1 John 4:17-21 MAN.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

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.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

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.

Introduction:

English Standard Version Chapter 4

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.

In today’s world, we’re driven by output. And because we’re driven by output, we tend to believe that the more you produce, the more you can profit. And I think this mentality bleeds into our faith as well. We read these verses, and we’re quick to focus on the output of love. “Whoever loves knows God,” so, focusing on the output, I think, the more I love others, the more I’ll know God. And so I set out into the world on a mission to love others as much as I possibly can in an effort to know God more, to be closer to God. In this paradigm, the output of love is most important.

But this is not how love works according to 1 John. The most important thing is not the output of love, but the input - not the love that you are pouring out, but the love that is pouring into you. That’s the most important thing about loving others. Because loving others is the effect of knowing God’s love.

John says that love is from God. He is the source and origin of all true love. When I walk outside to grab the mail, I’m usually barefoot because I’m lazy and stubborn. I have to jump and run to the mailbox and back because the driveway gets really hot by the late afternoon. Now, the concrete doesn’t just heat up on its own, does it? No, the heat emanating from the sun causes the concrete to heat up. That’s exactly what John is talking about here. The love that pours out of God and into us, compels us to love others. Loving others is the effect of knowing God’s love.

The question then is, “How can I know God’s love?” Or to put it another way, “How can I know that God loves me?”

English Standard Version Chapter 4

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.

How can you know that God loves you? You can know because he sent Jesus. He sent Jesus before you got your act together, before you got your life cleaned up, before you decided you needed him, before you were lovable in the least, he sent Jesus to remove your sin and your shame by bearing it himself on the cross. This is how God’s love has been revealed to us.

With our first child on the way, Melanie and I have started reading the Jesus Story Book Bible to our little boy, and I was struck with the way the writers described human beings. They wrote that they were lovely because God loved them. They weren’t lovely because they were obedient, or loving, or talented, or forgiving, or generous. They were lovely, because God loved them. Oh that we’d believe that. But if we ever will, it’ll be with our eyes on Jesus - because it is with our eyes on Jesus that we see the love that God has for us.

And as we learn of the depth of God’s love for us, we’ll find ourselves naturally drawn to loving others, because God’s love is transformative. John says that God sent his only Son into the world, why? So that through him we might live. You see, God isn’t just kind to us in order to persuade us to be kind to others. Have you every tried to be really nice and generous towards someone in the hopes that they’d be really nice and generous in return? That’s not what God is doing by sending Jesus - he’s not performing some grand gesture in the hopes that we’ll be inspired to be loving like him.

How can we know the love of God for us? We

Oh that we’d believe that. But if we ever will, it’ll be with our eyes on Jesus - because it is with our eyes on Jesus that we see the love that God has for us. And as we learn of the depth of God’s love for us, we’ll find ourselves naturally drawn to loving others.

God’s love has power to transform us. In fact, this is the whole point of God’s acts of love. He demonstrated his love for us by sending Jesus so that we might receive life that produces love. And this is why loving others is the effect of knowing God’s love - as we grow in our knowledge and trust of God’s love for us, we grow in our love for others.

So that’s the first principle of loving others, it is the effect of knowing God’s love for us. The second we see beginning in verse 11:

English Standard Version Chapter 4

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.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

The second

The second principle of loving others is this: loving others is the experience of God’s presence among us. “If we love one another,” John says, “God abides in us (meaning in the community that is loving one another).” What an absolutely incredible statement! The community of God is the place where the presence of God is made concrete and tangible as we love one another. There is no community on earth like the Christian community. God’s love is seen and experienced in our love for one another because our love is His love imparted to us by His Spirit.

When we take a meal to someone, as many of you have done, we give concrete expression to the presence of God’s love. When we send an encouraging text or call to check in with someone who is sick, we make the love of God tangible. When we care for the children of the church or host one another for dinner, we demonstrate that God is in our midst.

Now what does John mean when he says that his love is perfected in us when we love one another? He means that this is the desired outcome of God’s love for us: that in the same way Jesus revealed the depth of God’s love to the world, so too would the church community reveal the depth of God’s love to the world as they reproduce the love of God amongst themselves - making his presence with them concrete.

In this way, the church community, by its very nature is missional. If our goal in planting this church is to proclaim the gospel to those who do not know Jesus and to make him known, then a fundamental way in which we can help folks encounter Jesus is by making his presence tangible in the love that we share with one another as a community. More and more we hear stories of people coming to faith in Jesus not through dynamic preaching or an emotional worship experience, but through simply getting to know a community of Christians and seeing how they care for one another, and they meet Jesus in their love. Which, of course, is really his love pouring out of them.

Finally, our last principle for loving others starts in verse 17:

English Standard Version Chapter 4

17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

The last principle is that loving others is an expression of the triumph of God’s love. One of the hardest things to believe in this life is that God truly loves us. That after all we’ve done or have failed to do, that God really still loves us. The older we get, the more reasons we can come up with for why God shouldn’t love us. This is why John ends with this discussion of fear. Fear that we’ll be removed from God’s love.

But, if God abides with us as we love others in the Christian community. If as Paul says in , “the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us,” and we experience the very presence of God when we share his love in community, than John says we have nothing to fear!

“As he is so also are we in this world.” It’s the weirdest way to say the most beautiful of truths. As Jesus is, in the full favor and pleasure of God, so also are we. Would we ever doubt God’s love for his Son? Then we have no reason to doubt his love for us either, for as Christ is, so also are we.

If God abides with us as we love others. If as Paul says in , “the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us,” and we experience the very presence of God when we share his love with others, than John says we have nothing to fear.

And so when we love others with the love that we’ve received through Jesus, we’re expressing the triumph of God’s love over fear and sin and death and everything else. Our love for one another constantly calls us back to the joyful truth that God is here, and he loves us dearly.

This is why the church community is such an incredible gift from God. I hope you see that. I hope you see that this about more than just learning stories about God or singing songs together or gathering with seemingly moral people. This community is a community unlike any other in the world. This community is filled to the brim with the presence of God’s love made concrete in the actions of real people as we collectively proclaim the unshakeable love that God has for each of us.

So those are our three principles for loving others: loving others is the effect of knowing God’s love; by it we experience God’s presence among us, and through it we express the triumph of God’s love.

The challenge than is for us to allow these to transform how we love others.