When Love Abides In Us
1 John 4:12-21
We live in a world that is subject to certain changes in opinion. For a generation we have been worried about cholesterol and have tried to cut it out of our diets.
Now, just to confuse us, we are told there is a good & a bad cholesterol. For years many people turned to margarine to avoid butter but now scientists are saying that butter is actually better. 2% milk instead of whole milk became popular to avoid fat but some scientists now say that it really matter.
One man decided that he was convinced that in the near future they will discover that vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup is a cure for both heart disease and cancer. So anticipating that discover he is going to continue eating them now.
John’s letter is meant to settle some issues and end any confusion. Especially about the importance of love in the life of the Christian. Love is God’s fingerprint on our lives. It validates His presence and is only possible because He has placed the capacity to love within us.
If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.
(13) This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given to us from His Spirit. (14) And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. (15) Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God - God remains in him and he in God. (16) And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him
1. What does perfect love look like? Where does it come from? Who is it meant for?
The presence of this perfected love is meant to prove that we know
God and to draw a lost world into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
May visit someone who due to some tragedy finds themselves in an intensive care unit at a hospital.
Things are so critical that they might be on life support: monitor brain waves, heart rhythms, things which are all the evidences of life by one definition but are not what real living is all about.
You may access your own life as going though the motions of life but to answer the question, ’is this really living’ you might feel uncomfortable.
The Bible says that if you are separated from a daily consciousness of God that you are dead. IT is not real life, abundant life, eternal life.
2. The key word for John seems to be the word ’remain’ or ’abide’.
Does the love of God continually work itself through your life and mine
to touch others around us?
Book of Genesis the key word was ’walked’ God walked with men and men walked with God.
In Exodus men did not simply walk with God but God lived or dwelt with them. God dwelt in the camp. They were a people of God.
In the NT God dwells in men through the Holy Spirit. He is everpresent in our lives a constant companion and actually the power of His life lives through us.
John 14:23 If any man love Me, he will keep My Words; and My Father will love them, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him’.
Four Questions To Determine Whether You Have This God Kind Of Life:
DO YOU HAVE THE SPIRIT?(13) This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given to us from His Spirit.
1. Loving others is only possible through the Holy Spirit but also confirms the presence of the Spirit in our lives. Given to us from His Spirit
a. Because God has given us of His Spirit the possibilities are endless for us to love others. You might say ’I can’t love ___’.
Maybe you can’t but God can love them through you.
b. Our choice to love others welcomes the Holy Spirit to freely work through our lives. DO YOU HAVE THE SPIRIT?
DO YOU HAVE THE SON(14) And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. (15) Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God - God remains in him and he in God.
1. When we have perfect love then the world will start listening to what we have to say.
A man saw a sign in a florist shop window, ’Say it with Flowers’. He went in and told the clerk, ’Wrap up one rose for me, please’. ’Just one?’ ’Yes, I am a man of few words’. We are too often as believers people of few words or actions which show our love for others.
a. Every act of love in our lives is another word to the world about Jesus. My love for you confesses that He is real. He is sent by God…He is Savior
G. Campbell Morgan was a famous British preacher who had five sons, all of whom became preachers. A visitor in their home dared to ask a personal question, ’Which of you six is the best preacher?’
They answered together in unison, ’MOTHER!’ Mrs. Campbell had never preached a formal sermon but her life was a constant sermon.
PEOPLE DON’T CARE WHAT YOU KNOW UNTIL THEY KNOW THAT YOU CARE!
(16) And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains it him.
a. Living in perfect love is a constant reminder to us that God’s Word is faithful and His promises are true.
b. Someone constantly doubting their salvation? Are you allowing God to use you in an ongoing fashion?
c. As God uses us, loves others through us it is a daily witness to our hearts that we belong to Him.
Do You Have His Security ?
#1: For the Future (17) In this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; for we are as He is in this world.
1. It is wonderful blessing to know each day that at the moment of death is also the moment of entering the presence of God.
a. As we live each day with God ministering love through our lives it is a constant reminder of His love for us that will one day end in our being with him forever.
Heb 9:27 It is appointed unto man once to die but after this the judgment.
b. A Christian does not fear the future because Christ has suffered his judgment for him on the cross.
John 5:24 Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears My word and believes Him Who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life.
Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
1) Judgment is not future for the Christian but is past. Our sins have already been judged at the Cross and will never be brought against us again.
#2: In the Present(18) There is no fear in love; instead perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love.
1. A second blessing is that perfect love builds faith. Fear is the opposite of faith. A believer in Jesus has nothing to fear but fear itself. There is no reason to fear the past, the present or the future.
2 Tim 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
FEAR INVOLVES PUNISHMENT literally says Fear has punishment. Word for punishment is same root as word meaning to limit or restrain.
Sense that John is say that fear puts limits on us, imprisons us. Narrows or binds us(anxiety, tensions, worries arrest our love)
(Day of realization that set me free(TRUTH SHALL) God’s sovereignty, control, purpose – take on any challenge in His strength and needed to fear nothing! It set me free.
I can’t, it is impossible, not my capability had to be removed from my vocabulary when they were considered regarding anything God might direct me towards.
One of God’s faithful missionaries, Allen Gardiner, experienced many physical difficulties and hardships throughout his service to the Savior.
Despite his troubles, he said, "While God gives me strength, failure will not daunt me."
In 1851, at the age of 57, he died of disease and starvation while serving on Picton Island at the southern tip of South America. When his body was found, his diary lay nearby. It bore the record of hunger, thirst, wounds, and loneliness.
The last entry in his little book showed the struggle of his shaking hand as he tried to write legibly. It read, "I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God."
The great missionary understood the love of God in a way that I pray all of us can come to understand His unshakeable love.
So much of what we hear about today concerning God is founded upon a "let the good times roll" theology. We look for God in all of the good times, but I will assure that God can be seen most clearly in the darkest days of our lives
There is nothing that makes the Light shine so bright as the darkest night. Corrie Ten Boom learned this most valuable lesson from her sister, Betsie, while they underwent excruciatingly painful experiences during the crazed days of Adolf Hitler. Corrie once wrote,
Often I have heard people say, "How good God is! We prayed that it would not rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather!’" Yes, God is good when He sends good weather. But God was also good when He allowed my sister, Betsie, to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp.
I remember one occasion when I was very discouraged there. Everything around us was dark, and there was darkness in my heart. I remember telling Betsie that I thought God had forgotten us. "No, Corrie," said Betsie, "He has not forgotten us. Remember His Word: ’For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him.’"
Corrie concludes, "There is an ocean of God’s love available--there is plenty for everyone. May God grant you never to doubt that victorious love--whatever the circumstances."
(Corrie Ten Boom)
a. When we know God’s love it dissipates our fear and allows us to trust Him at deeper and deeper levels and with greater and greater things in our lives.
1) An immature Christian will be tossed back and forth between love and fear but a mature one has the faith to recognize the hand of God in all of life and to know that all that is done is done out of all that He is and all that He is is love.
Do You Have His Solution? (19) ….We love(no ’him’ in Greek) because He first loved us. (20) If anyone says, ’I love God’, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God who he has not seen. (21) And we have this commandment from Him: the one who loves God must also love his brother.
1. We have the ability to love because God made a choice to love us and to place within us the capacity to love others. If you refuse to love somebody or say you cannot love somebody and then say, ’I love God’ then John says you are liar.
2. Jesus said in Matt 25 that the way to love God was to love people, ’He that has done it unto the least of these has done it unto Me’.
I can’t see God and God really doesn’t have needs but people do and I can see them. Look around, people everywhere with needs that abound. Some have financial need but for the most part people need encouragement, support someone to stand with them and love them unconditionally.
A young African boy listened intently as the missionary teacher explained why Christians give presents to each other on Christmas Day. ’An expression of our joy over the birth of Jesus and our love for one another’.
When Christmas came the boy brought the teacher a very beautiful sea shell. ’Where did you find such a shell’ He told her how there was only one spot, several miles away where they could be found. ’You shouldn’t have gone all that way to get a gift for me!’ His eyes brightened as he said, ’Long walk was part of gift’.
3. John said all the way back in 1 John 2:10-11 The one who loves his brother remains in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and doesn’t know where he is going, because the darkness(hatred) has blinded his eyes.
a. 2 1/2 chapters later he sums up a lengthy message on loving one another by verse 21: And we have this command from Him: the one who loves God MUST love his brother. When all is said and done we love because GOD DEMANDS IT!
Verse 11 is the answer to every lame excuse on our part which says, "Oh, I just can’t love that person. You don’t know what she’s like. If you had to live with them as I have to, you wouldn’t be able to either."
"Beloved, if God so loved us ..." If you have experienced this kind of love, if you have been to the cross and have felt the overwhelming cleansing of God’s love for you, despite the antagonism and hatefulness you have shown him, and your loving of your own way and wanting to do what you like;
if you have felt the cleansing grace of God wiping that all out without any recriminations or calling up of the past, forgetting and forgiving it all,
then as John says, you not only can love someone else but you "ought to" -- you owe it. We owe it, because we have within us the fountain of love in the life of God.
Corrie Ten Boom: I was in a church service in Munich when I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door at Ravensbruck. Suddenly I was there again in my mind, the roomful of mocking men, the heap of clothing, my sister’s pain ridden face.
He came up to me at the church, ’How grateful I am for your message Fraulin, to think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!
His hand thrust out to shake mine mine. I who had spoken so often of people’s need to forgive kept my hand at my side.
As angry and vengeful thoughts boiled through me I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? I prayed, ’Lord Jesus forgive me and help me to forgive him’.
I tried to smile and I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing for him. I breathed a silent prayer, ’Jesus I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness’.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness but on His that the healing of hurts hinges. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. God is Love. We can love because He first loved us!
