<p>4:16- see on 1 Jn. 2:24.</p><p><em>And we know and have believed the love which God has toward us. God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him</em>- The love God has toward us is supremely in the gift of His Son to die for us (Jn. 3:16). This love is an essential part of God, and for Him to abide in us and we in Him means living in the sphere of self-sacrificial love, with that love touching every part of our thinking and doing. And this is empowered by the action of the Spirit within us, which is the means through which He abides in us and we in Him (:13). This speaks of nothing less than a complete psychological takeover of the natural spirit and personality. If we are open to it, we shall be filled with &quot;the fruit of the Spirit&quot;, which is finally just one thing- love, in its various manifestations.</p><p>The fact the Lord Jesus didn't pre-exist as a person needs some meditation. The kind of thoughts that come to us as we stand alone at night, gazing into the sky. It seems evident that there must have been some kind of previous creation(s), e.g. for the creation of the Angels. God existed from infinity, and yet only 2,000 years ago did He have His only and His <em>begotten </em>Son. And that Son was a human being in order to save humans- only a few million of us (if that), who lived in a 6,000 year time span. In the spectre of infinite time and space, this is wondrous. That the Only Son of God should die for a very few of us here, we who crawled on the surface of this tiny planet for such a fleeting moment of time. He died so that God could work out our salvation; and the love of God for us is likened to a young man marrying a virgin (Is. 62:5). Almighty God, who existed from eternity, is likened to a first timer, with all the intensity and joyful expectation and lack of disillusion. And more than this. The Jesus who didn't pre-exist but was like me, died for <em>me</em>, in the shameful way that He did. Our hearts and minds, with all their powers, are in the boundless prospect lost. His pure <em>love</em> for us, His condescension, should mean that we also ought to reach out into the lives of all men, never thinking they are beneath us or too insignificant or distant from us. No wonder 1 Jn. 4:15,16 describes believing that Jesus is the Son of God as believing the love that God has to us.</p>