From the Inside Out

I want to begin this morning with a rather simple statement, one that will neither be surprising or revolutionary in any way. Yet, one that is powerful in the implications that it has for your life and my life. God’s love changes everything. There is a danger when we talk about the love of God to understand it in a sort of abstract way, almost in a vacuum. Perhaps we pull it out of the glass and we study and think about it and then we put it back in the cabinet when we are done with it. The problem is that we view God’s love as something less than what it is: a life-changing love. In many ways, John has discussed this already, but with the section that we studied last week and the theology of love, John is showing us the glorious truth that God’s love is meant to transform us from the inside out. God’s love is so revolutionary, so pure, so beautiful that it can only transform what it touches. Do you hear that? God’s love transforms everything that it touches. There is no other way. We are going to see that this morning as we look at 1 John 4:13-21.

Read 1 John 4:13-21

We are going to see this morning, how John ties in verses 7-12 and this section that we are reading this morning. Look at verse 12 with me, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” What we have seen in 1 John is that love is evidence of the abiding presence of God in our lives. The logic is this: if we believe that in salvation God resides in us, and if God is love, then by necessity we must have love. Therefore, if we love one another then we know that God abides in us. It’s a beautifully simple truth. John is going to use these words abiding and love to show us the great power that is found within.

As we think more about abiding, John is going to show us that the idea of us abiding in God and He in us, is not some sort of peripheral doctrine but goes right to the core of orthodox Christianity. Remember that word abide means to remain, to stay with or dwell. One of the most clear passages on abiding is found in John 15, in Jesus’ message in which He says that He is the true vine. In this letter, John has given us several ways to know if we are with or abide with God: Walking like Christ, obeying God’s commands and Loving others. In this passage, he repeats what he wrote in verse 24, “And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.” The indwelling Spirt is evidence that we are with God and He is with us. However, I believe that there is something else in this little section: the role of the Trinity in our Christian lives.

The Trinity is a grand doctrine that has baffled many but has been accepted on faith by many more. The trinity is a rather simply stated doctrine with many facets: We believe in 1 God who is in 3 persons. He is One but there are three persons: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We see the Trinity here in this passage. The Holy Spirit is given to us to be our comforter and helper, and this is evidence of God’s abiding presence in our lives. The Father has sent his Son into the world to be the savior of the world which shows God’s desire to abide with us. Then we see the Son, who is the means by which we can even abide with God, through our confession of Jesus as being the Son of God and by implication, our Lord and Savior. So, when we say that we believe in the Triune God, we are also saying that each person of the trinity has made it possible to be with Him. Why is this important? You see the abiding presence of God is evidence that God is a personal, relational God. This is seen in the Trinity itself, in that God in his very nature desires relationship. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit fellowship with one another, but the great mystery of the faith is that through the Son, through Jesus Christ, we are brought into this fellowship. This is a magnificent truth that is meant to give us great assurance. In our Christian lives, we go through different things that may hinder our faith. When we have doubts, we remember that God the Father sent his Son for us. When we struggle with temptation, we know that the Holy Spirit is with us. When we feel unloved, we are struck by the love of Jesus Christ. To abide with God is to abide with the triune God… this is a wonderful mystery.

I want you to also see how abiding and love are also connected with the trinity. You see, love and relationship go hand in hand. I appreciate how one writer, Jared C. Wilson put it:

“Think about it: A solitary god cannot be love. He may learn to love. He may yearn for love. But he cannot in himself be love, since love requires an object. Real love requires relationship. In the doctrine of the Trinity we finally see how love is part of the fabric of creation; it’s essential to the eternal, need-nothing Creator. From eternity past, the Father and the Son and the Spirit have been in community, in relationship. They have loved each other. That loving relationship is bound up in the very nature of God himself. If God were not a Trinity but merely a solitary divinity, he could neither be love nor be God.”[1]

From eternity past, God has been showing love within himself, but we now experience that love. We are recipients of the pure and perfect divine love of God. Remember that powerful point: if God is love, and he abides in us, then we abide in love. I know this has been a little heady so far, but my point is to show how the Love of God changes us from the inside out. When we know and understand the love of the Triune God and His abiding presence, we are completely changed. Look at verse 17, “By this is love perfected with us.” The Love of God has a transforming power that begins in the inside when we realize the truth of what it means to be loved by God, and then it works on the outside.

One of the ways that the Love of God is transformative in our lives is that we live as confident people. We move from fear to confidence before God. What John is doing here is painting a picture for us. Love is based on a relationship and where there is love, there is no fear as to the status of the relationship. Imagine a god much different than our God. Imagine a cruel god who has unrealistic demands out of his creation. A taskmaster who is regularly waiting for his people to trip up. An authoritarian who grins when he punishes his people. There is no love there. With this God, you never feel confident in your position with him, do you? There is always a sense of uneasiness or uncertainty. John says, because of love, we live with a great sense of security and confidence. That is what love does, we are not always beat down with fear, but with freedom. Yes, the Bible tells us that we have the fear of the Lord, but that is much different than what John is saying. Fear of the Lord is respect. John is saying that we don’t have uncertain terror. Therefore we have confidence before God. We talked about this a few weeks ago. We don’t slink before Him, wondering if he will accept us. He already has. If we have trusted in Christ, we come as people who have been accepted! Now listen, we won’t come arrogantly before him, or with an attitude of pride. No, we will come before him humbly but confidently. Fear is the great enemy of faith. Yet, God doesn’t want us to live in fear of Him or fear of anything, we live with a boldness… the is what abiding and love provide us.

So we are changed from insecure people to confident believers. Then we are changed into people who are known for their love. This is the other aspect that God’s love changes who we are. Remember, the Bible says that we are new creations in Christ. What is one aspect of being a new creation in Christ? We are known as people with a deep love for all people. Love, in a sense, is the lifeblood of what it means to be a Christian. John reminds us in this passage, about loving God and loving other people. To say that we love God necessitates that we are going to also love those around us. There is no option there. Love is not an optional Christian characteristic that we can choose. In this passage, John has a very unique thing that I want us to see: “For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” This is a very important point because love is the language of belief. John’s point is rather easy to understand, isn’t it? He is saying, “look, people around are an opportunity that God has given you to put love into practice. They are flesh and blood. You can see them, talk to them. If you can’t love what you can see, how can you love what you can’t see?” John wants us to understand this because it is really a test. How we respond to flesh and blood around us, is a pretty strong indicator of how we will respond to God himself. Now, someone might balk and say… Well, I just don’t like people, but I love God. John says that is impossible. Remember, each and every person is made in the image of God, so to not love someone is to say to God, “Hey, you made a mistake! This one is no good.” God says, “Impossible!” That’s the transformation that love has in our life; we begin to see our tangible expressions of love as having a deeper meaning. John ends powerfully, “whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

Challenge

Have you ever taken time to think deeply about who God is, in his nature? This relationship that we have with the Trinity? The reason I ask this is because we cannot really know love, until we know the God who loves us. We made this point last week and it carries over today. The point that I want us to see is that the trinity is not some sort of abstract concept that theologians puzzle over and debate. No, the trinity is a beautiful theological truth that gives a more perfect picture of who God is and what it means to have fellowship with one another and to love. My challenge for us is twofold: take some time this week to really sit down and think about who God is. Write a few questions down. Think. Ponder. Then the second part is this: How does your understanding of God in this way affect your actions? Do you look at people differently because you have been changed by the Gospel? Do you need to rethink how you view people, in light of the reality that they have been made in the image of God? Do you need to see people as His creation? One of the most important things to remember is that this transformation of love, only comes from the transformation that we experience because have trusted in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We deserve to be punished for our sins and to spend eternity apart from God. Yet, in His great love, he has sent His son to die on a cross for our sins, so that we could be forgiven our sins and experience eternal love. We will never be transformed into people of love, until we know His love personally. Will you trust Him today?

[1]Jared C. Wilson, “No Trinity, No Love,” https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/no-trinity-no-love/, accessed 10/09/2020.