Re:Verse passage – 1 John 4:19–21 (day three)
“We love, because he first loved us.”
What is the origin of love? Aquinas’s famous definition of love – “to will the good of the other” – is not the origin of love, but an attempt to put into human language its glorious essence. How did it start, though? One might say that God invented love, or that love began when God began to love. But the Bible teaches us something more fundamental. God did not invent love. God did not begin to love. Otherwise, God would have existed without love until he devised it, or until he commenced loving. If God is love, as John says, that cannot be. God is not God unless he loves. For God to live is for God to love. Human beings found out about love from the one who has always loved.
