Love Does Series W2 - "Dependent on God for Love"

John is not identifying a quality which God possesses; it is not simply that God loves, but that he is love Therefore, to imagine that God does not love us is to deny his true nature, to repudiate his character. This Divine love cannot be earned; it cannot be deserved. It is love for our fellow believers that John puts forward as irrefutable evidence of the new birth. Its absence, whatever a person's pretensions may be, indicates that he has no true personal knowledge of God. So we are dependent upon God to love others. v7 clarifies for us where our source lies - Love comes from God. He is as much its source as he is the source of all true light.