The Source and Display of Love

1 John 4:7–12 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

PRAY

As we have been going through this book, we know that John is the author of this letter. The disciple of Jesus, now an Apostle (sent one) to make Christ known among the churches in Asia Minor.

We have seen previously that the writing of this letter was necessary because a group had left the church. They believed a different teaching and they were propagating it even after they left. That’s why John wrote in 1 John 2:19 “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”

They were teaching false doctrine; a teaching that denied the incarnation of Jesus Christ, or the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. They claimed to have superior spiritual knowledge, they appeared to downplay sin and love for brothers.

That is why it was necessary for John to write to the churches in Asia Minor, to assure the ones who remained, in 1 John 5:13 he says, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.”

The ones that departed are not carrying the message of truth, it is with the ones who remained, and John gave them 3 tests that we considered in earlier:

The doctrinal test - right belief about Jesus Christ (God in the flesh).

The moral test - obedience, walking in righteousness, not living in habitual sin.

The ethical test - love for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

In the last sermon when we considered vs 1-6, we looked at the doctrinal test i.e. the right belief about Jesus Christ.

Today we are going to consider the ethical test. We have looked at this subject of love twice before. As we said earlier, John keeps circling around certain themes throughout this letter. love is one of them:

First when we considered 2:7-11, we looked at the Old/New Commandment and we saw that hating a brother is equivalent to walking in darkness.

Then we considered 3:11-24, talking about loving in deed and in truth and saw the example of Cain hating his brother compared to Christ laying down his life.

Today we shall consider the deepest and final consideration of this subject of love grounded in the nature of God Himself. We shall see the origins of love through the triune God and the implications of His love in the life of the church.

I have titled this sermon: THE SOURCE & DISPLAY OF LOVE

In verse 7–8, our attention goes to the Source of Love

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

John as we have come to know his writing begins by the phrase that shows his tender affection “beloved” and calls them to ‘love one another’. Love one another is a phrase that he will use two more times by the time we get to verse 12.

Why are we to love one another? John gives us the reason, it is because love is from God. Real love, true love, self-giving love, sacrificial love, which we understand as Agape always has it’s source in God. The essence of love is rooted in our Creator.

The christian life is a life of an image bearer. We get to be merciful with others because God is merciful. In our LORD’s prayer, we see we are forgive others as we recognize that forgiveness has first come from the LORD. Therefore believers love one another because that love is from God. So in the new birth, being born again, our spiritually dead selfish hearts are renewed by the LORD with His living, loving heart so that His life becomes our life and His love becomes our love.

John Piper explains it well by saying “Love is from God the way heat is from fire, or the way light is from the sun. Love belongs to God’s nature. It’s woven into what he is. It’s part of what it means to be God. The sun gives light because it is light. And fire gives heat because it is heat. So John’s point is that in the new birth, this aspect of the divine nature becomes part of who you are. The new birth is the imparting to you of divine life, and an indispensable part of that life is love. God’s nature is love, and in the new birth that nature becomes part of who you are.… When you are born again, God himself is imparted to you.”

So love has its very origin and source in God, and it is evidence that we have been born of God. This is the foundation for genuine love. Not only do those who love others with the self-giving love show evidence that they have been born of God, they also show through their ongoing habits of life that they know God. The knowing here is not simply knowing about Him, as many Kenyans who are not believers would say, but knowing him intimately and personally as Father. 1 John 3:1 “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God;...” John responds in a statement of praise!

We see verse 7 having a positive sense of love. Verse 8 has a negative warning. And the warning is if your life is not characterized by self-sacrificial, God-like love, a love that has no concern even for enemies, then you do not know God. When you extend this logically, it means that you have not been born of God. Why? Because God is love. It is the very essence, character and nature of God to love. To give and sacrifice at great expense to Himself.

However when we consider God is love, many times the world twists this to form a reverse statement saying “Love is God”. This is not true because love does not define God but God defines love. The worldly thinking turns love into an object of worship, creating idols. But the definition has to start with God. Grass is green does not mean the same as “green is grass” or when we say rain is water does not mean “water is rain”. So let us not be confused by worldly narratives when people idolize love to the extent we forget about God Himself.

Secondly when you look at the world, you will see love by unbelievers. When a mother has a new born baby, she will strive to care for the newborn at great expense to her comfort. You will see people sacrificing their comforts to help others in need when disaster strikes. These are great displays of God’s common grace, that man as an image bearer was not completely removed as a result of the fall. We still see how evil men give good gifts to their children. But this is not bring salvation, our love is a response to the self-giving love of God. We receive by faith what the LORD has done and in turn live as a loving people to show that we are born of God and that we know Him.

So we see how this flows:

God is love

Those who have been born of God and know God are His children.

God’s children have God’s nature.

God’s children therefore will love.

So our first point about the Source of Love; it is God, and as we love like God loves, we give evidence we are connected to the source. We mirror the Father’s heart. We demonstrate by a life of love that we know God.

In verse 9-10, we are drawn to the second point The Display of Love

9–10 “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

The phrase “the love of God was made manifest among us” talks about the love of God put on public display. The love of God being experienced by His creation in a salvific manner. We did not just hear about it, John says we saw it, we touched it and gazed upon it. We were eyewitnesses.

We know that the law of Moses provided for two or three witnesses to establish a matter. The eyewitnesses of God’s love made manifest among us were not just two or three, at least we have the twelve, and many more who walked with him. At one point Peter proclaimed John 6:68–69 “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” After seeing the resurrected Jesus Thomas proclaimed John 20:28 “My Lord and my God!”. These were eyewitnesses of Christ’s humanity and deity, or Christ’s life here on earth, his death and resurrection. It is not only a biblical record, it is a historical fact, recorded by historians who did not view our faith favourably. So the love of God was made manifest among us.

The way a fallen creation experiences the love of God is by God sending His only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. Now we see the self-giving, sacrificial God. And this was not a reaction to sin, it was put in place before creation. In Ephesians 1:3–5 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,”

In my early days in faith, I thought that the Father sending the Son was a reaction to man falling. But the scriptures show me that God’s plan was made before creation. The LORD made provision to save a people, for them to be holy and blameless before Him. through Christ. So the love we see in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” That love did not begin after the fall, it is an eternal love! So the very love that the Father has for his people is an eternal love. It is not love that is measured in time. When people ask a married couple how they came together, often the telling of their story shows that their love for each other started at some point in time. For me, it was a year before Ann and I got married. I wish I could have told her that I had always loved her even before meeting her, maybe we could have been married sooner, but that is not possible, because man’s love is not eternal. By the way, that is solid advice for the young ladies when you hear a gentleman telling you that his love is timeless. Do not be shaken sister, do not be swept off your feet! Stand on Ephesians as the foundation for your knowledge on God’s display of timeless love! To the unmarried gentlemen, I’m sorry, today one more line has been removed from your quiver of mistari. But take heart, you still have many more to use.

So the Father sent the Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. What does it mean to “live through Him?” It means to be born of God and to know God. It means to experience His love and share that love with others. It means to enjoy fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It means to walk in the light, enjoy fellowship with one another, confess and receive forgiveness of sins, walk as He walked, abide in the Word and His will, know the truth, be confident at His second coming, have victory over sin, and so much more. What a life the Son provides!

This is perfect love, the love of God, how do we see it in time as creation? When we read... In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. We are not the initiators of love, God is. He showed this by sending His Son in time. The eternal Son took on limitation. He took our form, he was subject to time, he experienced a fallen world, took upon himself the sin of his creation, yet without sin. He laid down his life for us. He came looking for us even when we were not looking for Him. When you see the word propitiation you know that it means that the sacrifice of Christ satisfied the wrath of God. In our cultures, we have seen how people pour things on the ground to appease the gods, to satisfy their anger, so that we get rain, or a bountiful harvest, or peace, or so that our flocks may multiply. After that, what happens? Shall we continue doing this every year, every season, every day? There is only one God, there is only one sacrifice, and that is through Jesus Christ our LORD. Brothers, let us not take anything from the greatest sacrifice. When we do that, we are diminishing the love of God for the world.

[Sing] behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called the sons of God.

What a privilege!

As we get into verse 11 & 12, as we come to an end of this first half, we see the implication of verses 7-10 in the life of the church. What is our natural response as believers?

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Love is perfected in us when we love others. I remember when we were constituting as a local church and a question was asked to the members, “Why do you desire to be a local church?” One response from us is that as a local church, we can be accountable to one another. That was a good response, but the person asking the question pointed us to the greater thing. The greater thing was not accountability, but love, love for one another. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. It is often that Christians are not known for their love of others. We are seen as self-righteous, as judgemental, as people who despise or condemn others, as people who live in hypocrisy, or arrogant. Yet Jesus said John 13:35 “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” He also said Matthew 5:44 “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”

Again, John uses an endearing term to draw us to what is important. Beloved, wapendwa. He is building on the foundation laid by vs 7-10. And as he calls on these dear ones, he is using the “greater to lesser” argument. If the greater is accomplished, surely the lesser can be done. So if God loves us this way, look at the cross, then we ought to naturally out of gospel gratitude and connection to God who is the very source of love - ought to love one another. This is why Christ was praying to the Father, saying John 17:26 “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

As believers, we are called to live out day-by-day who we are as those who are born of God, as those who have experienced the love of God in the sacrifice of His Son. We are simply enjoying and experiencing who we are in Christ when we love one another.

When we were in darkness, God sent His light. When we were dead, God sent His life. When we were in sin, God sent His Son. When we were in despair, God sent His love.

Wapendwa, this is where love begins, not in our hearts, not in creation, but in God Himself, in the very nature of God. It was not a nice thought, or a theory, it was made manifest among us, by the Father sending His only Son, to die for us on the cross. If you have put your trust in this display of love, then you have been born of God and you know Him. In light of this, then the love of God should be experienced relationally with others. Is there a brother or sister toward whom you sense coldness, silence, distance, or tension that contradicts the love you claim to have received? Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

And if you're sitting here today wondering whether this love is even real in you — whether you've only heard about it rather than known it — come to the cross again. That's where the love of God was made manifest, and that's still where it's found. And may your heart sing...

At the cross at the cross where I first saw the light

and the burden of my heart rolled away,

it was there by faith I received my sight

and now I am happy all the day.

Next week we'll ask another question: how do we know this love is not just an event we believe happened two thousand years ago, but a presence abiding in us right now. For that, John points us to the Spirit — but that is for next Sunday. Amen?

PRAY