Most of us try to love from empty places — from duty, from guilt, from our own thin reserves. But love’s source isn’t in us. It’s in God.

Harold taught me that one quiet afternoon, in a small apartment beside a worn wooden chair pulled up to a single window. He had learned what 1 John 4 had been saying all along: we love because He first loved us. The chair was theology, embodied — the place where his soul was reset every morning before he had anything to give to anyone else.

Love’s Source

Where Love Comes From

Bruce Mitchell

Core Text: 1 John 4:7–12, 19  •  Supporting: Romans 5:5; Galatians 5:22; John 15:9–10

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Harold’s Chair

There was an older man in our church years ago named Harold. He was quiet, gentle, the kind of man who never pushed himself into a conversation. His wife had passed away, and he lived alone in a small apartment with a single window that overlooked the parking lot.

One day, I stopped by to visit him. When I walked in, I noticed a worn wooden chair pulled right up to that window. The cushion was flattened, the wood polished smooth by years of use. I asked him, “Harold, is that where you sit to read?”

He smiled. “No, Bruce. That’s where I sit to remember.”

“Remember what?”

He looked out the window as if he were seeing something I couldn’t. “That’s where I sit every morning to remember that God loved me first. Before I ever prayed. Before I ever believed. Before I ever got anything right. I sit here until my heart remembers that I’m loved… and then I can go love other people.”

He paused, then added, “If I don’t start here, I don’t have anything to give.”

It struck me like a revelation.

We often try to love from empty places — from exhaustion, from duty, from guilt, from our own thin reserves. But Harold had learned something sacred: love doesn’t begin with us. It begins with God.

That chair by the window was his reminder that:

    God’s love is the source, not the reward.

    God’s love is received, not earned.

    God’s love is the well, and our love is just the bucket we lower into it.

Before I left, he said something I’ve never forgotten:

“Bruce, the only reason I can love people well is that God keeps loving me first.”

What John Was Doing

Harold knew something most of us forget.

Love does not originate in us. It originates in God and arrives in us.

This is the burden of 1 John 4 — and it is the foundation of everything else in this series. If you miss this chapter, every chapter that follows will turn into willpower. Get this chapter, and the rest becomes worship.

John is writing to a church under strain. False teachers have left the fellowship. Confusion is rising. And John, the apostle who once leaned on Jesus’ chest at the table, picks up his pen and writes — over and over again — about love.

Not feelings. Not affection. Not preference.

The love that comes from God. The love that is God. The love that produces love.

Read it slowly:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this, the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us… We love, because He first loved us.

— 1 John 4:7–12, 19, NASB95

Four movements. Four windows into the source.

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1. God Is Love — and the Cross Tells Us What That Means

We say “God is love” so easily that we forget how startling it is.

John does not say God has love. He does not say God experiences love or expresses love. He says — twice in this chapter — ὁ Θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν (ho theos agapē estin). God is love.

The verb is a predicate nominative. It does not describe one attribute among many. It describes the essence. The reason love exists at all is that God exists. Love is not a thing God does. Love is the being of who God is.

But here is where John refuses to let us drift into the abstract. He does not say “God is love” and leave us with a sentimental concept. He defines what love means by pointing to the cross.

“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

The word for propitiation is ἱλασμός (hilasmos) — the satisfying of righteous wrath, the covering of guilt, the price paid that turns aside what justice requires. John does not abstract love away from wrath. He locates love precisely there. The cross is where love and justice meet.

This is cruciform love. Love with a cost. Love that bleeds.

We cannot define love by our experience of it. We must define it by the cross. Whatever else love means, it means this — the Father sending the Son, and the Son going, so that those who could not save themselves could be saved.

If you want to know what love is, look at Calvary.

That is the source. That is the origin. That is what John means when he says “God is love.”

2. He First Loved Us

There is a small word in verse 19 that changes everything.

πρῶτος (prōtos) — first.

“We love, because He first loved us.”

John does not say we love because we ought to love. He does not say we love because we have decided to become loving people. He says we love because something happened to us first. Love is a response. It is reception before it is action.

This is the order Scripture refuses to negotiate.

God’s love is not the reward for our love. God’s love is the cause of our love. Before we ever reached for Him, He reached for us. Before we ever turned, He pursued. Before we ever loved, we were loved.

John says everyone who loves is born of God — γεγέννηται (gegennētai), perfect tense. Has been born and remains born. Love is the evidence of a new birth that has already occurred. Our loving is not how we become God’s children. Our loving is the visible sign that we are God’s children — that the new birth has done its quiet work in us.

And then John uses a word for us — ἀγαπητοί (agapētoi). Beloved. He uses it three times in this passage. It is not flattery. It is identity.

Beloved is not what God hopes you will become. Beloved is what you already are.

Harold understood this. That is why he sat by the window every morning. He was not earning his belovedness. He was remembering it. He was letting the truth he could not always feel rewire what his heart had forgotten.

If you skip this step, everything that follows turns into striving.

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3. The Engine — His Love Producing Our Love

Here is where the chapter turns.

The first two movements built a foundation: God is love, and He loved us first. The next movement names what that love does. It does not stop at us. It moves through us.

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

But notice what John says next. He does not say, “Now try really hard.” He says something more astonishing:

“No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”

Two words to slow down on.

μένει (menei). Abides. Remains. The same word Jesus uses in John 15 — abide in Me and I in you. It is not a one-time visit. It is sustained indwelling. When we love one another in the Spirit, God is not watching from a distance. God is living in us. The love we extend is the love He is producing.

And then — τετελείωται (teteleiōtai). Perfect tense, passive voice. From the verb τελειόω (teleioō) — to bring to the goal, to arrive at the intended end. John is saying that God’s love reaches its goal when it produces love through us toward someone else.

Read that again.

The destination of God’s love for you is not your own private spiritual satisfaction. The destination of God’s love for you is the next person.

This is the engine of Christian obedience.

We do not love because we are commanded — though we are. We do not love because we should — though we should. We love because the love that came down to us is moving back out through us. The Spirit who poured the love of God into our hearts (Rom 5:5) is the same Spirit who now bears the fruit of love through our lives (Gal 5:22).

This is why Christian ethics is not moralism. Moralism says, “Be loving.” The gospel says, “You have been loved — and now His love is being brought to completion in you.”

This is why striving fails and abiding works. Striving tries to manufacture love from empty reserves. Abiding receives love from the One who is its source.

This is the engine.

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Love begins with being loved — because the Law of Christ always starts with Christ.

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4. Receptivity Before Activity

Which brings us back to Harold’s chair.

The chair was not lazy. It was not pious window-dressing. It was theology, embodied.

Harold had learned what most of us still resist: there is an order to the Christian life, and getting the order wrong wrecks the whole house.

We try to live verse 11 — “we ought to love one another” — without verse 19 — “He first loved us.” We try to give what we have not first received. We try to pour from a cup we never filled.

And then we wonder why we are tired.

Receptivity comes before activity. Reception comes before the mission. Being loved comes before loving.

This is not passivity. It is not a permission slip to do nothing. Harold did love people — well, deeply, faithfully — for decades. But every act of love he extended was downstream of the moments he sat by the window and remembered.

He was right. If he didn’t start there, he didn’t have anything to give.

Neither do you.

Neither do I.

The morning chair. The slow opening of the Bible. The quiet sentence whispered before the day begins: I am loved. Beloved. ἀγαπητός. Before I do anything. Before I succeed at anything. Before I love anyone.

That is not weakness. That is the foundation of every strong love that will ever pour out of you.

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Examination

Where is your chair?

Not literally — though for some of us, it should be literal. But where is the place in your life, in your week, in your morning, where you sit until your heart remembers that you are loved?

If you cannot answer that question, this chapter is asking you to build one.

Not as discipline. As lifeline.

Because the love you extend tomorrow will not come from your willpower. It will come from the well you lower into today. And if the well is empty, the bucket comes up dry.

John’s order is the only order that works:

    God is love.

    He loved us first.

    His love produces our love.

    Receive before you give.

Where are you striving when you should be receiving?

Where are you trying to manufacture love that you have not first remembered being loved?

The Spirit is not asking you to try harder. The Spirit is inviting you to sit down.

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A Prayer

Father —

You loved me before I knew Your name.

You sent Your Son before I asked for a Savior.

You called me Beloved before I had done anything to earn the word.

 

Forgive me for the days I tried to love from empty places.

Forgive me for trusting my reserves more than Your supply.

Forgive me for treating Your love as a reward instead of a source.

 

Teach me to sit.

Teach me to receive.

Teach me to remember.

 

Until Your love in me is brought to completion — flowing out toward the people You have placed in front of me.

 

Because love begins with being loved.

And the Law of Christ always starts with Christ.

 

Amen.

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A Word for You

Harold’s chair was a small thing. A wooden frame, a flattened cushion, a window that looked out at nothing remarkable.

But it was the place where his soul was reset every morning.

Do you have one?

If you do, name it. Honor it. Defend it from the noise that tries to crowd it out.

If you don’t, ask the Lord to give you one this week. A chair. A corner. A quiet five minutes before the day demands anything of you. A place where you let the truth of your belovedness sink into the parts of you that have forgotten.

And then — only then — go love someone.

Because the love that begins with being loved is the only love that lasts.

If something here met you, I’d love to hear about it. Reply. Tell me where your chair is. Tell me where you are learning to sit before you stand.

 

If you’ve read this far, thank you from my heart.

I write every word prayerfully—not to impress, but to reflect Christ’s love and grace—in theology, yes, but especially in relationship. I pray something here has whispered to you:

You are not alone. You are deeply loved.

Grace. Always grace.

With love, prayer, and expectancy,
Bruce Mitchell
A voice of love & grace—always grace
Bruce@allelon.us
allelon.us
@AAllelon on X
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“Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love conceals a multitude of sins.” —1 Peter 4:8

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Love begins with being loved — because the Law of Christ always starts with Christ.