James Nisbet Commentary - 1 John 4:7 - 4:7

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James Nisbet Commentary - 1 John 4:7 - 4:7


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

LOVE IS OF GOD’

‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God.’

1Jn_4:7 (R.V.)

This section of the Epistle, 1Jn_4:7-21, contains one of those profound truths which are so often expressible in simple words, but which are inexhaustible in their fulness of meaning, God is love.

I. This is the foundation—a foundation great and wide—and therefore we may expect that the edifice to be built up on it will be great and wide also. The foundation is wide as the world. God, Who is love, so loved the world that He gave His Son. We need not, therefore, be surprised if the edifice built up on such a foundation is world-embracing also.

II. St. John expresses his deduction from this foundation fact in a fourfold form.

(a) First, in our text it comes to us in the form of an invitation, ‘Beloved, let us love one another.’

(b) In 1Jn_4:11 it is expressed as a binding obligation. It is a debt we ought to pay. We Englishmen pride ourselves on paying our debts. Here is a debt which needs a great deal to clear it. Beloved, if God so loved us—if, that is, we have received so much love—we also ought, we owe it as a debt, to love one another. It is an invitation, it is a binding duty; but St. John has not done yet. In sweeter, more alluring tones he puts it before us in another form. He, as it were, turns the prism once again to show us a yet more beautiful ray of coloured light.

(c) In 1Jn_4:12 he shows us the indescribably blessed result which follows from loving one another; it is nothing else than this, the abiding of God within us.

(d) But St. John knew man’s heart; he knew its dulness; he knew how slow we are to respond to an invitation, to regard it even when coming from the King of kings as something to be accepted or refused as we will. The late Dr. Macleod was once invited to preach before Queen Victoria, and in view of some previous engagement he had written a letter to decline Her Majesty’s invitation, when it was pointed out to him that a royal invitation was equivalent to a command. St. John knew we might make a like mistake, perhaps from our all too slight acquaintance with our heavenly Sovereign; he knew, too, that some of us might underestimate the binding duty of paying our dues, that some would find it difficult to rise to the sublime height of appreciating the blessedness of God’s abiding Presence, and therefore, when he reiterates his deduction for the fourth time, he puts it in a form about which there can be no manner of doubt. ‘This commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.’

III. On no point was the closest friend of Jesus Christ more insistent than on this supreme duty of love.—It is as wide as its foundation. It is wide with the width of God’s heaven, for it is as wide as the love of God. Beloved, ‘one another’ includes all the souls whom God the Father created in love, whom God the Son redeemed in love, whom God the Holy Ghost is waiting to sanctify in love.

Rev. J. A. Wood.

Illustrations

(1) ‘On the east wall of the Church of the Ascension, in the Bayswater Road, London, the artist, Mr. F. Shields, who is decorating that old mortuary chapel with a most wonderful series of pictures of our Lord’s life, has painted a panel embodying his conception of what love means. Love is a beautiful female figure, with a face strong as well as tender, a face which bears witness to suffering endured. On Love’s lap is a little European child, by Love’s side stands a little African child, one little foot still fettered, the other freed by Love. At Love’s feet a little Chinese and a little Indian child are playing together. Both the little hands of the white babe on Love’s lap are outstretched to draw to itself the little black boy’s face and impress upon it a kiss. To the artist the embodiment of love knows no distinction of race or language or colour. He interprets the “one another” of our text with a world-wide meaning.’

(2) ‘A short while ago there went to Burma from a Leicestershire vicarage a young missionary. A year of work, and then to that stricken home went the sad news of his death from fever. But to Bishop Montgomery flashed back from the bereaved parents this inspiring answer: “We have another son to send.” Love counts no gift too great to give to the God who is Love.’