"Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."
1 John 4:11
“Beloved, if God so loved us,”
When John wrote this phrase with “if” in it, he did not mean it as we might say “if.” “If it’s a sunny day tomorrow, I will come to see you.” We mean by that, “Maybe it will be sunny and maybe it won’t…” The way John used “if” he meant it as a certainty.1 God loves us. We are here called, “beloved.” The Father proved His love for us by sending His Son to die for us.
“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
There was nothing lovable in us when God chose to love us. We had no standing before God, no merit of our own, no beauty or desirability for Him to love us. And yet, wonder of wonders, He loves us. His love is unilateral, He loved us first and without expecting love in return. His choosing to love us is all of grace! When it comes time for us to love others, we need to remember this.
“We ought also to love one another.”
Jesus’ kind of love “does what is best for the other person in the light of eternity, regardless of the consequences.”2 No one can honestly argue that Jesus didn’t have our best interest in mind when He obeyed His Father and went to the cross for us. When we see other people through the lens of Biblical love, it should change our motivation for loving them. They may not be lovely, or kind, or even deserving of our love, but that’s the point. We need to be gracious in our love for others the way that Jesus graced us with His love.
That word “ought” in our verse is important. One writer put it this way, “ought also” – “also ought.”3 Jesus loved us like this, we also ought to love others this way. Our love for others isn’t about us, it’s about loving people for God’s sake.
“Thou art giving and forgiving,
Ever blessing, ever blest,
Well-spring of the joy of living,
Ocean-depth of happy rest!
Thou our Father, Christ our brother,
All who live in love are Thine:
Teach us how to love each other,
Lift us to the joy divine.”4
How’s your “love-life?”
1. This is a first-class condition in John’s Greek text.
2. I am not sure of the exact origin of this definition for love. I believe I heard it first either from Dr. Bill Goode, or Dr. Bob Smith at Faith Baptist Counselling Ministry, in the mid-1980s.
3. E.W. Bullinger, The Companion Bible, the electronic version in eSword.
4. This is the third stanza of the “Hymn to Joy,” or “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee,” words written by Henry J. van Dyke, 1907. Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, 1824; adapted by Edward Hodges. Copyright status: Public Domain. Italics are mine.