My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves show that they have been born of God and that they experience a relationship with God.

The person who refuses to love shows that s/he doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love — so you can't know Him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through Him. This is the kind of love we are talking about — not that we once upon a time loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.

My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, it shows that God dwells deeply within us. It shows that His love is becoming complete in us — perfect love!

This is how we know we're living steadily and deeply in Him, and He in us: He's given us life from His life, from his very own Spirit. We find ourselves loving as He loves. Also, we've seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Saviour of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God's Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we've embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.

God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day — our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life — fear of death, fear of judgment — is one not yet fully formed in love.

We, though, are going to love — love and be loved. First we were loved, now we are able to love. He loved us first. If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, s/he is a liar. If you won't love the person you can see, how can you love the God you can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both.
1 John 4:7-21