Love

1 John 4:7-12
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

1 John 4:8
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:9
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

1 John 4:10
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

How we know God loves us:

1) Love pursues

Luke 15:20
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

Ezekiel 34:16
I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak…

2) Love sacrifices

1 John 4:10
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

A God without wrath is a God who whitewashes evil and is deaf to the cries of the powerless. A student of mine who grew up in a gang culture and had many whom he loved taken from him by violence told me with profound honesty that “If God will not avenge, I am tempted to avenge.” Precisely because God is a God of love, he is also a God of holy wrath.
J. Todd Billings

God’s wrath is a part of God’s love

“God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us. If it is God’s wrath which needed to be propitiated, it is God’s love which did the propitiating”
John Stott

3) Love endures

1 John 4:9
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

1 John 4:11
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

1 John 4:7-8

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

“The most observable apologetic for the Christian life is love.”
Francis Schaeffer

1 John 4:12
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.