Relationships: Love.
Notes
Transcript
Intro:
Intro:
Does anyone remember last year when we watched a video of kids defining love to kick off one Wednesday night? Yeah? They said some funny things and many said you can’t define love or that’s a really hard question. Well I found another list of answers from kids 4-8 years old on what love is. Listen to these:
“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.” Chrissy—age 6
“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.” Terri—age 4
“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” Danny—age 7
“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” Bobby—age 5
“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day.” Noelle—age 7
“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.” May Ann—age 4
“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” Karen—age 7
“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” Jessica—age 7
“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” Rebecca—age 8
What I love about each of those answers is they are really tangible, action based answers that point to the proof of people’s love for each other. Only like 1-2 of those referenced a vague feeling, while all the others focused on the actions in a relationship that display a reality of love.
The other thing I love about those answers is that they all show the selfless nature of real love. doing things for each other, sharing with each other, giving to each other…
Love in our world often gets defined in selfish terms with a focus on physical enjoyment or personal preferences and well being.
This is not at all how the Bible talks about love.
As we wrap up our series on relationships this week, it is important that we are all on the same page about what Love really is! Now, before we do, I get it. Most of you right now hear me say that and are like are you kidding me? We have talked about this before, we talk about this all the time! And you are exactly right.
In fact, we have even studied this exact passage before and done a deep dive on love from it. But keep in mind two things tonight-
We are never experts that move beyond any passage in the Bible. We always need to go back and study it again. meditate on it more, and let God speak to us again through it. So, never get bored or think you know enough about a passage of the Bible.
Tonight, we will have a more specific focus than before. This won’t be the same message. We will talk about the same verses and point out the same truths from the passage, but the whole focus tonight is about how that then impacts our relationships in a radical way.
The main take away tonight is this:
The love we have one another reveals the love we have for God.
That is a huge statement and changes everything if we truly understand and believe that to be true. So let’s get into it and see why that is true!
Turn with me to 1 John 4 now.
This will be our passage for the night and as we turn there let me set it up a little bit for us all. The apostle John, one of Jesus’ closest followers, is writing to a community of Christians in western Asia minor- likely modern day Turkey. One of the biggest things John does in his letter is deal with the problem of false teachers in their community who were trying to convince the Christians there that Jesus was not fully God, or that he wasn’t fully man, as well as other heretical, or false, teachings. Interestingly enough, time and time again, John comes back to the idea that love is the determining factor between the trustworthy teachers and the false teachers. In fact, as we will read, the only thing that can be a trustworthy determining factor for someone being a Christian or not is a christ like love for one another. So, with that context in mind let’s read the passage and see exactly how John defines this love.
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.
The very first thing we see John point out is the origin of love. If we want to understand anything and know how to define it, we need to go back to the source. Very simply put:
Love started with God.
He says, let us love one another because love is FROM GOD.
Put another way, God is the source of love. If God is the origin and source of love, then only God can define love.
Now, I hate to make such a simplistic comparison but imagine if I invented a new sport. Let’s say it even gains a lot of popularity and people start playing it all over the place. What happens when someone has a question about the rules or how to play the game the best way? Who is the best person they can ask? ME! Yeah. If they ask someone who doesn’t know me, or just started playing the sport, or someone in the world that hasn’t ever played the sport- they will get a bunch of different answers but the only perfect and trustworthy source is ME, the creator of the sport!
Again, if love began with God, only God can define love!
John says if you know God then of course you are a person of Love! If you don’t love God and love people then you simply don’t know God according to John! Knowing God is knowing love, and if we know what real love is, it is impossible for it not to show up in the way we live our lives.
So what is real love? That’s what John points out next. Verses 9-10 teach us:
2. Love looks like the cross.
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.
What is real love? Not the fake love our world portrays, not the selfish love the people around us talk about, not the purely physical affection that people call love- what is real love?
It is God the Father, sending Jesus His Son, into this world. It is our God- the creator of Heaven and earth, taking on flesh, walking in our brokenness and struggles. It is the perfect God-Man Jesus being arrested and tortured and then hung on a cross and killed, all so that you and I could have forgiveness of our sins and be brought back into a relationship with God despite our guiltiness!
Real love is self-sacrificial, generous and radical. Real love is the Gospel!
As John says, we can’t get it twisted, love isn’t anything that we did first. God is love, and God loved us so much that He gave His one and only son to pay for our sins and save us from the punishment of death that we deserved for our sins.
Our best attempts at love apart from God all fall short. Only receiving the love of God in our lives allows us to then express that love to those around us.
As John Piper says,
The love that you have as a born again person is no mere imitation of the divine love. It is an experience of the divine love and an extension of that love to others. - John Piper
This is why we see so many broken relationships in our world today. Bad friends, cheating spouses, and broken families all reveal our desperate attempts to practice love without God at the center of it all!
British theologian I. Howard Marshall said:
Human love, however noble and however highly motivated, falls short if it refuses to include the Father and Son as the supreme objects of its affections” - I. Howard Marshall
Meaning unless we know love first and are changed by His love, we will never be able to love people around us well!
Love looks like Jesus sacrificing his life for us on the cross so that we could be saved! Love looks like the cross!
So, love started with God, Love looks like the cross and finally-
3. Love is completed through relationships.
Look back at verses 11-12.
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.
When we experience the Gospel love of God- it changes us into people that love one another like God has loved us.
Later in this chapter, in verse 19 John says: 1 John 4:19
We love because he first loved us.
The Gospel makes us people of love.
We can’t love God without first accepted His love for us.
And we can’t really love one another without being changed by God’s love for us.
But when we step into a relationship with God through the Gospel and let Jesus change us from the inside out we are able to grow in our relationship with God and others and live out the radical love of the Gospel in all of those relationships!
Check out this photo:
Here we see where perfect love happens. People say we can’t love perfectly, but as Christians we can. Perfect love happens when we experience Gods love for us, we respond in love toward God through worshiping and obeying Him. And this leads us to love other people because as we see God loves them and we are made for relationships with them.
When this triangle is fully connected we can have incredible relationships that are founded in the perfection of God’s love. BUt that is ONLY possible for two christians. Whether its a friendship, a family relationship or a dating/marriage relationship- this perfect love can only be found between two christians because of those top two lines- both people must be connected to God through His love for them and their responding love for Him!
When I love god and you love God- we can love each other because His love is in us. But what about when I mess up and am selfish and hurt you? Well, thanfully because I love God and you love God and we love each other, we can forgive one another. You come to me and say hey we love each other but you hurt me and I say I am so sorry I DID hurt you please forgive me! And the grace of God and the love of God allow us to experience deep growth and healing in our relationship in spite of our failures!
This is God’s love perfected through our relationships with one another. God’s love is perfect- but it is completed when it is displayed through us as His children as we practice it with one another!
Now, when of course we aren’t only supposed to show this love to other Christians- but we will only experience the fullness of this love when it’s with christians because the triangle is complete!
When we go out and love people who don’t know God and His love is not in them- we still love them like God has loved us- but we need to show even more grace because they WILL hurt us and they probably won’t go out of their way to make things right or even ask for forgiveness if we tell them they hurt us. They might, but remember, they are still lost in their sin and don’t know God’s love so they can’t show God’s love.
But we know God’s love, so we must show God’s love to everyone around us as best we can!
As we wrap up- how do we actually take this and practice it?
Christians love one another as radically as God loves us.
I have one really relevant example for this tonight:
Love is camp scholarship donations! We have 7 students planning to come to camp with us this year who cannot pay for their spots. That is $2800! I would never be able to cover that, most of us couldn’t just pay that out of nowhere. BUT Christian love is the fact that I told our church we needed help and church members have all stepped up individually to pay for every single spot. A single woman in her 40’s wants to cover someone. Multiple retired senior adults want to use their savings to pay for students. Some of our church deacons- leaders in our church- reached out and want to cover costs for students. In a matter of days a bunch of individuals decided that they loved you guys enough to pay for anyone who needed help to get to camp! Listen, there are so many ways this can play out- caring for the sick, serving the elderly, giving time and money to families in need. But the bottom line is this-
Christians are willing to serve one another and walk through the highs and lows of life with one another because of God’s love at work in our hearts.
I hope you all see there are people in our church family that care about you and they know how impactful camp is and they want to make sure no one misses out! That is an awesome picture of Christian love to sacrifice their finances for your spiritual growth!
1 John 3:16 “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.”
2. Christians love the lost, because God loves them just as radically as He loves us.
In fact, the world will know God’s love through the way we love one another in the Church and the way we go out of our way to love them outside of the church!
You have people all around you who are walking in darkness, struggling in broken relationships, doubting if they are worth anything to anyone. And you know the God who created them and knows them and loves them and sent Jesus to die for them! you will only reach them with the gospel if you truly love them!
As we wrap up this series on relationships I hope you see that we weren’t created to chase after a boyfriend or girlfriend, life isn’t all about getting married one day, God wants to work in us and through us to reach the world with His love through every single relationship in our life!
My call to each of you out of this series is for you to let God’s love fill every area of your life, and transform every relationship of your life into a beautiful display of the Gospel!
Bow your heads with me and let’s respond together.
Have you received the love of God in your life? I didn’t say do you call yourself a christian, or did you pray a prayer one time and then keep living however you wanted. No, has there ever been a time in your life where you heard and understood the Gospel- that God LOVED you so much that even though you were separated from Him by your sins and deserving death, He sent His one and only son Jesus into this world to live a perfect life, die in your place as a sacrifice for you on the cross, and he rose from the dead defeating sin and hell forever! Have you ever let that radical love of God, come into your life and change you forever? The call is simple, turn away from your life of sin and selfishness, and follow Jesus as Lord. Let Jesus teach you how to live a life of this radical love! Is there anyone here tonight who needs to receive the love of God and begin living it out as His Child?
For christians in the room,
Thank God for the love He displayed for you on the cross and praise Him for it.
ask God to show you any ways that your life does not reflect the radical love of the Gospel and confess that to Him.
Ask God to help you go forward this week and extend His love to those around you- especially people who are the most difficult to love! And then go DO IT!
Let’s pray.