Typically when I read this passage I pay special attention to the first part of it. It explains that if we don't love then we can't know God because God is love. It's convicting. Then we're given the ultimate expample of love in Christ's atoning work for us that appeased the wrath of God against sinful man. However in this reading of the passage something else caught my attention. The passage closes by explaining no one has ever seen God. It then goes on the explain one of the reasons loving one another is so important. If we love each other with the love of Christ, God's love lives in us. While no one has ever seen God, they can see who he is by watching his followers, because God's love is made complete in them. What an amazing truth! People see God in us by the way we love one another. I hope this is an encouragement to you today as it is to me - to love people well, with the very love of Christ that dwells within us.
1 John 4:7-11
7Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9In 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. 10In 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. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
propitiation - the act of accepting or absorbing punishment for wrongdoing.
manifest - to make clear or evident to the eye or the understanding.
