1 John 4:19
"We love Him because He first loved us."
This verse is part of a broader passage in which the Apostle John writes about the nature of God’s love and how it influences how believers live and relate to one another in the body of Christ. In the preceding verses, John emphasizes that God is love (1 John 4:8) and that God's love is revealed ultimately in sending the Lord Jesus Christ to lay down His life for those whom He, the Father, loved from eternity. The LORD Jesus came to lay down His life for the sinners God the Father has loved and will love forever because of Christ's loving sacrifice unto death for them (1 John 4:9-10).
Contrary to popular opinion, the divine order of love is: God loved, therefore we love. Consider a few thoughts:
God’s love is essential—“God is love” (1 John 4:8,16). This is a profound statement. It doesn’t say God has love, but that God is love. In His essence and as an attribute, God is love. He loves Himself primarily. He loves His Righteousness, He loves His Son, He loves those sinners He gave His Son to save, and He loves the finished work of His Son that has satisfied His justice on their behalf. The Scripture puts it in the present tense, and therefore: everlasting, unchangeable, and invariable to His elect in the LORD Jesus Christ. The reason all who are objects of His love love one another unconditionally, even as they have been loved by God, is because they love one another with the same love that their heavenly Father has loved them and begotten them again unto life by the Spirit. This love is because of Christ's complete work accomplished for them on the cross.
God’s love is eternal—“…that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me” (John 17:23). By “the world,” Jesus meant the Jews and Gentiles chosen of God and given to Christ. God loves them as He loved Christ: eternally, immutably, and incomprehensibly. Note the past tense: "loved." The Father loved Christ as His own Son and as Mediator. He loved Him when He assumed human nature and became obedient to His will as the God/Man, both in doing and in suffering. When His Father left Him on the cross, (Psalm 22:1), He did not turn His back on His Son, but rather, purposed that He should remain on the cross, while He poured out His wrath (justice) upon Him, until His blood was completely poured out of Him unto death, for His sheep. Nothing less could satisfy God's law and justice. The instances of the Father's love for His Son as Mediator include His putting all things into His hands (John 3:35), revealing to Him all that He does, concealing nothing from Him, and appointing Him the only Savior, the Head of the church, and the Judge of the world (John 17:2) because of His love for the Son.
God’s love is elective—“Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Romans 9:13). The context makes it clear that this is not due to the men, their decisions, or deeds, but to God’s will and His electing grace. Some try to soften the impact of God's sovereign choice of some in love, reasoning that this somehow means God preferred one over the other. However, this perverts both the sense of God's love and His hatred of others, referring to God as simply having loved less, rather than as the Word declares, "hated." What should amaze us is not that God hates sinners, because His holiness is the cause of His hatred for them, and justly so. Rather, what is amazing is that He set His love on any. In the case of Rebecca, Isaac's only wife, the choice of her son Jacob was the choice of one of two sons by the same mother, and of the younger in contrast to the elder—before either of them was born and before either had done good or evil to be a ground of God's choice. All this was to show that the sole reason for distinction lay in the unconditional choice of God—"not of works, but of Him that calleth" (Romans 9:11).
God’s love is saving—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son into the world to be the Propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). This was the greatest of God's saving acts. God saved from sin through, in connection with, and not without, the satisfying work of Christ, those He chose in Him from eternity. God's decree to save was not salvation itself. God's justice required that the salvation of His elect be accomplished through the satisfactory work of the Lord Jesus on the cross. “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). It is the love of God for His justice that caused Him to send His Son into the world to be "the Propitiation" [satisfactory payment] for the sins of those He loved before the foundation of the world. Such is the effectual, saving love of God for His elect. His is not a general love for everyone that doesn’t actually save them. No! Everyone whom God has loved, Christ has paid their sin debt, and therefore they are saved already when the Lord Jesus finished the work. Since He loved His elect in Christ while they were yet sinners, and the Lord Jesus died for them while they were yet sinners, for what sin would God ever turn away one that He has eternally loved, and Christ has redeemed? Not one! The Lord Jesus declared: “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me; and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).
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