We are of God already, as John established in the previous verse.
Because we are of God, let us love one another. We do not love in order to be of God.
Many times, people read the Bible looking for directions.
With a law mindset, we may find ourselves frustrated into despair, for if love is of God, there is a temptation to believe that we have to love in order to be born of God.
Just think through that statement one more time. How can anyone do anything in order to be born? Such a statement is impossible. We are born again (John 3), and thus as children of God (1 John 3: 1-3), we love.
We have to be established in the truth of who we are in Christ, before we do anything.
Not only that, but because you are born of God, you know Him!
In fact, you can know Him without your effort because of all that Jesus did for us at the Cross, cutting the New Covenant:
"10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8:10-12)
"For all shall know me" - this knowledge is all about personal revelation of Him who has been from the beginning (1 John 2: 12-14)
We love because God first loved us, and by this love He makes us just like His Son, and this love casts out every fear in our lives.
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