As a father and a brother, I don’t often examine the dynamic about who loved each other first, but there is wisdom in these scriptures that we should not ignore.

I loved my children before they could love me.

Now that my children are older, they love me because I loved them first.

God loved us before we were mature enough to love Him. He loved us first. We cannot love God first, but we can acknowledge His love for us and love both Him and others.

This entire Bible chapter talks about love.

It says that we cannot say we love God if we don’t also love our brother.

Sometimes we struggle loving strangers and we also struggle loving those who hurt us.

Yet, if we don’t love them, how can we claim to love God?

If we don’t know God, can we truly love Him?

Job had heard of God but didn’t know God and believed things about God that weren’t true.

“Brother” as it is used here means a fellow-Christian or neighbor, not just our blood relatives. Scholars seem to recognize that the term changed over time and that in Jesus’ time the meaning was ambiguous.

We see that Jesus was almost redefining the term when he used it. Those that do the Father’s will are His “brothers”.

Mark 3:32–35 says, “And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. 33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? 34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! 35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.”

The word “Loveth” here is “Agape” love in the Greek. In the Old Testament, “Agape” is used to represent the kind of love that God has for Israel and a kind of love that they should reciprocate. In the New Testament, it is used to denote a kind of love that does not require a comparable response such as the love that God had for man, to send His Son to die for us.

God does not require us to die for Him.

Notice that earlier in the scripture, it says that if you say you love God but hate your brother, you are a liar. Now it is saying that if you love God, you should also love your brother.

So which is it?

The word “hateth” here in the Greek Subjective mood is a possibility, not a certainty. It implies the hypothetical condition of hating or showing hate towards your brother. Whereas the love towards God in this scripture is stated as being a fact.

So if we look at the last part of the scripture again in that light, we can understand how people who genuinely love God have a choice to make about fulfilling the commandment to love their brother as well, lest they make themselves into a liar.