Continuing the Meditation on 1 John

1 John 4: 7 - 21 - LOVE PERFECTED

How divine love transforms fear into compassion.

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.” (1 John 4:20)

This is where it begins - truth confronting illusion. We can’t love God and hate another at the same time. It’s a lie we tell ourselves, and it hides the fear and pain that live beneath our anger.

“He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

There are people who seem unable to love, not because they are evil, but because their behaviour appears frighteningly evil. In truth, many have been hurt so deeply that love no longer feels safe. These are the ones God longs for most, to bring them life, and if He abides in us, we’re called to reach them.

It’s easy to move toward those whose kindness we can already see - the ones society calls broken: the thief, the addict, the prostitute, the outcast. Yet many of them already understand love in ways that surprise us. It’s the cruel, the bitter, the hateful that are often hardest to love, and yet they are the ones who most need to meet God through us.

Love doesn’t begin with perfection - it begins with courage, with stepping past our fear of the darkness we see in others.

“If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:11)

That’s the measure. Hate feels easier - it lets us run away and call it justified. But love asks more. It asks us to reach through the wall, to stay open even when it hurts. Real love will always involve some suffering, because it breaks through the part of us that still wants to protect itself. But whatever we offer, God takes and perfects.

“If we love one another, God abides in us. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.” (1 John 4:12,18)

Fear is what drives us to punish and to push away. But when we invite God into the places that fear controls, He fills them with His presence, and love begins to grow there. Soon the need to punish fades, replaced by compassion - not only for others, but for the frightened parts of ourselves.

This is how love becomes perfected - not by our effort, but by letting God love through us.