Sermon Tone Analysis

/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.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world/.[1]

Some topics are so vast that they terrify the conscientious minister of the Word.

The concept promoted by the title of this particular message, to say nothing of the text, presents one such overwhelming topic.

I recognise, and I have often acknowledged, that God’s love is the stuff of contemporary caricature for those wishing to ridicule the Faith.

Nevertheless, the Word of God presents this aspect of God’s character so that no individual need miss the motivating force of salvation.

In John’s writings, three great truths are stated concerning God.

John tells us that God is Spirit [*John 4:24*].

Likewise, it is through John’s writing that we are informed that God is light [*1 John 1:5*].

In the text before us, John reveals that God is love [*1 John 4:8*], as he will again teach us in a few verses [*1 John 4:16*].

The Apostle John does all Christians a great service in revealing the character of God, and no more vital revelation of our God is given us than this one defining characteristic of love.

God is Spirit, and thus spirit, not matter, is the essence of His being.

Because God is Spirit, Jesus taught the Samaritan woman that mankind can worship God anywhere.

Worship is not a matter of time or place or form.

Worship is rather a matter of spirit and of truth.

Likewise, God is light as opposed to darkness.

There is no hint of evil in Him.

He is perfect moral goodness.

Therefore, we must be pure in heart and be cleansed from sin as we walk with Him in daily fellowship.[2]

God is also love.

Love is the essence of His being.

There is nothing deeper in the nature of God than sacrificial love, love that bears and suffers for the good of the one loved.

This is the nature of God revealed to us in Christ the Lord.

This is the God to whom we look in our study this day, seeking to understand Him and especially seeking to experience His glorious and divine love.

The Character of God Defined — God is love.

This simple statement is memorised by multitudes of Sunday School children.

Perhaps you, also, once memorised this verse as a child.

However, when you hear that statement, what do you think of?  *Love* is one such word which has been stolen from our vocabulary in recent days.

What is love?

John Mitchell has provided wise instruction concerning the love of God.

In an excellent little survey of this letter, he writes: People come to me and say, “Mr.

Mitchell, I am not a pagan.

I believe in God.

I have my God and you have yours.”

Then I ask them, “What kind of a God do you have?”

They will say that their God is a God of love.

Then I ask them, “How do you know that your God is love?”

You see, my friend, apart from the Scriptures, apart from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, there is no revelation that God is love.

We do not find love in nature.

One animal preys on another, and one fish feeds on another fish.

No, we do not find love displayed in nature.[3]

There is nothing more important in any religion than the character of its God.

Allah, the god of Islam is a fierce, even a vicious creature.

He instructs his followers to immolate themselves in the hope of smiting even a handful of his enemies and rewards male adherents with sexual favours.

He teaches hatred and excuses tyranny through condemning success in those outside his faith.

He promises peace through the sword.

The God of the Christian Faith is otherwise.

He lovingly calls all who will listen, warning them of the consequence of exiting this life without a transformation of the soul.

He longs to see the rebels lay down their arms in order to be adopted into His Family.

He is gracious and good, even toward those who are bent on hostility toward Him.

If I examine this God of love who is revealed through the Bible, I should be able to discover something of what is meant by the term *love*.

Perusing the Word, I quickly discover that God reveals through His Word that divine love is active rather than passive.

Love is not defined by how one feels about the object loved, but love is demonstrated through action.

Here is a marvellous example of the love God commands.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes [*Deuteronomy 6:4-8*].

Divine love is demonstrated by man through diligent instruction in the home, through meditating on the commands of God, through exalting His will.

Love stimulates one to action instead of permitting passive contemplation.

The reason this is so is because God Himself actively calls us to life and actively provides for our benefit.

What other meaning can that familiar verse hold which teaches us, God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life [*John 3:16*]?

God’s love led Him to give.

That is active and not passive.

God’s love is aggressive in pursuing the object of love.

God’s love does not permit Him to passively wait for those who are the focus of His love to one day wake up and cease their rebellion, but instead, God pursues the wanderer.

One of the most comforting passages in the whole of Scripture is that found in *Romans 8:28-30*.

We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

I am reminded of the old Scots lady who spoke when the parson solicited testimonies of God’s grace.

“I worked hard to be saved,” the old woman said.

Of course, her words shocked those who listened.

Salvation is not of works, but it is all of grace and her words seemed odd in their seeming opposition to grace.

“Yes,” she continued, “I found it necessary to run fast in order to stay ahead of the Saviour who pursued me.”

That is the story precisely.

We ran from grace, but in love, God pursued us.

Looking back, my testimony is that God called me from my mother’s womb, made provision for my salvation before the world began, and knew me before I was born.

This is persistent and aggressive love.

God’s love is focused on the object of love regardless of the response of the one loved.

The testimony of every Christian is that God loves us *in spite of* and not *because of*.

This is not a truth which we can explain, though every Christian has experienced this truth.

We are objects of God’s love, and we were loved even when we were in rebellion.

God did not choose us because of anything we might offer Him, but in love, He predestined us to receive His grace.

I could never have understood the Ephesian letter whilst situated outside the precincts of divine love; but once brought into the love of God, I marvel at the words which the Apostle wrote in the introduction of that letter.

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 through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth [*Ephesians 1:3-10*].

God’s love requires no merit from within the one loved.

Instead, we read that His love is extended to the rebel while the rebel is still rebelling!

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.