God’s Initiating Love; Reciprocal Love; 1 John 4:19

 

1 John 4:19 NASB “We love, because He first loved us.”

 

  1. There are basically three Greek New Testaments available to us for study today. The first is called the Nestle-Arland Text. It is also called the Critical Text. That is the Greek text that is the foundation for almost all modern versions such as the NASB, and the NIV.
  2. The Critical Text follows a certain way of deciding between different readings by emphasising the oldest MSS which are usually classified as the Alexandrian texts.
  3. There third Greek text is the Majority Text. This is a view of textual criticism that has developed in the 20th century and often it is confused with the Textus Receptus by those who don’t agree with it, but actually there are over 1200 differences between the Majority Text and the Textus Receptus. So it is not exactly the same but it is closer to the TR than it is to the Critical text. In the reading in the Majority Text the idea is that in the majority of MSS is the correct reading.

 

The evidence that we have on this particular passage is that in Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus two of the Alexandrian MSS omit the Greek word auton [a)uton] which is translated “him.” In other words, in those two MSS they read “We love, because He first loved us.” All of the Byzantine family group and the western text type include this pronoun. They all read, “We love Him.” Codex Sinaiticus has theon [qeon], a more precise form of the pronoun. It says, “We love God.” There are only a few MSS which don’t have a direct object of the verb here. That is important because there is quite a bit of difference between the statement “we love” which is just talking about “we love” in general, or “we love one another because He first loved us,” or “we love Him because He first loved us.” Furthermore, if we look at verses 20, 21 where we have an example given in terms of the internal content, it has a direct object. That supports the fact that it is much more probable because of content that somehow on copying the North African areas they dropped out that third person pronoun. So we would support a reading, both on external evidence in terms of the history of the MSS as well as the internal evidence of the context, that the better reading is “we loved Him because He first loved us.”

 

So the emphasis here is that it is the divine initiative of love that is the basis for the believer’s love. It is God’s initiative of love toward us that is the basis, the motivation, the foundation for the believer’s love for one another.

 

1.       The first person pronoun “we” and “us” must continue to be understood in the context of the epistle as the apostolic community. The “we” in 1 John 1:1 refers to the apostles, and throughout the epistle the meaning of the “we” never changes; John is always talking about “we” in terms of the apostolic community, i.e. the apostles and their immediate assistants, and those who were eye-witnesses of Jesus’ life during the incarnation.

2.       The “we” therefore does not mean “we Christians” or “we human beings” but “we apostles” as spiritually mature believers. That is important to note because he has developed in the flow of the discussion of 1 John that love comes as a result of maturity. Love is clearly a product of maturity, so when John says, “we love Him” he says “we apostles love Him because He first loved us.” And the fact that “we love Him” shows that we have reached some level of maturity.

3.       Therefore, “we spiritually mature believers who have matured in our personal love for God have done so only because of the divine initiative of God; it didn’t start with us, it started with Him. We have to understand that everything begins with God, not with us, and if God is not our ultimate reference point for understanding love, in fact for understanding everything about life, then we will never correctly understand anything in life.

4.       First God loved us, then as we learned doctrine and understood the many aspects of our salvation and unique spiritual life in the church we began to love Him. Our love for Him only comes as a result of learning and developing an understanding of everything that He is and everything that He has done for us.

 

So how did God first love us?

 

1.       We have the divine initiative of antecedent [previous, that which comes before] grace. Antecedent grace emphasised the fact that before we existed, in fact prior to the creation in eternity past, there was a conference called the divine decrees. In the divine decrees God in His omniscience knew that he would create the human race, that the human race would sin, and He determined that He would provide salvation. He looked at human history and on the basis of His love He is going to express His kindness to man through grace. It means that the undeserved grace of God began in eternity past.

2.       The object of antecedent grace is fallen man. Romans 5:8 NASB “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

3.       Antecedent grace, then, is the basis for this reciprocal love. We love Him because he first loved us. Reciprocal love is a response to the love God initiated in eternity past. In other words, we learn to love God because we understand through Bible doctrine what he has done for us in salvation. We learn through Bible doctrine the forty things that God has provided for us at salvation—everything we need in order to handle every situation in life.

 

1 John 4:20 NASB “If [3rd class condition] someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” He is using a hypothetical case. John says that if you hate your brother you can’t make the claim that you love God; you are a liar. That puts the emphasis on thought. It is studying the Word of God and basing your understanding of God, not on personal experience but on studying the Word.

 

Why the knowledge of God must precede reciprocity

 

1.       If we don’t understand God’s love for us we will never understand how to love God, and that means we will never make it very far in the spiritual life.

2.       When believers superimpose their own emotions and motivations on the love of God they are guilty of humanising the love of God. We have to model our love after God’s, not the other way around. True divine love is based on correct thinking, and correct thinking can only come from objectivity. Objectivity can only come from doctrine in the soul, and doctrine in the soul only comes through making learning doctrine a priority.

3.       God is not emotion. Emotion is a response to what we think to be true. So thinking produces a response, and that is emotion. The love of God is not emphasising an emotion but it is emphasising the positive application of His thinking toward the believer. God knew about us in all eternity past and it did not diminish His love for us. In other words, His love is not built on that we do or say.

4.       Knowledge of God must precede a reciprocal love for God because we can’t really understand the love of God unless we understand a lot of things about God that are revealed in His Word. You can’t love someone you don’t know.

5.       We have to be motivated by knowing the love of God through the doctrine in our souls before we can respond to it. Understanding God’s love then motivates us to love Him and to continue to grow and mature in the spiritual life.

6.       God knew everything about us in eternity past, yet He still loved us with the same maximum amount of love.

7.       If we love God we will love the Word of God. If we do not love to study the Word of God then we haven’t learned to love God yet and may never learn to love God because the Word of God is the thinking of God and to learn to love anybody we must learn to understand their thinking.