God is love (1John 4:8), but just as light is spirit, so is love. One cannot see light or love; one cannot hear them, touch them, taste them or smell them. Such are the five gates through which we receive our knowledge. We are unable to receive knowledge any other way, unless God performs a miracle within us by giving us his Spirit, whereby we are then able to understand his mysteries. Otherwise, as physical beings, our understanding and knowledge comes through physical means. Yet, one might say, if light and love are spiritual, how is it that physical beings are able to know what they are? Well, the reason why we are able to understand things like light and love, is we see their effects either upon our world or upon us personally.
For example space is dark. Why is that? Why are we able to see our days lit up, but, if we were in space it would be dark, except to see stars like the sun or their reflected light upon other bodies like the earth and our moon? In other words, although the same sun lights up our earth, we would be unable to actually **see** light demonstrated in space, except to actually see the physical stars etc. The presence of light is understood only through physical bodies that reflect it. We are unable to see the other side of the moon from earth, because the light of the sun never sees it. The same would be true of love. Unless we were able to see love demonstrated for us in a person’s acts, we would be unable to know what real love was. It would be like trying to visualize a prime color we never saw before. All the colors that we are able to see are made up of one or a combination of three colors: yellow, blue and red. We cannot begin to visualize what another prime color might look like, because it couldn’t be yellow, blue or red or any combination of two or three of those colors. So, too, is love. It is unimaginable unless we see it demonstrated before our eyes.
This is why the Word (John 1:1) was made flesh (John 1:14), in order to demonstrate what God was like (1John 1:18). If we are to know God, we must come to know Jesus (Matthew 11:27; John 3:11-12; 5:19, 30). Jesus is the love of God made physical. Through him we are able to come to know God’s love for mankind, especially toward the brethren (1John 4:9), and in knowing him, we are able to understand the gift of eternal life. This is how John began his letter, saying eternal life was manifested to Jesus’ disciples. They saw it, touched it and heard it (1John 1:1-2), and this is how God demonstrated his love for us, so that we could see and hear about his love for us in the words and works of Jesus (1John 4:9).
What have we ever done that expressed our love for the Lord? We couldn’t possibly understand what we should do for a God we didn’t know. How could we say we loved an unknown God? Such a thing would be merely an idea in one’s mind that could never be demonstrated or understood in our world. How could anyone ever love the unknown? How could anyone see an unknown prime color. We couldn’t know or understand what it would be like, nor could we possibly know it would be pleasing to our eyes. Therefore, it is not that we love God, but that he loves us and demonstrated that love to us in the life of Jesus, which taken to its ultimate end turned out to be the propitiation (hilasmos – G2434) or atonement for our sins. In fact, the only reason, we are able to say that we love God, is because he first loved us and demonstrated his love for us in the life of his Son, Jesus (1John 4:19), and, if this is true, we ought to love one another (1John 4:11). If we want to demonstrate our love for God, we need to seek to be like he is and had shown himself to be—i.e. be like Jesus!
Smoodock's Blog 