Start with Love

Intro

Are you a loving person?

It’s a question that puts us in a moment of reflection, am I a loving person? Would my friends if someone asked them about me, would they say I am a loving person? does your family see you as a loving person, If someone were to meet you for coffee for the first time would their impression for you be that you are loving?

That last question is easy, I can manufactor that and I can work really hard to be loving to slide by the radar that maybe I am not the nicest of people.

But how does being a loving person work when we have goals, when we have things we need to do. When we have good days and bad days, what does it mean to love other people.

Do I live a loving life?

Listen to this:

300 Illustrations for Preachers Tiger Woods Helps a Friend Succeed at His Own Expense

While competing for the PGA Tour Championship and a 10-million-dollar purse, Tiger Woods and Sean O’Hair displayed an example of friendship for the entire world to see. O’Hair and Woods were playing a practice round together preceding the beginning of the final playoff tournament. Woods noticed a correctable error in O’Hair’s putting stroke and brought it to his attention. During the next day’s tournament, O’Hair, using the putting tip, was one stroke ahead of Woods. When asked if he had any regrets about giving O’Hair the tip that allowed him to take the lead in such an important tournament, Woods replied, “Sean is a friend of mine, and like all my friends, you always try to make their life better somehow. That’s the whole idea of having friends in your life.”

Building friendships requires an investment of time and energy. And sometimes, it requires sacrifice.

—Jim L. Wilson and Rodger Russell

Again I ask, do you live a loving life?

Because this is a calling from God, the greatest commandment is Love the Lord your God with your heart, soul and Mind and the second is this love your neighbour as yourself. Now I am not going to dig into that text today but Jesus did not stop and pause when adding love your neighbour but includes it right beside, attached and to the same level of importance as our love of God.

So lets talk about two things today; 1. God’s love for you and if you see it the way scripture wants us to see it and 2. Your love for others as a reflection of God’s love for you.

Are you ready Church?

Listen I am going to need to involvement today, your participants today not recipients.

Are you ready Church?

God’s Core is Love

Digging into 1 John 4 and we are going to start at verse 7. See The Author John who also writes the Gospel of John is now writing 1 of 3 letters to a group of Christians who are struggling in their faith.

In this passage we are looking at John talking about Love and what it means to love each other but we need to pay attention to how to arrives at the specific quality of love for one another, or what I will be calling Community Love.

1 John 4:7–12 NIV

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Breaking these 5 verses up here I want to bring up specific parts of this passage that are going to take our understanding of what John said into that next level. From a introduction reading we see that God is love, if we know God we must know that God is love. If we know God is love then we are called to love each other.

Now they way John arrives at God being love in what I am going to call is God’s Core identity.

John in verse eight states this core identity of love: Whoever does not love does not know God becuase God is love.

This needs to be a foundational understanding about God. You need to ask yourself, do I see God as Love, do I give him that core identity.

Okay? Once you acknowledge that God is love, you can point to the root of his actions coming from his core identity.

Follow with me…

Why does God bless people: Love

Why does God Create people

Love

Why does God have Rules?

Love

Why Does God Judge?

Love

This is his core identity, he does not act outside of that identity. If God is love he acts out of love. Some people look at the actions of God and call him harsh or mean but they do not see that even in the judgement or the rules there is still love.

Okay so we understand God’s Core Identity is love. So we then get to back up to verse 7 and see that “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God” and to focus on that word Born as a key word here.

It is not a developed skill; Love is not a developed skill but its a skill that can be develop. Do you understand me?

John is telling us that we cannot develop love from nothing, we cannot love from nothing, with no influence of God we cannot form love of others into our lives.

Now you might say, well thats not true there are people that give to charities or volunteer their time and they are not Christian.

Well the first difference is the word LOVE in this passage.

This Word is a greek word “Agape”; can you say “Agape”.

Now Agape is to love but this is a much more deeper love;

Now there is 4 types of Love in the greek language

See Phileo was to be a human love, I Phileo my friends, its my brotherly love

I Storge my family, I have a tenderness with my family.

I Eros my spouse; There is a romantic and passionate love

Lastly I Agape my God, and before this passage it was almost solely used in reference to God, We would Agape God and God or even as John wrote about Jesus, Jesus would Agape people.

So John starts by saying Who ever Agape’s. Loves in a way that they could only experience, understand and replication by knowing God has been born of God.

So can the world love, yes but it is not like Agape. As John says Everyone who Agape’s has been BORN of God and KNOWS God.

You cannot truly, truly love unless you are Born of God.

Agape-Love is from following God

This is where I come back to where I started, is this love made or is it something you are born with?

Well first you cannot have it unless you are born with it, but it is a born again, something that all people can have becuase all people can follow Jesus, place their faith in him and be born again. It’s available for all people who follow God.

However it is also made, there is a starting state but there is a growing ability here.

However we are told that this love, Agape love is affirmation along with the Spirit that we are with Christ.

Keep reading on with me:

1 John 4:13–16 NIV

This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

So when we confess that Christ is Lord, accept him as saviour we are given Holy Spirit, and Holy Spirit works through us. Now this is so important, The Holy Spirit is the third person in the trinity, all God but three individual persons, its a marvelous mystery. However John writes telling us that we are given the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit acts as this seal of approval.

If we want a restored relationship with God the Father, well Jesus the son dies and we accept his sacrifice and we are given the seal of Holy Spirit who signifies our status as family with God.

Now how John writes this he that he writes it to talk about the trinities fellowship with one another. They are in equal fellowship with one another, no person is equal, no person is lesser. Three persons are all equally God.

So in verse 15 when John writes that God lives in them and they in God we get a feeling for the passion of love that is in the trinity. The intense and deep love of this God’s fellowship.

Now he places these 4 verses to talk about two things:

he is talking about how to start a faith relationship.

he is talking about how our human fellowship should look knowing what God’s trinity fellowship looks like.

We use the intense and passionate love of God in our own relationships with one another.

If we live with God, we understand his love and if we understand his love, even in the slightest of degrees we are to take our understanding the act on it to love others.

That is why verse 16 says: We rely on the love God has for us, and live in God’s love and by that in God.

It’s like this:

Imagine you were invited to study the subject of your choosing from the person on your choosing. That one person, podcaster, teacher who you look upto.

So you pack up your bag, you are given the time and space to go study away from home under this person, all expenses paid.

you study diligently under this person and learn many things that you did not know before, things that would be impactful or powerful back home!

However after a month of studying you decide to visit home and when you are home before anyone can even say welcome home you are busy off to work, to implantment all the things you learned. You are quickly busy becuase of the important work of what you learned in the world around you.

This is what John is talking about in this portion of the text. He is telling us that we have been invited into understanding of what love looks like in the fellowship of the trinity and we are to take the understanding of that and immediately implement it.

We have been given and are continuously being given a peak around the curtain to see how Jesus loves the Father, how the Father loves the Spirit, how the Spirit loves Jesus. We get to see this what is called “The Dance” as these three persons of the one God all are perfectly moving and interacting with one another in this intense and passionate love.

The reason we see this is so that we can rely on it but also live it out. The only difference between this and my illustration is that this is continuously happening.

We are regularly able to lean in and see God’s love, experience God’s love and then take it out in the world. This is AGAPE love, that we can lean in and understand it and lean out and deliver it and to have this rythmic movement of taking in love and giving love as God gives us love.

Agape -Love models the Trinity’s love.

Now John applies this earlier in the text when he talks about God the Father sending Christ to be the atoning sacrifice, That we are to mimic or copy this type of sacrificial love towards one another.

Verse 11 talks about sacrifice, that a AGAPE love, if you love someone else in brotherly love you are ready to sacrifice for that love. Maybe thats time, finances, energy, possesions, you name it. IF we believe that that trinity models Agape love then our love needs to be sacrificial

John 15:13 Jesus says this: John 15:13

John 15:13 NIV

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

what a great verse but it is a reinforcement of a command if we read one verse ealier:

John 15:12 NIV

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Agape love is brotherly love with the lack of self interest. That I am so eager to show someone else that they are cared for that I am ready to give up any self preservation I have.

Can you say that you have lived a love like that?

With your spouse? that’s tough enough but when it comes to my brothers, my sisters, my neighbours and friends, my co-workers, my class mates. That I would value them so much that I would be ready to give up my time, energy, my wallet, I would be ready to sacrifice even parts of my live style or reputation. that the respect of others for someone to know that I have such a deep brotherly love for them…

There is this guy I know and I attended his wedding maybe a year ago. Now I know him from working with him for sometime and we were best buds but as time moves on we didn’t chat much becuase we lived in different provinces.

Well the night of the wedding comes and me and Rhiannon are driving out and I say “oh I bet this will be a more secular wedding”. There is probably going to be lots of drinking.

Now I don’t drink, it’s a unsatisfying taste for me over anything. Hand me a coke zero and thats my party.

However I am surrounded by people who have been drinking a variety of amounts. However I am there, even if that is not my type of party becuase of my deep love of my friend. I am there even if I hardly speak with him that night becuase I deeply care for him.

Now you might say with him, I would be there too. However you might say why would you even attend if you know thats the case Liam? I went into it with a good idea of what would take place there. Listen to me here,

We know what Scripture says on drinking, Eph 5:18

Ephesians 5:18 NIV

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit,

So I am not participating but I am not afraid to attend. I know my calling and my calling is to not get drunk with them but to give brotherly, agape love.

The Apostle Paul writes on this very subject and uses food sacrificed to idols in Romans 14

Back to my story tho

Me and Rhiannon are just chatting with people and we want to leave becuase it’s not our crowd like I don’t know what to chat about with some people there.

But we stay and my friend the groom comes over. I can tell he is enjoying his wedding and the drinks there but he gives me a huge and says, thank you for coming; I look up to you and the things you do.

In that moment there was complete truth and sincerity.

This is what brotherly love is about.

I gave my time,

I got a baby sitter for the night

We drove 6 hours to be there

We payed for a gift

We spent time with people who I did not want to be around

Because I have a deep brotherly love for someone that I am ready to sacrifice all things but my faith for them.

Agape -Love requires sacrifice

But that is also difficult and John brings to light the challenge that is required to live at this level of loving.

1 John 4:17–18 NIV

This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Now John bringing us from theory to application and now challenges us to put something down to pick this up.

John states that Love of God is make complete in us so we will have confidence on the day of judgement and where your mind should wonder to is the great white throne in Revelation 20, where God has the book of life and is judging all creation.

Now that passage is often a scary passage; for it says that the dead are judged for what they had done and skipping a bit; anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

However John is challenging our own viewpoint on this; not the text directly but the way we feel about the text. That we should not be fearful over something like God’s judgement but rather as we approach it we are confident.

If there is one thing I want you as disciples of Jesus to know is do not be afraid of the judgement that is to come but be confident. Why? Because you know the judge and the judge knows you but it does not stop there, there is Jesus who is advocating for you to the Father. Then also the Holy Spirit who testifies on your behalf.

It’s a stacked defense becuase of your relationship with Jesus.

So there is confidence because at the time of Judgement, there is this undertone of love; deep love; agape love.

Agape -Love brings confidence

If you truly know God you would see even in judgement that there is love and that when you receive judgement or conviction, that when you are corrected that it is done so lovingly and be confident that God is truly for you and his desire is to see you grow.

So we cannot live in fear of God, and this fear is plain in the sense. If you read the Psalms you will read fear and it talks greatly about the fear of the Lord and this understanding of fear in other parts of scripture is more of reverence of the Lord. But John writes it here plainly that we cannot fear the Lord becuase that is not love.

Fear of punishment is the opposite of being made in perfect love. The two cannot co-exist and to explain that more we can read verse 19 which is a very popular verse;

1 John 4:19 NIV

We love because he first loved us.

If we take the idea that Perfect love and fear cannot co-exist and the earlier parts of the text where God’s lives in us and his love makes us complete we can see that Johns point of this text is twofold.

that becuase of God’s great works… We are able to love God, it’s not because of anything that we did but everything he has done. our relationship with God is restored becuase of the work he has done and our follow up love

in creation

in the birth of his son Jesus

in the death of Jesus

the sending of Holy Spirit

That becuase of God’s residence in us and him creating us a new in his perfect love. When we love others we are doing nothing from our own being but being a relay of God’s love to others.

Now I really want to focus on this relaying love to others becuase that is where the author John will go in these last few verses so let me read them.

1 John 4:19–21 NIV

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

In Johns writing there is not break in thought between the two but connects God’s divine love to us to the idea of God’s divine love through us.

So when he says verse 20 about hating a brother or sister and them being a liar then what he speaks is convicting truth. God’s love cannot be with you if it is not reflecting off you as well.

Paul writes about this multiple times:

Ephesians 5:1–2 NIV

Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love

OR think of the fruit of the Spirit… What is the first fruit?

Galatians 5:22–23 NIV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

God’s love and the brotherly love are deeply tied together and co-exist in the life of a disciple of Jesus. You cannot take God’s love and leave the reflection of it on the side. Nor can you choose to love someone and not give credit to God who works through you to make it Agape.

It’s like a window.

Maybe this has happened to you or you have seen a video of someone fixing their hair or their teeth using a car window as a reflector?

Then the person rolls down the window and it’s revealed that they can see right through it.

A Window takes light through it and reflects light off of it’s surface.

This is what is required of you, As John says you’d be a liar if you claim God’s love but yet hate another person. SO the command is that if you love God then you must love your brother or sister, and this is not a familial command but a community based command. That my brother or sister in Christ, but can I engage this one step further that this should be all people. The reason I want to expand this from just those who follow God is becuase there is many more scriptures that would agree,

The parable of the good samaritan as the cornerstone but take a piece of scripture like this.

2 Peter 3:9 NIV

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

If you pair that we that great commission to make disciples or acts 1:8 to be a witness of Jesus then being a reflector of God’s love is the best method.

So when it comes to loving your neighbour as yourself or loving some with brotherly love. The reason John says love and uses the Divine love to speak about it is becuase he is inviting us into seeing that as Christians our Love is based sole off of God’s love through us.

Agape -Love is reflections of God’s love

So how are you to take in this AGAPE love and also Reflect this love?

Being a recipient of God’s love

It’s a great season to understand that, when we celebrate the birth of our saviour who arrives to fulfil perfect love. However as much as you can hear it, you need to experience it. to receive the love of God and be made new is the first way to apply love in your life.

Maybe life has not gone the way you want and you are saddened or angry at God. Fearful that it has been punishment for something, I want to invite you to come and be prayed for today that he might reveal his love in your life. That you might see God’s love even through some of the hardest and darkest days of your life.

Well like John says earlier Agape love is sacrificial, that just as God gave his son Jesus and Jesus gave up his life so you could have a relationship with the father. God the father loves you so much he was willing to give up his son Jesus. Maybe it’s time to start taking this love seriously, and I want into you to come be prayed for, to take in God’s love in your life today.

2. Being a reflection of God’s love

that you should be ready to give up something in love for someone.

As you spend time with others, all people you are reflecting the trinity’s love. However you must recognize it, have confidence in love and attribute it to them

So I want to invite you to love sacrificially this coming week. What action would show love that would cost you something, money, time, reputation. How would you go out of your way to show someone how much Jesus loves them.

When we live a life of love that is sacrificial we begin to understand the depth of love that God has for us. In turn you will see your faith deepen when you live the love of God out.

So I want to end by meeting you where you are today. Two different points of one very Divine love:

Do I live with Divine Love?

Take it personally, communally, either way I am prescribing this moment of personal refection:

Are you living with Divine Love

If you don’t know or need guidance will you pray with me now and lets ask Holy Spirit together.