I can see why one can see those passages of John as immoral. I would offer one has to look beyond the verse as to what it is offering about Love. It is about the source.
I am quite aware of what it is trying to say about the source of love.
But that is also my point: it thereby states that atheists, for example, cannot experience true love. Nor can pagans or those that believe in other religions.
By making love something that arises from a deity, it denies it to those who do not believe. And the result of that is to dehumanize non-believers.
Historically, that has often lead to bloody pogroms, crusades, and and inquisitions.
It is like partaking of the heat and light of the sun. One has to be out in the midday sun on a clear day to experience the full heat and light.
Except, of course, that then implies that non-believers cannot possibly truly love their children, their spouses, their friends, etc. In that regard, love is NOT like heat. it comes from within, not from without.
So if all of us want to choose Love, what is the source? What is "true love". John is offering a source, yet the same book does also offers that we, one and all, are created with the potential of that Love within.
Again, understood. But this again shows just how little the believers regard those who don't believe. While claiming to be for unity and love, they show themselves to be about division and exclusion. They show that their belief is more about self-gratification and ego than actual caring for others.
Is love greater than what we find in this material world? I only offer this passage as a further thought, I apologise beforehand, if you do not consider it appropriate.
"Know thou of a certainty that Love is the secret of God's holy Dispensation, the manifestation of the All-Merciful, the fountain of spiritual outpourings. Love is heaven's kindly light, the Holy Spirit's eternal breath that vivifieth the human soul. Love is the cause of God's revelation unto man, the vital bond inherent, in accordance with the divine creation, in the realities of things. Love is the one means that ensureth true felicity both in this world and the next. Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul. Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms. Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe. Love is the spirit of life unto the adorned body of mankind, the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world, and the shedder of imperishable glory upon every high-aiming race and nation."
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 27
Regards Tony
If this is the case, then even non-believers partake in the divine.