1 John 4:7-21—Love One Another Part 2

Good morning, everyone! Happy Resurrection Day! Christ is risen! I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor of the church family of Eastern Hills, and I’m thrilled to be able to welcome all of you to this celebration of the love of God shown through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Thank you, choir, for leading us in worship today!

It has been a tremendous weekend of activity, worship, and fun for the church body here at Eastern Hills, and it’s been a blessing to be a part of it. Thank you, Joe and youth praise team for leading us in our Sunrise Service, by the way. Whether you’ve been participating in person or online, thank you for being involved this weekend, and if you’ve been visiting with Eastern Hills, a guest of our church family, or you’re just checking us out this morning for the first time, I hope and expect that you’ve found this a church body that loves the Lord, loves the Word of God, loves each other, and loves others.

For those of you visiting with us today, could you just take just a moment and let us know that you were here this morning? You can do that by texting the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link to our online communication card. Or if you’re in the room and you’d rather, please fill out a physical welcome card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. Either way, if you’re available and willing, I’d like the opportunity to meet you following the service to personally thank you for being here. When the service is over, I’m going to stay here down front, and I’d love it if you could just swing by and say hi for just a second. I have a thank you gift to give you as well. So please plan to come down and say hello later on.

Announcements

AAEO ($14,405.85)

Grad Sunday is coming up on 5/7, and we have nine students graduating from our student ministry this year.

Men’s breakfast this coming Saturday (4/15) morning from 8-10am in FLC. Gentlemen, plan to come and invite a friend to join you for a great time of food, fellowship, and devotion.

Opening

The book of 1 John is a wonderful letter that John wrote to the early church to encourage them in a time of crisis. Some who had claimed to be believers had turned away from the faith, leaving the fellowship of the church, believing lies, even to the point of denying that Jesus was the Messiah. Some were even trying to convince those who had remained faithful to both the testimony of Jesus and the church that they should leave as well. So John wrote this little Letter of Life, Light, and Love to help them to overcome the discouragement and questions they might have been wrestling with. He wrote of his personal encounter with Jesus, referring to Him as the word of life who has overcome death, as the true light of the world who has no darkness within Him. This morning in our focal passage, which happens to be one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture, we will see the picture of Jesus as the embodiment of the very love of God, and what that means for us. So as you are able, would you please stand in honor of God’s Word? We will read 1 John 4:7-21 this morning:

1 John 4:7–21 CSB

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. 16 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. 17 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. 18 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. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.

PRAYER (Monterey Baptist Church, recently called Pastor Bill Achilles)

Can I let you all in on kind of an insider “pastor” joke about Easter? In pastoral circles, Easter morning is often jokingly referred to as “Super Bowl Sunday.” There are many ways in which pastors see that on Easter morning, everything is kind of on the line. It’s normally the most attended Sunday of the year. There are extra activities surrounding it, like the Good Friday Service and Sunrise Service, that kind of build up to this morning. The worship gathering itself even has some extra elements, like the choir. So if church were a football team, I guess Easter Sunday morning would be the “big game,” and if the pastor is kind of the “quarterback,” then it’s the time with the most pressure for me to step up and deliver when I preach.

But this weekend, I got to thinking and praying about this analogy, which I have used myself at times. And I was convicted that it’s not a game. And I’m not a quarterback. And this isn’t a football team. And there’s something much greater on the line than whether or not I step up and deliver a “touchdown” of a sermon (I would have said “home run,” but didn’t want to mix my metaphors). But that doesn’t mean that it’s not all on the line in a way—it’s just not all on the line just for me.

This is because Easter morning is normally the church gathering with the largest amount of people who have never trusted in Jesus. And for some of the people in this room, it might be the very last chance that you will have to ever hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ and respond to it in faith. So my role is not to put together a game-winning drive, but to tell you literally the Gospel truth about how God loves you, about how He has revealed that love, about how we should respond to that love, and about the result of His love is in the lives of those who believe, and the result of the rejection of His love in the lives of those who refuse the salvation He offers. It’s not the Super Bowl. It’s infinitely more important than that for each of us this morning. So in a way, it’s all on the line for each of us.

Because this morning, we’re not talking about something that will fade. We’re talking about huge things. Lasting things. ETERNAL things… and the meaning that those things have in our lives right now. And we start with the revelation of God’s love.

1: The revelation of God’s love

John has just finished taking a momentary break in his discussion of how we are to love one another, writing to the church about knowing the difference between the Spirit of God and the spirit of deception in the world. Now he returns to the topic of loving one another, explaining the meaning behind the command:

1 John 4:7–8 CSB

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Every single time John says what the CSB translates as “dear friends” in this letter, he’s literally saying “beloved ones.” So he says to these loved ones that they should be “loving ones”—those who have received the love of God are therefore those who are in the best position to love others with that same kind of love. Throughout this particular passage, John uses the word for God’s kind of love, agape, in some form or another 29 times. Every time you see the word “love,” in this passage, it’s God’s kind of love.

There’s a reason that John is kind of known as the “apostle of love.” This God-shaped love is a major theme of both his Gospel and each of his letters. And especially throughout this letter, he repeats the command given by Jesus to His disciples just after the Lord’s Supper:

John 13:34 CSB

34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.

He repeats this instruction to the church, reminding them of the command to love:

1 John 3:11 CSB

11 For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another,

1 John 3:23 CSB

23 Now this is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he commanded us.

And now in chapter 4 John connects the love of God to the love that we are to have for one another in the church. Since love comes from God, then we should love one another. And since this is who we should be because of the love that God has given us, when we love well, it’s evidence that we both love God and know God.

He then uses the negative to illustrate this in verse 8, saying that the one who doesn’t have God’s kind of love neither loves nor knows God, because God is love. Love is one of the perfect characteristics of our perfect God. He IS love, because love gets the definition of what it is from God’s own Person and character.

Now, to make sure we understand something: “God is love” does not equal “love is god,” any more than “grass is green” means “green is grass.” If we, along with the classic Beatles tune from the 60’s, say “All You Need is Love,” we make love into our god. And when that happens, then “love” becomes an idol, and is no longer truly love, as C.S. Lewis wrote in his work, The Four Loves:

“If affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life the seeds will germinate. Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.”

—C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

No, God defines love, not the other way around. He is the source. Love is not the end in itself: God is. And by our living out the kind of love that God has shown us, we show that we love God and that we know God.

But while we can see that we are to love one another as God has loved us, because love comes from God because God is love, that doesn’t mean that we completely understand what John is saying, because he hasn’t described what that love actually looks like. So John then goes on to explain to us how this God-shaped love looks, and how it has been revealed to us:

1 John 4:9–10 CSB

9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

The revelation of God’s love is that Jesus, God the Son, the unique and perfect Christ, the Word of Life, came into the death of our world because of sin, so that we might live through Him. It’s not that we were great at loving God, and so He felt He needed to reciprocate (because we weren’t). It’s not that we were particularly deserving of His love, and so He was obligated to extend it (again, because we weren’t). It was simply because of His great love for us that Jesus came. He came and voluntarily took our place through His crucifixion, offering us a path of rescue from the depth of our sin, and death, and hell, and judgment that we deserve. This is what His being the “atoning sacrifice” means: that He willingly died in our place to take away our punishment, in order to purchase our forgiveness through His death. He was the perfect and complete sacrificial lamb for us:

Romans 3:25 CSB

25 God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.

Jesus paid the price that we owe for our sins, a price that has now once and forever been paid:

Hebrews 2:17 CSB

17 Therefore, he had to be like his brothers and sisters in every way, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in matters pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people.

And while the church gets to live out the blessing of being forgiven of our sins, that forgiveness is available to all who would trust in Jesus, because:

1 John 2:2 CSB

2 He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.

In his classic work, The Cross of Christ, John Stott explained the wonderful picture of Christ’s sacrifice and God’s amazing love in spite of our sin:

“For 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.”

—John Stott, The Cross of Christ

You see, in His love, God took the initiative to save us. We needed God to save us, and God came to save us in Christ:

2 Corinthians 5:19 CSB

19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

This is how we understand the love of God. This is how His love has been revealed to us so that we can understand it: Jesus willingly died in our place on Good Friday to put the love of God on display for the world to see, so that we could be reconciled to God.

The question is: “How will we respond to this revelation of God’s love?”

2: The response to God’s love

John here again speaks first to the response of the church to the revelation of the love of God, repeating his previous admonition to the “loved ones” that we should be “loving ones” because of how God has loved us:

1 John 4:11–12 CSB

11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.

If we are in Christ, if we have experienced the love of God through faith in Jesus, then we are to love one another. “No one has ever seen God,” says John. He’s saying that no one has ever seen God in His complete and total spiritual glory. A couple of people came close, like Moses and Elijah and Isaiah, but none of them saw God in all His glory, because we couldn’t stand it in our sinful flesh, as Isaiah said that at a glimpse of God’s glory he was “undone” (Isa 6:5).

But in another way, we HAVE seen God, because God has chosen to reveal Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ:

John 1:18 CSB

18 No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.

Jesus said to His disciples that if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father, in John 14. And here in 1 John 4, John tells us how people can catch a glimpse of who God is: it’s in how we love one another, because if we love one another, it shows that God remains in us, and His love is completed or perfected in us. Church family, do you love your brothers and sisters in this room? Do you love your brothers and sisters in Christ who attend another church in town? We should. We must. It’s the clearest way that we show that God is with us.

Honestly, if you’re a guest of the Eastern Hills church family today, if we are being obedient to this command, you should have already seen ways in which we love one another. It should be obvious. It’s by this love that we have for each other that we will show that we believe in Jesus, that we follow Him and are growing to be more and more like Him. Jesus said that this is how it would work:

John 13:35 CSB

35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

You should know that we are Christians by our love. But to add a wrinkle to this: loving with God-shaped love isn’t only love for one another in the church. It’s God’s kind of love for those who do not yet believe, perhaps even those who would consider themselves our enemies, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 5:43–48 CSB

43 “You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 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. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

God blesses even those who don’t love Him, and we should do the same, church. But to take one moment for those who might now be thinking about love in the wrong way: God-shaped love always wants God’s best for the beloved. God doesn’t approve of sin and look the other way. Instead, in Jesus God calls us out of the darkness of sin and into the light of His love, calling us to turn away from our sins and trust Him in faith and surrender. And so, the church is called to call people out of darkness and into the light as well. And while there are those in the church who may do this poorly, especially online, by and large the Christian church wants people to turn to God because we love you. We know that following Jesus is the best possible way to live, and we want you to have that as well. We love you because we know that God loves you, because we know that He’s shown that love through Jesus’ death on the cross, and we want you to experience that love. We’re not peddling a product or selling a service. We want you to hear about, believe in, and experience the love of God in Jesus.

And in Jesus, we have not just love, not just hope, not just peace, but we actually have fellowship, communion, with God Himself because He gives us His Spirit to live within us, as John goes on to say in the next verse:

1 John 4:13–16 CSB

13 This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. 16 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.

We looked at the indwelling of the Spirit last week. But consider what John said in verses 14 and 15: He said that we have seen and we testify that God sent the Son as the Savior of the world, and that whoever confesses (which means to stake your life on a fact) that Jesus is that Son who is the Savior will have that communion with God. Church, this is our testimony! We each have a Gospel story to tell.

This is what this day is all about. Jesus died, yes, but He didn’t just die. No, on the third day after His crucifixion, He overcame death and rose from the grave so that we could have eternal life! Death no longer has any power over Him because He has conquered death. We have this holiday because the grave is empty! And those who believe in Jesus, who have trusted in His death for their forgiveness, celebrate and are filled with hope because we are also promised eternal life in Him!

John 3:14–18 CSB

14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. 16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.

We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us (v. 16). And so we love one another, and we testify to that love and the hope of the Gospel because God is love, and He remains in us. And His work in us bears fruit, which brings us to our last point:

3: The result of God’s love

The final section of chapter 4 of John’s first letter to the church deals with the results that flow from our trusting response to the love of God revealed in Christ. John here shows that living a life of God-shaped love has consequences not only for the present, but also for the future.

1 John 4:17–18 CSB

17 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. 18 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.

“In this” is John referencing the fact that God remains in us and we in Him, and as His love is made complete, perfect, or mature through His remaining in us, then we will develop a deep confidence about the day of final judgment, when God in His righteousness will judge the world. This confidence comes from the fact that “as He is” (perfect and sinless in God’s sight), “so also are we in this world” (meaning that God sees Christians as having the righteousness of Jesus because of His sacrifice, even if we don’t live that out perfectly yet). So in a very real way, God sees us now as we will be in heaven: perfectly holy, because our sins have been covered by Jesus’s death, and our resurrection is assured because of Jesus’s victory over death.

So believers will have nothing to fear in the day of judgment, because we are being made complete in God’s love. This doesn’t mean that we should have absolutely no fear of any kind in our lives. God gave us healthy fear for our benefit, survival, and protection. Also, there is a healthy fear that is more of a respect. Consider Proverbs:

Proverbs 1:7 CSB

7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.

So this isn’t a complete absence of any fear ever. It’s an absence of fear about the future day of judgment. Those who belong to Christ will have no reason to fear on the day of judgment, because we will have been made complete and mature by the love of God through faith in Christ as He dwells in us by His Spirit and regenerates us, giving us new life in His love.

But those who reject Christ have every reason to fear that coming day, because God is perfectly just, and so must punish sin. He will judge the world fairly and with justice:

Revelation 20:11–15 CSB

11 Then I saw a great white throne and one seated on it. Earth and heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. 12 I also saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works by what was written in the books. 13 Then the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them; each one was judged according to their works. 14 Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

You can either trust that Christ has already willingly taken your deserved punishment for you, or you can decide that you would rather take the punishment yourself. There is no middle ground. Either your ledger will have the works of Jesus written in it, or your own. Only Jesus’s work is enough to save you, because only Jesus is perfect. He offers you His perfection and calls you to believe in Him for your salvation.

2 Corinthians 5:21 CSB

21 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.

Believe in Jesus. Trust Him to save you. Turn away from trying to save yourself, and surrender to Him in faith.

Finally, as we have seen several times in this letter, the proof of our belonging to Jesus is going to be shown in how we love one another, that loving one another well is the result of our having experienced the love of God. John ends the chapter with that same reflection:

1 John 4:19–21 CSB

19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.

We can only love the way God loves because He has loved us that way first. So God’s love takes us in a direction: loving others. The one who does not love is not merely “unsuccessful” at loving. He is unwilling to love. And John makes a very reasonable argument: that it is more difficult to love Someone who we cannot see, than to love someone who we can see. If we are unwilling to love those around us, our brothers and sisters in Christ, then how can we claim to love God? John says that such a person isn’t just mistaken. He’s a liar, and doesn’t actually love God at all. Jesus said the two were inextricably linked in the Great Commandment:

Matthew 22:36–40 CSB

36 “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and most important command. 39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

We are called to love, and to love well, not so that we would be loved by God, but BECAUSE we have been loved by God. Our love for others should reflect how much God has loved us. Are you loving well? If not, why not? Perhaps today you need to repent and trust Christ as well.

Closing

God’s love has been revealed in Christ, and we are called to respond to that love in faith, believing in Jesus, surrendering our lives to Him in faith so that we might be saved, and then seeing the results of His love in how we love others as God has loved us first.

Our response to the truth of the Gospel is more important than any Super Bowl. This is eternal life and death. If you’ve never believed in Jesus, then today you’ve heard the Gospel, and it might be the last time you hear it and have an opportunity to respond. I hope that after this message, you understand how important the message of the Gospel is. Will you place your faith in Jesus, believing in Him for your salvation, turning from your sin and surrendering to Him? You can do that right where you are, here in the room or online, because it’s not coming to a certain part of the room or saying any magic words that save you. You’re saved in that moment that you trust Jesus and give up going your own way. And you can affirm that trust in prayer, by just telling God that you understand you’ve sinned against Him, that you need His forgiveness, and that you believe that Jesus is both Savior and Lord, that He died in your place for your sins, and beat death in your place so you can live forever, and that you trust Him with your life now and forever. We would love to celebrate that with you. Come and share with us.

Challenge the church to share the message of the Gospel.

Joining the church

Prayer needs

Offering

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (Jer 32)

No Pastor’s Study tonight

Prayer Meeting

Instructions for guests

Benediction

I want to send us out this morning with an encouraging list of who we are in Christ that I found as I studied in preparation for this morning. I pray it blesses you and gives you strength and hope and encouragement as you live for Jesus this week. I’ll read a statement and give a Scripture reference or two, and together we will affirm each truth by responding “Amen!”

• Through Christ, I am dead to sin (Rom 6:11).

• Through Christ, I am spiritually alive (Rom 6:11; 1 Cor 15:22).

• Through Christ, I am forgiven (Col 2:13; 1 John 2:12).

• Through Christ, I am declared righteous (1 Cor 1:30; 2 Cor 5:21).

• Through Christ, I am a child of God (Rom 8:16; Phil 2:15).

• Through Christ, I am God’s possession (Titus 2:14).

• Through Christ, I am blessed with all spiritual blessings (Eph 1:3).

• Through Christ, I am a citizen of heaven (Phil 3:20).

• Through Christ, I am free from the law (Rom 8:2).

• Through Christ, I am crucified with Him (Gal 2:20).

• Through Christ, I am an heir of God (Rom 8:17).

• Through Christ, I am not bound to the desires of the flesh (Gal 5:24).

• Through Christ, I am declared blameless and innocent (Phil 2:15).

• Through Christ, I am a light in the world (Matt 5:14–15; Phil 2:15).

• Through Christ, I am victorious over Satan (Luke 10:19).

• Through Christ, I am cleansed from sin (1 John 1:7).

• Through Christ, I am set free from the power of sin (Col 2:11–15).

• Through Christ, I am secure in Him (1 Pet 1:3–5).

• Through Christ, I am at peace with God (Rom 5:1; Phil 4:6–9).

• Through Christ, I am loved by God (1 John 4:10).

— Daniel Akin, Exalting Jesus in 1, 2, 3 John, quoting from Thomas and Wood, Gospel Coach, edit mine.