John 4:17-21 the perfecting of love
So we should be learning by now in John’s teaching that God is love and when we dwell and remain in that love then God is in us. For John the perfection of God’s love is the confidence we have that we are saved. He reminds his readers that there is no fear in love. Fear is to do with being punished and that fear is crippling. When our love is fully mature then we do not fear God’s punishment because we know that He loves us and that gives us the confidence to stand before Him on the day of judgement, knowing that because of Jesus we are saved.
We love because God first loved us. It is like the question about the chicken and the egg – which came first. We know, when it comes to God’s love, that God loved us first, then we love. But there is a warning. If we say we love God but do not love our fellow man we are lying. If we cannot love the brother we have seen, how can we love God who we have not seen?
John speaks of loving our brother in Christ, but this teaching is for us to love all people. The proof of this is Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:43-38 where Jesus’ teaches His followers to love their enemies. In short, Loving God means we are required to Love People. Not easy is it? From a worldly viewpoint it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. To love others we need and rely on God to give us the love that is needed to achieve that love. Never be afraid to ask God. He is eager to give us all the assistance we need.

John 4:13-16 living in love
So John has taught his readers about the importance of loving one another. Now he teaches them about living in love. As an encouragement, he commences this section with a reminder that we know we live in God and He in us because He has given us the Holy Spirit. For those who find this evidence too abstract for them, he reminds them that he, John, and his fellow disciples, are witnesses to Jesus’ presence in the world. He reminds us that he is a witness to Jesus being sent to clear away our sins through his atoning sacrifice so that the damage our sins have done to our relationship with God can be repaired. What a powerful and freeing statement. We can have a relationship with God because of Jesus. That is love!
John continues. Anyone who confesses or acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God is lived in by God and makes his or her home in God. When you have your home in God, you can continue in an intimate relationship with God.
The love God has for us is not of this world and cannot be understood by the world. From the world’s perspective, how can you understand someone loving his enemy?
I was reminded of the worldly response to enemies and the Godly response recently. A friend posted on Facebook her concern about her young daughter being bullied at day care. The response of most people was to be aggressive towards the bully or do something unpleasant to the bully. Very few people expressed a loving attitude towards the bully. The worldly response is to want to hit out at those who hurt us, but this is not the Godly response. The Godly response is a choice, not a gut reaction. It is a decision we take and need support from God to carry through.
Again, responding in a Godly way to hurt is divine and requires much prayer and support from God. We can achieve the Godly response when we understand and believe in the love God has for us.

John 4:7-12 love one another
The rest of John 4 is about God being love. This is divided into three sections, the first 7-12 is about our need to love one another, the next 13-16 is about living in love and the last 17-21 is about perfecting that love. Today I will be looking at loving one another.
In verse 7, John tells us that we must love one another because love is from God. We can love because God gives us love. We are not talking about some human emotion but a divine love sent from God. This is the love that is a fruit of the spirit. It is evidence that we are born of God and know God. It is not enough to just be born of God. That is merely the walking through the gate of the sheep pen. To reach the pasture we must follow Jesus. This means we must grow in knowledge of God for the rest of our lives.
To emphasise the point, John presents the negative (v8). If we do not love then we do not know God. How is this so? Because God is love. It is in His nature to be love. We can only know love if we know God.
Verse 9 emphasises that this love is not found just anywhere. The only source of this love is God. We cannot achieve love without receiving it from God because He is love.
God’s love is displayed in a very practical way by Him sending Jesus into the world so that we can have life through Him. Without Jesus atoning sacrifice we cannot have access to God. That is love, that He loved us so much He sent His son as the atoning sacrifice for our sin. For this reason we should love one another. This is the proof that God lives in us. The first fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22). No-one has ever seen God, even though the Old Testament is full of examples of people who came face to face with God, these encounters were incomplete because we can only see God completely through Jesus.
These verses are hard. We are told to love others and show that love as proof we love God, but this is such a hard thing to do. It is so easy to love the people who are easy to get along with, but what about the people who are not loving to us? The people who hurt us? The people who seek to destroy our reputation? It is so much harder to love them. Yet we are required to do that.
So how do we love the hard to love? The only way we can even begin to do that is through constant prayer, quiet time with God and reading the Bible. As I worked on these verses I was reminded of someone who has been really nasty to me. I have forgiven her but God brought to mind an attitude I had to her that showed I was withholding my love from her. I know I can only correct that through a lot of prayer and reliance on God. My experience is not unusual, all people struggle like that. We will never be perfect in this world, but we can work at it and look forward to the day when we are in heaven and do not have to struggle any more.
That is love.