Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
I John 4:7 NKJV
It’s possible to believe all the right things about God and still be far from His heart.
John writes 1 John 4:7 like a spiritual X-ray. He is not asking whether we believe the right things. He is asking whether God’s life is actually flowing through us.
John Doesn’t Command Love — He Diagnoses Source
“Let us love one another” sounds like a command — until John tells us why:
“For love comes from God.”
John is not motivating love with obligation. He is revealing origin.
Love is not a Christian virtue you strive to manufacture. Love is evidence that God is present.
Which means this verse is not primarily about behavior. It is about birth.
“Everyone who loves has been born of God.”
Love does not make you God’s child.
Love reveals what you already are.
Legalism reverses this order — and the damage is immense.
Legalism Starts With Fear; Love Starts With Indwelling
Legalism always asks:
“Am I doing enough?”
John asks:
“Who is living in you?”
Legalism assumes God’s presence is fragile — maintained by performance and threatened by failure. So it polices behavior, tracks mistakes, and measures spirituality by compliance.
John does something far more disruptive.
He says:
If love is flowing out of you toward people you can see, then God — whom you cannot see — is already abiding in you.
That destroys fear-based religion at the root.
Because now obedience is not driven by anxiety.
It is produced by overflow.
Loveless Orthodoxy Is Still a Lie About God
Here John turns prophetic.
He does not say:
“Whoever loves is doing well spiritually.”
He says:
“Whoever loves knows God.”
And the implication cuts just as sharply:
Right belief without love does not prove intimacy with God.
That means:
- You can quote Scripture and misrepresent God
- You can defend truth and deny love
- You can preserve doctrine and be dead inside
Loveless orthodoxy is not neutral.
It tells a false story about God.
It presents Him as:
- Correct, but not kind
- Holy, but not near
- Sovereign, but not loving
John will not allow that version of God to stand.
Legalism Loves Abstractions; Love Demands Incarnation
Notice where John places the evidence of God’s presence.
Not in:
- Church attendance
- Moral rigor
- Doctrinal alignment
- Ministry productivity
But in how we treat real people.
People who are inconvenient.
People who disagree.
People who are broken, slow, messy, and visible.
Legalism prefers abstractions because they are controllable. Love forces us into incarnation.
You cannot claim intimacy with God while withholding love from people made in His image.
John does not soften this.
Neither should we.
This Is Not Soft — It’s Surgical
John is not lowering the bar.
He is raising it.
Legalism settles for external compliance.
Love requires internal transformation.
Legalism can produce behavior modification.
Only God’s indwelling life produces agapē.
So the real question is not:
“Why am I not loving enough?”
But:
“What am I abiding in?”
Because love does not flow from effort.
It flows from union.
A Warning and an Invitation
This passage confronts two groups at once.
To the proud, it says:
Right belief without love proves nothing.
To the weary, it says:
Your failure does not disqualify you — absence of love is about source, not perfection.
John is not calling us to try harder.
He is calling us to return to God as our source.
Because when God abides, love follows. Always.
Final Word
Legalism asks:
“How do I keep God with me?”
Love answers:
“God is already here — look what He’s producing.”
John leaves us with no middle ground.
Where God lives, love grows.
Where love flows, God abides.
Everything else is just noise.
Prayer
Father, forgive us for the ways we choose rules over relationship and performance over presence. Free us from the need to prove ourselves and remind us that Your love is a gift, not a reward. Let our obedience rise from gratitude, not fear, and teach our hearts to rest in what Jesus has already finished.
Holy Spirit, lead us in the way of love. Guard us from judgment, soften our words, and shape our lives to look like Christ. May we reflect grace, mercy, and truth wrapped in love. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
Beloved, let us [unselfishly] love and seek the best for one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves [others] is born of God and knows God [through personal experience].
1 John 4:7 AMP
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