Loving Brother is Must for Loving God (1 John 4: 19-21)

LOVING BROTHER IS MUST FOR LOVING GOD (1 JOHN 4: 19-21):

After writing about the perfect love that wipes out fear, Apostle John writes that the believers love God because God first loved. Though human beings are the image of God, the sinfulness of man had made human beings to be deprived of selfishness, making to enclose the original essence of God’s image. So our love towards God which should be unconditional had become love because of dependency or for the needs of life or for emotional gratification.  Though human beings change a lot, disobey and despise God, God is always unchanging and His love endures for generations and He gave all the solutions already for human beings through His eternal love, which is the first love. We had first tasted God’s love and then only we had loved Him back.

Apostle John then writes that if anyone says that he loves God and hates his brother, he is a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. The person who had known the fact that he had received the love of God without conditions or the good deeds, will strive to show the same to others irrespective of how others are towards them, following the footsteps of our lord and savior Jesus Christ. Thereby a person who really loves God could not hate his brother, if the person does, that person had not really loved God as the way it is needed to be because love towards God is explicit only through love towards others, whom the person could see and sense, as God does. 

Apostle John further makes a definite statement that whoever loves God must also love his brother, is the commandment the believers have from God. The Greatest commandment from the Lord Jesus Christ is to love God with all the heart, soul, and mind, and he did not just stop there. Lord Jesus further told the commandment equivalent to that which is to Love others as self. So, a person must love his brothers when they claim to love God.

Stimulations for Self-Reflection:

1.      Who first loved? How?

2.      Why do we love God?

3.      Who is a liar?

4.      How a person loving God but hating brother is a liar?

5.      What is the commandment we have from God?

6.      What is a must for claiming to love God?

7.      How we can love brothers to validate our love for God?