1 John 4:7-12 : God is Love - Part 1
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Introduction:
God is love…what exactly does that mean? Does this mean that God only does things that are warm and fuzzy? Many false teachers out there propagate a God who never judges and never disciplines. But what exactly does the Bible mean when it says God is love?
To begin understanding the definition of this agape love that is mentioned in our passage in 1 John today, let’s look over at 1 Corinthians 13 for a minute. Paul makes a startling statement in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 about love:
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Paul, in essence, equates love with having God. He asserts that love is a requirement for salvation. No - not the kind of love that we work to show. Instead, it is the the love that is from God. We have seen John also equate knowing God with having love multiple times already in his letter.
If the Holy Spirit is not loving others through you, then your works do not matter at all eternally speaking. You can know theology better than most. You can serve on church committees and even generously give of your income. Yet if you have not love - you are nothing. Paul goes so far to say that even if you die as a martyr but have not love - then you have gained nothing. In essence - he says if you do all kinds of good things but have not love - you truly don’t have Christ and thus you aren’t really saved. Because remember - we are saved by grace through faith and not by works so that no one can boast (Eph 2:8-9).
Today we are going to start a two-part series on understanding the concept that God is love and how that should guide our theology about God and how that should guide our personal lives and actions as well.
Please turn in your Bibles to 1 John 4:7-12
Read Full Scripture:
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.
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.
Prayer
There will be six different points in this two-part sermon. Three today and three next week. In each of these we will address a different aspect of love. The first of these is:
I. The Perspective of Love (7-8)
I. The Perspective of Love (7-8)
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.
Where does love originate? John lets us know that love is from God. Continuing with his ‘from God’ statements that we saw in the last few verses that we covered last week, he lets us know that love is from God.
Note what he says next. Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God! But what about all of the pagans and unbelievers that love others? Does this mean that they are saved? This is where it is really important to understand the Greek Word agape - which is a sacrificial love only expressed from God. The only way we can love like God loves is if we have the Holy Spirit. Any love that we try to perform on our own will always have some form of selfishness in it - there will always be an aspect of sin that infuses our action which makes our human-willed love impure. Things such as:
- Pride
- Wanting to be noticed and respected
- Wanting something in return
- Wanting a good warm and fuzzy feeling
- Feeling like we should or are obligated to love
- And a whole host of other things may be the driving force or at least a contributing factor toward why we are showing love to someone else.
Only by the power of the Holy Spirit can we truly sacrificially love the way God wants us to. Only those who have been regenerated by Christ can love in a pure way. They have been born again and now are able to love through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Some people teach or say that we should love people because we love God.
As we consider this idea, let us never exalt the mirror that reflects the light - let us exalt the light Himself. Sound a bit deep. Let me explain...
I do not wish to argue semantics here but this is an important theological distinction. We don’t love people because we love God. Note the very focus of that sentence. The subject that is doing the action is “we.” It is human-centric. The Bible actually teaches that we cannot even love God without His power (Rom 3). We love people because God loves us and loves others through us. We are only able to love our enemies because Christ loves them through us. We are only even able to sacrificially love our wives, children, family, and friends because God loves us and loves them through us.
If I may be so bold in a direct application here... This is why Paul forbids that one be unequally yoked in marriage.
14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?
The problem is that even the best of persons who do not have the Holy Spirit indwelling them are of the darkness. There are only two camps my friends. Those who are of the world and those who are of God. Only those who are of God have the capacity to love the way Jesus commands because only those who are of God have the indwelling Holy Spirit who can! No, believers are not always perfect in allowing the Holy Spirit to love others through them. They still fight their sinful flesh and give in to the desires of the flesh from time to time. But they have the capacity, through the Holy Spirit, to love sacrificially.
We cannot expect an unbeliever to be able to love the same way as a believer. They just aren’t able to. It is like asking someone to fly with their unaided arms. People don’t have the capacity to fly on their own strength. In the same way, people do not have the capacity to agape, or sacrificially love, without the power of the Holy Spirit.
As we move into verse 8, we see the flip side. Those who claim to be believers but do not love - John asserts that they are liars. Why? Because God is love and anyone who is of God will love.
Don’t miss the huge theology built into this short phrase, “God is Love.” The love of God is not just an attribute of God. It is a very essence of God. It is an essential quality of the nature of God.
We are given a glimpse into the very essence and character of God through statements such as this and others.
Other statements like God is light
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Or God is Spirit
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
or God is everlasting
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
Or God is Holy
2 “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
It must be asserted that love is not just one of God’s activities. Sometimes people view God as having different hats that he puts on and takes off. Oh - here comes the judgment hat - or here comes the loving Father hat, etc. However, love isn’t just something He does from time to time. It is actually intertwined in all that He does and who He is. Whether He creates, rules, judges, or saves - everything is done in love. It is an expression of His very nature.
And those who claim to be God’s and have not love are in much danger. Spurgeon once said:
Where there is the spirit of enmity, of envy, of pride, of contention, there is not the Spirit of God.
C.H. Spurgeon
Let us examine ourselves and see if we align with the Lord. Let us be sure to have the right perspective of love. While understanding the right perspective of love, we can move on to seek to understand:
Scripture References: 1 Cor 13:1-3, Eph 2:8-9, Romans 3, 2 Cor 6:14, 1 John 1:5, 1 John 4:2, Isaiah 40:28, Leviticus 19:2
The Person of Love (9-10)
The Person of Love (9-10)
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.
We have just gained a good perspective of love with our first two verses. Love originates and comes from God alone.
Now we get to the good news of the Gospel. This is the place where we need to celebrate and get excited. Because the previous verses expounding on the perspective of love is somewhat of a downer for mankind. Because of sin, we are unable to truly love on our own! We are marred by sin. Everything we do is tainted by sin.
Remember Pigpen on the Peanuts comics with Charlie Brown. Everything Pigpen touched ended up dirty because he was so dirty. That is mankind without God brothers and sisters.
Maybe an even more easy illustration is what if I had just changed my oil and had oil all over my hands and offered to come over and clean your house. The motive seems very nice right? I am offering to clean your house. But if I can’t get the oil off of my hands - and worse yet - if I don’t even know it is there! - then my help may end up not being as wonderful as you anticipate.
Even when we try our best to do something - if it in our own fleshly strength - it is marred by dirt and sin.
But there is great news that we get in these two verses! The love of God was manifested to us in the Person of Jesus Christ! I am sure many of us are excited about this concept but maybe we are a bit caught off guard by the word manifest. This isn’t probably something you say in your every language. If you have really been paying attention we had this word earlier in the book of 1 John. The Greek word here is phaneroō (phan-air-ro-o). It means to reveal or make known.
This is an important concept to understand because Jesus is preeminent and eternal. He is God. It is not that he was created and sent to earth. Instead, the already eternal deity of Jesus Christ was revealed, or manifested, to us through the virgin birth of Mary.
Why was He sent and revealed to us? So that we might have life through Him.
We were in a rough spot. We were as ones without hope. We were unable to save ourselves. We couldn’t even really love! Yet God sent His only Son - Jesus Christ - God-made-flesh - to live a sinless life and die on the cross for our sins. And through this salvation offered to us, we were given the opportunity to live forever with Him in Heaven.
John jumps ahead of our question regarding how we can take hold of this salvation by giving us verse 10. John says not that we have loved God. It’s not because of anything in us. It’s not because of the great works we bring. It’s not because of our wonderful personality and great heart. It’s not because it was us who went seeking after God. Just the opposite. It was because God first loved us. And how was this love manifested or revealed through Christ?
Through Christ being the propitiation of our sins. Here we come to another even bigger theological word. We briefly discussed this earlier in our study on first John as well. The Greek for this is hilasmos (ee-las-mose).
Without completely geeking out on you all, I want to address three large but very important theological words with you. You hear a lot of teachers and pastors say not to use large words because people might not understand. However, I got convicted the other day when I was listening to a pastor named Milton Vincent give an analogy of why this isn’t right. As you will see in a moment - especially as a physician - his analogy hit home for me!
He said that when we mention theological words such as justification (5 syllables) or sanctification (5 syllables) - people zone out and have a hard time following us. Yet, when someone goes to their doctor and is diagnosed with osteoarthritis (which is 6 syllables by the way) - that person asks the doctor to explain it and takes notes and goes home and researches it even more on the computer. Why? Because it is important to them. Then why, we must ask ourselves, is the Word of God and the understanding of the Word of God through theology not important to us? So you can thank Pastor Vincent for this teaching!
Propitiation - The appeasement of God’s wrath. The penalty of sin is death and God’s wrath and anger against sin must be appeased. Christ appeased God’s wrath.
Substitution - Christ bore OUR SIN upon the cross. They were laid and transferred from us to Him. He took our place and accepted the punishment that we deserved.
Reconciliation - Man was forever in a broken relationship with God after the Fall of Man in Genesis 3. Sin created a chasm that was too far wide for man to breech by his efforts. Yet, through Christ’s sacrifice and through His intercession for us, we can now be reconciled to God through Christ!
This is the good news of the Gospel in three big words! God hates sin and will judge it. So Jesus became the propitiation for our sins which appeased the wrath of God. He became the substitution for us by atoning for our sins which were transferred onto Him! And through this we can now be reconciled to God through Christ by repenting of our sins and trusting in Jesus Christ for our salvation.
Jesus Christ is the manifested and revealed Person of love. And it is through the Person of Jesus Christ we can understand further:
Scripture References: Genesis 3
The Persistence of Love (11-12)
The Persistence of Love (11-12)
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.
Love persists in believers because God’s love persists in believers. We are told here that if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Let’s break these two verses down.
First ,John admonishes us that if God so loved us - we also ought to love one another. We are to emulate our Lord. How did God show his love for us? Sacrificially. He gave His one and only Son for us. As we discussed a few weeks ago - we are adopted children of God. We are a part of His family and thus should act like it. When we reflect on the incredible price that Jesus paid for our sins, we should not hesitate to love others in response to the great love shown to us.
The key to this love is within an accurate understanding of yourself. If you understand your own sinfulness and depravity and see God’s love despite your underservedness - then it is easier to show love to another sinner like yourself.
I’ll come back to the next statement (No one has ever seen God) in a minute but right after this John says something very interesting:
“if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”
We have discussed the abiding of God in believers a few times throughout this series in 1 John. However, what about this last statement. His love is perfected in us. What are we to make of that?
What John is saying here is that when we love others through the abiding Spirit of God - His love finds its goal and has reached its intended, full effect. God’s love is perfected, or maybe better said, completed in us when it is reproduced in us. Obviously we, as sinful followers of Christ, never get to a point on this earth where the complete and full effect of Christ’s love shines through us. However the love that does flow through us is a shinning example of the perfect love that Jesus displayed on the cross.
Respond to that love my friends. I pray that already have - but if you have not - spend some time really considering the greatness of the love Christ has shown us. How wonderful is it!
Finally we get to a difficult statement in the middle of these two verses. No one has seen God.
Some may be quick to discuss Moses. Yet a close reading of Exodus will show that one is mistaken if one thinks that Moses visually saw God:
11 Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
Don’t miss that this is a simile. Don’t miss the word ‘as’ here. He spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. It is a comparison of similar but distinct things. It isn’t saying Moses saw God face to face. It says he spoke to God as one who speaks face to face.
We see this nailed home even more in the same chapter!
20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”
John 1:18 also reiterates this:
18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
As we saw earlier in this sermon - God is Spirit. We may see the manifestations of God, but we are unable to see God in His splendor and glory because it too much for us to handle in our sinful states!
Praise God that one day we will get to see the full glory of God. Yet, we do not have to wait for that day to have seen the manifestation of God that has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
Jesus let us know in John 14:9
9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
The fullness of God dwells in Christ. He is completely God.
9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,
Meaning in Jesus.
So although we may not be able to see God in all of His glory until we are resurrected and given our new lives - we have the Person of Jesus Christ to look at to understand the very nature and character of God.
Through Jesus Christ we have access to God (Eph 2:18).
And through faith and trust in Jesus Christ and being born again through a saving faith - we may persist in love through the person of love seen by the perspective of love.
Scripture References: Ex 33:11,20, John 1:18, John 14:9, Col 2:9, Eph 2:18
Conclusion
Brothers and sisters let’s take a few moments to bow our heads and reflect on the love of God shown to us through Jesus Christ.
I pray that each of us makes sure our perspective of love is calibrated to true, Biblical, agape love.
Next, spend some time making sure that you personally know the Person of Love. Have you placed your complete faith and trusted in Jesus Christ and repented of your sins? Do you believe that He is the Son of God - lived a sinless life - died a substitutionary death for you - raised from the dead - and now is at the right hand of the Father ready to intercede for you? If not - I urge you to talk with me or another church leader here and learn how you might move forward in understanding the Gospel.
Finally, if you are sure that you are a believer and saved - persist in love through the abiding of Jesus Christ. You don’t have to fix your life by your own works. You don’t have to do more in the flesh to earn favor from the Lord. He asks that you allow His Holy Spirit to work through you. Pray that you become less of yourself and more of Christ.
Prayer
If you would like to learn more about salvation through Jesus Christ or want to obey Jesus by obeying the first commandment of a believer in going through the waters of baptism - please see me after the service.
God bless and have a blessed week!