Back to Basics

God IS Love - vss. 7-8

I remember as a kid watching a Psalty movie (ask if anyone remembers Psalty) where they sang a song about 1 John 4:7-8. I remember, not too long after watching it for what must have been the 10th+ time I told my mom how bored I was of it because all they do is sing Bible songs and make you learn memory verses. To which my mom replied “Which verses do they make you learn.” I then began singing the song about loving one another because love is from God anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God for God is love.” I knew the verse, but I didn’t really believe what it said.

For much of my life the phrase “God is Love” has been something I have known. It has been there as a piece of information, an object of my knowledge but it has been little more than that. Often, God’s loves got reduced to a nice idea that would be a good thing to believe in, or worse yet it became a collection of whatever nice things I think Love is and then I just multiply them and stick them on to my ideas about God as an add on. “This is what love means to me” and so then God must also see it my way.

We live in a time when love is a loaded word, a word which has many different and even competing “definitions.” Even within the church we may find that we hold differing definitions of love, what it looks like and how we go about practicing this. Love, for many of us is a term that is difficult to define.

In this way we share a similar scenario to the people that John wrote this letter to. There were many different ideas floating around in the world of the first century, as many religions and cultures came togetehr bringing their own ideas about who God is into the discussion. And it seems, given that love is one of John’s main themes, that the church he is writing to is actuallly struggling to understand what God’s love is about.

John makes two claims about the identity of God in this letter:

First, God is light (1 John 1:5). Second, God is love (1 John 4:8)

Daniel L. Akin

His claim here, in vs. 8, is that the very origin of Love is God himself. Because of this, all our definitions of love must find their come from God. John makes it very clear in vs. 8 that God is Love. And that those who love, know God as he is. God is the definition of what love is. It is important here to stop and recognize the order of words here. God is love is how John says it. It is not the same thing to say that Love is God, which is how this verse is sometimes understood, in practical terms. It is easy for us to take what we know as love and ascribe those things to God as the best representation of human wisdom. But John doesn’t allow for that. God alone has the authority to define and exemplify what love looks like. To love is to know God because God is love. Our knowledge of God is evidenced by our love for one another.

God loves “with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18) - vss. 9-11

How is it that John knows that God is love?

1 John 4:9 “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”

God’s love is shown, made manifest, revealed in a physical way. A way in which the apostles have been eyewitnesses of (1 Jn. 1:1-3). This revelation of God’s love is the person of Jesus. What is doing here is reminding us that God is not a distant God, a God who sits in judgement far off and absent from the world. But as he so often does he brings us back to the reality of the person of Jesus, who came in the flesh as a real person and put God’s love on display. Jesus is the theatre of Love, but what is the event? what is it that God does through Jesus that actually defines the particulars of Love?

1 John 4:10 “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

This is where we get to the real meat and potatoes of what John is trying to communicate. Let’s recap the argument thus far. God is Love, he is the originator of love and the prime example of what that love looks like. The place we ought to look to see God’s love most clearly is actually a person, Jesus. And what did Jesus do as the example of God’s love? He died on the cross! John is making his point evidently clear. God’s love is made known not in a speech of compelling eloquence, not in an ideology, not in emotions, or feelings but in action. In the action of self sacrifice and atonement. God’s love is made known to us through the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

This phrase reminds us that the love of God is shown in the cross not just because it is nice to serve others, but that it accomplsihed something wonderful. Our greatest need is God, we are made for a relationship with God. The problem that we face is our sin, it separates us from that fundamental need for God. What the atoning sacrifice of Jesus does is rid us of the weight of sin and reconcile us to a relationship with God. This is what God takes on himself, not because of our love for him but out of his immense and powerful love for us. Undeserving, and unmerited we have received God’s love through the cross of Jesus Christ. Bernard of Clairvaux a French monk in the middle-ages said this:

He loves you more than you love Him, and He loved you before you loved Him - Bernard of Clairvaux

God is the origin, and the definition of love. He is the arena and the event. God is Love.

Living in God’s Love - vss. 11-12

1 John 4:11 “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” This challenge, coming in verse 11 is similar in many ways to the opening of our passage in verse 7. John has established that Love’s origin and definition is God, through his action of self sacrifice in the person of Jesus we know what love looks like. The Cross is the perfect example of what love is. God meeting us in our greatest need, and sacrificing himself to meet that need.

This is the point, because God’s love is self sacrificial our love for one another ought to be the same. It is clear that we cannot do what God did, we are not God. But the point is not that we should attempt that, but we should reflect the love we have received to the people we come into contact with. To put it more clearly, because God gave his own life for us, we ought to be willing to give our life for others.

Love is always self-sacrificial. This is the ethic John is calling his readers to embrace.

We might think that John has made a typo in 1 John 4:12 “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” when he says that “if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us.” It seems like a better way of saying this would be that when we love God he abides in us and his love is made complete. (What does John mean by complete? He doesn’t mean that God’s love is lacking or insufficient, but that there is an intentional outcome to God’s love at work in our hearts. That the intended goal of God’s love in our lives is that we would love one another in the same way that God has loved us in Jesus Christ. This is how God makes his presence known among us. When we embrace a posture of love towards one another, God is made known because God is love. Do you see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together?

It is sort of like a master artist that has a following. The painter herself is famous for masterful works of art. Her MO is dramatic uses of light to create contrast and tension in her paintings. As her students grow in their painting abilities and make a name for themselves people with a keen eye are able to see the influence of the Master. Her legacy extends not only through her own paintings but that of her apprentices.

In a similar way, God’s love is the love we experience, it is the love we are transformed by. We are moved by the beauty and the wonder, the drama of the Cross. The glory of the self-sacrifice and the grace of forgiveness. We truly learn what love is because of who God is. We learn how to love because God has made the first move. So, our love for each other embraces this as our foundation, and through it we make the Master’s work, his self-giving love known.)

The Spirit testifies vss. 13-16

A common thread in John’s letter is his assurance for the audience. He both exhorts and encourages them to a deeper understanding of what it means to follow Christ, and affirming that they can have confidence in their place in the family of God. He introduces the role of the Spirit in vs. 13 as the proof that God abides in us. 1 John 4:13 “This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.” This verse is an echo of what John writes at the end of chapter 3 and the beginning of the passage we heard read this morning. Essentially what it boils down to is that the Holy Spirit is the one that testifies inwardly in the life of the believer that tells us the truth about Jesus. To confess the truth about who Jesus us, that he is the Son of God indicates the presence of God’s through his Spirit within us.

Not only does the Spirit testify about Jesus inwardly, convicting us of the truth and enabling us to believe it, but the testimony of John and the apostles is true and trustworthy. 1 John 4:14 “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” This is the central idea of all of what John is communicating about God’s love. 1 John 4:15 “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.” reinforces the confession of the incaranation as the essential requirement for a relationship with God. And not only is this confession something which we can know as a historical fact, but believe in. 1 John 4:16 “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.” Notice how vs 14 and 16 mirror each other in their opening words. In verse 14 John writes “We have seen and testify” and in verse 16 “And so we know and rely on.” Some translations have believe which I think gives us a better idea about what John is intending to communicate. Because, what he is advocatiing for is not a cold hard fact. It is not just head knowledge of an event, but actually a deep trust and reliance on this truth as our foundation in life. The ability to love requires that we know God’s love, and we can only know God’s love through Jesus, and we can only know it as God’s love if we confess that Jesus actually is the Son of God made flesh. If Jesus is not immanuel, if he is not God with us, the cross is just an exercise of capital punishment on a rebellious sectarian criminal. But, if Jesus is God in the flesh then the cross is the event on which the entirety of history hinges. It is the greatest act of love ever known, and in John’s mind it is actually the embodiment of love in the material world. Our confession of the incarnation and our capacity to experience true love, love on God’s terms, are inseperable.

John’s final word in this section brings all these elements together in conclusion. He restates the claim about God’s identity that he made in vs. 8, but rather than knowing God he fills out the picture to now include life itself. 1 John 4:16 “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” Life itself is no all encompassed by the Love of God. Because God is what love is, and because he has made love known in Jesus, we are called into a participation in God’s love as a reciprocal relationship of life together. When we love our lives are in God, and God is present with us.