Our love for others validates our love for God. It reveals our genuine spiritual condition. You can express your devotion to God through the songs you sing, the prayers you pray, and the verses you promote, but if you can’t love God’s children, He questions your ability to love Him.
It makes sense if you think about it. Someone could profess their admiration of you, but if they follow such glowing remarks with passionate disdain for your children, you may not care to listen to another word. You may talk negatively about your children in hope of their change, but you don’t want to hear someone else do it in frustration. Those are your kids. You don’t want anyone to criticize, disdain, or humiliate them. Such words cause tension in your relationship with that individual.
The same is true with God. The Apostle John was attempting to help the growing Church know how they could be sure of their salvation. Through this letter, one of his standard tests is to see how well an individual genuinely loves others.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.
1 John 4:19-21
John’s description of people who say they love God but hate other Christians seems jarring: “he is a liar” (1 John 4:20). What would we be lying about? The lie centers on our love for God. If you say you love the Father but hate His children, you are lying. If you genuinely love God, you will love those He loves.
John’s description of a “brother or sister” is even more revealing. That language implies other believers, who we ought to understand to be our spiritual family with a deeper relationship than even our physical family at times. To be called a child of God means that you have siblings. So if you are to love the Father, you must love your brothers and sisters, even the ones that are hard to like.
Do you have unresolved anger in your heart towards another Christian? Pray that God will help you do the right thing to love them and thereby prove your love to God.
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.
