NOTES for Jo1 4:12

For the apostle, love and knowledge of God are not only inseparable from one another; for him they are two sides of one and the same reality. No one has ever seen God, John says, but if we love one another, then God abides "in us," and the corresponding Greek expression can mean both "within each of us" and "among us." In this case God's love abides "in us," in both meanings of the expression, in all fullness. At first glance the thought that all knowledge of God is love may seem strange. There are other forms of it, after all, that do not deny love but also do not place it at the center of a person's relationship with God.

But if love is viewed not only as relations among people but also as a form of God's presence, the primary and foundational form for the Kingdom, much becomes clearer. Indeed, how can a person see God? The only real possibility, not counting speculative abstractions that usually have no relation to genuine knowledge of God, is awareness of that breath of life which God "breathed" into a person at creation.

Consciously placing it at the center of one's own life in all its manifestations. Only in this way can knowledge of God and communion with God become reality for a person. Then God's power and God's love become reality for him too: those forms of God's presence that were accessible to humanity even before Christ came into the world. Every other experience of communion with God proves derivative from the experience of becoming aware of this Presence.

But with Christ's coming the situation objectively changes: now every experience of the Presence, if it is genuine, is inseparable from the Kingdom entering the world. The breath of life given to everyone can today become a door into the Kingdom, if only one knocks. But only Christ can open the door, and when He opens it, the new foundation of a person's life becomes the energy of love on which the whole life of the Kingdom is founded. Only the life of the fallen world is founded on natural energy, yet God is hidden even behind natural energy.

But behind the energy of love God is not hidden; in it and through it He is revealed, and therefore it lies at the foundation of the Kingdom. But if, according to the Savior's words, the Kingdom is within us and among us, then love, if we are residents of the Kingdom, will also be within us and in our midst. And behind its concrete manifestations within us and among us stands the whole fullness of God's love revealed to the Kingdom. Everything else, every form of being, awareness, and knowledge of God, is derivative from God's love. Regardless of how much people understand this.