“This is love”

1 John 4 is often used in Wedding services. It includes some amazing passages about love! But that was not why it was originally written. We’ve recently gone through 1 John in our evening services and we saw there that it was written to counter the influence of false teachers in that church. The famous passages about love are not written to encourage newly-weds, but to challenge a church looking away from Jesus. But that doesn’t stop couples choosing 1 John 4 for their wedding services!

It was while preparing for a recent wedding service that I suddenly spotted something I had failed to spot before. The famous 1John4:10 says this:

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

It’s an amazing verse! It is a huge encouragement for every believer – He loved us, even when we did not love Him! And the price of love, which He was so willing to pay, was for Jesus, His only Son, to become the sacrifice that paid the price for our sins, bringing us back into relationship with Him.

Often Wedding Services will use this as a ‘pattern’ or ‘standard’ of love. “This is love” … so show love like this: self-giving, servant-hearted and sacrificial. And there is biblical precedent for this way of looking at this verse – Phil 2:5-8 tells us to have within us the same mind as Jesus who willingly laid aside His rights as God’s son, took on flesh, came to serve and lived to die for us.

But, the force of the Greek is to say “In this is love” … it’s not to raise an example to follow, but to call us to look to God and His amazing, outstanding love. 1 John 4:11 goes on “… since God so loved us, we also ought to love once another”. That word ‘ought’ is a duty which is felt. The idea is that we so gaze on His love that we are taken up with it, full of appreciation of it, with the result that we long to see that same love in our own lives.

Part of the training of an architect is to draw repeatedly buildings that are ‘landmark’ buildings. The idea is that as they study them to draw them, they start to appreciate the way they use their form and materials to display beauty, to make a statement, to bring pleasure. Their time spent looking in detail works into them a sense of space, proportion and design that they want to achieve for themselves in their work.

And that’s what 1 John 4:10 is talking about – look, and look again, at the love of God for us. Be amazed, and astounded at it; let the wonder of His mercy, loving-kindness and audacious generosity of God towards rebels like us bring about a longing to love like that. As we take time to consider His love let Him shape our thinking and response; let His love change our heart attitude, our love towards others.