All You Need Is Love

1 John 4:7-11—Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

In 1967, the great British philosopher, John Lennon, penned one of his band’s most famous songs: All You Need Is Love. He was right, you know? People say it all the time yet today. They say it’s all that’s needed to bring peace to rioting, understanding of those different than us, success in marriage, along with a whole host of things. And they’re right too, well, to a degree. They’re right in saying All You Need Is Love, but they start from the wrong premise. So many who say this, as John Lennon did, start from the premise that all that’s needed is human love. They start from the false premise that humanity is naturally good and knows how to love.

If all you needed was human love, why does human love fail so much? If humanity is naturally good and on its own has the ability to love, then why is there still rioting, hatred, suspicion, cheating, broken homes, abuse, murder, etc.? You see, every time humanity tries to divorce the message All You Need Is Love from him who is Love, we will fail. We will fail either by not loving at all or by so changing the definition of love that all that’s left is a twisted caricature of love.

All You Need Is Love—God’s Love. God’s love is perfect. God’s love chooses to love without any outside cause or any angle or any selfishness. God loves just to love. A lot of our loving is done so that we would be loved in return. But that is not at all how God operates. That’s why in his perfect love, God could give his Son for us. God’s love is entirely self-sustaining. He doesn’t need anything from outside of himself in order to love. His love is perfect love.

Think of God’s love as a giant ball. Everything inside that ball is perfect love. By nature you were born outside of that giant ball of love. You weren’t able to believe in Jesus as the Son of God and your Savior. Your heart and your life were only filled with sin. But when you were baptized, God brought you into his love. He made you his child and made promises to you that cannot be broken. Promises of sins forgiven and life everlasting in heaven. 

All You Need Is Love—God’s Love, and you have that love! Because of this you can live in love toward all people.

Now, this isn’t to say that as children of God you won’t fail in living in God’s love. To claim this would make true the accusations that Christians are a bunch of hypocrites. We are all still flawed, sinful human beings who carry a sinful nature that always thinks of itself first. But when this happens, you have the opportunity to live in true love—God’s Love. 

To live in love—God’s Love—is to do exactly what God has done for you. It’s remembering that God chose to love you, even though there was nothing for him to love about you. Because God has loved you in this way, you too can choose to show love even when you and others fail to live in love. To live in God’s Love is to forgive one another and to receive forgiveness. It’s learning to put other’s best interests ahead of your own. That’s exactly what Jesus did for you when he allowed himself to be punished for your sins!

All You Need Is Love—God’s Love. As you keep God’s love for you at the center of your life, you will be blessed and you will be a great blessing to others.