Love is the Proof of the Life of the Eternal One Within You.

 John 17:2-3

“Just like You gave to Him authority over every biological being, so that every one of [these biological beings] which you have given to Him he would give to them eternal life. Yet this is the eternal life so that they would know You the single real God and Jesus Christ whom You sent out.”

1 John 4:7-13

“Dear ones, we should love one another, because love is from God, and every person who loves has been birthed from God and knows God. The person not loving didn’t know God, because God is love. With this the love of God was made to shine out within us, because God sent out His one of a kind Son into the world so that we would live through Him. With this is the love [of God], not that ‘we’ had loved God but that ‘He’ loved us and sent out His Son a means of appeasing about our malfunctioning behaviors. Dear ones, if God loved us in this way, we are also obligated to love one another. No one has beheld God at any time. If we would love one another, God remains within us and His love is having been finished within us. With this we know that we remain within Him and He within us, that He gave to us from His Spirit.”

John 1:18

“No one had seen God at any time; the one of a kind God* who exists in the embrace of the Father, that person explained [Him].”

*[Or “Son” depending on your Greek text]

     Jesus, in His prayer in John 17, very explicitly states that eternal life is knowing the only God which really exists and Jesus Christ whom that God sent. This is the definition Jesus Himself gave. Not living forever, not fire insurance from Hell, but knowing God the Father, to whom He was praying, and knowing Himself. 

     In John’s first letter, John explicitly states that the person who loves knows God, and the one who doesn’t love doesn’t know God. Whether or not someone loves is the measurement or standard by which it can be determined if someone knows God, and is the measurement or standard, John states, by which it can be determined if God remains within us.

     If eternal life is equivalent to knowing Him, and knowing Him is equivalent to loving, then eternal life must be equivalent to loving, at least on some level, and it can be said that the person who doesn't love doesn't have eternal life and according to John’s logic doesn’t have God remaining within him. We know that we are remaining in Him, that He gave to us from His Spirit, that we are in possession of eternal life when we love one another.

     Eternal life is the life of the Eternal which is expressed by love for one another just as He is love. How can you say you know Him and yet hate or act hatefully towards one another? How can you say that the life of the Eternal One is within you when you seek to destroy one another or tear one another down? These things don’t come from the single real God who is Love, and who became Love incarnate.

     What is your “being saved” worth if you do not love one another? What is your theological orthodoxy worth without the love of God shining forth from within you? Nothing according to Paul who wrote in 1 Corinthians 13, “If I should talk with the tongues of human beings and of angels, yet I don’t possess love, I have become a ringing brass or clanging cymbal. And if I possess prophecy and I know all the mysteries and all the knowledge and if I possess all the faith so as to transpose mountains, yet I don’t possess love, I am nothing. And if I feed all the things of my existence [to children] and if I hand over my physical body so that I should be burned, yet I don’t possess love, I am benefited nothing.”

     What is it Jesus explicitly said were the two most important commandments? What new commandment did he add and harp on over and over again at the last supper? If you take nothing else away from what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, He was explicit in that loving was the central and primary mode of operation. Love God, love one another, love the guy next to you, and love your enemies, doing good to those who hate you, blessing those who curse you, and praying for those who pursue you and do harm to you. These are the commands to which John was referring when he wrote in 1 John 2, “And with this we know that we have known Him, if we should keep His commands. The guy saying that, “I have known Him and not keeping His commands, is a liar and the truth isn’t within this person. Yet whoever should keep His message, the love of God has truly been finished within this person, with this we know that we are within Him. The guy saying to remain within Him is himself obligated to walk just like that One walked.” Obedience to His commands to love is the evidence, the absolutely required evidence that the life of the Eternal One is actually within you.

     Without it, you’re just a noisy cymbal.