Love Perfected: As He Is, So Are We

Yet even for defining love, that is not love perfected, or completed.

 

How does that happen in our lives, then?

 

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17)

 

A more accurate translation of this passage reads:

 

"By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17, NASB)

 

Love is not perfected in what we do, but in that we identify with Jesus. Not just seeing Him as the one we live through, and more than seeing Him as the mercy seat for our sins (past, present, and future), but we identify with Him, not with ourselves.

 

This was Jesus' prayer before going to the Cross:

 

"20Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; 21That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. 22And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: 23I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. "(John 17: 20-23)

 

Leaving elementary school and high school and entering graduate school love, so to speak, or to be an expert on God's love, is to see that you are in Christ, and that He is before in all things:

 

"I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning." (1 John 2: 13)

 

Not our doing more, but identifying more fully in Christ -- that is growing in knowledge of God's love for you.