God Is. . . Love

I think there are times in our lives when that statement feels more true than at other times. There are times when we would easily agree with that statement, and there are times when our mouth may state the words but our minds and hearts have a difficult time justifying the statement with the events we see and experience around us.

Statement comes from

Underline every time you see a word relating to love:

1 John 4:7–12 ESV

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 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. 10 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. 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.

God’s Love is the Evidence of the Believer. (7-8)

(7) Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. (8) Anyone who does not love does not know God,

We show we belong to God when we love like God. (7-8a)

‘love’ =

15 times love used in this passage

common love vs. uncommon love

Common love (kind we see in the world) is love that gains you something.

What does this uncommon love look like?

Loving others when you gain nothing.

Agape = selfless love

no greater love than this -

Loving others at great expense.

Acts 2

Loving people who don’t love you back.

Luke 6:32 ESV

32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

Luke 6:35 ESV

35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Luke 6:

Let’s face it - our Christian walk is really not expressed through the extreme cases (dying for our faith, loving enemies)

It is harder to live out the daily of our faith. But that is where our faith makes all the difference.

It is hard to hug a porcupine

Instead of loving your enemy:

**love the one who irritates you

**love the one who cannot love you back

Uncommon love is the defining mark of a disciple of Jesus:

- Jesus washes his disciples’ feet

John 13:34–35 ESV

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:35 ESV

35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:35

Whoever loves like this ‘has been born of God’

Nicodemus

John 3:3 ESV

3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

John 3:6 ESV

6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

This love is uncommon because it is not from us it is FROM GOD:

Carson:

The New Bible Commentary 4:7–21 God Is Love

Love, as Christians understand it, is not a human achievement; it is divine in origin, a gift from God.

Galatians 5:22 ESV

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

If this love is a fruit of the Spirit then the production of this love in our lives has less to do with how hard we work to produce it and more to do with how hard we pray to receive it.

Gal

Is there an obvious display of an uncommon love that gives evidence to God in your life?

Francis Chan in his book, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed By a Relentless God, states:

“Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people he has made?”

Is there an obvious display of an uncommon love that gives evidence to God in your life?

When ot

(8b) because God is love.

God loves because he IS love. (8b)

The statement is not “God does love” - it is God IS love

It is not a statement of doing - it is a statement of being

You do flows from what you are.

i.e., I’m a pastor - at some time we going to talk about Jesus!

Why is that significant?

because it means that God cannot do anything that is NOT loving.

Theologian A.W. Tozer once stated,

“Nothing God ever does, or ever did, or ever will do, is separate from the love of God.”

That may be a hard statement to swallow for you right now, but it is the truth.

‘God is love’ is not to the exclusion of his other attributes:

God is spirit:

John 4:24 ESV

24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

God is light:

1 John 1:5 ESV

5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

*Notice: Because God’s nature is light, there is no darkness in him at all.

*God (and his people) love because it is in their nature. God, because it is who he is as God, and his people because the Holy Spirit lives and works through them.

God’s Love is the Gift of the Believer. (9-10)

(9) 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.

God showed the world his love by sending Jesus. (9)

3 ways sending Jesus showed God’s love:

God SENT Jesus

it is easy to love from a picture - it is something completely different to enter into their mess.

2. God sent Jesus to the WORLD

While in our rebellion against him, God sent his Son.

3. God sent Jesus to DISPLAY love

Jesus showed by example what God’s love really looks like.

healing the sick

touching the leper

feeding the hungry

honoring women

loving those called unlovable

eating with sinners

Jesus shared God’s love by satisfying God’s wrath. (10)

(10) 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.

Propitiation = atone = kippur

Atoning for what? our sin. Atoning from what? God’s wrath.

While God is indeed love we must never forget that he is also a God of wrath.

J.I. Packer summarizes: “God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil” (Knowing God, 151).

Four truths about God’s wrath:

1) God’s Wrath Is Serious (fearful)

God’s wrath is not popular, but it is biblical

God is not a warm sugar cookie or a big plush teddy bear - He is a consuming fire.

Jesus is the Lion of Judah - not the Cowardly Lion of the Wizard of Oz

God is love, spirit, light, and also a consuming fire:

Heb 12:31

Hebrews 12:29 ESV

29 for our God is a consuming fire.

Jesus is the Lion of Judah - not the Cowardly Lion of the Wizard of Oz

Hebrews 10:31 ESV

31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

2) God’s Wrath Is Just

The wrath of God is not in contradiction to the love of God. In fact, it is because God is by nature love, that God’s wrath exists. They are two sides of the same coin.

Romans 2:5 ESV

5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

A willful rebellion against an eternal God deserves and eternal punishment.

The wrath of God is not in contradiction to the love of God. In fact, it is because God is by nature love, that God’s wrath exists. They are two sides of the same coin.

How do the two work together? We call it - justice.

Theologian Miroslav Wolf used to call the idea of an angry God ‘barbaric,’ but then his country of Croatia experienced a war. He writes,

“My last resistance to the idea of God's wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry.

Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God's wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn't wrathful at the sight of the world's evil. God isn't wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.”

ILLUST - the ‘loving’ but unloving judge.

Because God does all things for his own glory (and that is right and good) he must punish (justly) any attempt to steal his glory. Sin on our part is stealing God’s glory - sin against an eternal God has eternal consequences.

For God to ignore or disregard our sin would actually be unjust. They must be dealt with.

3) God’s wrath is against us

Ephesians 2:1–3 ESV

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Wrath of God - we must not tame our God - He is ferocious for you.

RC Sproul

When we talk about salvation biblically, we have to be careful to state that from which we ultimately are saved. The apostle Paul does just that for us in , where he says Jesus “delivers us from the wrath to come.” Ultimately, Jesus died to save us from the wrath of God. We simply cannot understand the teaching and the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth apart from this, for He constantly warned people that the whole world someday would come under divine judgment.

John 3:36 ESV

36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Jon 3:36

4) God’s wrath is absorbed in Jesus

Ephesians 2:4–5 ESV

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

Jesus’ work on the cross absorbed God’s wrath

Jesus did not repel God wrath. He did not negate God’s wrath. He absorbed it. He tasted it. He drank the cup reserved for you.

J.I. Packer in "Knowing God" designates a distinct difference between pagan and Christian propitiation: "In paganism, man propitiates his gods, and religion becomes a form of commercialism and, indeed, of bribery. In Christianity, however, God propitiates his wrath by his own action. He set forth Jesus Christ... to be the propitiation of our sins."[9]

While you were still a sinner against God, Christ died for you.

God didn’t start loving you because you were loving toward him. In fact, he started loving you when you were completely unloving toward him.

God’s love was initiated by God because of who he is not because of anything you or I had done.

John is not writing this out of some theory but by eye witness account.

John was the only disciple at the foot of the cross - perhaps that is why the word ‘propitiation’ is only found in his writings - he saw first-hand the wrath of God poured out on Jesus during the very time that the Jews were celebrating the Passover - a remembrance of God’s wrath poured out against Pharoah and all those in Egypt who did not believe God and accept his offer to pass his wrath over them if they would mark their houses with the blood of the lamb.

Romans 5:8–10 ESV

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Romans 5:8-

Charles Wesley rightly exulted in this good news:

And can it be that I should gain An interest in the Saviour’s blood? Died he for me, who caused his pain! For me, who him to death pursued? Amazing love! How can it be That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

*God showed and shared his love through Jesus. What should your response be?

God’s Love is the Mission of the Believer. (11-12)

(11) Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

God’s love compels us to love each other. (11)

Standing at the foot of the cross prohibits us from looking down on anyone.

What offense could someone possibly perpetrate against you that could allow you to justify NOT loving someone when you compare it with what Jesus has done for you on the cross?

*Is there obvious love from us toward one another?

God is revealed through our love to the world. (12)

(12) No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

When we love each other - we show God! - And the opposite is also true.

In his work, The Apology, 2nd Century theologian Tertullian wrote:

“It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See how they love one another, they say, for they themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, they say, for they themselves will sooner put to death.”

Love is perhaps the greatest apologetic for the Christian faith. It is possible to resist the truths we state, but it is impossible to deny the love we show.

What are some tangible ways to reveal God through loving those who don’t yet follow Jesus?

*God’s mission of love is carried out through his people.

Conclusion

Psalm 136

Psalm 136:1–3 ESV

1 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. 2 Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever. 3 Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever;

26 times.

God’s nature

See it

God’s gift

Received it

The cross is where grace and wrath meet in a spiritual clash that alters life and death.

God’s mission

Do it

**As we approach the Table of Communion, it is time to assess our love in light of the cross of Christ.

The cross is where grace and wrath meet in a spiritual clash that alters life and death.