Friends are our friends because we recognize them physically, we know their names, but most of all we know their emotional life. We know how they feel about us. Our friends are emotionally recognizable to us. Is God the Father as emotionally recognizable to you as one of your closest friends is? That is why the New Testament keeps telling us about the emotional life of the members of the Trinity, particularly the emotional life of God the Father.
And we have come to know personally and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1John 4:16).
John the Apostle uses the Greek term for "know" referring to personal knowledge and experience. His God is emotionally recognizable. What is it that John recognizes about God the Father? He recognizes God as one that has a delighted passion for His own: this God is love. But He is not just a quality; He is a Person in love with His own. That is the first thing we should emotionally recognize about our God.
