We love others because…. Why do we love others? Has that thought ever crossed you mind? Do we love others because they are attractive, like me? Do we love others because they make us laugh? Do we love others because they make us feel good? Do we love others because they are good cooks? Why do we love others? Why bother wasting our time on other people? What does the Word of God say about loving others?
Turn with me to 1 John 4.
Read 1 John 4:7-12.
We love others because God is love. We love others because God loved us. We love others because if we love others God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
We love others because God is Love.
John makes a brief yet profound statement in verse 8, “God is love.” God is in his nature love. God is the perfect, flawless expression of love.
Let’s look at the first three verses of our passage, 7-9. We’re going to work backwards through these three verses. We will start with verse 9, then we’ll look at 8, and then 7, as we consider the statement that “God is love.”
Verse 9 says, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”
There are a couple things to note here about God’s love. First, it cost him something. Second, he demonstrated his love in the middle of the object of his affection. Third, we, as humans, were the objects of his affection.
God demonstrated his love for the human race by sending his Son that we might live. The love of God for the human race was shown in the death of his Son Jesus Christ on the cross. God’s love cost him something. It cost him his Son. As Jesus hands a feet were nailed to the cross, he took the punishment for our sins. A holy God could not bear the sight of his only Son with all that sin on him. Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” There was a separation of the Father and Son at that moment. God’s love for us cost him that separation from his Son. One great preacher once said, “Love is self-sacrifice, the seeking of another’s positive good at one’s own cost.” God sought our good, which is eternal life, at the expense of the humiliation and death of his only Son.
The other thing is that God sent his Son into the middle of the human race. He didn’t stay in his ivory tower. God came in human form to get in the middle of the race. He faced temptation. He was hungry, thirsty, and tired. He experienced the range of human emotions, from happiness to sadness, and from anger to delight. He felt pain. He felt physical pain. He felt emotional pain. God came and got directly involved in human life. He didn’t stay on his throne in heaven and throw out platitudes about love and all that. He came and got his hands dirty.
I remember hearing a friend of ours who was going through a very difficult divorce. She loved her husband, and she didn’t want a divorce. He had emotional abused our friend. He had cheated on her. He had put the family in a terrible financial position. Our friend was devastated. She told us that one day she was driving to work and praying. She told God that he didn’t understand the pain of rejection. God reminded her that he had indeed experienced the pain of rejection on the cross.
God came and got his hands dirty in the human race. He experienced everything that we can experience.
The other thing we get out of this verse is that we are the objects of God’s affection. God sent his Son so we might live through him. God has offered us the gift of eternal life. It hasn’t been offered to anyone or anything else. Trees don’t have eternal life. Animals don’t have eternal life. Nothing other than humans has the opportunity for eternal life. We are the objects of God’s love. It is for us, and only for us that he sent his Son so we can have eternal life with him.
John says in verse 8, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” How could someone who had experienced the kind of love that John is talking about not love others? The Bible says that all people are sinners. Everyone single one of us were born sinners. We have all committed acts of sin that deserve nothing less than eternal punishment. God loves us so much that he sent Jesus to pay for our penalty. John says that anyone who doesn’t love others is not a recipient of the love of God.
Again, the word “know” is more than mental acknowledgement that God exists. To know God is to have a deep personal relationship with him. To say that we are God’s child and not love others is absurd. It would be like claiming to be the child of someone whom you don’t even remotely resemble. It was always funny growing up when someone would say, “You look exactly like your dad.” Then the next person would say, “You look exactly like you mom.” It really struck me one day that I did have a resemblance to my dad. I was looking at some pictures taken at my high school graduation party. I looked at this one picture of me standing there, and it immediately reminded me of a picture I had seen of my dad when he was young. At that moment there was no way I could claim to be something other than my dad’s son. There was a distinct resemblance. It was undeniable. The way I was standing, my body language, even the way my mouth looked all betrayed the fact that I resembled my dad.
We are to resemble our heavenly Father. We are to be so like him that people say, “Hey you look like you dad. You act just like your dad.”
Verse 7 says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”
To show that we have been born of God and know God, we are to love others. This is how we show our resemblance to our Father.
One of the reasons that I look like my parents is that I have their DNA. Half of my DNA comes from my mom, and the other half comes from my dad. The DNA carries traits and tendencies. It determines our eye color, our hair color, and other things. It even determines if we will be likely to lose our hair. We have our parents DNA because we have been born of our parents. Our parents got their DNA from their parents and their parents and so on. There is nothing we can do about our DNA. My DNA says that I will lose my hair. The only way to overcome that would be to use some artificial method, whether it’s a rug, a weave, Rogaine, or whatever.
When we are born of God, we get his DNA. His DNA is love, because “God is love.” Our God-like DNA says that we love others. If we do not love others, we don’t have the right DNA. If we don’t have the right DNA, we haven’t been born of God. Love proceeds naturally from someone who truly loves and knows God and was born of God.
We love others because God loved us.
It’s not our love for God that motivated him to send his Son. We had nothing to do with it. God sent his Son because he loved us. Verse 10 says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
We have that big hairy theological word, “propitiation.” Propitiation means that Jesus paid for our sins. He took the punishment that we deserved for our sins. We deserved death, and Jesus died for us. Jesus has paid our account in full by his death on the cross.
Jesus death on the cross is called the “atonement.” Atonement is another big hairy theological word. Its meaning is easy to remember. Just breakdown the syllables: at-one-ment. Jesus’ death means that we can be at one with God. Jesus death bridged the gap between God and us.
There is nothing mankind can do to bridge the gap between God and us. In fact our actions required God to punish us. God’s love, however, provided provision for us to be reconciled with him. Out of his love, he sent his Son to pay our price. Jesus took the sin of the world and paid the price for us. The greatness of God’s love is seen in the fact that it was so costly to him. Jesus sacrificed his entire being for us when we didn’t deserve it.
We must come to grips with the fact that God loves us more than we can imagine. We must understand that he sent his Son to his death for us. We did not deserve this treatment from God. We do not deserve his love. We can do nothing to earn it. He loves us because he is love.
John states in verse 11, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” It is as if John is saying, “How can we not love others when we have been recipients of such great love?” The fact that God loved us enough to have his only Son brutally executed on a cross should motivate us to show the same kind of love. The way I would paraphrase this verse is: “The least we can do is love others since God has done all of this for us!”
This is an ethical demand of Christianity. Christianity cannot be separated from the demand of ethics. We cannot be Christian and not love others. To claim that I have God’s DNA and not resemble him is as ludicrous as to claim that I have Matt’s DNA. I just ain’t happening. If I don’t love others I am no more God’s child than I am the child of someone other than my dad.
Resurrection Band, a 1970s style rock band, was a big influence on my life as a teenager. There music spoke to me about a real relationship with God. They had a song called “Souls for Hire.” In that song they sing about an authentic relationship with God. It starts off, “You toy with the truth, dilute it with water. You hate your wife, but you say you love your daughter.” It goes on to say, “You lean toward religion. You secularize. Don’t feed me excuses. They’re nothing but lies. The time that you’re wasting is precious to Him. Truth is you don’t confront sin.” At the end of the song it goes, “Be loved if you want, or lost if you don’t. Don’t blame the preacher. Don’t blame the school. Don’t blame conditions. Don’t be a fool. If you live in the darkness, it’s you that decides.”
The time that we sit around and blow hot air about love and God is wasted time if we don’t go out and get our hands dirty with people. Jesus came and died for people. Jesus didn’t die for programs, buildings or anything else. Jesus died for people. Jesus died for you. Jesus died for you, and you and you. Jesus died for me. Jesus died for the people who live down the street. Jesus died for the people who live up the street. Jesus died for the people you work with. Jesus died for the people who live next door to you. Jesus died for the people you don’t particularly care for.
Don’t make excuses for not carrying out God’s plan of love. Don’t blame others for failure to show that you are a child of God. Don’t blame anyone or anything for moral failure. We so easily alternate between religion and the world. We lean toward religion on Sunday, but when Monday comes we secularize. Excuses are lies. If we love God, we will love others. If we don’t love others, we don’t love God.
We love others because if we love others, God lives in us and his love is in its full expression.
It is only when we love others that God lives in us. It’s not enough to have a correct theological understanding about God. In fact, someone may have a mistaken understanding about God and love others and be a true child of God. On the other hand, someone who has a correct understanding of God and doesn’t demonstrate it in love is not a child of God.
In the Church of the Nazarene, we talk a lot about holiness and sanctification and all that goes along with that. I believe in holiness, and I believe that Jesus Christ has the power to break the bondage of sin in our lives. At the same time, we sometimes use that as an excuse not to demonstrate love for others. We say garbage like, “We don’t want the world to influence us.” What kind of nonsense is that? Who’s more powerful: Jesus Christ the only Son of the Living God or the world? When we say stuff like that, what winds up happening is that we remove our influence from the world. When we remove our influence from the world, we wind up condemning people to an eternity in Hell.
Jesus came to earth and engaged the culture. In verse 4 of chapter 4, John reminds us, “For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” Jesus Christ is greater than any obstacle we may face. Our job is to demonstrate the love of God to the world.
Verse 12 says, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”
No one has ever seen God. I haven’t, and you haven’t. God cannot be seen, but he can be made known through love. The test of our walk with God is our love for others. We love others because he has come into our life.
Some people have a hang up on the thought that God’s love is perfected in us. The word “perfect” doesn’t mean that we are flawless. It means, rather, that God’s love is brought to full expression in our lives. God’s love is brought to its fullest expression through our love for others. God’s love was not designed for our consumption. It was designed to be shared with others so they can know the love of God. Our love for others brings God’s love to its full expression and it makes him known to the world. The only way that pre-Christians will see God is to see him through our love for them.
Call to action
Are you excited about what God has done in your life? Do you think it’s a good thing that Jesus paid for your sin? Don’t you think someone you know would think that it’s pretty cool that Jesus paid for their sin? Don’t you think the person who works next to you deserves the love of God as much as anyone else? What about your neighbor?
On the same album as “Souls for Hire,” Resurrection Band has a song called “Defective Youth.” That song says, “My heart is at the North Pole/Need moral antifreeze. Church people pushing answers/You want me on my knees. You say He’s the solution/You tell me you got love. I say you gotta prove it/When push comes to shove.”
Push is coming to shove. We gotta prove our love for God. It’s time for a DNA test. Do we have God’s DNA?
There is only one successful way to build a Church. LOVE! Love builds the Church. Programs aren’t going to build a Church. A building isn’t going to do it. A beautiful sign isn’t going to cut it. Advertising on the TV or radio ain’t going do it. Money isn’t the answer. Events aren’t going to do it. Mailings and telemarketing gimmicks won’t cut it. All those things can help, but that’s not enough.
One thing, and only one thing, will build the Church. It is love. Our lives have to be so saturated with the love of God that it oozes out of us. We have to love others so much that we are willing to get our hands dirty in their world. We got to stop worrying about the influence of the world on us. If Jesus Christ isn’t more powerful than the world, then I don’t want to serve him.
The very last Sunday of June has been designated Friendship Day. Our goal is thirty adults in worship. That would mean that each one of us would bring at least one other person. We aren’t striving for thirty just so I can Rev. Barnes and brag about preaching to thirty people. We are striving for thirty because Jesus died for each one of them. We want people who are not Christian. If one of your friends is a Christian, don’t invite them. Praise God, they already know Jesus. We want sinners. We want drunks. We want drug addicts. We want people who can experience the love of Jesus first hand. We want people who are not currently experiencing the love of God like we are. We want them to know the love of God. We want them to be born of God and receive God’s DNA.
