To unpack this title, let us mull over the meaning of I John 4:7–16, which is love.
“Love” appears some 111 times in the New Testament, as a noun (ἡ ἀγάπη). As a verb (ἀγαπάω), it appears 128 times, including as “beloved” (Ἀγαπητοί). The word famously distinguishes itself from other Greek words for love, storge(affection, such as mother and child), philia (friendship: “no greater love than this…”), and eros (romantic love).[1] Agape (or caritas) is how God loves — it is the divine nature.
7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
We are loved before we love. Such it is to be born of God, God’s child (note the verb — γεγέννηται, the same as “the Word begotten”). And it is unconditional: you cannot be a child of God if you do not love. We have seen above that the Triune God is relation, and that relation is agape. For God is love — ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν. It is what God is, not just what God does. In these two verses lie the unbridgeable gap between the divine and us. Pierre loves or does not love, but Pierre is not love. As creature, God loves Pierre, that is the divine nature.[2] But only when Pierre loves God and God’s creation, including, of course, other humans, can he be “begotten of God”.[3]
