Summary: God is Love, and they who love are of God

LOVING ONE ANOTHER IN FIRST JOHN

I/ WHAT LOVE DOES:

1 John 3:16-18

"Hereby perceive we the love , because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down lives for the brethren. {17} But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? {18} My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth."

1. Which is more important loving words or loving deeds ?

2. How do we know God loves us? (First because His word says so, and second because Jesus proved it by His action on the Cross)

II/ WHAT LOVE IS:

1 John 4:7-10

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. {8} He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God

is love. {9} In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

{10} Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son the propitiation for our sins."

A/ Love is of God - Love comes from God:

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God"

The best that the unchristian world can do is a union on mutual interests. But love for the unlovely, and for the unloving, sacrificial and lasting is

something supernatural, even superhuman, beyond the comprehension of the unsaved world. This kind of love is strictly and exclusively "of God".

1. Is love a feeling, or an action ?

2. Why should we do a loving thing for another person?

B/ Those who are "born again" love: "and every one that loveth is born of God"

1. God’s life and character necessarily manifest themselves in those who His children "he who loves is born of God". Merely emotional, or intellectual, or

doctrinal, or mystical conceptions of the new birth will not satisfy John (or God).

2. Those who are really spiritual are those who love.

Love defines who the real christians are! As God is righteous, they who do right are born of Him; as love is of the divine nature, so those possessing that nature will show it by loving.

C/ There is no Knowledge of God apart from Love: "and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God"

They alone know God who are willing to learn love, for the loveless heart has never understood what God is like. God’s power, eternity, majesty, wisdom, judgement, may be perceived, and feared: but they will not be fully understood, and God Himself will not be known, except we love. "He who loves... knows God. He who does not love does not know God", it is as plain as that!

D/ Finally, "God is Love":

1. Judaism and Greek philosophy had learned that God is Spirit, Judaism and Gnosticism had learned that God is light, but only Christianity saw the one truth worth all languages in earth or heaven - God is love!

2. John means it is the nature and property of God to be merciful, bountiful, faithful, abounding in grace, over-flowing in loving-kindness, patience, and tender-heartedness, dealing with us in steadfast righteousness, and ever seeking our highest good.

3. Paul says that nothing named in heaven or on the earth can separate us from it - (Rom 8:38-39).

4. All God’s activity is loving activity. If He creates, He creates in love; if He rules, He rules in love; if He judges, He judges in love" He cannot help it: for God is love!

E/ What God is - is learned from what God does: - verse 9 & 10

"In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins"

John insists that the initiative is God’s. Love (again) originates in God, and the meaning of love must be deduced from the divine action of God. "For God so loved the world that he gave"

III/ WHAT LOVE DEMANDS:

1 John 4:11-12

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. {12} No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

We would think that he would have gone on to say we ought also to love Him,but he does not. For it is the nature of love to pour itself out for others, and it rests not until it has reproduced itself in those it loves.

John 13:34 "[A new commandment] I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."

God is only seen by a lost world in the sacrificial love shared by Christians. As the saying goes " We are the only bible a careless world reads". In witnessing

to lost people, I have had them say "I am as good as so-and-so who is a deacon in his church".

Others have been cheated or lied to by so called christians. In deciding if something is right or wrong, consider what it will do to your testimony! In other words, if you love the lost you will be careful for their soul. Some christians are not sure they

are saved. The question is how can they convince someone else to accept Christ if they are not sure Christ will keep them?

IV/ THE PRIME AXIOM OF CHRISTIANITY - vs 16

"And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."

1. We must both know theologically and experientially that God is love, and loves us. That God is for us, in all circumstances, against all enemies, in the face of all needs, and in answer to all accusations. "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" The gospel cannot be reduced to greater brevity.

2. In Pilgrims progress written by John Bunyan, Little-Faith dwelt in the town of sincere,and his "mind was upon things divine", but he was brutally attacked by three brothers, Faint-heart, Mistrust, and Guilt, and robbed of all his spending-money, leaving him

"scarce enough to bring him to his journey’s end".

3. He was forced to beg and almost all the rest of the journey scattered nothing but doleful and bitter complaints. Yet Christian defends him kindly because like Mr Fearing "he would not go back".

4. You see the gospel ceases to be "good news" if one cannot know if they are saved. It is of course right that Little-faith and Mr Fearing should be gently dealt with: but Christ offers assurance, and this assurance is bound up in John’s prime axiom "we have

known and believed the love that God hath to us".

V/ THE FEARLESSNESS OF LOVE - verse 17

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgement: because as he is so are we in this world"

1. The fruit of assurance is that special kind of confidence or frank fearlessness which John has already referred to in 2:28, 3:21 and will presently speak of as boldness in prayer in 5:14.

2. Here, this confident boldness faces its severest test, the day of the final judgement of God. Only perfect love will bring boldness in the day of judgement.

3. Remember in verse 12 John said "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us".

4. Remember also that Jesus faced the judgement of men, the awful judgement of the cross: yet His relationship with the Father was never less than the perfect confidence of love.

VI. verse 18 - THE LOVELESSNESS OF FEAR

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love"

In the 21st chapter of Revelation, John says "the fearful, and the unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death"

Fear cannot generate love, or sympathy, or tenderness, or compassion. If a church member is without love, they are without God for God is love. Those whose

lives are ruled by fear of punishment or the loss of God’s love cannot know God because "fear hath torment".

VII/ WHAT PROVES LOVE FALSE:

1 John 4:19-21

We love him, because he first loved us. {20} If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? {21} And this commandment have we from him, That he who

loveth God love his brother also.

A/ verse 19 - HOW WE CAME TO LOVE

"We love Him,because he first loved us"

Love always descends. A mother loves her child more than the child loves the mother. God loves us more than we can love him. The love of God passes knowledge; man cannot grasp it. We will need all eternity to fathom the love of God. "Unto him who loved us and washed us from our sins " His Love came first while we were yet in sin.

B/ verse 20 - THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE

"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen"

Love and hate cannot coexist. God’s love is missing if we hate. We can be disappointed in another, but we must not hate. Hate reveals self will and the lack of God’s presense.

C/ verse 21 - LOVE IS NOT AN OPTION

"And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also" If we really want to know what will make Jesus happy, if we really want to know his will, if we really want to know about Him, then we will "love one another"

SUMMARY:

1. LOVE IS ALWAYS COSTLY

2. CHRISTIAN LOVE CONSISTENTLY PRODUCES GOOD DEEDS EVEN IN ORDINARY DAYS

3. PRACTICING MUTUAL LOVE IS THE REPONSIBILITY OF EVERY CHRISTIAN

4. ASSURANCE OF SALVATION COMES TO THOSE WHO PROVE THEIR FAITH BY THEIR LOVE

5. PIOUS CLAIMS OF LOVING GOD ARE PROVED FALSE BY CALLOUS UNCONCERN FOR FELLOW CHRISTIANS