1 John 4:10

John locates the essence of love in God's initiative, not ours: "not that we loved God, but that he loved us." Love did not begin with our reaching toward God but with God reaching toward us while we were still in our sins. He proved this love by sending his Son "to be the propitiation for our sins" -- the sacrifice that deals fully with sin and restores the relationship. The word "propitiation" points to Christ's atoning work that turns away the consequence of sin and makes peace with God possible. This verse guards against a self-centered view of love in which we imagine ourselves the initiators. Instead, God is the first lover, and the cross is the measure of his love. The order matters: he loved us first, then acted decisively to remove what separated us from him. This is humbling and freeing -- our standing with God rests on his love and his Son's sacrifice, not on the strength of our feelings toward him. Genuine love, John implies, is patterned after this: it gives first, sacrifices for the beloved, and does not wait to be deserved.