Submerged in Love

“We have come to know [by personal observation and experience], and have believed [with deep, consistent faith] the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides continually in him.”

— 1 John 4:16 AMP

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The Words I Almost Read Past

I opened the Bible app this morning, and because it is one of my favorite subjects, my eyes could have gone immediately to the obvious center of this verse:

God is love.

I love love.

I love studying it, talking about it, discovering dimensions of it I had not seen before. I love the fact that Scripture does not merely tell us God has love, gives love, demonstrates love, or feels love.

God is love.

But strangely, that was not where Holy Spirit stopped me this morning.

It was everything surrounding it.

“We have come to know [by personal observation and experience], and have believed [with deep, consistent faith]…”

Then:

“…the one who abides in love…”

And finally:

“…God abides continually in him.”

Continually.

There was something about the architecture of the sentence that suddenly felt different.

Know.

Believe.

Abide.

And then discover that while you are abiding in Him, He is abiding in you.

The picture that immediately came into my mind was water.

Not standing beside it. Not studying it. Not dipping a toe into it.

Submerged.

Except the water was love.

And suddenly I could see something I had read many times but perhaps had not fully entered.

What if John is not primarily teaching us something to understand about love?

What if he is describing somewhere to live?

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John Is Writing From Experience

There is something important about remembering who wrote these words.

This is John.

The disciple who refers to himself in his Gospel through the identity of being loved: “the disciple whom Yeshua loved.”

He had walked with Love in human flesh.

He had eaten with Him. Watched Him touch lepers. Watched Him receive people everyone else had discarded. Watched Him kneel and wash feet. Watched Him weep. Watched Him forgive. Watched Him remain silent before accusation. Watched Him hang on a cross.

John had stood close enough to crucified Love to hear Yeshua speak while dying.

And now, decades later, John writes:

“We have come to know…”

The Greek is extraordinary.

ἐγνώκαμεν — egnōkamen, from ginōskō.

To know through experience. To recognize. To become acquainted with. This is not merely possessing information.

John is saying, in essence:

We know this because we have encountered it.

And that makes the Amplified’s expansion—“by personal observation and experience”—so beautiful.

John is not presenting a theory. He is giving testimony. I have watched Love. I have touched Love. I have seen what Love does under pressure.

I know Him.

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And Have Believed

But John does something fascinating.

“We have come to know…and have believed…”

Why both?

If I know something, haven’t I already believed it?

Apparently John sees a distinction.

The Greek word translated believed comes from πιστεύω — pisteuō: to believe, trust, rely upon, place confidence in.

This begins opening the verse.

Because it is possible to know God loves you and still not live as though His love can be trusted.

We can know the theology and organize our lives around rejection. Know the verse and anticipate abandonment. Know God is good and still brace ourselves every time something beautiful appears. Know we are loved and continue performing as though love must be earned.

John moves us beyond awareness.

We have known, and we have trusted.

The Amplified describes that believing as “deep, consistent faith.”

Deep means it has moved beneath the surface. Consistent means it remains.

Not perfect emotion. Not uninterrupted spiritual exhilaration. Not never having another question.

Something deeper.

A settled orientation of the heart.

I may not understand what God is doing, but I know the character of the One doing it. I may not understand the silence, but I know the One inside the silence. I may not understand the waiting, but I refuse to reinterpret His heart through what I cannot presently see.

That is deeper than believing in love.

That is allowing yourself to be held by it.

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The Sentence Changes When You See the Water

Then John says:

“The one who abides in love…”

And this is where the water appeared in my mind.

When we say someone is in love, we understand instinctively that we are describing more than an intellectual position.

They are in something. It surrounds perception. It affects what they notice.

Their face changes when the person enters the room. Their imagination changes. Their future begins making room for another. Ordinary things become charged with meaning because love has altered the atmosphere through which they are experienced.

And John says: Abide in love.

The Greek word is μένω — menō.

Remain. Stay. Continue. Dwell. Make your home. Do not depart.

Suddenly “abiding in love” becomes far more substantial than trying to be loving.

John is describing habitation.

Live there.

And this is where I think we have sometimes reduced one of the most staggering realities of Christianity into behavioral instruction.

Be nicer. Be kinder. Love people more.

Certainly love produces those things. But fruit is not the root.

John is not first telling us to manufacture loving behavior. He is telling us where to live.

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Submerged

Imagine standing in an ocean.

At first the water touches your feet.

You can still feel the ground beneath you. You remain largely unaffected by the water because most of you is still outside it.

Then you walk deeper. Ankles. Knees. Waist. Chest.

Until finally you surrender the last resistance and go beneath the surface.

Now something changes.

You are no longer merely touching the water.

The water is touching all of you.

It surrounds your skin. It moves through your hair. It changes how sound reaches you. It changes how light appears. It changes how your body moves. It changes what you can hear, how quickly you can move, what direction your body naturally wants to go.

You have entered another environment.

That is the picture I saw when I read:

“The one who abides in love…”

Submerged in Love.

Not visiting.

Not occasionally stepping into God’s affection when life feels safe enough to believe it.

Not standing on the shoreline discussing whether the water is trustworthy.

Go in.

And then deeper.

Because there are dimensions of love you cannot experience from shore.

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God Is Love

John does not say merely that God loves.

The Greek is stunningly direct:

ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν — ho Theos agapē estin.

God is love.

Love is not something God occasionally accesses. He does not move in and out of it.

He does not have loving days and distant days.

Love is intrinsic to His being. Everything God truly does flows from who God eternally is.

His correction comes from Love. His boundaries come from Love. His patience comes from Love. His holiness does not compete with Love. His justice is not a temporary suspension of Love. His truth is not Love becoming harsh.

We separate these qualities because human beings experience ourselves in fragments.

God does not.

He is whole.

Which means when John tells us to abide in love, he is ultimately telling us to abide in God.

And John immediately says exactly that:

“…the one who abides in love abides in God…”

The environment is not an abstraction. The environment is a Person.

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But Then John Reverses It

And here is where the sentence becomes almost too much.

“…and God abides continually in him.”

Read that again.

You abide in God.

And God abides in you.

This is not merely immersion.

It is mutual indwelling.

You are submerged in the ocean, and somehow the ocean is inside you.

That should arrest us.

Because Christianity is not merely humanity attempting to reach a distant God.

The gospel announces something infinitely more intimate. God has come near enough to inhabit.

Yeshua spoke this language before John ever wrote it: “Abide in Me, and I in you.”

There it is again. In me. I in you.

This is the mystery John never seems to get over. And I do not think we should get over it either.

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Continually

The Amplified gives us that beautiful word:

continually.

God abides continually in him. Not once. Not occasionally. Not only during worship. Not only when you feel spiritually impressive.

Not only when your thoughts have behaved all day. Not when everything aligns just right and you somehow manage to create the perfect atmosphere for His presence.

Continually.

This changes something.

Because many of us unconsciously live as though God’s presence operates like visitation.

We feel Him. Then we don’t. Then we assume He left. We have a beautiful encounter. Then Tuesday afternoon feels painfully ordinary.

We mistake changes in awareness for changes in presence. But abiding says something different.

Remain.

The Greek verb does not require constant emotional sensation. It describes continuing residence.

Perhaps one of the deepest movements of spiritual maturity is learning not to confuse I cannot feel Him right now with He is not here.

Those are not the same sentence.

Love remains.

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What Happens to a Body That Learns It Is Loved?

This is where Scripture meets the body in ways I find fascinating.

A nervous system shaped by uncertainty learns vigilance.

It watches. Predicts. Scans. Braces.

When love has historically been inconsistent, the body may struggle to rest even when the mind desires intimacy. We can begin anticipating withdrawal while receiving affection.

But imagine what happens as the deepest part of a person increasingly learns:

I live inside a Love that does not leave.

Not as positive thinking. As a practiced spiritual reality.

Prayer changes. Silence changes. Waiting changes. Even repentance changes.

You no longer approach God primarily as someone trying to persuade Him not to reject you. You return because you already know where home is.

John says a few sentences later: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love drives out fear.”

We often focus on driving out fear.

John focuses on perfecting love.

Maybe we have been fighting the wrong direction.

Perhaps some fears do not need to be wrestled to the ground as much as they need to become displaced by a greater awareness of where we are living.

You do not empty the ocean one cup of fear at a time.

You go deeper into Love.

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The Environment Determines What Can Breathe

And suddenly the image becomes even larger.

Every environment supports certain forms of life. Take a creature out of the environment it was designed for and it struggles. Place it back into its proper habitat and what looked dysfunctional begins functioning naturally.

What if some of our exhaustion comes from trying to produce the fruit of love while living internally in the atmosphere of fear?

Trying to create peace while submerged in anxiety. Trying to give freely while submerged in scarcity. Trying to trust while submerged in anticipated abandonment. Trying to become who Scripture says we are while breathing an atmosphere built from what happened to us.

John offers another environment.

Abide in love.

Because eventually the environment begins influencing what can live there.

Stay in Love long enough and fear begins losing oxygen.

Stay in Love long enough and performance becomes exhausting because belovedness is easier.

Stay in Love long enough and you stop interpreting every delay as rejection.

Stay in Love long enough and correction stops sounding like abandonment.

Stay in Love long enough and you begin loving other people without requiring them to become the source of the Love you already inhabit.

That is freedom.

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You Cannot Give What You Refuse to Receive

John’s entire argument in 1 John 4 is relational.

“We love, because He first loved us.”

There is an order. He first loved. We receive.

Then we love.

God is not asking empty vessels to manufacture an ocean.

He fills. We overflow.

This means receiving love is not spiritual selfishness.

It is preparation.

You cannot sustainably give from what you continually refuse to receive.

And perhaps some of us are more comfortable serving God than being loved by Him.

Doing gives us something to control.

Receiving requires surrender.

To be loved without earning it leaves the ego unemployed.

There is nothing to prove. Nothing to purchase. Nothing to negotiate.

Only something to enter.

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Come Further In

Maybe that is what I heard this morning beneath the verse.

Not simply: God loves you. I know that. You know that.

John assumes we can know something and still need to believe it more deeply.

The invitation was: Come further in.

Stop studying the water from shore. Stop measuring Love by the people who could not love you properly. Stop determining God’s capacity to remain by human experiences of leaving. Stop allowing yesterday’s abandonment to define your expectation of eternal Love.

Come further in.

Let Love rise past your ankles. Past your knees. Past the places where you can still run quickly back to shore if trusting becomes uncomfortable.

Let it reach the places you have kept above water.

The memory. The disappointment. The unanswered prayer.

The part of you still quietly asking whether God will remain if you finally release your weight.

Submerge it.

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The Commission Hidden Inside the Love

Because this is not only about feeling safe.

There is a commission inside abiding.

A person who knows they are loved becomes dangerous to systems built on fear. They cannot be manipulated as easily by rejection.

They do not need applause to obey. They do not need everyone to understand what God told them. They can tell the truth without needing to destroy another person.

They can love without possession. Give without disappearing. Leave what is unhealthy without hatred. Remain tender without becoming powerless. Forgive without calling evil good. Stand before opposition without allowing opposition to determine identity.

This is why the enemy works so relentlessly against belovedness. Because someone who merely knows about God’s love can still be controlled by fear.

But someone who has learned to abide in it?

That person carries another atmosphere.

They enter rooms without begging the room to tell them who they are. They bring their environment with them.

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Love Is Where You Live

Perhaps that is what John has been trying to show us all along. Love is not merely what God gives you. Love is where God invites you to live.

“We have come to know…and have believed…”

Experience became recognition.

Recognition became trust.

Trust became habitation.

And habitation became mutual indwelling.

We know. We believe. We abide. He abides.

Continually.

There is the architecture.

So today we should not merely asking whether we believe God loves us.

We should ask something much more intimate: How deeply am I willing to live inside what I say I believe?

Because there are depths of Love that cannot be explained from shore.

At some point revelation requires participation. At some point you have to stop describing the water.

And enter it.

Let Love surround what fear has been guarding. Let Love reach what shame has kept hidden. Let Love touch the places disappointment convinced you to keep dry.

Let Love become the atmosphere through which you interpret what you cannot yet understand.

And when you can no longer tell where the water ends and you begin, remember the mystery John placed quietly inside one sentence: You are abiding in God. And God is abiding in you.

Continually.

You are not standing outside Love asking to be admitted. The door has already opened.

Come further in. Then live there.

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I Hear the Spirit Say

“Beloved, you have spent enough time standing at the edge of My love trying to understand whether the water is safe.

Come deeper.

You have known that I love you, but I am teaching you what it means to live as one who believes it. There are truths your mind has agreed with that I am now bringing into the places your body still braces, your heart still guards, and your memory still expects history to repeat.

I am not asking you to manufacture greater faith. I am inviting you to remain long enough for My love to become more believable than what hurt you.

You learned some things through experience that I never spoke over you. You learned to anticipate departure. You learned to measure affection for signs of withdrawal. You learned to keep part of yourself near the shore even while longing for deeper waters.

But beloved, human inconsistency is not a revelation of My character.

Do not use what left to interpret the One who remains.

I am teaching you the difference between visitation and habitation. You keep looking for evidence that I have arrived while I am reminding you that I never departed. My presence is not sustained by your perception of it. I am here in the moments that feel charged with glory, and I am here in the quiet Tuesday afternoon when nothing appears to be happening.

Continually means continually.

When you feel Me and when you do not. When you understand and when you cannot. When the answer comes and when the silence remains. When you are strong and when you discover places still trembling beneath the surface.

I remain.

And now I am teaching you to remain.

Abide in My love before you interpret the circumstance. Abide before you decide what the silence means. Abide before fear names the future. Abide before disappointment turns one moment into a prophecy about everything that will ever be.

Let Love interpret first.

Beloved, you have sometimes tried to remove fear while remaining mentally submerged in everything fear has told you. But I am not merely teaching you to fight what frightens you. I am changing the atmosphere in which fear has been breathing.

Come deeper into Love.

There are fears that will lose their authority simply because they can no longer breathe where I am taking you.

There are identities that cannot survive prolonged exposure to belovedness. There are agreements with rejection that begin dissolving when you discover you are not waiting to be chosen. There are patterns of performance that become unnecessary when your spirit finally understands there is nothing you can accomplish that will make Me hold you more securely.

You are already Mine.

Let that become more than theology.

Let it enter your nervous system. Let it reach your breathing. Let it change the way you wait. Let it change the way you receive. Let it change what you expect when something beautiful enters your life.

You do not have to rehearse loss in order to survive love.

You do not have to prepare the funeral of every beautiful thing while it is still alive in your hands.

You do not have to diminish joy so disappointment will hurt less.

Beloved, remain present.

Receive what I am giving you while I am giving it.

And understand this: abiding in Love does not make you naïve. Love sharpens discernment because fear is no longer distorting what you see. When you know you are held, you do not have to call everything safe. You can recognize what is not for you without hatred, release what has completed its assignment without believing you have been abandoned, and speak truth without needing your words to wound.

This is what happens when Love becomes your habitat.

You become difficult for fear to govern.

Rejection cannot name you. Delay cannot rename Me. Another person’s capacity cannot determine your worth. Uncertainty cannot become prophecy simply because you do not yet know what comes next.

You know where you live.

In Me.

And beloved, I live in you.

Do you understand what that means? You are not entering rooms alone asking whether there will be enough love there for you. You carry within you the presence of the One who is Love.

Stop begging atmospheres to give you what I have already placed within you.

Bring My atmosphere with you.

Bring peace into what has been anxious. Bring tenderness into what has become hard. Bring truth into what has been confused. Bring courage into what has been governed by fear. Bring Love into places where everyone has learned only to protect themselves.

This is why I am taking you deeper.

Not merely so you can feel My love.

So you can become evidence of what happens to a human life that has been submerged in it.

Come further in, beloved.

There is more Love beneath you than fear behind you.

Release your weight.

You will not reach the bottom of Me.”