THE ROOTS OF LOVE: GOD
Text: 1 John 4:7-12
Introduction
1. Illustration: "Love is so much the gift of God that it is called God" (Augustine, Ancient Christian Commentary On Scripture, vol. XI, 213).
2. Simply put, God is love, and any discussion or definition of love begins with God.
3. In our text today John declares...
A. Love Comes From God
B. God Loved Us First
C. Since God Loved Us We Should Love Others
4. Let's stand together out of respect of the Word of God as we read 1 John 4:7-12.
Proposition: God is love and as His people we need to display His prime characteristic.
Transition: It all starts with the fact that...
I. Love Comes From God (7-8).
A. God Is Love
1. We could easily declare John as the Apostle of Love, and much of his writtings are plastered with this concept of love.
2. Again (1 John 3:9-10) John argues that ones nature shows ones spiritual lineage; those who are like God are his children, and Gods supreme characteristic is his love, revealed in the cross of Christ.
Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary New Testament, Under: "1 John 4:7-21 The Test of Love".
3. In v. 7 John says, "Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God."
A. In the context of an appeal to love, it is appropriate that John addresses his readers as "dear friends," more literally "beloved."
B. He has already defined Christians as people who love their each other, and appealed to them to do just that.
C. In fact, the phrase "love one another" appears 13 times in the New Testament, and of those 13, more than half, 7 of them, appear in Johns writings.
D. Now he return to this idea, urging his readers to act accordingly. The thoughts he expresses here are mostly repeats of what he has already said. This is probably as a way of emphasis, but John also has some fresh nuances to express.
E. He begins by emphasizing that love comes from God. It has its origins in God, and therefore, love is a God thing.
F. The beginning of love is found in the fact that God showed love to us, and to understand what love is we have to first understand love as expressed in the actions of God.
G. But if love is a God thing then it only makes sense to say that anyone who truly loves must be in a relationship with God. John does not say, "everyone who has been born of God loves," which would put the obligation upon the readers.
H. Rather he is making two parallel statements: all love come from God, and therefore, all those who love are born of God.
I. John's concern is not exhortation but definition. In other words, his point is not telling people to love, but rather telling them what love is.
4. Now this presents us with a problem, because some people might say, and many of them do, "I don’t have to be a Christian, all I have to do is love!"
A. However, this can only be true if we take Johns statement completely out of context from the rest of the letter.
B. Remember context has many levels in Scripture. You have the immediate context (chapter), the book context, testament context (OT or NT) and the biblical context.
C. And in this case, John clearly states that both faith and love are essential. So this leads to another dilemma, how is it possible for people who are not Christians to love?
D. We cannot deny that there are those outside of the church who love, in fact, sometimes they do a better job of it than we do!
E. How then can we explain this fact? Well we can explain it in one word - THEOLOGY! "Oh, Pastor we don’t want to talk about theology, we just want to talk about Jesus!" Well guess what, were gonna talk about theology.
F. First, we are going to talk about the theology of the nature of God.
G. Genesis 1:26-27 (NLT2)
26 Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image, to be like ourselves. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.
27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
H. Now we have been created in the image of God, a fact that was defaced by not destroyed by the Fall, therefore, all human beings have the capacity to love.
I. Secondly, we are going to talk about the theology of grace. Through the preaching of the Gospel people are aware of their obligation to love one another, and they may be influenced by this preaching even if they fail to accept Jesus as Savior.
J. Yet ultimately it is belief in Jesus and love for God that matters. Human love, however well intentioned it might be, falls short if it refuses if it fail to on the Father and the Son as its supreme objects of love (Marshall, 211-212).
5. Now look what John says in v. 8, "But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love."
A. As John so often does, he emphasizes his point he states the opposite. Anyone who does not love does not know God. Their lack of love demonstrates that they cannot possibly know God because God is love.
B. The idea is that knowledge of God as love leads us to love one another. We cannot come into a relationship with a loving God and not be transformed into a loving person.
C. He doesn’t really tell us how this transformation takes place, but he does imply that the love of God takes control of our natures and transforms us.
D. However, it is the end of this verse, which really carries the most weight. God is love is rightly recognized as the peak of divine revelation in this letter.
E. This statement stands along side of "God is light," and "God is spirit," as one of the great expressions of the nature of God in the writings of John.
F. We are wrong to exalt the love of God as his greatest attribute just because it is more compatible to our way of thinking.
G. Nevertheless, it is true that "God is spirit" describes his theoretical nature, while "God is light," and "God is love" deal with his character, especially as he has revealed himself to humans.
H. It has been noted that to speak of God as live is not to reduce God the status of an abstract quality.
I. The statement refers to his action. But it signifies more that "God loves," because all of God actions are out of love. Since love is a personal activity, the statement stresses the personality of God to its fullest extent (Marshall, 212-213).
B. Exemplifying Love
1. Illustration: In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, "Do not waste your time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less."
2. The real proof of transformation in our lives is love.
A. 1 Corinthians 13:2 (NLT2)
2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of Gods secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didnt love others, I would be nothing.
B. The true sign of whether you are in a relationship with Jesus is how much you love.
C. It's not how many Bible verses you know.
D. It's not how many songs you know.
E. It's not how much you give.
F. It's not even how much faith you have.
G. In fact, Paul says in comparison to love there things mean nothing.
H. What really matters is how much you love God and how much you love others.
Transition: The reason that we should love is...
II. God Loved Us First (9-10).
A. God Showed How Much He Loved Us
1. There is no greater example of love than God sending Jesus to die for us.
2. John show this to us in v. 9, "God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him."
A. John has already told us what love is, and in doing so has protected us from the danger of confusing poor human substitutes for love with Gods love. Now he goes over this concept again, but also adds some fresh ideas.
B. His language is nearly ideal to what he has said in his Gospel that most people are familiar with from John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."
C. He focuses at the beginning that the coming of Jesus demonstrates Gods own love.
D. His point is that the coming of Jesus is the visible proof in our lives of the hidden love of God.
E. So the cross is the visible sign to all of humanity of the incredible depths of Gods love for us.
F. God sent his own Son into the world so that we might obtain eternal life through him.
G. So we see two examples of Gods love; on the one hand self-sacrifice and on the other action done to benefit others.
H. John here uses his favorite verb "send" is an indication of the way in which Jesus came from a heavenly existence into a sinful and rebellious world.
I. Now this is really exciting, the word "send" comes from the Greek word apostello which is a compound verb, from apo - meaning away from, and stellomai - meaning to put something in order.
J. In other words, God sent Jesus away from himself in order to fix what we had messed up!
K. Now I don’t know about you, but that is one of the most awesome things I’ve ever heard! And that my friends is what love is all about!
3. Now in v. 10 John gets to the heart of why we should love. He says, "This is real love not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins."
A. Here, he says, is love not just the love of God, but love itself.
B. There can be no definition or explanation of real love which does not begin with God.
C. We cannot begin to comprehend by starting with our love for God. On the contrary, love has to be seen and understood as originating from God in sending his own Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
D. In this phrase we find the deepest definition of love; love means forgiving the sins of the ones we love and remembering them no more.
E. This is what God has done for sinful and rebellious mankind: he forgave our sins against him at his own cost.
F. To remove this idea from the concept of love is to water down the concept of love beyond measure.
G. The depth of Gods love has to be seen precisely in the way in which it bears the wounds inflicted upon him by the human race and yet still offers full and complete pardon.
B. Real Love
1. Illustration: "This is the greatest sign of God's love for us: when we were not yet able to seek him because of many sins, he sent his Son to us, so that he might grant forgiveness to all who believe in him and call us back into the fellowship of his fatherly glory" (Bede, Ancient Christian Commentary On Scripture, vol. XI, 213).
2. This is love: God showed his love by sending Jesus to save us when we were still sinners.
3.
A. Romans 5:6-8 (NLT2)
6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.
7 Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good.
8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
B. He didn't love us after we got it all together.
C. He didn't love us after we repented of our sins.
D. He didn't love us after we got right with him,
E. No, he loved us when we were lying in the mire and filth of our own sin.
F. He loved us while we were still sinners!
G. And that is the kind of love that we are supposed to display to others.
H. We are to love them not because they loved us first, but because God loved us first.
I. Loving someone is not a reward for something that they have done, but rather an obligation that we have because we have been commanded by Jesus to do so.
Transition: This leads us to the crux of John's teaching on love, and that is...
III. Since God Loved Us We Should Love Each Other (11-12).
A. Since God Loved Us That Much
1. Now that we know what love is and the fact that God loved us first, what should be our response to this wonderful news? That's simple, we should love each other.
2. In v, 11 John says, "Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other."
A. The recipients of so great a love have no choice but to respond to it. Our sins have been removed as far as the east is from the west by the gracious act of God.
B. British Bible Scholar I. Howard Marshall puts it this way, "He has loved them in such a way as to arouse adoring wonder at the magnitude of his sacrificial giving. They cannot do anything else but show love to one another."
C. Since we have received this incredible gift of love we must demonstrate that same kind of love to each other.
D. John simply could not comprehend how a person could experience the love of God and yet be unmoved by the obligation to love other people in the same way that he has loved them.
E. It is significant that John does not say that experience of God's love should compel us to love him in return; rather he speaks of our obligation to love others.
F. Although John is thinking primarily of loving those inside the Church, the fact that he begins with the statement of Gods love for sinners strongly suggests that his vision is not limited to the church but extends it to the world (Marshall, 215-216).
3. John then concludes in v. 12 with, "No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us."
A. John is saying here that if we fulfill this command to love, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
B. He says that nobody has ever seen God. This is a familiar thought in the Old Testament, and it taken up in John 1:18, a verse which is clearly in Johns mind here.
C. John 1:18 (NLT2)
18 No one has ever seen God. But the one and only Son is himself God and is near to the Fathers heart. He has revealed God to us.
D. In this verse a contrast is drawn between the visibility of God and the fact of the tangible presence of him in the person of Jesus.
E. Here, however, the contrast is with the way in which God is made known to us in the context of mutual love.
F. Its possible that John was dealing with false teachers who claimed some kind of direct vision of God, perhaps through some mystical experiences.
G. But John insists that God is not to be known in this kind of way at all. It remains true, despite all claims to the contrary, that God cannot be seen.
H. However, if we fulfill the command to love one another, then we experience the presence of God in ourselves.
I. At the same time Gods love is made complete in us. So if we love others then Gods love has its full effect in our lives (Marshall, 216-217).
B. A New Commandment
1. Illustration: I read an article once that stated that waitresses and waiters complained that Sunday was the worst day of the week to work. I thought, as I read this article, that my faith was going to be strengthened by what I was about to read. I thought the article would state how these servers would rather be with their families worshiping in church. I was disheartened when the article went on to say, that the servers complaint was, on Sundays the restaurants are filled with impatient, rude and sometimes obnoxious people dressed in their Sunday best, who rarely if at all ever gave a tip. Now apparently these Christians had forgotten what they had just heard at Worship or in Bible class. Something as simple as Christ’s command to love each other - couldn’t be accomplished 30 minutes after hearing the command.
2. Somehow we've gotten confused and taken Jesus new commandment as the new suggestion!
A. John 13:34-35 (NLT2)
34 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.
35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.
B. John said earlier in this letter that this is the message you have heard from the beginning.
C. It is one of the cornerstones of the Christianity: faith, hope and love...but the greatest of these is love.
D. In fact, Paul went so far as to say that without love we have nothing!
E. So where have we gotten the idea that this is an option?
F. Where have we come up with the concept that we can just rip those pages out of the Bible that tell us we are to love? And to be honest, if we did the Bible would be pretty thin!
G. It's a commandment: you must do this!
H. In this letter John says it over, and over, and over. In fact, of the five chapters in this letter he talks about it in every one except the first and last chapters.
I. Do you get the impression that he thought this was an important concept?
J. The reason he thought it so important is because Jesus thought it was vitally important. In fact, so important that he told them about the night before he showed the greatest act of love ever displayed in history, when he died on the cross!
Conclusion
1. Illustration: "Love is so much the gift of God that it is called God" (Augustine, Ancient Christian Commentary On Scripture, vol. XI, 213).
2. In our text today John declares...
A. Love Comes From God
B. God Loved Us First
C. Since God Loved Us We Should Love Others
3. THREE THINGS TO REMEMBER...
A. WE ARE COMMANDED TO LOVE BECAUSE IT IS ONE OF THE GREATEST EXPRESSIONS OF GOD'S CHARACTER.
B. WE ARE COMMANDED TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER, REGARDLESS OF A PERSONS DESERVEDNESS, BECAUSE GOD LOVED US, AND STILL LOVES US, WHILE WE ARE STILL SINNERS.
C. WE ARE COMMANDED TO LOVE BECAUSE IF GOD CAN LOVE US INSPITE OF OURSELVES, THEN WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO LOVE EACH OTHER, EVEN WHEN WE DON'T SERVE IT.
