Love comes from God

Arm Chair Critic

Have you ever sat watching some sport on the TV and you find yourself yelling at the TV telling them what they should have done?

Your team is about to score and all they need to do is pass the ball as there is a man standing out in the open. You just don’t know why they couldn’t see that!

Maybe sports not your thing. Maybe instead you watch the news and some politician is sprouting his stuff and you yell at him through the TV screen, telling him how his logic is all wrong.

It’s what we might call an armchair critic.

Now being an arm chair critic is easy. There are in fact a lot of advantages to being an armchair critic.

Because you’re only yelling at the TV screen, it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong because they can’t answer you back.

In the case of sport, you have the advantage of slow motion replays where everything always seems so much easier.

At the end of the day, the armchair critic is easy because you don’t have to prove anything. It’s all about theory.

Armchair critic of church

I believe it is also easy to be an armchair critic of the church - and I believe that goes for both people within and outside the church.

Every so

Every so often I’ll hear comments from people outside the church telling me what the church is doing wrong and how they should do better. Certainly in light of the Royal Commission into child abuse, those armchair critics have only risen their voice.

But even from within the church it is easy to be an armchair critic, after all, I’m sure we’ve all got our own opinions about how we could improve things.

Link with last week

Now last week, I looked at a passage in where Jesus describes himself as the vine and tells us that we are the branches, and that we can remain in him through love. And so one of the messages to come from that was that as a church it becomes so vital that we keep that love as the thing that drives us.

In fact, it is that idea that has largely driven our new vision statement which begins with “love” (the rest of it being “love, share, serve”).

I had a number of comments after that message last week agreeing that love is essential.

So we’ve got biblical justification for love, and we’ve also got agreement by consensus that love is vital, but next comes the part where it becomes easy to sit back in our armchair and pass judgement.

You see, we’ve all got our own ideas of how that love should be expressed. Some see love for others being expressed by always being willing to lend a hand no matter how much it puts you out. It’s the idea that if we say no for selfish reasons, then it’s not real love.

At the other end of the spectrum there’s what we might call ‘tough love’. This is the type of love that recognises that if by saying ‘no’ to someone, this may just be the most loving because you are teaching them to stand on their own two feet.

And of course, there are many of ways we can think tho express it. Part of the problem, is that often when we consider how well others are expressing love, we can become just another armchair critic who is more about theory than practice.

And like all armchair critics our perspective is limited. I know that as an armchair critic, we feel that our perspective is actually greater, but by not being in the moment, it really isn’t.

And so, as we explore this idea of loving others, we are in need of a better perspective.

Well thankfully, I believe the passage that I read earlier gives us that perspective, and my hope is that we may dwell on the truths expressed here before we rush into thinking what we should do next as a church.

Context of 1 John

The passage I read earlier was from the book of 1 John. This book is generally considered to be one of the letters written by the Apostle John with the purpose of encouraging believers in their journey.

Within the letter, John makes it clear that “true believes must believe that Jesus truly is the Christ come in the flesh and this belief must work itself out in righteousness and love.” (reference Intro the NT by Carson and Moo)

And it’s this last part about belief working itself in love that we come to in the passage we have before us today which is .

The context immediately prior to this is that John is telling his readers that they can overcome any spirit because God is with them. In saying this, John establishes the fundamental difference between the spirit of the world and the spirit of God, which leads us into our exposition of God being love.

God is love

The basic premise then that we get from the passage before us is that God is love and because of that we love others. If you apply that to the context that immediately preceded this, you see that John is showing how this will fundamentally make us different from the world around us, which while there may be an allusion to love, what you actually find is a self-focussed love.

The point that I am going to draw from it is that if we want to know anything about love, then we have to stop and look at the one who embodies the very concept.

You see, twice in this passage we read “God is love”. It first comes at the end of the eighth verse, and then again in the middle of verse 16.

What is clear in such a description is that you can’t separate the essence of God from his love. This is one of the defining characteristics of who God is.

Now before I continue I just want to state that a strong conclusion from this passage is the love we are to show to others. As I explore the passage, I’m going to leave the application of this for today, because this is what we will focus on in coming weeks, instead I want to use today’s message to focus on how God loves us.

I’m doing this because I believe this must be the starting point. We can’t begin to explore what our love should look like to others if we don’t fundamentally understand the love that God has shown us first.

Our love reflects God’s

I believe that is the point that John is trying to make in the opening few verses starting at verse 7. He fundamentally links the love we show with the knowledge of God.

He states it both in the positive and negative form.

First the positive: “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God”.

And then in the negative: “Whoever does not love does not know God”.

Now on the surface this might sound like a bit of an overstatement. After all, I’m sure you can probably think of numerous examples of your non-Christian friends showing love.

But, despite these exceptions you might find, I believe this speaks of a truth that it is only in God that we learn how to love. The curious thing that I believe we find is that even in your non-Christian friends, the love that they do show is actually a result of God working in their life.

And so, before we even get into the centerpiece of God’s love, we learn something truly quite remarkable, and something we’ll touch on again shortly, and that is that we can reflect God’s love, and so you can begin to experience God’s love, by observing those who are close to God.

Now a quick word of caution, even those close to God are not perfect, and we all are affected by sin, therefore, even in a mature Christian you will only see but a reflection of God’s love.

The real thing

In verse 9 however, John moves beyond just the imperfect love that you can see in his people, and shows us the real thing - the thing that I want us to focus on this morning, because it it the thing that will drive the love that we need to show.

Let me just read both verse 9 and 10 to you again, because it is one of the most fundamental things that we believe as Christians.

1 John 4:9–10 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)

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.

If you want the perfect illustration of what love is, then look no further than the God sending his son to earth to be an atoning sacrifice for us.

I just want to dwell on this for a moment because it gets to the very heart of all that we are about.

Just think about the incarnation. We are talking here of the second member of the Trinity. He is not just god-like, he is God. He didn’t owe anybody anything. If he wanted to just wipe out humanity, he would be perfectly in his rights to do so, and quite frankly, he would have very good reason to do so.

But not only did he refrain from wiping out humanity, he did the opposite. He actually made himself one of us.

In doing so he subjected himself to all of the struggles and disappointments that we face.

But the reason he did so wasn’t just because he was curious, but because he wanted to be close with us. He subjected himself to all that comes with being human, just because he loved us. It meant that he we could now have a relationship with him - not as some distant deity, but as one of us.

But that’s not all, as verse 10 so clearly teaches us. You see, love is Jesus on a cross.

We need to understand what this is about. To understand the significance of the cross we need to understand that humanity had permanently damaged its relationship to God. No one is able to stand before God, because our natures are incompatible. He is Holy. We are sinful.

I know some people struggle with this concept, but once you recognise the truth of it, then you realise hopelessness of our situation. A situation that would have been complete hopeless except that God provided another way.

He did want to come back in relationship with us, but that would involve a price to be paid - a price that humanity is just incapable of providing.

The only way that humanity could be taken out of that mess was if God provided the perfect payment for them - a payment that would involve Jesus dying for the sins of the world.

This was the ultimate demonstration of love.

I believe that without understanding this sacrifice, our understanding of love will always be deficient.

You see, what is so significant about this, and what will drive everything we do as Christian, is that this love was not deserved. If we are going to talk about what was deserved, then we would all be wiped out.

As I said before, I will leave most of my application about how we are to love others for the weeks to come, but I think it is very important to point out now, as it does in our passage, that because of how undeserved this love was, we need to make sure that we love everyone, and by everyone, we don’t just mean our friends, but even those who we would even count among our enemies.

This is the type of love we are talking about. A love that crosses boundaries. It’s a love that doesn’t really make sense, and this is why it is really only a love that usually fits in with the Christian worldview.

As Jesus tells us at another time, if someone strikes you on the cheek, turn the other cheek to them, or if someone takes your shirt, give them your coat as well.

In the eyes of the world it doesn’t make sense, but this is the type of love that comes from Jesus.

What we can learn about love

Coming back to , want to highlight some other great things that we can learn about love.

We can experience it

Firstly, this is love that we can personally experience through the Holy Spirit.

If you look at verse 13 it tells us how God’s spirit means we can know God is in us. Verse 14 then tells us by this means we have seen and testify to God’s work.

The beautiful thing about this is that God’s love for us does not remain as some theoretical truth, but rather a truth to be experienced.

I’m going to come back to this, because this will get to the main application that I want to give today.

Takes away fear

But before I do, there is another thing we learn.

God’s love takes away fear. We see this clearly expressed in verse 18.

Now fear can be an interesting topic. That’s because there are a few sides to fear.

On one side, fear is actually a good thing. We learn from the wisdom literature that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

But when fear is used in this way it is talking about fear like reverent respect. A good analogy is the fear a child has of his parents (at least, in a healthy household). At youth group for example, I know that for some kids, the fear of me calling their parents can be enough to change their behaviour dramatically.

That fear is good because it can drive us to be better. But there is a bad side to the same fear.

You see, while the fear should drive us to be better, it also reminds us of our sinfulness. It reminds us that we are deserving of judgement.

When there is no love, that fear is perhaps the worst thing imaginable. But love erases this side of fear. We still hold that reverent respect, but it’s of a different nature. And that is all because of the cross.

When we experience the love of God, our fear is taken away, and this truly is a beautiful thing.

Application

Before I finish this morning, I want to together some of the ideas that I’ve raised today.

As I’ve already said, my focus this morning isn’t so much on the love that we show as a result. This will be my focus for the three weeks to follow.

Instead, I want to use this passage as an antidote to becoming an armchair critic of the church. You see, instead of focusing on how well or perhaps how poorly we in the church show love, let’s start by focusing on seeing it done perfectly.

Time for reflection

Earlier I gave some reflections on the meaning of the cross. It’s all well and good to listen to my reflections, but I believe for this to really sink in, we need to sit with it and let the truths of it become more real.

That most likely means taking time out to listen to God. Exactly how that looks for you might vary. You might like to use a study guide to help you move through various parts of scripture. Maybe you like to just meditate on a few verses, perhaps keeping a journal for your reflections.

Can I suggest however that it can be good to vary it up.

Something that I’ve found useful lately is listening to a recording of scriptures read by an actor. I actually have a free app on my phone which has a number of different recordings that I can use. Sometimes when you have scripture read to you it can add a fresh new dimension.

Enjoy the experience

But as you reflect on it, I would urge you to not just let this be a theoretical truth, but explore how you can really experience the love of God.

I’m well aware that many of you have spoken to me about times in your life where you have really experienced God’s love in a real physical way. Again, what this feels like for you might differ.

For me, it is a real sense of assurance. A sense that I know that I have someone watching over me.

What I love is that you can get this feeling both in the good times and the bad.

Sometimes I look back over good times in my life and just realise that God has been so good to me. And I can really feel that love.

At other times, when the stress levels rise and everything feels like it is falling down around me, again I can really sense that God is loving me and helping me through.

The trick with this, is to actually have the presence of mind to realise it. Both in the good and bad times, we can often be too preoccupied with whatever it is to realise how much God is showing his love to us.

Conclusion

The message that I want you to take home today is that when we talk about love, it starts with God. We’re going to get to the love that we show as a result, but it can’t start with this. If we try to start with this we will inevitably fail.

This really is the starting point for our vision statement for the church. We are to love, share and serve, but this comes not from ourselves, but flows out of the love that God showed us first.

So before we get into armchair critic mode and pointing out all the faults of the church, let’s instead focus on the perfect - God’s love for us.

Let’s pray...