Born of God

1 John 4:7-8
“Beloved, let us love one another. Love is of God. Everyone that loves is born of God and knows God. He that does not love, does not know God for God is love.”

“The ultimate test of our profession of the Christian Faith is, I believe, the whole question of our loving one another. It is possible for men and women to give intellectual assent to the propositions that are found in the Bible and yet be utterly devoid of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the love of God in their hearts. But because God is love, we ought to love one another for three reasons.

The first is that love is of God. If you are loving the brethren you are proving you are of God. The second is that it gives evidence of the new birth. Do you feel love within you towards the person you naturally dislike, the person that is irritating and can be in some respects hurtful to you? Do you know a sense of compassion and pity towards that person? Do you pray for that person? Can you truly say you are sorry for them? That is what love does. Lastly, loving one another is evidence of spiritual knowledge. By manifesting love towards one another, we give proof of the fact that we have a true spiritual knowledge, that we really know God. God is love. Therefore, the more I know God, the more I will know that God is love, and the more I will know about love.

Knowing God means, I repeat, not knowing things about God, but really knowing Him. The same word is used about God’s knowledge of us. God said of the children of Israel through Amos, ‘you only have I known of all the families of the earth’ (Amos 3:2).”