Bible Strands
1 John 4:19
We love because He first loved us.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — John writes to a community under pressure from teachers who deny the incarnation, in the middle of a sustained argument (4:7–21) that defines God as love and tests whether his readers' love is genuine.
The words — The Greek reads "We love him because he first loved us" (αὐτὸν / αὐτός); the BSB drops the object pronoun, smoothing over the fact that the love is directed at a person, not an abstraction.
The thread — 1 John 4:10 states the same reversal in stronger terms ("not that we loved God, but that He loved us"), and John 15:16 echoes the initiative motif ("You did not choose Me, but I chose you").
Why it lands — The verse removes any claim of merit from the reader's love for God; if love is a response to a prior act, the only honest posture is to stop performing and start answering.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
We love him, because he first loved us.
Cross-references
- 1 John 4:10 And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
- John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
- John 15:16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will remain—so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give you.
- Titus 3:3 For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.
- 2 Corinthians 5:14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, therefore all died.
- Luke 7:47 Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, for she has loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
- Ephesians 2:3 All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.
- Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,