Here For It: Wk 7
Notes
Transcript
Intro:
Intro:
You can grab a seat and while you do, go ahead and turn your attention to the screen for a quick video to get us started tonight! A team interviewed some experts to define a concept that very important and it will help us get started in our passage tonight! So check it out!
PLAY VIDEO
Alright, so maybe they weren’t exactly experts, but it is so funny to hear little kids describe the idea of love. We see from their perspective watching people interact like their family and friends that they mention certain behaviors and feelings and some of them honestly made really good observations about love.
Transition:
Transition:
The unfortunate thing, is that many adults in our world would still likely describe love like these kids. Saying, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, or going further many would say you CANT describe love or define it- it is different for everyone. And many would continue mentioning some feelings or behaviors that are involved with love.
Our passage tonight is all about this idea of love. In fact, the word love (Gk agape) dominates 1 John 4:7–5:3. It appears over 30 times in those verses alone! So John is clearly emphasizing love, but John is clear, just like the rest of the Bible, that love isn’t something that humans have made up or get to define for themselves. Love is from God- he is love, he defines love, and he helps us walk in love!
And before we dig in, I realize this is one of those things that we talk about a lot here. I am always talking about loving God and loving people- and that’s because that’s literally what Christianity is all about so of course we will always talk about this!
But my hope for tonight is for us to really reflect on how crazy and unbelievable God’s love is and why that truly does change everything about the way we do life as individuals and as a ministry!
Our main point tonight is simple: The Gospel makes us people of love!
Let’s look at why that is true!
Turn to 1 John 4 with me and we will jump into the passage together!
As you turn there, we only have one more week left in this series and next week we will read the concluding thoughts of John from the very end of this letter. But I hope you have been encouraged in this series to really know who you are in Christ and how that changes the way we live both here in the church and out in the world. We will wrap up next week but this series is one that should shape the rest of our year together as a ministry because it is genuinely the core of who we are!
So, let’s keep going tonight!
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. 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. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.
One of the best things you can do to figure out what something is and how it works is to identify where it came from or who created it. If i put anything in front of you right now you would need to look at who made it, why they made it, and what they intended it for in order for you to get the most out of it. That’s exactly what John establishes right off the bat in this passage. He says again, we should love one another but then says why: because love comes from GOD!
Love originated from God. Before humans existed, before creation, God existed and God was already love! Love is critical characteristic of who God is and it is evident in every single story in the Bible, it is clear across all of creation- God is love. And the only way that we are able to love God and love people is through knowing God personally.
Remember, John has been helping the church discern between true and false teachers in the church and helping them spot false christians who are causing division. The standard for all of that has been the presence of Love. Because only people who have been born of God- meaning we have become children of God through a personal relationship with Jesus, are capable of real love.
This is important, the first point we see about Love is love has a clear origin: God.
Love is from God! God is love, so he is the author, definer, and source of love for everything else in creation!
Commentator Daniel Akin describes it this way:
“Love belongs to God’s nature. It’s woven into what he is. It’s part of what it means to be God. The sun gives light because it is light. And fire gives heat because it is heat.”
God is love, so love comes from God and when we are born again into the new life of Christ- the divine nature of God becomes part of who we are. So, we become people of love because God is love!
But, this doesn’t happen overnight, yes we immediately receive and experience God’s love fully through the Gospel, but we all know that learning to walk in it takes time. But John says if we KNOW God then we love God and love people. That means as we walk closer to God and grow in our personal and intimate knowledge of God, we will also grow in our ability to love like God!
It’s a cycle- knowing God makes us love God more, loving God makes us want to know God more and all of that makes us love each other more.
Transition:
Transition:
But we still have to answer, what IS love?
If the origin of love is God, then what does God’s love look like?
That’s what John gets to next!
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. 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.
Love has it’s clear origin: God!
And, Love has a clear standard: the Cross!
Meaning-Real love, the love of God, looks like the Cross!
What is love? Love is God the Father sending Jesus the Son to the cross!
Why is this the definition and standard of love?
So, we actually have to take a step back and understand why Jesus had to go to the cross and then we see why this is the only definition of love.
Look at verse 10 again. God sent Jesus to be the ATONING sacrifice for our sins. that word atoning may be propitiation in your translation. So we know Jesus was a sacrifice- he died in our place on the cross. But the why is so important to understand. IT was to atone for our sins- which means to make amends or reparations for. Propitiation is the idea that Jesus’ death took on God’s Wrath against our sins.
So, two ideas are at play here-
God is Holy and Perfect. He has no sin in Him and in order to be holy he cannot be around anything sinful! So, when sin entered the picture God could no longer be with us. He is also just so, he can’t ignore the sin. But this means that God hates sin and has to deal with it justly- which means killing that which is sinful. Because God is perfect, holy and Just- God must get rid of sin! But second-
God is Love! So, yes, God has to deal with sin and must punish sinners because he is holy, perfect and Just, but God is also love. And because God loves us so much he knew we could NEVER pay for our sins ourselves, we would never be able to stop sinning by our own strength or abilities. And so God provided the sacrifice himself!
Again, Daniel Akin puts it so well talking about this idea of atonement and propitiation, he says:
“Propitiation teaches us that God personally hates sin. Propitiation teaches us that sin is serious. Propitiation teaches us the greatness of God’s love in which He provided the offering to turn His wrath away. Propitiation teaches us the truth that Christ’s death satisfied the Father and was a substitution for sinners. Propitiation teaches us that God’s holiness required satisfaction and that God’s love provided satisfaction.” - Daniel Akin
God’s holiness demands a price for sin, because of God’s love He paid the price Himself!
So, love looks like the cross because it was on the cross that God’s love was demonstrated for us!
This then makes us define our standard of love by looking at the cross. THe more we understand and experience God’s radical, self-sacrificial love for us, the more we are transformed by that love and begin to love God and love others like this!
so what does this love look like lived out?
Biblical love is willfully struggling and suffering for others so that we can share life with them.
The God who had the power to destroy everyone because of their sin in a moment, decided instead to come into our mess, put up with human struggles, go through hatred and ridicule, be spit on and beaten and hung on a cross, and killed so that he could raise from the dead and offer us eternal forgiveness, life and love with God in His kingdom! That is Biblical love!
So we must be willing to do this with those around us:
We struggle alongside others.
Jesus came into this world and walked in the midst of sin and struggles to be close to us, to help us see God’s love for us and to teach us a better way to live!
As we walk in love towards others, we must enter their mess with them, walk through life with them, even when it is hard and even when we don’t feel like it. Because that is exactly what God did for us!
2. We suffer for others.
Jesus took on the pain of our sin for us as he was tortured and hung on the cross and killed for us. He was also hated and rejected by the world.
We will endure persecution of many kinds. The world will hate us as it hated Jesus. But when we realize God’s love for us, we can love others because we see them as God sees them. So we can endure any suffering and persecution because we truly love God and love the people around us! And because ultimately, this is how we share the life of God with them!
3. We share life with others.
This is the ultimate end goal. Jesus came to share life with us. The life that is found in Him! How to live life that is full of God’s love and empowered by His Spirit. We get to show people a different way of life than they can figure out apart from Jesus! God uses us to reach a lost and hurting world with the life of Christ!
And this brings us to the final point in this passage.
Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.
Love has a clear goal: Growing the Family of God!
John says that we must love one another because this is how people are able to see GOD! If we remain in God and HE remains in us, we will love God and love people- and through that love God is displayed to those around us.
This is crucial both in the church and outside the church.
We all grow together as the family of God as we show each other the love of God and walk in it together. We will grow close to each other and to God as we live out self-sacrificial love toward each other.
When we love each other like Jesus we are able to help each other follow Jesus, we are patient with each other in our weaknesses and struggles, we pray for each other and are honest and vulnerable with each other. We love each other deeply in this place because God’s love has changed us and is creating us into a community of Love!
This is why we cannot be divided, we can’t be competitive against each other or try to show boat, or brag. We can’t think of ourselves more highly than others. In this place we should not do anything that doesn’t look like the love of God through our lives because we have been born again in Christ and now His love is within us and if we don’t show this love to each other we will NEVER show it to the world around us!
This love and living as people of love builds us up as the church but it also reveals God to the lost world around us! God’s love, from the very beginning has been for the lost. Because we were all lost before he saved us. And God’s word teaches us God’s love is revealed to us in this way- that while we were STILL SINNERS Christ died for us!
So God’s love is always for the lost, starting with us and then moving through us and compelling us to go after the lost around us!
When this world and your friends who don’t know Jesus see your lives every day they should see you living a life of love and they will see God through that love!
And especially when they come into this place, they should immediately notice by the way we talk and act and treat each other that we are different, that this place is NOT LIKE THE WORLD around us!
This place is a place of love because we are people of love because…
The Gospel makes us people of love!
Our ministry must look like the radical, self-sacrificial love of God. That is what defines us and shapes everything we say, and do and think!
So, this is love. That God came and died in our place, so that we could be with Him once again!
As we close- the most widely known bible verse in the world is John 3:16, but did you know that 1 John 3:16 is just as incredible? You can actually put them together for a full picture of God’s love at work in our lives:
Check this out:
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.
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.
This is love students- God died for us, and he rose from the dead so that we could receive a new life where we can love God and love others in the same way! Let’s be a ministry that LOVES like GOD!
Bow your heads with me and let’s respond together!
Have you received the free gift of eternal life through the Cross? God’s love was poured out for you on the cross so that you could be forgiven of tyour sins, brought into the family of God and given a brand new life forever in his kingdom! Have you trusted in Jesus as lord and savior and begun to walk in this love we have talked about tonight?
Christians, are you growing in this love? Do your actions and words and thoughts display God’s love in every way? Right now ask God to show you any ways that you are struggling to love like God. Ask god to forgive you and help you grow in that love.
As we sing about God’s love in a second, reflect on that love and praise God that He has shown us real love through Jesus on the cross!
PRAY