What Is Love? | 1 John 4:7-12
Notes
Transcript
[Scripture reading]
7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
We’ve talked a lot about what love is in 1 John. And surprise surprise, that’s also our topic today. But first, I want us to figure out how the world defines love.
If a woman goes out of her way to do something special for the man she loves like buy him some new shoes, why did she do that act of love for him? Is it because she just wants to do that? Is it because she feels an obligation to?
Well a majority of the time its because of how he makes her feel. He does all these things to make her feel special so she wants to do something special for him.
So if that’s the reason she loves him, well what if he didn’t make her feel special. What if he was the worst dude ever and never did anything nice for her and always made rude comments to her. Well she probably wouldn’t be buying him some new shoes.
So as long as he is loving to her, she is loving to him. And it happens both ways: a guy is only going to love a woman if she is loving to him.
So that begs the question, why does God love us? What have we done for God that would cause Him to do such an awesome thing for us by sending His Son to die for us? I honestly can’t think of a single thing In my life. Everything I’ve done for God has only been because the Holy Spirit did it through me. So without God, I haven’t done anything for God that would cause Him to love me.
Yet we see here John straight up say that God is love.
1. Love is found in God. (vv. 7-8)
1. Love is found in God. (vv. 7-8)
7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Explanation: So love comes from God. And going on what we were talking about earlier, there’s no reason for God to love us. So God’s definition of love, and the world’s definition of love must be different.
In our analogy, the woman’s love to the man was dependent on the man’s actions to her. That’s called a condition. As long as one thing happens, another thing will happen. And that’s how the world defines love. As long as you make me happy, I’m gonna love you.
But God’s love is different. Even the word used for love in this passage is different from the world’s view of love. It’s the word is agape or unconditional love. God’s love to us is without condition. Even though Israel constantly rebelled against God in the old testament, He still delivered them out of captivity. Even though they continued to rebel against Him, He sent His Son to die on the cross and rise from the dead for their sins.
You don’t have to earn God’s love in your life. You don’t have to check all these boxes and all of the sudden you’re in the family. No, God loves you even when you make mistakes.
And God is the only one who can show this kind of love. Every other form of love has a condition to it, but the love that God shows us is unconditional.
Application: And what’s cool is He lives in us once we accept Him as our Savior through His Spirit and now we are given the ability to show this same love back to God and to others. But it is only through knowing God that you are given the ability to show this kind of love.
A big way that we love God is through following His commandments. Loving God means we will want to honor God with our lives. So while you don’t earn your love for God, once you accept Him in your heart and you begin to love Him, you begin to desire to live a life that is honoring to Him.
1 John 5:3 (NLT)
3 Loving God means keeping his commandments…
And this love grows in us as we walk with God.
A guy named Danny Akin wrote this in a commentary, “Not only do those who love with a God-like love give evidence that they have been born of God, but they also demonstrate in an ongoing habit of [love] that they know God. They don’t simply know about God, they know Him intimately and personally as Father.”
So not only is this type of love evidence that we have accepted Jesus into our heart, but as we continue to know God more intimately and personally, we love Him and others more.
Love is one of the fruits of the Spirit.
Galatians 5:22 (NLT)
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: [and guess what the first fruit is] love
The word used for love there in Galatians 5 is the same word in our passage tonight; the same kind of love that only God can show. So the fruit of a relationship with God is the love of God
But we only are able to do this because God loved us first.
2. Love is initiated in Christ. (vv. 9-10)
2. Love is initiated in Christ. (vv. 9-10)
9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
Explanation: Just starting in verse 9 we see this measure of how much God loves us. He sent His only Son into the world to live a life that you should have lived and die a death that you should have died so that you might have eternal life. That’s how much God loves you.
Then in verse 10 John opens with, “This is real love…” And that just builds on that idea that God’s love is unconditional. There are no strings attached; it is real love.
Then John goes on to say, “… not that we loved God”… remember we didn’t love God; Israel rebelled against God constantly in the old testament and you have rebelled against God both before and after you were saved.
“not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”
Our relationship with God is initiated by Him. He loved us first. In fact, before you were even born He loved you enough to send His Son to die for you. Even though He knew you’d sin against Him every day.
John Stott said, “Our sin is us seeking to become like God or us determining what we should do based on what we want, but Jesus chose to become like man to die for our sins. We assert ourselves to put ourselves where only God should be, and God sacrificed Himself through Jesus to put Himself where only man should be.”
Argumentation/Illustration: Many people have this twisted mindset that God only loves them when they love God. And that’s because that’s what our culture says. You get money IF you work, I’ll be your friend IF you are a friend to me, I’ll love you IF you love me. It’s conditional love.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth With God. God still loves you if you lie to someone. God still loves you if you hold hatred for someone in your heart. God still loves you even if you do the worst thing you can imagine in your mind right now. God still loves you.
That doesn’t mean you’re automatically saved. God loved you enough to pay the ultimate price for your sins, but if you want to be saved you’ve gotta be willing to accept that you’re a sinner and that Christ is your Savior. God loved you enough to pay the price for your sins, but he also loves you enough to let you choose if you want a relationship with Him or not.
Application: So if you’re going through something tough right now or you’re struggling with a sin that you can’t seem to get rid of, trust that God loves you no matter what. Without condition, without pre-requisites, with no strings attached.
3. Love is demonstrated in us. (vv. 11-12)
3. Love is demonstrated in us. (vv. 11-12)
11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
Explanation: God has loved the world in many ways in the past. In the old testament, He loved His people enough to provide for them, deliver them from their enemies, even allow them to prosper at times. He loved the world in the gospels through Jesus. We see Jesus preform countless miracles for people and providing salvation through His death and resurrection.
And verse 12 is how God loves the world today. “… if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.” God loves the world through us.
God has a mission. And that mission is to love the world. This incredible sacrificial love that Jesus showed the world through His death and resurrection was only the firstfruits of this mission. It was only the beginning!
Through the Holy Spirit, God is continuing this act of love through His church! Through us! God is using you to love the world. Let that sink in for a minute. You are how God is loving the world.
The beginning of verse 12 says, “No one has ever seen God…” Now if you gloss over this section you may just think, “That was a random spot to say that, but yea that’s right.” But try and think of why John writes that at this specific spot.
Reread verse 12. It says,
12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
God has not been seen. But if we love others, God is seen IN US. The unseen God is seen through His church. [Repeat that]
That is why verse 11 says, “since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.” Because we are how God shows love to the world!
Illustration: I want to tell y’all about a time God showed love to me through someone in the church.
2 years ago I started going to Connection Church Dublin. I had just left my previous church and was not in a great place mentally or spiritually. I had recently started playing drums and acoustic guitar (and was still pretty bad at both) and attended one of Connection Church Dublin’s Christmas services. There I met the worship pastor, Jim, and let him know that I’d be willing to help out with worship if he ever needed it.
Little did I know and little did he know the path that we were both about to start on together. He brought me on the team and began discipling me and he was teaching me about theology, leadership, music, all of which I realized I didn’t know much about at all.
But even though I had much to learn, he still loved me and discipled me and trained me. And without him going out of his way to do that, I wouldn’t be here now.
And he wasn’t getting anything out of it. Yet it was taking a ton of time out of his schedule to train me. He sacrificed time, energy, sometimes maybe even money to do that for me and it was incredibly fruitful. Through that I was equipped to be a pastor.
A year later I got in contact with Liam about being the worship and student pastor up here and the rest is history.
Application: That’s how we’re called to live. We are called to live lives that show the love of God to the world.
One of Liam’s points in his sermon Sunday was, “the call to follow Jesus is a call to come and die.” We are called to die to our sin, take up our cross and live sacrificially. That means rejecting the sin in our life, rejecting our worldly desires, sometimes even our worldly dreams that we might love others.
And the best way you can live that life and love others is through loving God. As you spend time with God by being in His Word, praying to Him, and being in biblical community you become more like Jesus and you are able to love others more.
So I challenge you, spend time in God’s Word, pray to God, come to church, and through you doing these things to love God, He is going to produce the fruit of love in your life.
Verse 12 closes with this phrase:
1 John 4:12 (NLT)
12 … God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
That’s gonna be our blanket statement for the next couple weeks. As we’ll see in the next couple weeks, verses 13 through 16 are all about God living in us as it says in the beginning of that phrase, and verses 17 through 21 are all about God’s love being brought to full expression in us.
[Let’s pray]
As we go into small groups we’re gonna fill out these Who’s Your One cards. On these cards, you’ll write down a person that has been on your heart to invite to church and you’ll give one to your small group leader and you’ll keep the other one to be praying for them throughout the week.
This is how we’re loving the world, through seeking the lost and praying for them. So please take this exercise seriously.