1 John 4:16 · World English Bible
1 John 4:16 Meaning We Know and Have Believed the Love
We know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
What does 1 John 4:16 mean?
Love is not an emotion that comes and goes. It is a state of Being, the recognition that beneath all appearances you and another are not separate.
From the Ego v. Being reading below.
1 John 4:16 through 2 lenses
The same verse, read by 2 traditions.
Ego v. Being
Sufism
EGO & BEING
Ego v. Being
Love is not an emotion that comes and goes. It is a state of Being, the recognition that beneath all appearances you and another are not separate. When the ego with its sense of division grows quiet, what remains is a spacious presence that feels its oneness with all life.
To dwell in love is to abide in that presence rather than in the mind's story of me and them. This is why the one who lives in love lives in God: when you rest in that undivided presence, the sense of being separate from the source of life falls away, and only closeness remains.
Ego v. Being lensGo deeper in the app
SUFISM
Sufism
The love a person offers back is not a second thing added to God's love; it is the same current returning to its source, the way a stream is only the spring arriving somewhere else. The fault here is treating love as a possession to hoard, and the cure is to stay in it and keep loving even when it costs.
So who loves whom begins to blur. In someone who truly remains, the lover and the Beloved are one reality seen from two sides, and God is nearest wherever that love keeps moving.
Sufism lensGo deeper in the app
Ego v. Being lens
Live 1 John 4:16 today
- Pick one person you have a story about, the annoying neighbor, the ex, the coworker, and set the story down for a minute. Just picture them going through their day, tired like you.
- Today, do one small thing for someone with no mention of it afterward. Refill the coffee, send the file before they ask, carry the bag. Kindness without a receipt.
- In the grocery line or the slow traffic, resist the pull of us and them, me against all these people in my way. They are all heading home to somebody. You are one of them.
Who have I turned into a character in my head instead of a person?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism · Metta
Real kindness is not a mood. It is a way of standing in the world once the walls between you and others come down.
Upanishads
Whoever sees all beings in themselves, and themselves in all beings, has nothing left to fear.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
We are made for each other the way hands are made for each other. To treat another as an obstacle is to work against your own nature.
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