Why? Love and Discipleship

HBI - The way we are to love others is revealed in God’s love shown to us and as such we are to remain in Him.

Intro

Love and Discipleship, what do they have to do with each other and why is it important. We are looking into what our purpose is as a church. This guides where we go because it answers the question why we do what we do. To get everyone on board with where we re going we need to know why we do what we do. Our purpose statement says that why we are here is to glorify God. We went over what this looks like in different areas of our lives last week. the rest tells us that we are to glorify God through Loving others and making disciples.

That is not just loving each-other in the church but others around us as well. Discipleship and loving others go hand in hand. This is why we are here, to not just tell people about Jesus but as we are going to learn teaching people what it means to remain in Him.

There is a movie I watched a long time ago called Armageddon. Classic world is going to end movie. A big old asteroid is heading towards earth and the US government is the only one that knows what to do so they send a bunch of oil drillers up to the rock hurtling through space to drill a hole in the thing and blow it up before it destroys us all. Well the ragtag group they send up contains two important characters (spoiler alert) One is a father and the other is engaged to the fathers daughter and he doesn't like him. In the end of the movie someone has to stay on the space rock and press the blow up button because the remotes batteries died and they draw straws to see who will press the magic button. The engaged guy draws the straw but the father runs out, locks the door and says I will sacrifice my life so you can have a life with my daughter. What a story of love, sacrificing your life for another.

I was mocking the movie a little bit but the image of a man giving his life for another in love is one that is given to us in the scripture I want to focus on the morning. I may be jumping around in the bible for a bit but I want us to look into why we have come up with the church direction that we have.

so what does it mean to love others? How are we to love those around us? What example do we have of what it means to love Jesus anyways? These are some things we are going to look into today.

7-8 - The command - Love others

we start out with the command that we have, not so much a command but rather a friendly yet strong reminder.

1 John 4:7 (CSB)

Dear friends, let us love one another

John tells us right off the start that we have a command from God. Dear friends He says. My beloved friends whom I love, we need to show love to one another. It may say love here but our word for love does not do justice what his really means.

a universal, unconditional love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance. This is the definition of love that is given us here.

1 John 4:7 (CSB)

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

So we are told that we need to love others, and that the uncondtional love that we are to show is is from God everyone who loves has been born of God. Verse 8 goes on to tell us that if you do not love then you have not been born of God and does not know God for God is love.

but then this could mean that if we love others then that makes us a Christian right? I mean that is what it seems to be saying here. Just go through the motions and boom, we are a child of God. easy peasy. This is the problem with taking scripture out of context. We go farther back to see if John has said this elsewhere as well to give us that same idea.

1 John 3:23 (CSB)

Now this is his command: that we believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he commanded us.

so that is what we must do, just to be clear. In order to be a child of God, even if we do love others means that we must first believe in Jesus as our Lord and savior.

the command that we are given as Christians, those that believe in the name of Jesus as our Lord and savior, love one another. This is why we are here, to love eachother and love those around us that do not know of Jesus.

9-16 - God’s love revealed - This is What it looks like

But again we read that this is not just any type of love. We are given an example of what this is supposed to look like. Loving others is hard sometimes. You know that you are to love but sometimes you don't like them very much. some people are pretty hard to love. But true love has been revealed to us and that is the example that we are to live by.

9 - God sent His son - We need to live through Him

1 John 4:9 (CSB)

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

God sent His one and only son into the world so that we might live. We where lost in sin, maybe we still are lost in sin but the promise of life is seen in Jesus coming to earth.

10 - love is seen not in how we love, for we are sinful but rather in How God loved us enough to sacrifice His son for us.

The love that we are to show is not seen in how we can love on our own. For we are sinful but rather we read in verse 10 that love is this, it is sacrificial. The love that we are to show is seen in the atoning sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross. some versions use the word propitiation. It is a word that is not either used or understood anymore but it is a beautiful word. either way what this means is that Jesus blood covered our sin. As sinners we can not love like this it is not possible because our sinful hearts get in the way.

What Jesus did is pay for sins that where not His own, He truly loved to the point of paying for penalties that where not His own Being an atoning sacrifice meant that His blood covered our sin, if we believe in Him. to love others even when they do not believe, even when they do not deserve it, even when they have have done something to hurt us. This is the example that we have.

Therefore we need to show this same love to one another - a sacrificial love.

We learn a bit more about the revealed love of God to us. 1 John 4:12

1 John 4:12 (CSB)

No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.

We experience the presence and character of God not through seeing Him but through the way we love others. Because love is not seen in the way we love but through the way that God loved us. As we echo that to those around us we experience the presence and the character of God. God is made know to others through the way we love others.

1 john 3:24

1 John 3:24 (CSB)

The one who keeps his commands remains in him, and he in him. And the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he has given us.

this is how we know we remain in God. Again it is not just saying, hey I am showing love to others, but rather it is through the evidence that we keep his commands as well. It is living our life in every aspect for Jesus. It is through God and His spirit that we can do this. (How do we know we have received His spirit?”

14 - We are a testimony to this to the world around us, what God’s love has done through and to us. This is another aspect of God’s love revealed in us. we give testify as to what the Lord has done for us. We tell people what we have done, what the Lord has pulled us out of and How He has changed our lives and we give testimony to the wondrous love of God.

15 - God’s love is revealed in those who remain in Him (but what it looks like to remain in Him has already been said)

16 - We can Have assurance of all this because we have experienced the Love of God.

What an amazing thing, to know that God’s love has been revealed to us in such a way. His atoning sacrifice has given us freedom from our sin if we confess He is Lord and believe He is risen from the dead. We get a glimpse into the character of God through His love. We may not see Him ever, but we see him through the way He has shown love to us. We can have assurance of our faith because of the love we have experienced. And this sacrificial love that has been revealed to us is what love we are to show those around us. The revealed love of the savior dying in our place on the cross.

17-21 - No Fear in God’s love - This is why

We are told we need to love those around us. But not with a worldly love, or really any type of love that we can muster on our own but rather through the revealed love of Jesus on the cross. the last thing that this shows to us is that there is no fear in His love.

1 John 4:17 (CSB)

In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world.

This goes on to talk about the fact that God’s love casts out all fear, what this is telling us is that through the Love of God in us, as it is made complete in us what happens is confidence in the day of Judgement knowing that we have the blood of Jesus covering us. what is seen on the day of judgement is not all the bad things that we have done but the sacrifice Jesus paid for us.

Though we are in the world we remain in Jesus and are not of this world.

18 - No fear in love. This is in reference to the day of judgement. it is clear that anyone who has fear of the day of judgement needs to look to Jesus and what He has done and be assured that if you have given yourself to the son of God then when the time comes to see Jesus face to face, all fear will be wiped away.

we are left with a reminder in verses 20-21 that if we say we love Jesus yet hate those around us, hate our brother and sister and those that do not know Jesus even then we are liars. We do not have to like how the world lives, how they turn there back on God. It is okay for that to make us angry but to the person we are to love them. It does not mean that we have to be okay with our brothers and sisters in Christ living in sin but loving them might mean that we encourage them to turn their lives around. This is why it is so important that we disciple others.

We need to be a people that disciple others because we do make mistakes, we fall to sin and we mess up our lives. we need to teach others, in love, what it means to remain in Jesus, how to live according to the commands of Jesus. We need to work together in love by discipling one another what it means to live for the Lord. People need to see that in us.

So What?

Loving others, sounds like a hippie message. you just need love man. but we learn what it truly means to love those around us and it is so important. The first thing we learn from this is that.

True love has been revealed to us through Jesus sacrifice on the cross for us when we did not deserve it.

You may look at the love a mother has for her new born baby and think wow, that is love. But people are sinful and can fail you. You want to know what it means when it says to love others? look to what Jesus did for you on the cross. Look to the life of Jesus and how he washed His disciples feet, How he served others and did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage but rather gave it up to give us freedom from our sin.

Sacrifice, that is what it involves. thinking of others first. This is love.

we can have confidence in the day of Judgement as Jesus love casts out all fear of death.

Confidence in our salvation, that is what this is saying. We may never see the face of God till we die but what this is saying is that we can have assurance of our salvation and remain confident that if we remain steadfast in the love of Jesus, if we live for Him, believe in His name and follow His commands and show this love to those around us then we are saved and we will be seen as a child of God.

Death needs not be something to fear as a child of God, this is the message that we share, this is why we are here, this is wy we love others. we are incapable of loving others like thsi on our own but we can with Jesus love. we can know we are saved, and know Jesus blood has covered our sin.

Therefore we need to teach others what this means.

Discipleship, that is what this leads to. I could preach a whole nother sermon on what this looks like but since we have been focusing on this alot lately I thought I would join this two points together. We remain in Jesus, we are found in Him as His children. But as we love others we point them to Jesus and then show them what it means to live for Him.

it is not enough to just share with them the message but really walk alongside them and show them what it means to be a child of God. Thos is what it means to love others. God’s love revealed is us, casting out fear of anything the world can throw at us showing others through discipleship how to do this in their own lives.