From belief, the Apostle again turns to its practical application to the life; and here again he refers all back to Love, as the animating principle of the christian life. His language rises with this view to a loftier tone: "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love." This is not a command to love. It is not the Apostle's aim to bring before believers new motives to mutual love. His aim is this: to show them what must necessarily follow from a certain presupposed fact; the necessary mark of a certain existing state; the effect which cannot fail when the cause from which it proceeds is actually present. He would produce in them the conviction, that just so certainly as they are the children of God, as life from God exists in them; so certainly must this reveal itself in mutual love. The want of this love would show that they were not children of God, -- that life from God was not in them. The proof he adduces, that as children of God they must love one another, is this: love is from God, and therefore every one who loves is born of God. Love is here represented as something divine, something which points back to the eternal fountain of love in God, a ray of divine life. It is love which constitutes the absolute opposite to the life, to the stand-point, of the natural man; to that which is supreme in him, when his whole nature has completely developed and expressed itself. The natural man makes Self the centre and end of all. Love impels man to go beyond self, to renounce self; to make the interests of others his own, to share with them all that he has, to give himself to them, to live for them.

Where now something of this impulse is present in the soul, man thereby makes himself known as the image of God; it is a mark of that higher life which proceeds from God. Single instances of such love may be found, we admit, even where that life from God which John describes does not yet exist, where the birth from God has not yet taken place. Still, even these bear witness of a power which is foreign to the natural man as such, -- -a ray from the primeval Source, a mark of divine lineage. As such we cannot but recognize them, whether derived from the new divine life introduced by Christ into the world, from the general influence of society and education, -- -through which many divine impressions from Christ may have been received, by such as have never yet opened their hearts to his influence, -- or whether we find them existing apart from all connection with Christianity. In either case, we cannot but discern in them the features of that image of God, which, though obscured by sin, still gleams out through darkness; the marks of that original divine lineage, of that general connection with the God in whom we live and move and have our being.

In this passage, however, the apostle is not speaking of such emotions, breaking forth singly in opposition to the prevailing selfishness; but of a state, wherein this love is the governing principle of life. This is what he designates as the necessary mark of children of God, since love is from God; and hence, where this love is the ruling and animating principle, it is evidence that its possessor has this principle from God, is born of God. We have often observed, that in the Apostle's view all true knowledge of God proceeds from the life, the fellowship of life with God. So also here, "being born of God," and "knowing God," are classed together. To the affirmative declaration he immediately subjoins the negative, drawn from the same premises; viz. that he who loves not is far from knowing God, from being in union with him. He had before said, that love is from God; thereby referring to him as the primal source of all love. But he now goes farther and says: God is love. Love is his essential nature; God and Love are coincident terms. Love absolutely, whose essential nature is to love, whence therefore all love proceeds, is the designation of God himself.

It is a thought full of meaning, which the Apostle here expresses. He indicates thereby, that Love is the clearest embodiment which we can vision to ourselves of the incomprehensible God. It is personal spirit only that is capable of love. To an impersonal existence love cannot be ascribed; unless something else is understood by the name, than what it is adapted to express. When God is represented as Love, we are led thereby to regard him as the Being, from whose nature it is inseparable to reveal and to impart himself, to diffuse beyond himself the bliss which he enjoys. Inasmuch as he is himself the sum of all excellence, the highest good, he must first be himself the object of his love. Thereby begat he the all-perfect likeness of himself, the only-begotten Son, who is the object of his absolute love. Such is the import of Christ's own language, in his prayer as High Priest of his people. (John xvii.24.) Knowing himself to be one with that, Eternal Effluence of the divine glory; and feeling himself called as man to a share in that glory, because of the Eternal Word dwelling in and animating him; he speaks in that prayer of the glory which the Father's love had bestowed upon him, before the foundation of the world. This love moved him, for the purpose of revealing and imparting himself, to bring into existence the whole creation; in which every being is by itself a revelation of God as Love, while each enjoys its own appropriate measure of happiness. Hence too he created, as the aim and end of all creation beside, rational beings for whose sake he would thus reveal himself; who were themselves adapted in their nature to receive this his revelation from without, to become partakers of his self-communication, to enter into fellowship with him, to receive into themselves his image, and to reflect it in their conduct. Love moved him, when man had estranged himself from this his highest destiny, to send the dearest object of his love, the only-begotten Son himself, to appear in human nature; and to bestow him in whom he thus appeared, wholly upon man. He too, as being the all-perfect image of him in whom God had from eternity mirrored himself, now becomes the absolute object of his love in humanity; that love which extends itself from him who is the eternal Effluence of the divine glory, upon him who is the Effluence of that glory in time and in humanity. He is therefore called, absolutely, the beloved Son of the Father, -- -He in whom the Father is well-pleased. This can be said of no other; since only that which perfectly presents to the Father his own image, that wherein he beholds himself, can be absolutely the object of his complacency. And from him the love of God extends itself to all who stand in fellowship with him, who reflect his image as it is more and more actualized in them, and who to the Father's all-foreseeing eye appear as already bearing his image, as entirely one with him. In him we have the perfect revelation of God as Love; in his whole manifestation, in his life and death, we learn to know God as Love.