Daily Manna · Day 51 · February 20
Dwelling in Love
“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”
It is possible to be certain God loves you and unable to sit at a table with a man three rows back.
That is the exact problem John is working on, and his solution is a test rather than a reassurance. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Dwelleth is the word for taking up residence. Not visiting, not agreeing with, not feeling moved by during a good song. Living at an address. And four verses later he closes the escape route with a bluntness that is hard to read in company: if a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. Not mistaken. Not immature. A liar, because he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
But here is where the question stays open, and I am not going to pretend John closes it. He does not define hate, and most of us are not doing anything so vivid. We are doing something quieter: the message left on read, the seat chosen at the other end, the two-year drift nobody named. Is that hatred, or is that just an ordinary human limit on how many people one person can carry? John does not answer that. He also does not offer the excuse.
So it remains possible to be certain God loves you and unable to sit at a table with a man three rows back. John's letter says the second fact is evidence about the first. He leaves you to work out what it is evidence of, and he leaves you to decide it at that table, not in your head.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 51 is What It Is For (2 Timothy 3:16).