Perfected Series

Perfected

1 John 4:14-21

• It is really one of the most uncomfortable positions a family can be in.

• I don’t desire to pull off any memory bandages before wounds heal, but the seriousness of this topic demands it.

• We have all visited a family in the hospital who was faced with a heartbreaking decision.

• It may even have been some of your families.

• The patient is hooked to every machine to keep them alive.

• There is a pulse, there is breathing, bodily organs are functioning due to medical intervention.

• But the person is gone. The brain is not alive, or at least not responsive to any stimulus.

• The decision, do we unplug the machines and leave the life in this body to fight alone?

• Many of us have predetermined how that fight will go for us when we are plugged up to machines.

• The issue clears up when we focus on quality of life. Like many of you, I have said, “Unplug me.”

• I am certainly looking forward to the highest quality of life after the flame of this life has flickered out.

• I raise this uncomfortable and unpleasant situation for a very important reason.

• I want you to consider the scopes and meters in the control room in heaven.

• For many Christians, the machines are reading that there is life in the body, the arms, legs and mouth works.

• There is even brain activity, but the heart has no longer been emitting supernatural love.

• Without that supernatural love, not matter how good a work or deed looks, it’s dead.

• No matter how many positions within a Church the Christian holds, no matter how many dinners the hands cook for the needy or grieving in the community, no matter how many bandaids the person places on little knees and elbows, the finger prints left on the lives around them are not God’s.

• God’s fingerprints only pass through us onto the lives of others through Agape love.

• I wonder if the Angels stand looking at that Agape Monitor in heaven and wonder when God is going to pull the plug.

• We have established that Agape love is supernatural. It cannot be attained by our humanity but is available to us through the presence of God in His children through the Holy Spirit.

• Now, we will see that it only demonstrates itself when it is perfected in us.

• And only that supernatural love leaves the fingerprints of God on other people’s lives.

Jn 4:14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.

• John had already said that they did not know or yet see Jesus in His Glory.

• But Jesus still revealed the Father. So what did they see and testify to that revealed the Father?

• The grace of God: They had seen Jesus demonstrate God’s grace by granting forgiveness and healing to the least deserving.

• In that, they had seen God, for Jesus revealed God’s heart.

• They had seen the love of God, demonstrated through Jesus Christ to all He encountered.

• They had seen love continue in the least loving, most painful, highly offensive moments.

• They recognized and testify of the steadfastness of God’s love.

• In actually, they had seen love perfected.

• And they saw it in Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, during a time when He was stripped of every define benefit.

• That is important to note, because when Christ humbled Himself to become man, He became as man.

• He forfeited everything that was outside of our reality. He became as us so that He could show us the way.

• And then with no more than we have (less the sin nature), He loved perfectly, obeyed perfectly, depended upon the Father perfectly, suffered perfectly.

• He became more than the spotless Lamb for our sacrifice.

• He became the perfect example and perfect demonstration of victory in a fallen world.

• There is much theology here that we are not ready to teach.

• I could go off in several directions here, but I want to stay focused on His perfect love.

• How specifically does the testimony of the Apostles apply to the hearers, and us the readers?

1Jn 4:15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.

• The same source of victory that Jesus depended upon is available to us.

• I believe this is the reality that John wants you to grasp.

• If you are saved, the same power that made Jesus the successful Savior of the world, as mentioned in verse 15, is living in full power within you.