Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
God Is Love
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let’s love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. · WEB
The letter's second definition of God arrives, and it is used as the reason for a command rather than as a comfort.
Verse 7 gives the command and then reasons backward to its source: love one another, for love is of God. The letter is not appealing to the readers' feelings about one another or to the benefits of unity. It is appealing to where the thing comes from.
The two clauses that follow run in the direction the letter always runs. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God — the loving is the evidence, the birth is the cause. This is the same order as the righteousness test 1 John 2:29, and reversing it would turn the letter into an instruction to earn a parentage.
Verse 8 states the negative and then the definition. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
This is the second of the letter's two definitions, matching the first 1 John 1:5, and the two govern the two halves of the letter. It is worth stating what the sentence does not say. It is not reversible — the letter never says love is God — and it does not stand alone, since the same writer has already said God is light and that in him is no darkness at all. A definition read apart from its pair produces a God who could not have said any of the hard things in chapters 1 to 3.
What the definition does is remove love from the category of things God chooses to do. It is what he is, which is why failing to love is treated as evidence of not knowing him rather than as a lapse.
settled What this mark means