It is not difficult to find in Saint John’s First Epistle a broad exposition on love from the perspective of our Lord and God. In 4.7-9 we read: Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. This has little to do with an emotional feeling or response to those things heavenly, but is much more of a heart response to the Almighty’s call for us to relate to each other as he relates to each and all of us.

To respond to another from an emotional feeling of loving is very limiting in its scope, but to respond to one another from God’s position of a heart response is to come to know what God is all about: Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. To be born of God is to have his genes at work within us, and provides for an accurate relationship with those with whom we live—just as God loves them and us.

Not to be able to respond to another from a heart position of loving them is to demonstrate the absence of an understanding what love truly is: Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is a clear manifestation of not being able to determine a God-response to another, and evidences that we do not know God at all. If God is by his nature love, we must know love in order to know God as he is.

God demonstrated to all of humanity how strongly he feels about loving us: This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. Jesus is love personified. Father God gave his Son for us in order that we could and would enter into that loving relationship with him and with each other. This is what life with the Lord is all about—loving him and others.