Dear Friend of the Persecuted Church—

This month, we are examining 1 John 4 to answer the question, “What does it mean to love the Body of Christ?” Today we are taking a look at verses 7-11:

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

Herein is love, not that we 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 ought also to love one another.

Love: The Essence of Knowing God

In verses 1-6, the author of 1 John 4 taught us how to identify the Body of Christ by the indwelling of the Spirit of God. In a very real sense, there is “us” and there is “them”—those that have the Spirit, and those that don’t. Throughout these first verses, John refers to those of us that have the Spirit as “we”: “we are of God,” and “hereby know we the spirit of truth,” for instance.

But verse 7 changes course dramatically, as this reference to “us” becomes a command: “Beloved, let us love one another.” Now, it would be perfectly adequate for God to give us this command, through His Word, and expect us to obey it without any explanation. But here, He tells us why we are responsible to demonstrate this agape love to the brethren.

From these verses, a clear principle emerges. Love is so much a part of God’s character that if we do not know love, we cannot know the God of love. God is love, and love is of God. One without the other is impossible.

In fact, love is so much a part of God, that even our own love for Him starts with Him! Out of His love for us, we learn to love Him. It all starts with God’s love flowing to us—“not that we loved God, but that he loved us.” From that love, we learn to love God, as verse 19 confirms by saying, “We love him, because he first loved us.”

And from God’s love to us, we learn to love the Body of Christ. “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”

My friends, the love we have for the Body of Christ is the essence of our own relationship with God. The love that you pour out in your prayers for the persecuted is a reflection of your own knowledge of who God is, and your response to the love that he has poured out on you.

Yours for the Body of Christ,

Gabriel J. Waddell
Executive Director