We can know that we have been born of God if we love the children of God. We can know that we love the children of God if we love God and obey His commandments.

“For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.”

I used to view that like God’s love language was obedience. If I wanted to love God, I showed it through obedience.

But in reading that verse in another language, I saw “love of God” written as a possessive, as in God’s love.

The Old Testament teaches us that we can’t keep the commandments. There wouldn’t be a need for a new covenant if we could keep the commandments. The new covenant is reliant on God because the old covenant showed us man will break his promise. Only God is faithful.

God’s love is that He gives us His Spirit, His overcoming power, so that we can keep His commandments. He gives us our death and His life so we can keep His commandments.

The curse is in disobedience. The blessing is in obedience. He wants us to live in His blessing, so He loved us by giving us obedience, by offering the opportunity to choose obedience. Obedience, and blessing, aren’t possible outside of Christ.

His command is to love. It’s not a burden. It’s a gift. We can overcome sin, self, and the world and live in love because God has overcome it all and given His overcoming life to us.

We receive this blessed, overcoming life by faith.

John is writing that we will have eternal life, that we will know with assurance that we have eternal life.

We’re to have confidence before God. If we approach Him according to His will (as it says in chapter 3, as those pleasing Him), then God hears us. If He hears us, we have what we ask of Him.

We can ask God to show mercy and forgive others, in many cases.

We live in a beautiful place where God Himself gives us the love He requires of us. He Himself protects us from the evil one.

The world is in the power of the evil one, but in Christ we’ve overcome the world and are free from sin. Keep free from the world. Love God alone. All else is idolatry.