1 John 4:19....Why I love Him
Notes
Transcript
1 John 4:19....Why I Love Him
1 John 4:19....Why I Love Him
Psalm 16:8 “I have set the Lord always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.”
As a christian we are told to love one another and to love Jesus and God. Scripture instructs us to and we say we stand on the word.
But have you truly understood WHY we should love him.
The apostle John lays out a lot of things in this epistle and one of the topics is love...
As John wrote this letter to the church in general....
to the believers of Christ…the believers in Christ.....
Jews and Gentiles.
remember we are the church...
so this letter was for the church of 85 a.d., as it is for the church in 2024 a.d.....TALK, PREACH...
just like us today, John’s readers probably never saw Jesus in the flesh but his letter comes from his first hand knowledge of Jesus, as he walked with him...
but through it all the purpose of his letter can be found in 1 John 5:13 “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.” .......TALK PREACH.....
John’s letter to the church can be classified as a personal and a spiritual epistle, in that it has emphasis on personal rightouness, purity, love and a knowledge and loyalty to Jesus.
and here in this 4th chapter, John stresses the topic of love.....
Let’s walk....
John hits us pretty hard in verses 8 and 20.......1 John 4:8 “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” 1 John 4:20 “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” ......TALK, PREACH....
John is seperating the real from the fake right there
But in our verse today, he is stressing that we love God but the question arises, Why?
1 John 4:19 “We love Him because He first loved us.”
now i hear you family, the why is in the verse....
this is a cause and an effect text right here....TALK...
but we need to proceed deeper into the cause....
let’s go deeper....
this text shows us two key causes on why we should love God...
the manifestation of His love and the action of His love....
His love is the incentive, the motive, and moral cause of ours. We cannot but love so good a God, who was first in the act and work of love, who loved us when we were both unloving and unlovely, who loved us at so great a rate, who has been seeking and soliciting our love at the expense of his Son's blood; and has condescended to beseech us to be reconciled unto him.
He was the first to love us: this thought ought to create in us love casting out fear
he first showed loved by sending His Son.....
1 John 4:9 “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”
note that His love was shown by sending us the greatest gift ever....Jesus....TALK, PREACH....
however some still question, his love.....They look at the awful ravages of sin in the world and say, “How can a God of love permit these things to happen?” But people need never doubt God’s love......TALK, PREACH...
He loved us when we were still sinners: “Every man that ever was saved had to come to God not as a lover of God, but as a sinner, and then believe in God’s love to him as a sinner.” (Spurgeon)
we need to follow God’s example and we need to learn how to show love.....TALK, PREACH....
Next the action of His Love....
I & II Peter, I, II & III John, Jude C. We Must Acknowledge Jesus to Be the Son of God (4:14–21)
God first loved us and made a relationship with him possible
He proved His love at the cross. Christ died that we might live “through” Him (1 John 4:9), “for” Him (2 Cor. 5:15), and “with” Him (1 Thes. 5:9–10
TALK, PREACH....
1 John 4:19 “We love Him because He first loved us.”
because He first loved through him showing us and acting up his love.....TALK, PREACH
Now for the effect...
WE LOVE HIM....
not simply for what He can do for us but for what He has already done for us....
Now remember, we never make ourselves love Christ more by flogging ourselves for not loving him more. We come to love those better whom we love by knowing them better… If you want to love Christ more, think more of him, think more of what you have received from him.” (Spurgeon).....TALK, PREACH..
This verse tells us where our love for Jesus comes from. It comes from Him. Our love for God is always in response to His love for us; He initiates, and we respond. We never have to draw God to us; instead, He draws us to Himself.......a response....he has done something.....TALK, PREACH...
i. “1. We love him because we find he has loved us. 2. We love him from a sense of obligation and gratitude. 3. We love him from the influence of his own love; from his love shed abroad in our hearts our love to him proceeds. It is the seed whence our love springs.” (Clarke)
The Bible Exposition Commentary Chapter Nine: Love, Honor, and Obey (1 John 4:17–5:5)
The perfecting of God’s love in our lives is usually a matter of several stages. When we were lost, we lived in fear and knew nothing of God’s love. After we trusted Christ, we found a perplexing mixture of both fear and love in our hearts. But as we grew in fellowship with the Father, gradually the fear vanished and our hearts were controlled by His love alone. An immature Christian is tossed between fear and love; a mature Christian rests in God’s love
Here’s so more effect...
now we should be loving one another...
John 13:34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
I & II Peter, I, II & III John, Jude C. We Must Acknowledge Jesus to Be the Son of God (4:14–21)
We cannot claim we love God and then show that we hate our brothers. This only proves one thing: we are liars.
1 John 4:20 “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” “
God commands us to love one another
and this should be the effect when we realize why we Him
Why do I love Him so, because He first loved me...
and because He love me so He did something for me that no other person could ever do....
it is true that He loves us now. Do you believe it? “Oh, if you do really believe that he has loved you so, sit down, and turn the subject over in your mind, and say to yourself, ‘Jesus loves me; Jesus chose me; Jesus redeemed me; Jesus called me; Jesus has pardoned me; Jesus has taken me into union with himself.’” (Spurgeon)
TALK, PREACH, CLOSE....
Warren W. Wiersbe, Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the New Testament (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1992), 774.
David Walls and Max Anders, I & II Peter, I, II & III John, Jude, vol. 11, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 210.