Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 3:7-12

This is the second in a short series on the love passages. Last week we discussed John 3:16 and the following verses. John says much the same in this letter, same author, probably 40 years later: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” We talked last week about a love that promotes a life that is free from condemnation. This passage takes the next step.

John thought of love as an active verb, almost athletic. It brings life and moves out in many directions from the core of the recipient. It moves from the first person to the second, actively affecting, almost infecting, the next person. Then that love points the second person both vertically toward God and, again, out toward the next person he or she comes into contact with. This is God’s plan for evangelism – love the people.

The man or woman who is walking in love is receiving a constant supply from God’s never-ending supply. But being in possession of that treasure transforms the one who carries it. Filled with the abundance that is God’s love, he or she wants to give it away. Think of the idea of having so much income, so much wealth, that you desperately want to give it away to anyone who’ll accept it. Well, we do have that wealth and, unlike money or material possessions, we have to give it away because it it’s no longer abundant if we hoard it. Think of a treasure that is abundant as long as we distribute it. Once we got used to such an idea, we’d become genuine philanthropists – the word means “lovers of mankind,” just what John is talking about.

God is offering us all the love we need, want, could ever use. What are we supposed to do with it? Look around – it’ll take about 10 seconds to find somebody to share it with.