1 John 4:7-21 January 28, 2007
God’s Love and Ours
John is coming to the end of his letter & it is this point that he brings it all together. You remember that he is arguing with a group who has left the church that we call proto-Gnostics. These people believed that we are saved, not through faith in Jesus’ death on the cross, but through some secret knowledge that can only be granted trough some strange ritual. They believed that good spirit could not mix with evil matter, therefore Jesus could not have been both God and human. He was either God who just appeared human or a man who only appeared divine. They we an arrogant bunch, and were hateful toward anyone who did not possess their secret knowledge.
This passage really brings into clear view how Christians are different than this other group, and how we are to live even now.
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1 John 4:7–8 - Love because God is love
The poetry of John’s language doesn’t come out very well in the translation: “Dear friends, let us love one another.” “agap‘toi agapÇmen” “beloved, let us be loving”
His logic is pretty simple. In his very essence, God is love, therefore if we claim to follow God, we should love.
If you meet someone who claims to know God and teaches or shows hate toward those created in God’s image, you need to know that they do not know God.
The love that God is, and the love that we are supposed to have between each other is not just an affectionate feeling. The love that God is not just some ephemeral feeling or concept. God’s love is not just his character, it is his action. In fact you cannot separate his love from his action.
At the crossroads center in the Dominican there was a card pinned to the wall with a quote from mother Theresa. It said “it is not enough to be compassionate – you must act.
In his love, God is not just compassionate for us, he acts; he does something
1 John 4:9–10 God’s love is shown in the incarnation, the cross for sinners
On Friday, I took the kids skiing, the run we were on most often had a fork at the bottom of it. Each fork lead to a different lift. More than once, Benjamin would take one fork and Nicholas the other. I would be left to decide which son to follow and which to leave to try to ride the lift on their own with the hopes of meeting back again. I have to admit that I had a very stressful day skiing. My anxiety went through the roof as thought of Benjamin or Nicholas being all on his own at the bottom of the hill. I’d also have to think about sending Hayley to be with one while I went after the other
”This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”
God didn’t just send one of his older children to the bottom of the ski hill to fetch another one. He sent his one and only Son as a baby to grow up and fetch all of us into his kingdom.
He doesn’t just send His only Son to fetch us, he sends him to be sacrificed on a cross to pay the price for everything that we have ever done wrong so that we can come home. He sent his Son to die.
He sent Jesus, not because we loved him so much and wanted to be with him, he sent him before we loved him. – “not that we loved God, but that he loved us.”
God is not just compassionate, he acts – he sacrifices his own, only Son so that we might have life.
1 John 4:11 – love like God
Our love for each other should be like God’s love for us – not just affection, but active love. Not action that is worth nothing to us, but sacrificial actions. If love costs us nothing it is not love.
The Beatles got is wrong when they sang love, love, love…it’s easy. It is not easy; God’s love is costly.
The early Christians recognized this in Acts 2 when they would sell pieces of their own property to ensure that other Christians had enough food.
God’s love is costly and sacrificial and it is given without the surety of a positive response.
When I emptied my bank account to by a diamond ring for Pam 19 years ago, I was pretty sure of the response. We had been together for years, we had talked about marriage, and she seemed positive, even excited about the idea! I was pretty sure I would hear the word “yes.”
Paul writes that God loved us and sent his only son to die for us while were enemies! He was in no way sure of the response!
Our love is to be the same. Jesus says “what good is it if you love people who you know are going to love you back, don’t even the pagans do that? Instead, love those who may not ever be able to show love in return.
1 John 4:12-16 God’s love is shown through the giving of the Spirit
God’s love is not just costly it is intimate.
If God’s love was only shown to us through the coming of Jesus and his death on the cross, it would be amazing and out of this world, but it would still have a distance to it. 2000 years of distance to be exact. Although it is fantastic and more love than we could ever imagine, God’s love is not shown only in one act 2000 years ago. God’s love is not only shown through his sending of his son: God’s love is also shown by sending his Spirit to live within us.
What Jesus did on the cross 2,000 years ago gave us the possibility of reconciliation with God, the Holy Spirit is the reality of that reconciliation. God comes and moves in.
He doesn’t just move into the neighbourhood, he doesn’t just move into the house, he moves into you, into us. What God does is even more intimate than the marriage relationship, it is not just body-to-body intimacy, or soul-to-soul, it is spirit-to-spirit. And his Spirit teaches our spirit that we are well-loved children he wispers in our ear, God is your Father, you can call him “Abba.”
1 John 4:16b-18 Love is to be like Jesus – read verse
The way that we love each other is to be the same way that Jesus loved the people around him.
- no fear – not a fear based religion like voodoo, or other religions where you have to placate the Gods or they are going to get you. Our faith is a love based religion, that says that God loves you, and you do not have to jump through hoops to please him, he is already pleased enough to die for you, to live in you by his Holy spirit. You don’t have to earn this, you already have it! God does not have a bullet with your name on it, he has written your name on the palm of his hand. He’s not leaving me – he’s got a Mike tattoo on his hand!
We are to love in the same way – not create fear through coercion, but to show people the freedom of unconditional love!
1 John 4:19-21 Love is the core of our faith
There are many things that are key to our faith – truth, right belief, morality, right action, justice, right economics. All there things are right and key, but our faith begins and ends with love. All these other things lose their meaning if they are not surrounded by love.
1 Corinthians 13
Once again, it is not just a warm feeling for each other, it is compassion acted upon.
It is as simple as John writes – the love that we have for each other comes from God, but if we do not show love to each other, how can we say that we love God when the love is supposed to come from him?
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.
