1 John 4:9-11

1 John 4:9-11. God is love; and in this was the love of God manifested in us: it had its one supreme expression ‘in our case,' ‘in us' as its sphere. This explains what follows, in the perfect. That God hath sent as the permanent token of His love his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Here only is the ‘Only-begotten' in the Epistle. He was sent as the eternal Son, the mystery of whose filial relation is expressed by this word: introduced here partly to indicate the greatness of the love by the measure of the gift, partly to connect our life with His. In the Gospel the Only-begotten is given as a proof of love to the world; but the life is given to those only who believe.

Here the emphasis is on ‘in us;' but the life must here include, on account of the next verse, deliverance from condemnation as well as the eternal life itself: hence not ‘in Him,' but ‘through Him.' The apostle then gees back from the manifestation to the love itself. Herein is love: its origination is not in or through the mission, but in God Himself. Our response is in his thought throughout; but it is only as response: ‘love is of God.' Not that we love God, but that he loved us, and sent going back again to the past his Son as the propitiation for our sins: thus impressively does St. John show what he meant by ‘not that we loved.' He provided and sent what not our love but our sins required. Not ‘to be' a propitiation; but ‘He sent His Son,' whose mission dating from heaven was atonement.

Beloved always ‘beloved' in this connection, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another: not ‘so to love,' as if the example prescribed the kind of love; but we are bound by the nature of the love common to Him and to us: it has been manifested ‘in us' to that end.