Every day around the world, the words “I love you” are spoken billions of times, and it is easy to see why, once you look at how much love dominates our culture. Of the millions of books published worldwide each year, 62.5% have love as a central theme, and roughly half of all major movies and songs released globally center on love as well. Psychiatrists and psychologists have found that among our greatest human needs are to be wanted, needed, and loved and that people who feel loved carry a 50% lower risk of depression. But no one knows more about love than the God who created it, and no author in Scripture wrote about love more than the apostle John, who used the word 85 times and gave us the most famous three words on the subject: “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16, ESV). John now turns from our love for God to God’s love for us, showing us four ways we can know that love is real.

In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, your body will produce 17 million red blood cells. That’s double the population of New York City. And that blood already knows you better than your brain does, traveling 60,000 miles through your body and touching every part of you except the cornea of your eye. Without blood, there is no life in your body. The same is true spiritually. Years ago in seminary, a professor told me he was sick of what he called slaughterhouse religion and wanted the blood of Jesus taken out of our pulpits. But just as your body dies without blood, the body of Christ dies without His blood too. First John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (ESV)

In 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California. By 1849, more than 100,000 prospectors had flooded the state, hoping to strike it rich. Many of these inexperienced miners were badly fooled when they mistook pyrite for real gold. It shined. It sparkled. It looked valuable. But it was not gold, so it earned the name “fool’s gold.” To tell the difference, prospectors learned to test it: Real gold dents when you bite it or press it with a knife, while pyrite cracks. Real gold leaves a yellow streak when rubbed on porcelain, while pyrite leaves a black one.