Compassion
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God’s Eternal Nature
God’s Eternal Nature
(7-8) Being God
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
God’s eternal nature is love. God is love. He has always been love and is currently love and will always be love.
It is the nature of God to love. It is who he is. It is what he does. God loves.
I like the passage when God hides Moses in the Rock in Exodus 34 and he says to Moses that he will cause His glory to pass by Moses and when the Glory of the Lord passed in front of him scripture says
6 Then the Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: Yahweh—Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in faithful love and truth,
7 maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving wrongdoing, rebellion, and sin. But He will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ wrongdoing on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.
Love is from God. So let us love one another. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
This love is selfless devotion toward God and neighbor.
The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary a. A Further Elaboration of the Social Test: Love (4:7–12)
It is true that the words God is love mean not that loving is ‘only one of God’s many activities’ (Alexander) but rather that ‘all his activity is loving activity’
8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Because God is love
God is the source and origin of love and all true love derives from him.
The one who does not love does not know God
To claim to know God and not have love is like a child who claims their parents but does not look like or act anything like them.
To know God is to Love. It is drawing close to the nature of God and becoming like God and this is loving.
Historical Gift
Historical Gift
(9-11) Loved us and Sent His Son
The origin of love is in being of God, the manifestation or display of that love was in the coming of Christ!
9 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.
We see God’s loving nature on display throughout the Old Testament with the nation of Israel. We see his love with individuals and nations.
God’s ultimate revelation of His love was this
God sent His One and Only Son
Who sent His One and Only Son
God did
It was God who from the very nature of who he is that he Loved us and sent his one and only son for us.
10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Not that we loved God but He loved us and sent His Son
It is not our love that is primary but God’s love
Who’s love is primary? God’s love is primary
God’s free, uncaused and spontaneous Love
Love is self-sacrifice, the seeking of another’s positive good at one’s own cost
The coming of Christ is therefore a concrete historical revelation of God’s love.
This is the greatest example of love. God giving His One and Only Son as a gift to you and I.
Propitiation:
We should remember that propitiation does not mean that men must do something to appease God or to placate His anger. Propitiation is something God does to make it possible for men to be forgiven.
11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.
No-one who has been to the cross and seen God’s immeasurable and unmerited love displayed there can go back to a life of selfishness.
Resist the worldly idea that everything is meant to serve you and your own comfort. Careful that we have a Biblical approach to life. Often times you hear the words “go ahead and get that because you deserve it and you have worked hard for it”.
Algorithms are designed to serve you and your likings. AI always works to build a system built around you.
The beauty of the cross is that we deserved nothing except to be punished for our sins but God in his goodness went to the cross and died on the cross for us who didn’t deserve a thing.
Go to the cross and embrace God’s immeasurable and unmerited love then go and share this with others.
12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.
No one has ever seen God. This is true
If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.
God indwells in us. His love is perfected in us. As His love is perfected in us, we love one another well.
Our love for one another is evidence of God indwelling in us.
His love is perfected in us
God’s love which originates in himself and was manifested in his Son is made complete in his people.
God’s indwelling (13-16)
13 This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit.
We know that or
Here is the proof that we remain in Him and He in us
He has given assurance to us from His Spirit
This gets sooo good. The Love of God is not dependent upon our own self will or our own desire. I have to love them because the Bible says that I do. I have to will myself to love them.
No, God sends His Spirit to live in us. The nature of the Spirit is love.
14 And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world’s Savior.
We know by the Spirit and
We know because we have seen
This is a word here that refers to the actual eyewitness of the life of Jesus on Earth. John is referring this verse to himself and his fellow apostles.
So we have the Holy Spirit as a testimony and we have the witness of the apostles who were eyewitnesses of Jesus.
World
means sinful society, estranged from God and under the dominion of the evil one.
Its urgent need was to be rescued form sin and Satan.
Savior
The Father so loved the world that he sent his Son, His dear and only Son to be its Saviour
If the father saved us from sin then we must run from the sins that the father saved us from.
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God.
If you confess that Jesus is the Son of God
This gives evidence of the fact that God lives in him and he in God.
1 John 1:16
16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
God is love, the one who remains in love remains in God and God remains in him.
Dr. Sharp says its not be better but come closer to the Lord. The closer we come to the Lord the more love flows from us.
God is the source of love. We stay connected to the source and get closer to the source then love flows from us. We start to live out the nature of the one that we are close to.
Completed or perfect love (17-21)
17 In this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, for we are as He is in this world.
Love is perfected with us so that
we may have confidence in the day of judgement
for
We are as He is in this world
The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary 2. Perfect Love (4:17–21)
in our standing before God, even while remaining in this world, we are already like him. We are sons in and through the Son, begotten or born of God as he was (5:18), the objects of God’s love and favour like him (cf.
18 There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love.
There is no room for fear in love. The two are as incompatible as oil and water.
Perfect love drives out fear
fear involves punishment
As forgiven Children of God then punishment has be dealt with through the cross of Jesus.
Keep drawing near to the Lord and don’t let fears keep you from experiencing the love of Jesus.
19 We love because He first loved us.
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen.
21 And we have this command from Him: The one who loves God must also love his brother.
If how a person behaves contradicts what he says, he is a liar.
A brother who is seen should be easier to love than God who we have not seen.
