John gives us the formula: God is love. Not God is loving, though he is. Not God has love as an attribute, though he does. God is love. It's his fundamental nature. Everything he does flows from that nature.
Then John connects it to how we live. If God is love, and we love one another, then God abides in us. Love isn't sentimentality. It's the evidence that God lives in you. It's the way the world knows God lives in you. Your love is God's presence becoming visible.
John also says no one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. We become the visible form of God's invisible nature. That's an enormous claim. When you're patient with your difficult neighbor, when you sacrifice for someone who can't repay you, when you show mercy to someone who hurt you, you're making the invisible God visible. You're incarnating love.
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