From the Cheap Seats

1 John 4:7–12

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• love is from God
• God is love
• not that we loved God but that he loved us
• if we love one another, God lives in us

Applying the Word to My Life:
Most people know John 3:16 by heart. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life." It is the most quoted verse in the Bible. It shows up on signs at football games, painted on highway overpasses, spray-painted on bridge abutments. Someone holds one up and feels like they have done something for the faith.

I am not sure they have.

There is something about that sign that looks a lot like the man from yesterday — the one who looked at a cold, hungry person and sent them on their way with a kind word. Someone in need sees that sign but they are still cold. The sign didn't cost the person holding it a conversation or a relationship or any of their time.

John is not asking us to broadcast the message. He is asking us to be the message.

In this passage John tells us what love actually is. God loves us. He went first. He did not wait to see if we would earn it. The cross had no conditions attached to it and no goal beyond the good of the person on the receiving end. Pure self-emptying. That is the model.

Which means if our love is conditional — if it depends on whether the person believes the right things, or becomes the right thing — it probably isn't love. If it is goal-directed, trying to get something, trying to convince someone — it probably isn't love either. Christian love is unconditional and for the sake of the other. Just: this person matters to God and to me, and I genuinely care about their wellbeing. Full stop.

I had to work through this when I started helping the homeless. There was a voice in the back of my mind that kept asking whether I was being taken advantage of, whether any of this was really helping. Eventually I realized: that was not my concern. That was up to God. My mission was the person in front of me — whatever I was able to give them in that moment.

If I helped a hundred people and only one was genuine, I still helped the one. That was worth it.

Genuine love for the sake of the other does more for the faith than a thousand signs ever could. John says it plainly — no one has ever seen God — but if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. That is how God becomes visible. Not through the sign on the overpass. Through the person who stopped.

There is a quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi that has stayed with me for years: preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary use words. Words have their place. But they are never the first thing. The first thing is whether the person in front of you knows they matter.

The world has plenty of signs. It is short on people who stop.

My Response for Today:
Today I will look for one person in front of me and ask what it would mean to love them for their sake alone — not for what I hope they will do or become.