Love in the Place of Fear
Putting Fear in it's Place. • Sermon • Submitted
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· 2 viewsThere is no room for fear when God's love is in us.
Notes
Transcript
introduction
Who has experienced a good trade? What do you think about when you hear the term “trade in”?
When we approach the trade in process, we come to it knowing all the things that happened while we had our car. We know the dings and scratches. We know if we were up to date on getting it serviced. We know all the problems we’ve had with our vehicles.
With all that, we hope that it will help take off some of the price of the new car. IT is a great feeling though, to trade the old in for the new.
Maybe you haven’t experienced this but I’m sure you have made a trade of some sort in your life and hopefully it was in your favor!
This lesson is about trading up. Replacing fear with love from God. This trade sets a Christian on a course toward a new way of understanding God, as well as a new way of living day-to-day.
We can know and experience love because of Christ.
We can know and experience love because of Christ.
1 John 3:13–18 (CSB)
Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death. Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has this world’s goods and sees a fellow believer in need but withholds compassion from him—how does God’s love reside in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.
Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death.
This should be a sobering reminder of the world’s feelings towards Christians. Just as the world hated them then, it still hates believers today.
We shouldn’t be surprised at this. Earlier, John spoke about Cain and Able. Cain’s intentions were evil and Abel’s were righteous. Abel’s righteousness was a threat to Cain and he killed him for it. Since the actions of the believers should be righteous, it would make sense that this is in opposition to the world.
He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We have become the righteousness of God. This doesn’t make us righteous inwardly, but positionally. We are made right with God. God has credited the righteousness of Christ to our account, this happened when he saved us.
Jesus spoke to them again: “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”
If we are walking in the light we will expose the darkness, which is what the world stays in. Sinful actions are done in the dark and in secret, but there is nothing kept secret from God. Therefore, as the world continues to work in secret, sinful deeds, it will fight those who represent the light so that sin will continue.
This is why the world will hate believers.
Believers have gone from death to life. Satan has lost control over them and they have found life. An enemy. This was literally a life and death situation.
Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
The distinguishing mark of believers is their love for one another. It is unique and different. The capacity to genuinely love is different from the world’s definition of love.
Therefore, anyone who resisted loving was still locked in the grip of death. This is why someone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer.
Again, let’s look at Cain and Abel. Cane’s anger, rooted in sin, made him a murderer. This probably also took their minds to Matthew 5:21-26.
“You have heard that it was said to our ancestors, Do not murder, and whoever murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you, everyone who is angry with his brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Whoever insults his brother or sister, will be subject to the court. Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be subject to hellfire. So if you are offering your gift on the altar, and there you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled with your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Reach a settlement quickly with your adversary while you’re on the way with him to the court, or your adversary will hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out of there until you have paid the last penny.
John emphasized that anger is lethal and has no acceptable place in the experience of the believer.
Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
No murderer has eternal life residing in him. What does this mean? As a believer, if you hate someone, you won’t go to heaven?
There are three things to consider here:
#1, you may not have known this; ignorant to the scriptures and this is why we study. But now you do; repent make peace and be loving.
#2, we need to understand that we are still sinners and that means that we know what we should do, but don’t do it on occasion. However, as believers we know to take it to God and ask forgiveness. Continuing to pursue righteousness is key to a believer’s life.
#3, if you have a persistent, unrepentant hatred for someone, I think your salvation could be questionable.
So, how do we know this love that John is speaking about? Because of Jesus’s work on our behalf. This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us.
Jesus’s death is the ultimate expression of love. In turn, this type of love should consume a believer’s life.
We should show this type of love practically by how our relationships are with one another. Laying down our lives for our brothers and sisters, gives the idea of putting aside something, if not everything, to care for another.
We need to keep the context of this. When it says brothers and sisters, it is talking about other believers. Those within the faith. This is not to say that we shouldn’t be loving to others, we absolutely should, but we should be ministering to and fellowshipping with those within our own household first.
This was a letter from John to the early church which was being infiltrated by outsiders with corrupt doctrines.
However, how we treat each other shows the world what love is and what they could have if they surrendered to Christ.
If anyone has this world’s goods and sees a fellow believer in need but withholds compassion from him—how does God’s love reside in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.
This indictment tells us that if someone has the world’s goods, material wealth, and withholds helping a fellow believer, John asserted: how does God’s love reside in him?
He refers to the early church as little children, not as a slight or offense, but as a observation of immaturity. They are his little children, in a sense, but they aren’t acting as grown believers holding onto sinful actions and mindsets.
We have discussed this before, love is an action. Not just words.
If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,” but you don’t give them what the body needs, what good is it? In the same way faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself.
We are under a microscope at all times. We should be acting out what we say. Jesus is the perfect demonstration of love through action, and John exhorted the church to live distinctly in the world with action-oriented love.
What does “in action and in truth” mean?
We can say we love someone and we can do things to make people feel loved, but is it genuine actions and speech? Motives of the heart must be true, genuine, and paired with action.
Ultimately you and God know your intentions.
Others may see the fruit, but He sees the root.
God’s love is in us because God remains in us.
God’s love is in us because God remains in us.
1 John 4:14–16 (CSB)
And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
The love that John described in his letter to the church is not the type of love we could have come up with on our own. It is from God, given to believers because Jesus abides within them. He is the source of genuine love.
We have seen is a huge statement. This isn’t a theory or an example based on personal thought. It is through a personal relationship and example that John witnessed for himself that he extends these examples.
It was a reminder to those who would hear this then and now that the author walked with Jesus, had a day-to-day relationship with Jesus and learned directly from the Messiah Himself!
John, like others, saw the Son of God and understood that He is the savior of the world.
The Father has sent his Son is important. There is no guesswork about Jesus. He wasn’t just a good teacher, He was the savior that was commissioned.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God will experience the profound promise that God remains in them. What someone believes about Jesus makes all the difference. The result of belief in Jesus resulted in abiding, namely the permanent embrace of God within a person’s life.
This was far from a one-way street. Instead, the relationship is a two-way meaning between God and the believer.
God acted to make a meaningful, loving relationship possible with people through Christ.
Likewise, believers were drawn to an intimate, tender relationship with God.
The relationship is mutual in that God drew joy from the action of abiding just as people benefited from the direct connection to Him.
John identified with the church community, declaring that it was a lived experience. God’s love, manifested in believers, was a known, documented experience. Remember, John witnessed it.
John declared God is love. The true, perfect, sacrificial love. Agape love. It is the love that sen Jesus to die for us and the love that led God to send him.
so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
God sustains life for everyone. While the world hates Him and His very own children, God still demonstrates love in the way He holds the universe together and provides life giving sustenance for everyone. This is the powerful love that believers are called to remain in.
1 John 4:16 (CSB)
And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
There is a progression in this verse.
God moved first, we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
He loved first.
Second, in the experience of encountering God’s love, believers realize that God fully embodies love. God is love, he is the definition of love.
Finally, Christians are admonished that the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
We are to remain in this love and to experience it. We do this by remaining in fellowship with God. He remains in us and we continue to experience His love in our abiding in Jesus.
God’s love gives us confidence and dispels our fear.
God’s love gives us confidence and dispels our fear.
In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love.
Embracing the reciprocal love builds confidence within struggling believers. Love is made complete refers to the relational love we have described.
The perfection of love creates assurance for believers as they contemplate divine judgement with respect to the way we live in this world.
Love becomes the basis for all things as believers live out each day. As we understand what it means to say, as he is, so also are we in this world, we discover that love empowers a new way of life even during the hard times.
This means we can lives as Jesus lived with a love-infused confidence.
Every believer will stand before the judgment seat of Christ . Don’t think of it as a trial to determine your salvation but as the Judge’s opportunity to evaluate the Christian life you lived.
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
In spite of your sins and failures, if you actively sought to minister in love to members of God’s family, you will be able to stand with confidence on that day because “love covers a multitude of” offenses. You will have no reason to fear.
In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love.
There is no fear in love. We have talked about the fear of God, but this is the other type of fear. The dreadful type.
Love and fear are polar opposites. They repel one another. Perfect love drives out fear. Jesus’s love eradicates fear.
Fear is associated with punishment. With the love of Jesus, there is no room for punishment or condemnation of the believer.
John bluntly insisted that the one who fear is not complete in love. A person is missing out when clinging to fear instead of embracing the readily available love of God.
When we look at our past sins or even the sins that we commit currently, it’s easy to become worried and scared, but we should remind ourselves that we are redeemed.