This is Love
Notes
Transcript
Introduction - Talk about hate, war, violence - the tribulation to come. Find some stories about what is going on in the world. War in Ukraine, 558 mass shootings in the US, almost 100,000 deaths from drug overdoses, all of these issues point to a world that has no peace. A world without peace knows only violence and hate. And all those who hate are of the world; but those who know God will be different. Because those who know God will love. This is one of the points of today's passage.
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.
14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
Transitional Sentence: God loved us enough to pursue us when we were lost; we should love the lost in this world enough to pursue them.
Verse 3 tells us that the love of God was manifested here on earth. The idea of His love being manifested in the Greek is that it was revealed or made clear. Before this time the truth of His love was hidden, it was a mystery. The manifestation of His love came in the form of His Son. John 1:14 says:
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
So what is the big deal of God sending His only Begotten Son to dwell among us? Verse 10 shows us that Love did not originate in the mind of man. Some guy in the past didn’t just decide that love was the way to go. As if man can imagine or invent an emotion. (Elaborate) No, Love originated with God. We didn’t really know how to love until love came to dwell amongst us. Love dwells in us when the Holy Spirit dwells in us.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
God’s love for us wasn’t just an emotion it was backed up with an action. He did something about it. His action was to send His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Do you remember that idea? Propitiation — the means of appeasing wrath and gaining the good will of an offended person; especially with respect to sacrifices for appeasing angered deities.
How much greater love could God show towards us? Can you think of anything more valuable than one of your children? Great would be the love of a man to give up one of his children or himself for the sake of another. Sacrificial love - the kind that God calls us to have, the kind where we love one another.
The great thing about loving one another is the Holy Spirit. Through loving one another we will have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and among us. When we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us we will abide in Him. We make our home in Him as He makes His home in us.
This is how God loved us first. He sent His Son to be the propitiation and then He sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in us and to teach, comfort and lead us.
So how do we love one another? Do we love each other with words, or do we love each other with deeds? Love requires action, just like the action God took when He sent His Son to dwell among us.
Verse 11 says:
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
With this verse John makes it clear that we should love one another. So, if God loves us does our love for each other originate with us. No. This isn’t a matter of us loving others, it is a matter of God loving each of us. God loves each of us and God loves others. Since love originates with God we don’t really love? God is loving others through us. So in truth the Holy Spirit is doing the loving, because we don’t really know how to love without the help of the Holy Spirit.
So how do we love? As I just said not by words but by deeds! Some deeds are:
Encouragement - the act of giving hope or support to someone, Prayer -A reverent petition made to God, humility - the quality or condition of being humble., hospitality - Cordial and generous reception of or disposition toward guests., service -An act or a variety of work done for others, peacefully - Inclined or disposed to peace, forgive - To give up resentment against or stop wanting to punish, speak well - to speak of others without malice, speak truth - speak no lies, bear others burdens - to help others with the troubles.
Each of these deeds of love can be found in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,
5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,
6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;
7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
You will never fail your brothers and sisters in Christ through deeds of love. But is the love we show to our brothers and sisters in Christ perfect love?
Why not? Verse 12 says that God’s love is perfected in us.
12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
If God’s love is perfected in me then why am I so terrible at it? I try but don’t get it right. I still hurt people and don’t show the love the way I should. Well the great thing about God’s love being perfected in me doesn’t mean that I am able to love perfectly but that God loves me perfectly. Since God’s love is perfected in me His love should shine for others to see.
Remember the question I asked earlier? If love originates with God do we really love - or does God do the loving through us.
This is where I wonder if we really love - its easy to love our brothers and sisters in Christ - but what about the lost. What about the people around us that don’t have a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? Has His love been perfected enough in you to shine for the lost?
This is where God’s perfect love is put to the test. His loving the lost through us as we pursue them for His glory. We have to be willing to allow God to use us to love the lost. If we allow our fear, our anger or some other irrational emotion to get in the way God’s love will not shine for the lost.
This is where God’s perfect love breaks down. If we are afraid to talk to someone because of their skin color, the way they are dressed, the part of town they live in or almost any other reason we shut the door on the gospel message. I know that it is hard sometimes, I have a hard time with it too. Some of us can talk to anybody, some of us can’t. But still if the Spirit inside you is prompting you to do it then follow the leading.
So how do we love the lost. Well one way goes along with how we love our brothers and sisters. We can encourage them, pray for them, be hospitable or any of the other deeds of love. We can always practice acts of random kindness.
But there are three things that will help each of us love the lost as we pursue them. Do you remember what John said in the beginning of this letter?
1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life—
The three things here that will help us love the lost. We have heard, we have seen and we have touched.
First - We need to learn to see the lost as Christ Jesus sees them so that we may pursue them with God’s love. Many times when Jesus was confronted by a large crowd it says that He had compassion on them. He had compassion for them - He had a sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. We have to feel for them. We have to understand what is going to happen to them when their lives come to an end before they accept Christ. This could be a tough one - especially if the other person is better off than you are. Why should you have compassion for someone with lots of money and doesn’t seem to have any misfortune? Think of their future - their eternal future.
Second - we need to learn to hear the lost as Jesus hears them. He took the time to find out what people needed - what would you have me do for you. Its a practice that we need to learn - we need to learn to listen. Listening takes time, we need to be willing to take the time to listen and not just hear what they are saying. If all we do is hear them the sound may just get lost in our heads, however, if we listen we will think about what is being said. (Adults on the peanuts shows) How can we help, how can we pray for people - not just vague prayers but powerful specific prayers. Listen to them - learn how to help.
And third - we need to be willing to touch the lost. Jesus willing touched people. Lepers were unclean, they were isolated and were not allowed to get close to people. Jesus touched them and healed them. The idea of touching a leper at the time would have been very outrageous. So, how can we touch people to show them the love of Christ Jesus.
As we learn to love each other more deeply we can begin reaching out more often to the lost. As we reach out more often we will learn to see, hear and touch the lost with the love of Christ Jesus. As we see, hear and touch the lost the love of Christ Jesus will break thru our brokenness and shine for others to see. We who are in Christ Jesus were once in bondage to sin and death as they are. When His love broke thru to us those chains were broken and we were set free and given a whole new life.
The lost are all around us. All of the hate in the world shows it. Those who hate are of the world, those who love are of God. Let us show others that we are of God - let us love the world as Christ Jesus did. The lost do not have a very good future - at least not eternally. Jesus saves, so pursue them with the love of Jesus and bring them to Him so that they have a chance to hear the good news.
Pray -