All you need is love

Beloved,
let us love one another:
for love is of God;
and every one that loveth is begotten of God,
and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God;
for God is love.
Herein was the love of God manifested in us,
that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world,
that we might live through him.
Herein is love,
not that we loved God,
but that he loved us,
and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:7-10 RV

Yes, more from John. What a week!

God is love is one of the greatest and biggest statements ever made. About anything. It has taken John a few chapters to get to this, his first outright statement of the fact:

God is love.

I have used this idea to to explain what God is to my five year old daughter. I asked her to remember what it felt like giving our (now deceased) dog Sophie a hug. The way Sophie would lick her face, the way she felt when Sophie came running up to her. These are different feelings than that of enjoyment from tv, or an icecream. I suggested that God is somewhere in there, in that feeling.

Herein is love,
not that we loved God,
but that he loved us,
and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

This idea has been in my head of late; fleeting understandings of the fall of man and so forth. It also relates to the previous reflection. Jesus was the second Adam. By His ultimate sacrifice, he took away all our sin. All we have to do is believe in Him. By his ressurection he conquered death for all of us. Again, all we need to do is believe in Him.

The above description now reads very feebly. For some reason, it escapes my intellectual capacity. It is from a far deeper understanding that I get this. One seemingly unobtainable to my writing.

On a slightly different subject, this going through 1 John has been a true pleasure. If I ever needed evidence for the "living word" idea, the Holy Spirit inspiration concept, this week with 1 John has certainly been such a case. To have these paragraphs in my head as I do normal stuff has been relaxing and challenging. And not going to any commentary to help has (I think) been even better.