“perfected in us”

The small-group Bible study text that I chose for our February lesson at Bethany Bible School on soteriology was 1 John 4:7-12, one of the great “love” texts of the Bible.

The text contains four key, repeated nouns and one key, repeated verb. The nouns are “Beloved” (vv. 7, 11), “God” (all verses), “the Son” (vv. 9-10), and “love” (which can also be, of course, a verb) (all verses). The verb is “sent” (vv. 9-10). We might approach this text by asking how these nouns and this verb fit together.

Who, for example, is being “sent”? Who is sending? Why, or for what purpose, was the sent one sent? Or why did the sender send the one who was sent? The answers to these questions may help us to understand the meaning of every key word which we have found.

The text proclaims, then, that “the Son” was “sent”. Moreover, “the Son” was sent by “God”. Furthermore, “the Son” was sent “into the world”. And why did God send the Son into the world? “In order that we might live through him” and “to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (vv. 9-10). We might go even further and ask about the motivation of the sender: Why does God desire that we “live through him”; why does God make an “atoning sacrifice for our sins”? The text is clear—because of God’s “love”.

So far we have accounted for the usages of “God”, “the Son”, and “love”, as well as the verb “to send”. The missing noun, “Beloved”, is also, however, implied within this schema. The “beloved” is the “we” who might “live through him”, the “our” whose sins have been atoned for. The “beloved” are, in other words, the objects of the love of God who “sent the Son into the world”. “Beloved” is a collective noun. The “beloved” are the many-in-one, made to be so because of the love that brought them together.

It is on the note of the unity of this collective, this one body made up of many members, that this text ends—with an astonishing claim. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (v. 12). “God is love”; the text has already said so in no uncertain terms. Indeed, “love is from God” and “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (vv. 7-8). “God is love”.

If God is love, it would seem that love has already been “completed” or “made perfect”. Even before the creation, love is perfect in the God who is, the God who is love. And this may be so—except that the text claims that God has a purpose for God’s love beyond God’s own invisible Self—whom “no one has ever seen”. God’s purpose was that love would not be contained within God, but overflow to those whom, because of love, God created. As soon as God creates, as soon as the possibility of other lovers becomes a reality, there is more love to share, more love that needs to get out, more love seeking completion. The love of God is seeking completion in the members of God’s creation. Though “God is love” and no other, though it was “not that we loved God but that God loved us” (v. 10), it is yet only in us, the “beloved”, that God’s love can be perfected. God cannot perfect his love in us without us. We must “love one another” (vv. 7, 11, 12). Only then do we have the assurance of God’s abiding presence with us. Only then do we know that God remains. Only then can the One “whom no one has ever seen” be seen.

“God sent the Son into the world in order that we might live through him.” “If we love one another”, that same world to which Jesus came will see the glory of God.

-Joe