Genuine Love, pt. 2

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

1 John 4:7-11 (ESV)

1. What does genuine love look like?
Genuine love is rooted in God, without whom there is no love. In order to love, we must know God because love was manifested by and began (before creation) with the love expressed to us that God would pour all of His wrath on His Son for us, sinners. While grace is for some (Exodus 33:19), His love is for everyone. Jesus' propitiatory death is for everyone. Whether God is being gracious or just, He is still being loving. We are commanded to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Luke 10:27). Notice that these two commands go together because we could not do one without doing the other. We could not love our neighbor without loving God because love is from God, and we could not love God without loving our neighbor because then we would not know God.

2. Why should we love?
Because God so loved us. Since God's love has so affected us, we should not want to do anything but love one another out of gratitude. Love is an outward expression of the "knowledge" of Jesus Christ in our heart. I say "knowledge" because we don't learn or obtain wisdom of the saving grace of Jesus Christ that changes our hearts, but we are born of God and then know Jesus Christ by grace through faith, making our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). So, we should love not as if God said, "Because I told you to," but because His loving kindness is more than we deserve for sinning against a holy God who cannot have sin in His presence.

3. How can we love?
Because love is from God. All love that is genuine that we express to each other is based in the original act of love shown to us from God. Therefore, God works in us to show genuine love, because apart from God we do not know love because we do not know God. To know love is to know God. Therefore, the power to love comes from the Holy Spirit. In order to know love better, we must know God better. The more we read God's Word and learn more about Him, the more we will love. I dare say that we cannot love more than we proportionally know God because Jesus was God, and He showed the greatest expression of love that ever will be. Simply put, How much we know God = How much we can love. I don't think that we are capable of loving more than how much we know God. Otherwise, that "extra love" would be based in something other than God, and that is impossible since love is God.