Compelled by God's Love to Love One Another

In the 1980’s Tina Turner produced a song that says, “what’s love got to do with it” calling it a touch of a hand, the only thrill; a second-hand emotion, an old sweet fashioned notion…bra, bra…. I remember I was in High school when the song became exceedingly popular and circulated rapidly globally. In Africa most of the High school are boarding. The school I was attending had set aside Saturday and Sunday afternoons as free time for students, and for entertainments. This song would be played repeatedly. It really gave people license to enjoy pleasure. If John were there, I am sure he would tell people a different story about love. He would say, “you’ve got it all wrong!”

I am here to speak about God’s “love” and Specifically to remind each one of us that, we are compelled to love one another.

Tradition says that the Apostle John (the author of our today’s reading) continued preaching even when he was so enfeebled with age as to be obliged to be carried into the assembly; and that, not being able to deliver any long discourse, his custom was to say in every meeting, “my dear children, love one another.”

In the Greek language there are three words that are used for love. The first one, eros, stands for sexual, romantic love. Eros is the kind of love mostly known by the world. This eros love is what generally motivates people.

The second word, philia, generally refers to affection between friends. From this word we have Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love”.

Although eros and philia have others as their focus, they both can be motivated by self-interest, self-gratification, and self-protection because of our fallen nature. This has been happening in the history of humanity since the fall. Eros and Philia are both the kind of love that is designed to satisfy the desires of the one doing the loving. There may be an element of giving involved, but it is a giving for the purpose of getting something in return.

The third Greek word for love is agape. The meaning of this word for love stands in sharp contrast to that of the other two words. This word alone points to a completely self-sacrificing love, a love that lacks self-interest, self-gratification, and self-preservation. Agape love is motivated primarily by the interest and welfare of others.

In the New Testament, agape is the Greek word most frequently used for the love for God, the love for spouses and the love for enemies. Agape love means action. It means that we act in a loving way towards others. It means we use our mind and our might for the benefit of another, without regard for ourselves. It is not based on our feelings.

If Agape love is authentically acted upon, eros and Philia will be genuine because agape is the uniting factor.

As believers, we are compelled to love one another. Loving one another is a cause that all of us have to be necessarily involved. Each one of us need to be loved.

Do I need to be loved, but I do not see the need of the other person who need to be loved?

In order to love one another, we need to basically understand why we should love one another (I love my daughter because she always would insist explanations. I am also a kind of a person who insists to know the basis and legitimacy of any statement)

So as to understand how to love, we need to understand God’s love (why) because His love is the archetypal Love (originates from Him). Not just that we are created in the image of God, but also because he has redeemed our fallen nature expressing his divine love through Christ.

We cannot understand the extent of love that God compels us to express to one another unless we understand how God loves us.

Today I would like us to examine four reasons why we are compelled to love one another From the 1st Letter of John 4:7-10.

I. We are compelled to love one another (Verse 7-8)

A. We are compelled to love one another because love is from God (7a)

God cannot compel us to love one another without revealing the source of love (as we shall hear from verse 9)

God created humanity in his image and likeness in spite of the fall. We as the redeemed of God are therefore able to genuinely love because we have experienced this love.

The love that God compels us to express to other must flow from him into us and then flow from us to others.

John is exhorting believers that they should love one another because the source of love is the very God, they had put faith in Him.

John seems to say that we should seek love for one another. And because this love is from God, then it is sacred love.

Because this love is sacred, it should be nurtured, taken care of, encouraged, and developed to maturity in the same way as we are nurturing salvation.

B. We are not only compelled to love one another because love is from Gode are also compelled to love one another because we have been born of God and knows God (7b)

Loving one another is the evidence that we have been born again.

We are born of God, and the DNA of God’s love is in you and me.

Loving one another is the effect of the love that we have accepted from God.

Loving one another is the litmus test, indicative test of testing if we are born of God and knows God.

If one is born again and knows God, then the following words are absolutely true:

1John 4: 13-18 a. 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 Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 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. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also, we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

Explain “Born of God”

1 John (immediate) context: The term born of God is found primarily in the book of 1 John. First John 5:1 says, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.” Other references are found in 1 John 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; and 5:4, 18.

larger context: The term born of God closely mirrors Jesus’ words in John 3:3 when He told Nicodemus that he must be “born again” or, in some translations, “born from above.” Nicodemus responded the way anyone would. He asked, “How can someone be born when they are old?” (verse 4) Jesus’ answer was even more puzzling. He said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (verse 8).

So, the message of John is that the one who loves has been born of God and knows God.

II. We are compelled to love one another (8)

A. We are not only compelled to love one another because love is from God; and because we have been born of God and knows God; but we are also compelled to love one another because the one who does not love does not truly know God (8b)

John is contrasting the nature of one who does not love.

He is explaining the status of the one who does not love.

That one, John says, “does not know God.”

I am not speaking about our attempt to love without first having been reconciled with God because our fallen nature affects everything we try to do without God.

I am not speaking about the fallen “holy wood, or Nollywood kind of super love in the movies and medias.” But about Agape-unconditional love that we experience on the basis of being reconciled with God.

You know there are many ways to express love without regard to what God says, but all those ways are conditional and temporary. If I do not have this then you are not my love. If I do not have this, you do not love me. If I do not have MacDonald’s, you are not my mum or Dad.

B. We are not only compelled to love one another because love is from God; we have been born of God knows God; and the one who does not love does not know God; but we are also compelled to love one another because God is love.

John is explaining why it is true that the one who is not loving has not known God: John says because “God is love.”

Love is one aspect of the very nature of God as we shall see in the next two verses (9-10)

Before we get to verse 9and 10, let us read the longest section about the nature of love that John is talking about.

The way of love larger context: The Way of Love surpasses all other services we render.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Therefore, the one who loves shares in God’s nature of love-loving one another and God loves us.

One who loves can say with Paul in Galatians 2:20” I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

III. We are compelled to love one another.

A. We are not only compelled to love one another because love is from God; we have been born of God and knows God; the one who does not love does not know God; and because God is love; but we are also compelled to love one another because God revealed his love to us (Verse 9)

God sent his one and only son into the world (loving by words and actions)

Our salvation is an expression of God’s love for humanity.

The greatest demonstration of God’s love was this gift of His Only Son.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life," John 3:16.

God did not send Christ as a reward to the obedient, but rather as a ransom for the defiant.

We see Jesus display his love throughout His life and ministry.

He healed the sick without requirement of gratitude.

He displayed humility even though He was King of Kings.

Even while on the cross, Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of the ones who placed Him there (John 3:16, 1 John 3:16, 4:10, Romans 5:8). Salvation is open to all who believe in Christ.

B. X We are not only compelled to love one another because love is from God; we have been born of God and knows God; the one who does not love does not know God; because God is love; and because God revealed his love to us; but we are also compelled to love one another because God sent his son that we might find life in him and live-in love (selfless love)

1 John 4:12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Christ came to reveal the love of God through which we experience His love and are able to live in love with one another.

Matthew 11:27: All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Father except the son and everyone to whom the son choses to reveal him.

Through God’s love, we are reconciled to God and to one another. This is the very thing that makes us members of the church, the body of Christ. And the very thing that should motivate us even more to love one another.

And this his command: John 15: 12-17 X “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. X No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

IV. We are compelled to love one another (Verse 10)

A. We are not only compelled to love one another because love is from God; we have been born of God and knows God; the one who does not love does not know God; because God is love; and because God revealed his love to us; and because God sent his son that we might find life in him and live-in love (selfless love); but we are also compelled to love one another because this is the kind of love that God loved us.

“In this is love, not that we have loved God, but he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

We are recipients of God’s initial love (loving one another is a moral debt that we owe God)

B. B. We are not only compelled to love one another because love is from God; we have been born of God and knows God; the one who does not love does not know God; because God is love; and because God revealed his love to us; and because God sent his son that we might find life in him and live-in love (selfless love); and because this is the kind of love that God loved us; but we are compelled to love one another because God graciously sacrificed Christ for our sins (Verse 10)

God demonstrated this love by sacrificing death of his son (The full extent of demonstrated sacrificial love)

Larger context: Paul wrote to the church in Rome in Romans 5:6-11, saying, “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. 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. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Conclusion

We are all indebted to God, to love one another. We owe God a debt of love to love. Romans 13:8-10 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law…You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

1 Peter 4:8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.

BENEDICTION

Ephesians 3:17-19

(May) Christ dwell in your hearts through faith-that you, being

rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend,

with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the

height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses.

knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (for ever and ever) Amen.