On Love And Identity

Successful first week! ...... sort of. I found out the OJ i was drinking has Vitamin D3 in it, which is ALWAYS from animals. Fail. But as for that oversight my first week of eating no animal products proved successful, as I did not fall over and collapse from malnutrition! And that is success.

Me and Kayla are reading through 1 John, and we came across one of my new favorite verses in the Bible as of now. Here is the passage from 4:16-17 -

¹⁶So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. ¹⁷By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

The title of this section is "God is Love" in the ESV. Here was the revelation that came through this. We are love. Crazy, right??? But what I love about these verses is that they touch on our Identity. These verses are crazy similar to earlier, at the end of chapter 3, where John urges us to love our brothers. I had thought before that he was just repeating himself in the later chapter 4 verses in this section. But it is entirely different in nature, in that it's defining feature is that it tells us "as He is, so also are we." As He is Love, in this world, we are Love. He touches on Identity here, verses loving in action as earlier in chapter 3.

This entire book has been so encouraging. One of my favorite verses from here ties into this, it says "He who loves his brother, lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble." We ARE love, what is in us to make us stumble? Let all our actions be motivated by love, and we cannot stumble!