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In order to love…
1 John 4:7–21 (ESV)
This is not our first sermon in this series on love. You were warned at the beginning of this series that the Apostle John is going to repeat several themes throughout his letter. We could have organized our sermons in such a way to minimize the repeated sections, but we chose not to—thinking that we, like John’s original readers, may benefit from the repeated emphasis.
Just two weeks ago, Philip preached an excellent sermon from the second half of Chapter three, which begins,
1 John 3:11 (ESV) — For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
If you missed that sermon, I’d encourage you to go back and listen to it or read it.
We also Evaluated Our Loves back in July with the command to love one another in Chapter two.
1 John 2:15 (ESV) — Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
In today’s sermon, we are looking at the command to love our brother again. However, the beloved Apostle is going to take us a bit deeper into the inner workings and prerequisites of Christian love.
I don’t know how familiar you are with prerequisites. The concise Oxford dictionary defines this as “required as a prior condition.”
For the younger ones in the room, the most significant prerequisite you’ve encountered may be the height requirement at Carowinds or Six Flags. You must be at least 54 inches tall to ride the Intimidator or Mind Bender or Goliath. No amount of knowledge of these roller coasters is enough. You have to be 54 inches tall to ride them.
For some of you students, you’ve bumped into prerequisites when trying to sign up for certain classes. Why can’t I register for Calculus 3 when I haven’t had 1 or 2?
For you job seekers, perhaps you’ve run up against certifications or experience that is required in order to apply for a job.
Around 15 years ago, I began exploring a career as a computer programmer or website developer. I had no real experience in the field, but I needed a new way to earn a living, having been working in churches since high school. I took a bunch of online tutorials through Lynda.com, and was making good progress with some mentoring by others.
But, I eventually thought I should actually learn the basics of computer programming. So, I signed up for a night class at Wake Tech, purchased the textbook and showed up for class. I didn’t really know where to start, but I signed up for a class in Programming C#. I was excited. It was the only language that sounded remotely like it was for musicians.
Some of you can guess how this went. Don’t get me wrong. I was pretty much a straight A student through school, unless you count my two semesters of Hebrew. I showed up at class, and the first thing the professor did was go around the room and ask all 25 of us what our programming experience was. My heart sank as the professor got closer and closer to me. Many of the students, though my age perhaps, had very different backgrounds than me. Most of them said something like, “I’ve been programming in Java and C/+/+ for 10 years, and thought I’d expand my knowledge to make myself more marketable…” I said something like, “I’ve built a few websites, but thought I should learn a bit more about how computer programming works. I heard musicians could make good computer programmers…” The teacher looked straight at me in front of everyone and said, “you may struggle to keep up in this class.”
It went about like you’d expect. I made it through three classes and then dropped, overwhelmed and humbled.
What did I miss? I didn’t pay attention to the prerequisites. I don’t remember if the course technically had prerequisite courses that you must take. But, clearly, I should have gleaned from the course description that this was not the course for a complete novice. Perhaps I overestimated my abilities in my pride, but the biggest problem was that I didn’t account for what had to come first.
We act as if certain things in life have no prerequisites. We think we’ll intuitively figure them out. But basic familiarity with subject-matter vocabulary does not make us experts. Just like using Dreamweaver to make websites did not make me a computer programmer.
Perhaps you think expressing Christian Love is BASIC (see what I did there?), intuitive, or automatic. It is not. Perhaps you think that because you’ve encountered certain emotions or had particular experiences that you really understand what love is. And, certainly we can talk about love in certain ways that includes expression by non-Christians.
However, Christian Love, like what John describes in his letter, does have prerequisites. You will never master it unless you’ve understood and experienced these three things.
In order to love…
Some of you have had great examples in your life of Christian love. Many of us are keenly aware of the Christian love we have received over the years from our pastor and friend, Phil Sasser. The funeral eulogy and testimonies yesterday were a powerful reminder of the power of Christian love as an example.
Have you ever considered the Providence of God and the examples of love in your life? Each of us has grown up with different demonstrations of love (or its absence) around us. From an early age, we learn something of love from our parents and family. Some of these pointed us toward the love of God; others were its antithesis.
I am very grateful that my parents showed a very biblical kind of love to me—nurturing, protective, kind, but also firm. They loved me by accepting (even treasuring) me, but also with the rod of discipline. They showed me love by delighting in me, by sacrificing for me, and by steering me on the right path and not letting me go my own way. Not only did they express love to me, they also loved one another in front of me—not perfectly, but genuinely. They each gave themselves to the other, and only to the other, in marital faithfulness.
All of these expressions of Bible-informed, God-empowered love were a gift to me from God.
Many of you had very different pictures of love in your childhood years. Perhaps even calling God your “Father” is a distractingly painful reminder of the lack of love in your home growing up. Some of you faced non-stop criticism or even abuse. For many, the example of marital love lived out before you was broken, dysfunctional, or intermittent.
It’s good news, then, that the main example whom John holds up before us is not the example of our parents or our friends. Whether we had great parents or terrible ones, we can still learn love by this example.
1 John 4:7–11 (ESV)
Let’s get one question out of the way. John makes it sound like everyone who expresses love is a Christian. “Whoever loves has been born of God.” Let me give you two reasons why I don’t think we need to take it like that.
First, remember the occasion for John’s letter. He is helping his church rightly identify and understand the difference between the true believers and false teachers from within their church. It appears that those false teachers who had left were not demonstrating Christian love. They were somehow separating their doctrine from the need to live righteously or to love one another. John is correcting this; those truly born of God love their brothers and sisters in Christ.
Second, we must remember that the Bible can speak about love in many different ways. For instance, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says:
Matthew 5:46 (ESV) — For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
Even non-Christians have categories for brotherly love, romantic love, and the loyalty of friendship. We need not go around saying “that’s not really love.”
There is, however, a love that is higher, purer, and modeled for us by God the Father. We see it here in our text, and also famously in John 3:16.
John 3:16 (ESV) — “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Observe the sequence of statements about love in our text.
The origin of a thing matters. Love is from God. This doesn’t mean we get to define love any old way we want to and say that it comes from God. We know this because of his next statement.
Philip spoke of the dangers of switching this sentence around to say that “love is God” in his sermon two weeks ago. Consider the significance, though, of saying that “God is love.” Love is not merely something he does or expresses. He is love. Love isn’t just a choice for God. God is love.
John has already told us that “God is light” (1 John 1:5), that “he is pure” (1 John 3:3, and that “he is righteous” (1 John 3:7). God is also the one who “is true” (1 John 5:20).
We are fundamentally different in this regard. We can see and delight in the light. We can purify ourselves as he is pure, and we can pursue righteousness and truth, but we cannot say that those things are part of our essence.
God IS love.
This does not allow us to conceive of God in merely philosophical, distant, outside-of-his-creation terms. Our God IS relational. Before time began, this love was expressed perfectly and happily within the Trinity, but when God created the heavens and the earth, his love was then expressed from who he is to his creation. This brings us to v. 9.
1 John 4:9 (ESV)
God’s love has been shown to us—made manifest, that is, made visible in God sending his one and only Son. At first glance, we may read this and immediately of the incarnation, and surely God coming to dwell among us was an expression of his love for use.
But John leads us further into the purposes of God’s love by tying it to his redemption, not merely his incarnation. It’s hinted at in v. 9 — “so that we might live through him.” But it’s made clear in vs. 10.
1 John 4:10 (ESV)
The Father did not just send his Son to preach to us, do miracles among us, and show us the Father. That, in itself, would have been beyond what we could comprehend and more than we deserved. Instead, the Father sent his one and only Son to take on himself the sins of the world, to be rejected, blasphemed, and murdered by men, to take on himself the very wrath of God toward his enemies, and to die.
God IS love, and this is the love of God expressed to us. He could not have done anything more to demonstrate his love for us.
The emphasis of our text is the example of Love given to us by the Father. But, of course we should not miss how God’s love was shown to us by the Son as well.
Romans 5:8 (ESV) — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Consider reading through the Gospel of John with the specific purpose of seeing the examples of how Jesus loves.
Here are a few examples from the Gospels:
We talked earlier about the limitations of human examples of love, but its value is not absent from our passage.
John has written several times in his letter about how he saw and heard the Lord and was encouraging his readers to believe his testimony.
What about those of us who have not seen the Lord in person? Are we relegated only to the written testimony of God’s love? Not at all!
1 John 4:11–12 (ESV)
An astounding thought!
None of us has seen God. And we, unlike John, haven’t even seen Jesus in the flesh. Yet, despite this, we have seen God to some degree mediated through the love of fellow believers. “God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” (“has been made complete in us” — perfect passive).
John Stott points out in the Tyndale Commentary the significance the phrase, “no one has ever seen God,” noting that the other place we see this in John’s writings is in his Gospel in 1:18. There, God the Son makes him known. Here in 1 John God’s love is made known when we love one another.
Stott goes on to say:
God’s love, which originates in himself (7–8) and was manifested in his Son (9–10), is made complete in his people (12). It is ‘brought to perfection within us’ (neb). God’s love for us is perfected only when it is reproduced in us or (as it may mean) ‘among us’ in the Christian fellowship.
- John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John, Tyndale NTC, 165.
The first prerequisite for Christian love is that we see it exemplified in the Father and Son.
It’s tempting to our pride to think that all we need in order to express Christian love is a good example. But, that is not enough.
Christian love is not something that can simply be studied or learned. We can certainly benefit from a study of the love of God, but that is not enough to put it into practice.
In theology, particularly in the study of the Atonement, there a theory called the “Example Theory of the Atonement”
Wayne Grudem defines it like this
The example theory… denies that God’s justice requires payment for sin; it says that Christ’s death simply provides us with an example of how we should trust and obey God perfectly, even if that trust and obedience leads to a horrible death.
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, 724.
We don’t just need an example; we need a Savior. If you’re studying the atonement, this is called the “penal substitutionary” view of the atonement.
John writes about this in v. 14.
1 John 4:14 (ESV)
If you’re a Christian of have been in church for very long, you’re accustomed to this kind of language—the language of “Savior.” However, don’t assume that this is obvious to others.
This is the question that threw off the religious leaders in Jesus’ day. They were most aware of their desire to be saved from Roman oppression. The Jewish people, then, like for much of their history, were being oppressed by a foreign, pagan power. They longed for deliverance.
Others have answered this question by saying we need to be saved from the Devil. In fact, he is roaming around seeking whom he may devour. He is a ruthless enemy of God and God’s people.
The prerequisite, however, for walking in Christian love is realizing that Jesus came to save us from the wrath of God. We see this in vv. 9-10.
1 John 4:9–10 (ESV)
In order to truly know the love of God, we must realize that we need a Savior—not just from our difficult circumstances or our enemies—but from our sin and rebellion and death.
God does not save us because we chose to love—him or others. He saves us in order that we can love him and others. On judgement day, none of us will get into heaven because we loved well, we will will get into heaven because we received the love of God in Christ Jesus our Savior. He took the punishment for our lack of love, for our hatred, our murder, our jealousy, our blasphemy, our greed, and our lust. All of the sins we committed against love cannot be atoned for by our love, but by the love of the Perfect One who gave himself up for us to satisfy the wrath of God against us. This is what “propitiation” means. Jesus satisfied the wrath of God. There is no more wrath for those who put their faith in him.
We must not read “God is love” in a way that causes us to picture God as the syrupy, sentimental, tolerant, squishy love of our culture.
God’s love is relational and does pursue the best for the object of his love. But, it is only love because it is vitally connected to truth, righteousness, and goodness.
For us to love God and others, our love must also be connected to truth, righteousness, and goodness. It can only be expressed by those who have been delivered from the bondage of sin and condemnation—for those who know God as Savior.
Even if we’ve understood God’s example of love in sending Jesus, and even if we received the forgiveness of sins through Jesus our Savior, we would still be hard-pressed to truly demonstrate that love in our own lives.
Thankfully, our text goes even further in explaining the enabling of our love.
We have God’s own Spirit in us, and through his Spirit we know God. There are actually two distinct works of the Spirit mentioned in our text. I’ll mention one and we’ll explore the other.
1 John 4:7 (ESV)
It’s important to get the order here. the ESV Study Bible get is right. “Love is presented here as a consequence of, not a precondition for, being born of God.”
Word Biblical Commentary says something similar: “Love is the effect, not the cause of spiritual rebirth.”
This is not even a “chicken and egg” dilemma. Whoever loves (present tense) has been born of God (perfect tense — something that happened at a point in time in the past and has continuing results).
This makes total sense with what John is saying. Love is from God, so how can we love? We must be born of God. We must receive his life in us.
The regenerating Spirit causes us to be born again, but our passage goes beyond this initial work of the Spirit, and is vital to our living in love.
1 John 4:13 (ESV)
This is one of the great mysteries of the Christian life, where theology and experience meet.
All of those together wouldn’t quite be enough to overcome our weakness and sinfulness, but…
1 John 4:15-16 (ESV)
Ultimately, what enables us to express Christian love is that God himself dwells in us. He abides in us. He indwells those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God.
How does this indwelling Spirit work in us? Paul has truths for us in Romans 8.
Romans 8:11 (ESV) — If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
Romans 8:14–16 (ESV) — For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
John begins with a command.
1 John 4:7 (ESV)
He finishes with a test.
1 John 4:20–21 (ESV)
It is a very practical test.
We’ve already mentioned this, but it’s important to realize the significant effect of our Christian love. Others can experience God’s love through us.
1 John 4:12 (ESV)
We gain confidence for the day of judgment
1 John 4:14–18 (ESV)
Here are some other recent messages.
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