1 John 4:7-21

 John 4:7-21 English Standard Version (ESV)
God Is Love
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 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. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

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It should not surprise us that love is the characteristic that sets us apart from the world--not just any kind of love, but the agope love that comes only from God.  The world may be able able to love friends, family and spouses, but only God is able to love with an everlasting, unconditional love that led Him to make a plan to die for us--in our place--while we were still enemies of the King and the kingdom (see verse 9 and John 3, especially John 3:16).
We return once again to the doctrine of election, we love Him because He first loved us--God chose us, not because we are special, but because it is the way that He gets all the glory.  It was His choice and His actions from beginning to end that have saved us.  The death of Jesus satisfies justice and makes atonement for us and redeems us (buys us out of slavery to sin).
All who have been saved are now temples of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of God indwells us.  We know that we are saved because of the communion that we have with the Spirit and the fact that the Spirit is at work in our lives convicting us of sin, equipping us for every good work, and sanctifying us to make us more like Jesus and as Jesus promised, the Spirit will lead us into all truth and remind us to always give glory to the Son and the Father.
Since we have the Spirit of God living in us, it should make sense that we should begin to look like and act like God the Holy Spirit.  The first fruit of the Spirit is love.  (See Galatians 5:16-26).  Christians who are known by their love are showing evidence of the Spirit of God living in them and being at work in their lives, but so-called "Christians" who are known by the first things listed in the Galatians 5 passage referenced above are showing evidence that they do not know God and that He is not at work in their lives and that they do not belong to Him.
We do not need to be afraid of standing in judgment before God because we know that God has made us blameless in His sight through Christ, but we also no longer need to fear met, even if they unjustly try and convict us and kill us as they did Jesus.  They may be given authority to torture us and kill us, but they cannot take away the love of God from us and God's covenant with us is an everlasting one that transcends even death itself since death was conquered by the cross and the resurrection.  We should never be afraid of doing what is right, it is always right to do right.
Once again, we are told that we cannot say we love God and hate each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.  It now comes back clearer than ever before in the gospel of John and the book of 1 John, "Whoever loves God must also love his brother."  If we are out of fellowship with other believers, we are out of fellowship with God and God commands us to restore and maintain our relationship with each other because we are a model to the entire world of what His love looks like.  The world is looking for us to mess up and be just like them and love those who we want to love and prove that nothing has changed about us.  However, if we demonstrate love towards those that are difficult to love because we have been loved by God and have His love in us and flowing through us, then we can do it to bring about glory to God, and doing so proves to us and to the world that we belong to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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