1 John 4: We Love Because

This chapter contains the sentence God is love, which is quoted more than almost any other and often detached from what surrounds it.

Read the definition John supplies: in this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son. Love is defined by an act, not by a feeling, and the direction is established before we did anything.

Then the order that everything hangs on: we love because he first loved us. Not in order to be loved. Reverse those two and the whole chapter becomes exhausting.