Love
Notes
Transcript
Recap
Recap
In 1 John chapter 1, John introduced a significant problem and a glorious possibility. The problem is that God is light and you and I live in darkness. The possibility is that, if we confess our sins, Jesus will forgive and cleanse us, and we will be able to have fellowship with God and with God’s children.
In chapter 2, John deepens the idea of fellowship with the concept of abiding—fellowship is like hanging out with someone, and abiding is like living with someone. He points out that the Christian experience is one of maturing growth, and he introduces the idea that if we don’t love our brothers and sisters in Christ, then we don’t really know God.
Towards the end of chapter 2 and throughout chapter 3, John makes it clear that in order to abide with God, we need to know Jesus. Which means we have to be careful of counterfeit Christs who draw our attention away from Jesus, or teach false things about Him. This is significant to the church John is writing to because the church was dealing with a schism. Some members had broken away from the church and were teaching errors about God—an early form of Gnosticism. And the Christians John was writing to weren’t really sure what was right and what was wrong. So John clarifies a few points of doctrine, and also reassures them that God has called them His children—they are born of God. But how can you know if the person next to you has been born of God? By their love for others. How can you be sure you’ve been born of God? If you know God, then you’ll love others. It may be a growing process, but active love is a sure fire way of knowing if the Spirit of God is in you.
And that brings us to chapter 4 where John doubles down on this idea of love.
What Is Love?
What Is Love?
A group of professionals posed the following question to a group of 4 to 8-year-old kids: “What does love mean?” The answers they got, as one researcher said, “were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined.”
“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.” Chrissy – age 6.
“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.” Terri – age 4.
“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” Danny – age 7.
“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” Bobby – age 5.
“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.” Noelle – age 7.
“Love is when mommy gives daddy the best piece of chicken.” Elaine – age 5.
“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.” May Ann – age 4.
“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” Karen – age 7.
“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” Jessica – age 7.
“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” Rebecca – age 8.
“ “Love” as seen by Frank Pittman and a bunch of kids” Smart Marriages Mar. 12, 2002
John has a definition of love too. It’s found in 1 John 4:9:
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.
Love is the central theme of the book of 1 John — honestly, everything that John writes. And this is the definition of love in John’s mind—that God, the sovereign of the universe, the creator of everything, would give his own life to save ours.
But that’s the middle of the chapter. Let’s go back to the beginning of 1 John 4 to see where John is going with this next part of his letter to the church.
False Teachers
False Teachers
In the beginning of 1 John 4, John goes back to the issue of false Christs that he brought up a couple chapters ago. He warns us that not every spirit is from God—there are false prophets (false teachers) going around—so we need to test the spirits.
The test he proposes is designed to combat the errors spreading around the churches towards the end of the 1st century. Within the next 50 or so years, these errors would develop into an alternate Christianity that Iraneous and other early Christian teachers called Gnosticism.
John says this about these errors:
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
John adds to this idea of Jesus Christ having come in the flesh when he says this in verse 15
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
The point John is clarifying is that Jesus is God in human flesh. He is the uncreated creator, the self-existing king of the universe, the co-equal of the Father and the Spirit. Any teachers that says otherwise is a false teacher in John’s book.
It’s helpful to understand a tiny bit about Gnosticism as we read these passages from 1 John.
In Gnostic tradition, the term Sophia (Σοφία, the Greek word for "wisdom") refers to the final and lowest of what they call emanations of God. In most versions of the gnostic myth, Sophia births an aeon called Yahweh, who in turn brings about the creation of materiality—physical beings.
According to Gnostic teachings, this emanation from Sophia creates mankind by trapping elements that he stolen from Sophia inside human bodies—these elements are the gnostic version of what many today call the soul. In response to Yahweh trapping souls inside physical bodies, the Godhead emanated two savior beings, Christ and the Holy Spirit. Some Gnostics believed that Christ then embodied itself in the form of Jesus, in order to be able to teach man how to achieve gnosis, by which they may return to the pleroma — the home of God. But others adamantly deny that any divine being became flesh. Instead, they say that Jesus was just a human who attained enlightenment and taught others how to do the same. And still others taught that Jesus was a false messiah who perverted the teachings of John the Baptist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
In Gnostic tradition, the serpent in the tree was actually trying to give Adam and Eve the Gnosis or knowledge to help their souls escape the bodies they were trapped in by the creator.
Today, you can readily see how this teaching is completely backwards to the gospel of the Bible. Yahweh is not a lower form of diety who trapped souls in physical bodies to spite the true God. And the serpent was not trying to liberate Adam and Eve. The problem in our world is that we are born into a world in rebellion, and we actively participate in rebellion against God. The problem is not that Yahweh created us—but that we think we can live without the creator. Yahweh isn’t an emanation of some low form of God, he is the one and only God. The problem is that God is light, and we are darkness. God is love and we are selfishness.
And so, the solution is not some mysterious knowledge, but the forgiveness and cleansing that Jesus offers when we come to him and confess our sins. The solution is Jesus’ great love for us and desire for us to be back in a fellowship with Him.
What John dealt with in his day is not very much different than the many schisms the church has today. There are all kinds of theological viewpoints that draw people from the fellowship of the church into their own little gatherings where they teach things that you cannot find in the Word of God.
In one version, if you don’t understand a particular old testament verse to be an end-time prophecy, then you can’t be saved. It’s a tale as old as the church—someone has some special knowledge (gnosis in the early church) that no one else seems to understand. But they talk as if, when you know what they know, you’ll be enlightened, closer to God, more likely to be saved, protected from the laodicean throng.
Other false teachers continue the Gnostic teachings today by saying that Jesus is a created being. Still others teach that the Holy Spirit is an emanation, and not a divine being in and of itself.
Another prominent false teaching is one that Paul dealt with—the Judaizers who encourage us to take up the ceremonies and forms of ancient Isreal with the hope that we will be more spiritually enlightened or blessed by doing so.
When you talk with some of these teachers, they seem relatively tame. I mean, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to do a passover feast. And who cares if Jesus was created or not, so long as he is our redeemer? But the truth is, whenever we diverge from the clear teaching of God’s Word to form our own philosophies, our false doctrines mar the truth about God and prevent people from truly knowing Jesus. Like the false teachers in John’s day who’s teaching lead to Gnosticism, our false teachings will always lead us away from the Gospel of Jesus.
If you find yourself exploring some of the false teachings I’ve mentioned, please talk with me afterwards. I would enjoy spending some time with you exploring the Bible and uncovering the truth about God that these false doctrines obscure.
Knowing Jesus — not some mystical knowledge, but an intimate fellowship, an abiding relationship — that’s John’s goal in writing this letter to the church. And not just that they know Jesus but that they know that they have salvation—the promise of eternity with Jesus.
He makes that perfectly clear in 1 John 5:13
13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.
Knowing that many were confused by false teachers, John says, test the spirits. If they believe that Jesus—the messiah, the Son of God, the everlasting Lord and savior—has come in the flesh and is the son of man who died on the cross to save us from our sins, then you’re at least starting in the right place.
Remember John’s point from chapter 3? We can have confidence in the judgment. He wants us to have confidence in WHO GOD IS.
Every alternative to the gospel is a salvation by appeasement that requires us to do something to make God respond to us. There is absolutely no confidence in man-made religion. You can never know if God is pleased with you. You can never be confident in your salvation. The best you can do is hope that you’ve done all that is necessary.
But the gospel of the Bible is based on better promises than the works of men. It is based on love. But not my love or your love. It’s based on God’s love. Notice how John assures us in verse 4.
1 John 4:4 (ESV)
4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
He who is in you is greater. That’s the gospel. Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Hold onto that thought, because he’s going to repeat it in just a minute. But he’s not done with his advice on testing the spirits of false teachers.
In verses 5 and 6 John suggests that anyone who does not listen to the apostles is not from God. God’s revelation through the prophets of the Bible is the ONLY source of truth and doctrine. Anything that would take the place of the Bible to try and tell you philosophies about God that are outside of the Bible is at best sincerely wrong and not worth listening to. Stick with the Bible.
God is love
God is love
With the warning out of the way, John gets to the definition of love that we talked about at the beginning.
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.
John is not the first one to say this—Jesus said it, Paul said it, Peter said it, even Moses said it back in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
And this argument—if you don’t love you don’t know God—is underscored when John says this in verse 19:
19 We love because he first loved us.
God’s love inspires love in us.
Actually, it’s more than that. God’s spirit writes his law of love in our hearts when we ask Him to be the Lord of our lives. You can know that you are God’s child because He’s writing love in your heart. And if you don’t have love for your brothers and sisters in Christ, you can be pretty certain that there is some aspect of your life that you have yet to surrender to God.
This love is not just the human affection kind of love—the draw that we feel towards successful or beautiful people, or the pity we have for someone who is suffering. And its not the kind of love that you have for people who have lots of things in common with you. As the Bible points out, even thieves have a certain love for other thieves.
No, the kind of love that John is using as the test for our knowing God is the kind of love that Jesus had for the world when he willing gave up his life to save us, while we were taunting and torturing him. That’s a whole ‘nother level of love.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
It’s at this point that John makes a very important observation.
The world hasn’t seen God, but when it sees us loving each other like Christ did, it sees God.
12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
By the Spirit
By the Spirit
And John is careful to point out that this evidence of being a child of God is a product of the spirit that is in us. This is the Spirit he referenced in verse four when he said that this spirit is greater than the spirit in the world. This isn’t some buckle-down-and-love kind of advice. This is John saying that the evidence of your salvation is a change in your heart—a love that God grows inside you when you surrender yourself to Him and allow His spirit to take over your life.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
Here’s the catch though. God will only give us as much of His spirit in the as we are willing to receive.
Do you remember that story of the woman who came to Elisha with money problems? Her husband had died and his debtors were coming after her boys to cover the debt. Elish asked her if she had any oil in her house, but all she had was a few drops in the bottom of her bottle. But Elisha wasn’t discouraged. He told her to go to her neighbors and borrow every pot and bowl and jug and pitcher she could find, and then pour her oil into them. She could have gone back to her house, frustrated that God’s prophet didn’t give her any practical solutions. But instead, she went back with faith and did exactly what Elisha had told her to do. As she poured the oil, it kept flowing and flowing until all the containers were filled and she had enough oil to cover her husband’s debt.
God has promised His Holy Spirit for everyone who repents and is baptized. It’s a guarantee of his salvation. But we have a daily choice about whether we allow the Spirit to flow through our lives, or resist His work on our hearts. Like the widow’s oil, there is no limit to the resources of God’s Spirit, except our faith. He will fill every vessel we give to Him, but He won’t force himself on us.
If you find the evidence of the Holy spirit is lacking in your heart, then I’d recommend that you ask yourself this question: what vessel in my life have I kept from Him? What aspect of my heart is blocked off? What chunk of my life is unsurrendered to Him?
Conclusion
Conclusion
John is passionate about this subject because he saw Jesus with his own eyes, and experienced him in his own life. And he tells us,
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. 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.
It’s by abiding with God that love is perfected in our hearts.
And how do we abide?
We start by confessing. 1 John 1:9. It’s the foundation of all fellowship with God. Until we fess up to our sinfulness, God can’t do anything. But as soon as we confess, He forgives and cleanses us and allows us the possibility of abiding.
And because we are abiding, we can have confidence in the day of judgment. This is a huge difference from what the false teachers were saying. They wanted you to become enlightened—but what does that mean? It’s impossible to define. There’s always going to be some new secret that puts you just out of reach of enlightenment. They give you rituals and activities that will help you get close to God, but what they don’t say is that no amount of activity or perfection of ritual will be enough. You will always be left wondering if you’ve done enough, or know enough.
But that’s not the case with the true Gospel. The gospel of Jesus is a gospel of love—God’s love.
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.
This is verse we often say—perfect love casts out fear. And so, if we’re afraid we say, “well, I haven’t conjured up perfect love, yet.” But this has never been and will never be about your love. Your love is a response, not the initiator. This verse is about God’s perfect God.
The reason we an have confidence is because we don’t need to be afraid of punishment when the judge of our lives is the one who gave His life for us.
It’s because of His love that we love.
19 We love because he first loved us.
But some people claim salvation without actually baring their souls before God or receiving His Spirit. They hold onto their selfishness and sinfulness and grudges.
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.
Whoever sees God, confesses their sin, receives God’s forgiveness, and allows the Spirit to live in them, will love others. It’s as simple as the law of gravity. What goes up, must come down. The person who gives up their life to God, will live in God’s love.
There’s a book called A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 by W Phillip Keller, a former shepherd turned pastor. Consider this brief section of Psalm 23:
Psalm 23 (ESV)
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
…Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
Keller focuses in on the sheep lying down in green pastures and says that this only happens under the right circumstances.
If sheep are afraid of a predator, they won’t lie down.
If they are being oppressed by bugs, they won’t lie down.
If they have a dispute with another sheep, they won’t lie down.
If they are hungry, they won’t lie down.
Unless they are free from fear and hunger, the sheep just won’t lie down. And the thing is, the sheep can’t do a thing about any of these problems.
If they don’t have help, they’ll eat something that will kill them.
Without help, they can’t defend themselves from enemies. They can’t protect themselves from pests. They can’t solve social conflicts.
The only solution is a shepherd.
The shepherd anoints the sheep with oil to ward off pests.
The shepherd protects the sheep from predators.
The shepherd prepares the field for grazing so they can eat without harm.
The shepherd applies the rod and resolves conflicts between sheep.
The key factor in removing fear is the shepherd’s love.
And that’s true for you and me too. Without Jesus, our best efforts lead to fear, anxiety, conflict, and self harm.
But with Jesus, we can lie down in peace and love.