1 John 4:10
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:10 (NKJV)
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 John 4:10 (NIV)
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:10 (KJV)
This is real love, n ot that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
1 John 4:10 (NLT)
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:10 (ESV)
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:10 (NASB)Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation [that is, the atoning sacrifice, and the satisfying offering] for our sins [fulfilling God's requirement for justice against sin and placating His wrath].
1 John 4:10 (AMP)Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMP), Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org
In this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (the atoning sacrifice) for our sins.
1 John 4:10 (AMPC)Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMPC), Copyright © 1954, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.lockman.org
This is the kind of love we are talking about, n ot that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
1 John 4:10 (MSG)Scripture quotations from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
New Covenant Meaning
Love Is Defined by Its Direction, Not Its Feeling
John provides the definition of love by ruling out one direction and establishing another. Love is not that we loved God. That direction would put the origin of love in human beings and make it contingent on human initiative and faithfulness. John corrects this: love is that God loved us. The defining feature of love, the thing that shows you what love actually is, is the movement of God toward us when we had not first moved toward Him. The origin is entirely in God. The initiative is entirely His. This matters enormously because it means love is grounded in God's character, not in ours, and it therefore does not fluctuate based on our spiritual condition.
The Propitiation Is the Measure of the Love
John says God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. This is not a demonstration of mild affection. A propitiation is a sacrifice that satisfies the full weight of God's righteous response to sin. The love is measured by what it cost: the Son of God given to bear what our sin deserved. Romans 5:8 makes the timing explicit: "God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." The demonstration of love was not made when we were lovable. It was made when we were sinners. The measure of the love is the cost of the propitiation.
John's purpose in establishing that God first loved us is to ground the call to love one another in the prior reality of God's love. Verse 11: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." The ability and the motivation to love others comes from receiving God's love first, not from generating love through effort or spiritual discipline. You cannot sustain a genuinely loving posture toward difficult people from your own reserves. But if you are regularly receiving and resting in the love that God directed toward you when you were unlovely, that love becomes the wellspring from which love for others flows. The vertical determines the horizontal.
Application for Your Life
You Did Not Initiate This. He Did.
The temptation for many believers is to experience God's love as conditional: He loves me because I am faithful, because I pray, because I serve. 1 John 4:10 disassembles that framework at the root. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us. His love came first. It arrived when there was nothing lovable in us to attract it. You did not earn the opening move. You cannot lose the love by failing to sustain it. The love is His initiative and it preceded yours. Rest in a love whose origin is not you.
The Cross Is Not Evidence That God Is Finally Appeased. It Is Evidence That He First Loved.
Some read the cross as God's anger being satisfied by the Father punishing the Son. But John frames it differently: the propitiation was sent by a God who loved us. It was the act of love, not the condition for love. God did not begin to love us after the cross satisfied Him. He sent the cross because He already loved us and wanted the obstacle of sin removed so that love could flow without obstruction. The propitiation is the love in action, not love's result.
Prayer Based on This Verse
Father, I receive this definition of love. Not that I loved You, but that You loved me. You moved toward me when I had not moved toward You. You sent Your Son to be the propitiation for my sins before I was seeking You. Your love is not a response to my devotion. It is the origin of it. I rest in a love that I did not initiate and cannot cancel by my failures. Let this love be the foundation I live from. Where I have been striving to earn love or to maintain it through performance, I lay that down. You already love me. You proved it at the cross. I receive it. And from that love, let me love others. In Jesus' name. Amen.