indicative and imperative - Not unlike Paul’s description of God’s initiative and our response in his letter to the Ephesians, so the 1 John writer affirms and connects initiative with response. God’s love for us (the indicative) invites our ethical command to love one another (imperative). This balance lies at the core of 1 John for neither the indicative nor imperative are ever far from each other.

a timely word - This intermixing, interweaving, and overlapping of God’s love with our loving one another is a powerful word to amplify to our post-modern culture that too often defined love by emotion and sexual attraction, an act, yet bereft of a relationship. We need to hear again the life-transforming truth that God loves us and that God’s very Self is inextricably linked to that word in the sending of the Word-made-flesh. Being loved has everything to do with loving others in very visible, active ways.

ancient interpreters - augustine: When we come to the subject of love, which is what God is called in Scripture, the Trinity begins to dawn a little, for there is the Lover, the Beloved, and Love. venerable bede: From where would we get the power to love God if God had not loved us first of all? cyril of jerusalem: To love God the parent, is to love the neighbor, the child. venerable bede: The Spirit makes us children of God by adoption, the water of the sacred font cleanses us, and the blood of the Lord redeems us. [1]

What would you consider some of your greatest assets that you received from your father? Your mother?

If the 1 John writer’s definition of love is drawn from the Father / Son analogy (of God loving the world such that the Son becomes incarnate to redeem the world) what other definition’s of love exist in our culture that invert or twist the biblical understanding of love?

If you resolved to do a better job of loving others, how would you go about it?

 

Please see the homily posted on DPS for this week that is based on 1 John 4.

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[1] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture XI (InterVarsity Press, 2000), page 212ff.