Replacing Love

1 John 4, from verse 7 onward, can be hard to read sometimes. In the same way that staring at a pattern can render what was ordered into something nonsensical, so does the word love - which appears 32 times in this section - start to lose its impact. In fact - oh, this blew my mind! - in 4:5, just before all the 'loves,' John is talking about the Spirit of God vs. the spirits of the world, who speak from the world's viewpoint, in the world's language. He tells us, basically, not to listen to those spirits, but to become fluent in the language of God so as not to fall for the language of the world, which is our native tongue.

He follows that directly with a passage just riddled with the word love. And if we're not careful (as I was not, at first) we wind up reading in the language we know best - the world's. In world-language, love is just a word people use to get out of trouble, or to denote a bit more affection than usual - to mean "more than 'like.'" It means flowers and chocolates and teddy bears and other trinkets and gifts. It is so overused in world-language that it has nearly lost all meaning.

In God-language though?
God-love has an entirely different definition than world-love. In God-love, John says:

"Dear friends, let us lift up one another for the rising comes from God. Everyone who boldly encourages has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not have eternal patience  does not know God, because God is forgiveness. This is how God showed his sacrifice among us: He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is honor: not that we have cared for God above all else, but he cared for us above all else and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Dear friends, since God so considered us, so we also ought to consider one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we concern ourselves with one another, God live in us and his sacrifice is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the unfailing good will God has for us.

God is putting others first. Whoever lives in sacrificial giving lives in God and God in them. This is how genuine, pure, holy affection is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In the world, we are like Jesus. There is no fear in truth. For perfect grace drives out fear, because fear has do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in confident truth. We are whole because he first was whole for us.

Whoever claims to lift up God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not praise their brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot praise God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: anyone who accepts God must also accept their brother and sister."

This is the love of God-language. It means selflessness, and grace; forgiveness, and honestly? Work. It can't be taken lightly. The weight of it is too much. Surely, it is much, much more than the candy-and-flowers, I-like-you-as-long-as_______, qualifying love that world-language makes it into.

Sometimes, we have to find the words in world-language that add up to the much simpler, much stronger word in God-language.