12No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. 13By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.
Theology and relationship mix; truth informs behavior; God’s presence anchors our interpersonal realities. First the theology: no one has seen God; He is unseeable by His very nature. This truth is not a new revelation, for God said to Moses, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” (Ex. 33:20). The apostle Paul affirmed this when he wrote, “[God] dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16). John will circle back to this in verse 20, where he relates our loving people whom we can see with loving God whom we cannot see.
For now, we must grapple with the fundamental Christian truth that our love for fellow believers is intrinsically connected with God abiding in us. The inference here is clear: God loves us perfectly, but the fulfillment of His ultimate purpose for His love is contingent on us. We must not stop up the channel, the flow of His love through us to others. God does not intend us to bask in His love without actively allowing Him to love others through us. Just as a pool of water being fed by a fresh spring will stagnate and do no good if it does not have an outlet, so also God’s love will stagnate in us if we do not love others.
God’s method of loving people is through recipients of His love who, in turn, love others. His love is the ultimate reciprocity! When God’s love is perfected this way in the community of believers, we see the irrefutable evidence of God’s active presence among us. This is what it means for God to abide in us and for us to abide in Him—the dynamic interplay of the presence of God with us.
John further explains this symbiotic relationship as evidence of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit’s work in us. The Spirit is God’s activity in the Christian community, and we keep in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25) by doing our part in the spread of God’s love. We know from other scriptures that when love is motivated by the Spirit, it works its way out through the spiritual gifts, where we each use God’s enablement to serve one another. The key, though, is our motivation; we serve out of the abundance or overflow of God’s love toward us. In this, God’s abiding love finds its ultimate purpose fulfilled, the growth of a loving community of believers.
Father, may You cause me and my fellow believers “to increase and abound in love for one another . . . so that [You] may establish [our] hearts . . . at the coming of our Lord Jesus . . .” (1 Thess. 3:12–13).
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