John encourages the believers TO LOVE, a verb, an action (1 John 4:7). He invites them to LET themselves be loving. He reminds them that they have a choice. Love is within us, is our default behavior but we have a choice (free will) in which we may withhold that which is natural. Love should flow from me. When it does not (and this happens more often than I would like to acknowledge) it is revealing that I am operating from my “self”, my flesh, my ego and not from my identity, fused with Christ – His life and mine, inseparable.
It is always a choice to love. We get to walk from the Spirit within in the truth of who we are, or, walk in the flesh and leave a trail of regret for being loveless. When we withhold the love that defines who we are, in those moments of lovelessness we are the hypocrite. Yup, the true me loves – the hypocrite withholds and walks in a lie of their identity. Walk free. Be who you be. Love well, love often, love naturally.
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone
who loves is born of God and knows God.
Let us love one another
Everyone who lovesἀγαπάω, agapao: Strong’s 25 NT; loveHelps Word-studies: to prefer, to love; preferring to live through Christ by embracing God’s will (choosing His choices) and obeying them through His power.
Zodhiates: Love as a direction of the will and finding one’s joy in something.
Thayer’s Greek Lexicon: "to take pleasure in the thing, prize it above other things, be unwilling to abandon it or do without it"
Love is from God
ἀγάπη, agape: Strong’s 26, NT: Love, goodwill
Zodhiates: Benevolent love, not shown by doing what the person loved desires but what the one who loves deems as needed by the one loved. Unselfish love.
LET love