Preaching Series on 1 John (4 of 6)

Fourth in a 6-week series

Sand art with cross = heart (God is love)
Photo by Neal E. Johnson on Unsplash; licensed under CC0.

July 14, 2024

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Commentary on 1 John 4:7-21



Week 4 (7/14/2024): 1 John 4:7-21

In this week’s reading, the author continues to offer a different emphasis on what constitutes the law. Instead of summarizing the law as love flowing out from the believer to God and the neighbor, he advocates for top-down understanding of love. Love flows from God to the believer and from the believer to neighbors in need. The ability of the believer to love their neighbor is tied to whether they “know” God and whether they acknowledge God’s overflowing love for them. This overflowing love is demonstrated by God in two ways: first, the giving of the Son as the “atoning sacrifice for sins” (4:10) and then by the sending of the Spirit (4:13). The repetition of the theme “we love because he first loved us” (4:7, 4:10, 4:19) may serve as an argument against those that emphasize love for God as the primary focus of the believer and thus neglect the needy in their community. Though he has placed the emphasis on love coming down from above, the author ends this section by leaving his readers in a familiar place: Love for God and love for neighbor go hand in hand.