When I go to Biblegateway.com, I came across this verse and wanted to get your take on it.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:11-12 (ESV)
God abides in us. The Good News indeed! I struggle with how to integrate the idea of perfecting God's love. What a powerful verse. Thoughts?
1 John 4:9-12
9) In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10) Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11) Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
12) No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Here are some thoughts . . .
It's not just love, it's THIS love.
God's love for us in that God gives His Son to remove our sin problem. To bring us forgiveness. To reconciled us. Loving us even though we seem unloveable. Giving life to all of us, even those who wish Him dead.
When we have THIS love in us, it's only because God lives in us, because humans don't love that way. And if God
does live in you, that's the love that is inside, ready to flow out like a gusher.
If we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is consumated matured completed in us.
Philippians 2:12-13
12) Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
13) For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
God lives in you causing you to become loving as He loves. When we choose to love others with God's love, we are choosing to walk in faith, trusting that He is real inside us, that His love is real, and that His love is able to be expressed in our lives.
We find that even though we have thoughts and feelings contrary to love, even so, love overwhelms these thoughts and feelings from the flesh.
We can feel conflicted, but that contrary feeling is the flesh bucking against the control of the Spirit. Our spirit walks in love and faith, and when we choose that, this is the life we live.
2 Corinthians 3:18
18) But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord . . .
As we see God work through us, as we experience the outflowing of His love in response to our faith-choice, we see His love, expressed through us. We see the fruitfulness in others, as this real love has an impact in their lives.
Colossians 3:10
10) And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
Seeing God express His love through our lives shows us in glorious detail what God is like. This knowledge of our Creator, personal knowledge as we watch Him in action, renews our minds. Learning what God is like tells us what we are like, because we are reborn with His very nature. God loves, and we are (re)born to love.
Seeing the love of God brings out the love inside us. This is all done in faith and choice. We trust this is real, and choose to do it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. It's when we choose to love others that we see the reality of this love. And we see that this is now who we are.
Much love!