1 John 4:10

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. This paragraph is one of the most beautiful and, at the same time, one of the most powerful passages in the entire New Testament.

It opens with an affectionate appeal: Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God, and every one that loves is born of God and knows God. For the third time in this letter St. John is constrained to speak of brotherly love, to plead with all Christians to show that love which was given into their hearts by faith. Such love is a creature of God, it is a reflection of the love of God in the hearts of those that have learned to know His love. It is a part of the new divine disposition and conduct which characterizes the believers. It is a proof of the new birth by the power of God through the Gospel; it is an outgrowth, a fruit, of faith, of the saving knowledge of God. On the other hand: He that does not love does not know God. Where there is no love toward the brethren in the conduct and life of a person, this is a sure and certain sign that he has not yet come to know God as he should, that there is no saving knowledge, no faith toward God in his heart.

That this is true St. John brings out in an uncontrollable burst of ecstasy: For God is Love: herein was manifested the love of God in us, that His only-begotten Son God sent into the world that we might live through Him. The test which St. John suggests is so definite, because it is impossible to know God, to be united with Him in true faith, and yet not to have love in the heart. For God is Himself Love: He is the personification, the embodiment, the source of love. How can anyone be born out of this love, receive a new spiritual nature from this love, be fully acquainted with its divine power, and yet not be inspired with love toward the brethren? For the love of God was manifested, was revealed, appeared to us and in us in such a wonderful way that the very angels were moved to the depths of their being. His only-begotten Son, than whom there was no being in heaven and earth in whom He felt greater pleasure, with whom He was united in a more intimate union, this beloved Son God sent down from heaven, from the abode of everlasting bliss, into this world, this vale of sin and corruption and death, in order that we, lost and condemned sinners that we are in ourselves, might have life, true, spiritual, eternal life, through Him and in Him. There is no message in all the universe more comforting, there is no passage in all literature more powerful than this simple statement of God's love in Jesus Christ, His Son.

And it is a gift of God's free love and mercy that John is speaking of: In this lies love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins. Here all merit, all boasting on the part of man is excluded, for this singular example of love is not to be found on the part of men, as though we, of our reason and strength, might have felt love for Him and longed to be united with Him. The very opposite is true. While we were yet sinners, while we were enemies of God, Romans 5:8, God loved us, and it was His love alone which prompted Him to send His only Son into the world to be a propitiation for all our sins, to offer up Himself in vicarious satisfaction for the transgression of all mankind. A perfect atonement has been made, a perfect redemption has been gained for all, and all the blessings of this salvation are ready to be received by faith, we, the believers, having become partakers of them all through the power of God in the Word.