmate in all sincerity exhorted us, “Men, we need to love one another,” but it felt trite.  Another preached a beautiful sermon on love, but his sermon was self-help and “oughts.” At Urbana ’70, we sang, “We are one in the Spirit … one day unity will be restored … and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”  Singing together with 13,000 college students felt “real.”  Is that what empowers us to love?  How is it that God’s love is made perfect in us?

Notice the brackets in this section. First and last by the command that we are to love one another (7-8 & skip to 20-21), making the point: Loving my brother is critical to my experiencing the love of God.  Then 9-10 shows where that love comes from, well summarized with 19, We love because He first loved us.  Finally, notice the perfecting of love mentioned in (12 & 17-18), showing us how we may experience that perfecting of God’s love in us.