Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7)

We read extensively from the 1st Letter of John in our lectionary during the Christmas season, reminding us over and over of the love of the  Father for the Son and the need to love one another. The letter was written during a time when gnosticism was strongly influential  in society,  promising that knowledge, especially privileged knowledge, was everything. 

Recently I heard the term  “the knowledge society”. I think it means the knowledge some people have that gives them a way of exercising  power over others in society. Maybe teachers, doctors, accountants, media celebrities. Maybe even priests and bishops and politicians. Anyone who knows something that gives them power over others. Perhaps we all have something that makes us part of that knowledge society. 

John’s letter seems to call out broadly to all possible levels of the “knowledge society” to remember the primacy of love in life.

It’s not how much you know, it’s how much you love and use what you know with love that counts.  For “love is of God.”