Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary 1 John 4:10

"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 4:10 (ASV)

The author now distinguishes agape love from any love claimed by the false teachers. It is not that “we loved God” (3:17; 4:20), as his opponents claimed, but that “he loved us.” Agape love can be given to God only when it has first been received from God. It exists only as response to his initial love for us. Moreover, God’s love for us defines what true love requires—the commitment to sacrifice one’s most beloved possession for another’s gain. So for God, love required that he send “his Son as an atoning sacrifice [see comment on 2:2] for our sins.” The difference in understanding between John and the false teachers is never greater than in their understanding of love. The false teachers claimed to love God but understood love not in Christian terms but in those of Greek philosophy. Love in the Hellenistic world became a mystical craving for union with the eternal. Two things derive from this understanding of love. First, love for God as expressed by the false teachers becomes primarily an exercise in selfgratification. Second, one can never attribute love to God and say, for example, that God loves us. God as the Absolute is always passionless and unmoved, according to them.