A Lot of Love

I John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

John has often been referred to as "the apostle of love."  After all, he uses the word 14 times in this paragraph alone.  But this love is not the shallow kind spoken of so often in our society.  In the opening paragraph of this chapter John warns that such shallow love has nothing to do with Christ, but rather is from deceiving spirits.  Real love - the kind John is talking about here - is connected to Christ, Whose very coming to earth demonstrated that love and sin have nothing to do with one another.  John then goes on to say that because we understand the connection between real love and Christ's death for our sins, we in no way want to have any connection with the old sinful life nor the judgment it brings.  Let us settle for nothing less than the love of God in Christ.