sermon20220710 The Love of God in John's Epistles
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Before the children leave
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 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. 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. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 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. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 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. 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. 19 We love because he first loved us. 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. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Francis Moloney
Love in the Gospel of John: An Exegetical, Theological, and Literary Study (Preface)
the authors of the New Testament did not invent the command to love God and neighbor. The commands to love God (Deut. 6:4–5) and to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev. 19:18) predated the Christian era by many centuries, as, most likely, did the command to love one’s enemies (see Luke 6:27//Matt. 5:44; see the hints in Exod. 23:4–5; Prov. 24:17–18; 25:21–22).
Jesus
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
An awareness of the theme of love in the Gospel of John has a long history in Christianity. In a story attributed to Augustine, the disciples of the Beloved Disciple, somewhat wearied by his relentless insistence that they love one another, once asked him if there was anything else of importance that Jesus passed on. The Beloved Disciple simply replied: “Love one another.” Ever since that time, Christians have focused on the central role of love at every level of life and practice, and not only for “one another.” As history tells us, there have been times in the Christian story when care and love for others have not been especially obvious, especially during the Crusades, in the dramatic breakdown of Christian unity during the period of the Reformation, in the horrific persecution of the Jewish people across the centuries, and in the abuse of young people by Christian authorities in more recent times. Despite these tragic departures from the dream of the founder of Christianity, his followers—in their many guises—still strive to obey his command to love.
But there is something different in the Fourth Gospel that has attracted the interest of scholars in recent times. Despite the widespread insistence upon love in the Gospel of John, the command to love one’s neighbor has disappeared. A command to “love one another” has replaced it. It is equally interesting that Jesus does not command love of God. He instructs his disciples—and through this Gospel, all subsequent readers and hearers—to love him. To love Jesus, and to believe that he has come from the Father, is one of the guarantees that God will love them (see 16:27). Scholars have assessed the uniqueness of the Johannine use of the theme of love variously; there is little unanimity among them. They seldom focus upon the cross of Jesus as the revelation of love (see 15:13).
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The love of God is an action
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
Our love for one another is to be an action
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
The combination of God’s love for mankind and the believer’s love for one another.
The sacrificial love of God is to be the sacrificial love of the believer. This type of love is to be the distinctive, Spirit empowered love of the elect.
It is this love that is to defining mark of Christian marriage
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
It is this love, the love of God, that is given to the believer by the Holy Spirit, poured into our hearts we are told in Romans 5. And it is the absence of this love that the word of God uses to reveal false belief and condemn false believers.
And it is this love that John proclaims in his epistles as the evidence of true faith.
Just as John has stated in his gospel that you are not born again because of the faith possess prior to salvation but instead you have been given faith because the Holy Spirit has done a work of new birth within you;
in the same way John is going to say in 1 John that you do not become a Christian by loving like God, rather, if you are truly God’s child, God’s elect, regenerated by the Holy Spirit, then you will love other believers as the Spirit empowers you or you will choose to rebel against the Spirit and live in carnal defiance to the Spirit by refusing to not do the “one another’s” of the New Testament:
Not forgiving one another, not serving one another, not being kind, to one another, not accepting one another, not submitting to one another, not encouraging one another, not offering hospitality to one another, and all of the other one another’s in the Bible.
This is the action love that is commanded by the Lord and empowered by the Spirit in the lives of obedient believers.
The love of God in John’s epistles:
In 1 John, the apostle John shows us the evidences of true faith.
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.
What did he write:
Big Idea: If we know we’re sinners rescued by Jesus, and if this leads us to obey God and love other believers, we can have assurance that we have genuine faith.
Chapter 1 shows us our sinfulness and our need for salvation:
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
John then shows us what true salvation produces: obedience and love. And these two are often viewed by John as one and the same:
If you are obeying you are loving, if you are loving you are obeying. If you are not obeying God’s commands, you are not loving. If you are not loving other believers, you are not obeying.
1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
(1) Obedience
5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him:
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
lack of obedience is defined as love for the world
(2) Love for one another
10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
(3) Obey the commandment and love
The softening of the gospel in our culture
23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
(4) True love for God is obedience
1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
True faith produces true obedience. True faith is given by the Spirit, thus the term “born of God.” If you are not overcoming the world:
You are living in disobedience and need to repent
You have not been born of the Spirit, born of God and you need to cry out to God and ask for the Spirit to give you the new birth, you need to be born from above.
1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.