Love One Another

1 John 4:7-12

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have 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 ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

· Love for one another isn’t just for married couples. If we are believers, our love must extend to other believers around us and even to our enemies, as Christ taught us.

· I want to encourage us all to work at growing in love for one another because of God’s perfect love for us.

Love is from God.

I think this is one of the most important things John tells us about love here—it initiates with God, not with us. Love comes from God. In response, we love him, and we love each other because he first loved us. John makes sure we understand this reality in v. 10, where he reminds us that it is “not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.” Our love for God and others flows out of our experience of God’s love in our own hearts.

We cannot give something we have not received. We cannot love without first receiving love. And so for us to obey the commands of these verses to love one another, we must first experience God’s love for us.

Verse 16 says that we have known and believed God’s love which he has put in us. It is this personal knowledge and experience of God’s love and our trusting reception of his love that enable us to give his love to others as well.

God has demonstrated his love for us.

To love is to give sacrificially of oneself for the good of another.

Because God is love, that means that his nature is to give of himself for the good of others, for all of creation, but especially for mankind as the image of God.

Verse 9 tells us that God’s love was made manifest or plain or clear – that is, anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see can plainly observe God’s love; it’s not hiding.

Verses 9-10 show us two specific ways that God has demonstrated his love:

Sending his Son into the world (Incarnation) – God became man, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the Son partook of flesh and blood so that he could take our place.

Sending his Son to take our sin (Atonement) – the word “propitiation” refers both to the appeasement of God’s wrath against our sin as well as the sacrifice that takes away our sins.

“The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.” –John Stott, The Cross of Christ

There was nothing in us that deserved this substitution, this demonstration of love. We could never earn it or deserve it. But this is the beauty of grace. God’s love is a gift that we receive by faith.

Consider these other verses that remind us of God’s love for us demonstrated in Christ:

1 John 3:16 ESV

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

John 3:16 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 8:32 ESV

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Love is evidence of our new birth—that we are part of God’s family.

Verse 7 says this in two ways:

Love evidences that you have been born of God (past reality with present implications)

Love evidences that you know God (present reality)

Verse 12 says the same basic thing but in different words:

· If we love one another, God abides in us – that is, God is living in us by his Holy Spirit, which is only true of those who are regenerated and trusting in Christ.

The implication of this truth is that every true believer will love other believers; so this becomes a test for whether we are genuine believers or not. (verse 8a)

Our love for one another makes the invisible God visible to the watching world.

What does verse 12 have to do with God’s love? “No one has ever seen God.”

It is true that we cannot see God with our eyes. We cannot perceive him with our physical senses. But we and others around us can know that he is real. How?

· By our love for one another.

I think that’s what John is saying here. Our sacrificial love for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as our love for our enemies, demonstrate the reality of God.

· How could people who are so different, who have so little in common, love each other so much?

· How could people love those who are unkind to them, and show forgiveness to those who mistreat them?

John is saying that our acts of sacrificial love mirror the sacrificial love of God which he showed us in Christ, and they are a demonstration of his reality and existence to those around us.

In other words, our love for one another makes the invisible God visible to the watching world.

Application:

· Have you experienced God’s love? Have you trusted in his love? (v. 16)

· Are you demonstrating the reality of God to others around you by your sacrificial love? Are you giving of yourself for the good of others as God has done for you?

· Give of your time, your talents, and your treasures.