command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. First John 4:7–21 can be called a rhetorical unit, and it begins with perhaps the most love-filled verse in the whole of the Scriptures. The audience is called “beloved” (agapetoi), and we have the verb agapomen as well as the noun agape, even the participle ho agapon. The Beloved Disciple is telling us that love describes the very character of God, and it is supposed to describe the very character of Christians and the very nature
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