"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." 1 John 4:7
The first letter of John shows two extremes: the love of God, and the deception of the Antichrist.
As I've been reading through this book, I feel like I'm reading the writing of a bipolar author, scaring people about the impending coming of the Antichrist and then comforting them with the discourse of God's unconditional love. Perhaps that serves to make the parts about love more comforting than they already are. At the same time, though, this is the sort of thing we encounter every single day, and John is equipping us with the necessary tools to make it through this troublesome life.
I must admit, I enjoy the fact that John doesn't dwell on the Antichrist problem. If anything, he writes too much about love, but we need more of that anyhow. We need to know more about God's unconditional love because it is what is saving us. That love comes down to us in the form of grace of salvation from all the evils in the world. On the other hand, there are many out there who claim to be Christians, using the bible to promote their doctrines of hate, and using God as an excuse to kill others by going on murderous rampages or ascending to power to kill countless people. That is what we are facing each day: people using the bible for its physical weight rather than it's weight as wisdom.
As we encounter more and more of this hate, we can become comforted by knowing that all our Christian faith can be summarized in succinct verses, as opposed to ramblings of hate, exceptions to love, and discrimination. Think about it: Jesus told us that there are only two commandments to follow - love God, and love each other; we read in John 3:16 that Jesus came into the world as an act of love; and right above, we have yet another verse - that those of God are ones who show love. We know God because we can love. That's just knowing, though. We are of God because we love.
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