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]
The mission
9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
God’s agape is incomparably greater than any we can muster, even when we do so through the Spirit, without whom we can do nothing. No greater sign and work in creation is this sending, this mission of the Son, the Word. Not just that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) but for the single reason that “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14)
11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives (μένει) in us, and his love is perfected in us.
