Christ's Command

Without a doubt, love is one of the most significant and ambiguous words in our language. Love is something we use to describe the most intimate relationships we have. We wonder when we should say I love you to that special person, while at the same time saying that about just about everything else. Food, places, entertainment, things. We say we love all kinds of things. Love is, for some, a feeling. It's something that we fall in or out of. It's something that we get swept up in like a current. For some, love is acceptance. It's just receiving somebody just as they are, not judging, just affirming them. For some, love is commitment. It's God, King, and country. It's faithfulness and duty. And for some, love is action. Talk is cheap. Love is a verb. It's what you do. I wonder what you would say this morning. What is love? This is an important question for us to consider, because as we examine our text this morning, we're going to hear this, that God loves. That God is love. And that as Christians, we are called to be characterized by love. We are continuing a series we begun last week on the church and this morning we're going to be in the letter of 1st John page 1023 in your pew Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, I invite you to take the one in front of you or around you home as a gift to us. Read it. It is God's word. A bit of an introduction as we get into this letter. John was a real person in history who actually walked and talked with Jesus. He learned that Jesus was more than mere man, but he was God Almighty in the flesh. John was a witness of the crucifixion and burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. He knew that Jesus was the Son of God. He knew that eternal life was found in him alone. And so John wrote this letter to Christians, people like you and me. He wrote to us so that we can be confident that we also know God, that we can have fellowship with Him, just like the apostles who walked and talked with Him. John, throughout the letter, kind of gives three tests of how we can know that we love God, that we know God. The questions are this, do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? Do you continue in sin? Do you love other Christians? Those are kind of the three themes that continue to come up over and over again in John's letter. If you've read the letter of John, you know it's a little bit different. Paul's writings, very systematic, very much making an argument, lots of therefores and senses. And John does not write like that at all. He writes in a very circular way, kind of revisiting topics over and over again. It's actually a little bit frustrating if you try to outline it. It's funny to see the way that the different smart guys actually do that in their books, breaking down these really complex outlines. I don't think that's what John is writing for at all. I think he's writing to reiterate, just like in the context of the church, we say truths over and over again to each other. I think that's what John is doing. He's writing Christians to affirm to them the same basic things they need to know to plant them firmly in the gospel. So we're going to be in chapter 4 this morning, considering Christ's command that we as a church love one another. And what I want us to see this morning is that love for one another is the necessary response of being loved by God. Christians must love one another because God has loved them. So let's read 1 John 4, verses 7-21. Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. 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. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that God loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit. And we have seen and testified that the father has sent the son to be the savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. Amen. I want us to consider three points this morning. First, God's love for us. Second, our love for God. And third, our love for each other. So first, God's love for us. So going back to verse 7, that first section there, we see that God is the source of love. We see that love is from God. God is the origin of love. It starts with Him. And then even further in verse 8, it tells us that God is love. Now that's a very different statement than what some in the world might want to say now that love is God. For them, love is the kind of things I was talking about at the beginning. Some facet of that emotion of love. It's exalted in our culture to the place of primacy. It's what they worship. And John's not saying that. He's saying that God is the one who defines love. I wonder if I had asked you at the beginning of the service, what is God? What would you have said? How would you fill in the blank? God is what? We may think holy and righteous, maybe angry or judgmental or incompetent or absent or unknowable. We are certainly tempted to think all kinds of things about God if we're honest. But what John says is this, God is love. It's not all that God is, but it is one essential aspect of who God is. He is love. And so now we're asking, okay, fine. God is love. What is love? And in verse nine, John tells us specifically, 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. So God's love is shown, it is demonstrated to us in this way. He sent his son into the world so that we might live, so that we might have life through him. This is how God shows who he is and what love is. So let's take some time to flesh that out a little bit together. God has a son. Christians confess the Trinity, the doctrine of the God as three persons, one nature, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. They are equal in their nature, in their perfection. They are all God, and yet they are distinct in their roles and persons. From all eternity, they have existed together in perfect harmony, in perfect fellowship with one another, in perfect love together, delighting in one another. We see that God sent the Son, God the Father, sent God the Son into the world. Into the world. Now the world is the place God created. There was a time when the world that we know didn't exist. God made it. So God sending His Son into the world in and of itself is something of a spectacle. The Creator entering into the creation. But there's much more to it than that. The world is not simply the creation, but it's creation in rebellion against the creator. The first human beings rejected God as their authority. They doubted his word. They went their own way. And as a result, this world that we know is fallen and broken. It's not the way it was supposed to be. So typically when John is talking about the world, that's what he's talking about. It's the world in rebellion against God. And so it's into this mess, into this brokenness, that God sends His Son. And John tells us the reason why, so that we might live through Him. So Jesus, the Son of God, came to give life. In our rebellion, we are dead to God. Jesus came to make us alive to God. Now in verse 10, he goes on to explain this in a little more detail. In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that God loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. So here is the love of God manifested for us. Not that we were seeking God or loving God or interested in him in any way. God loved us and he sent his son to give us life, to be the propitiation for our sins. Now we've got to talk about a big word, propitiation. It's one of those $20 theological words. And just because it is that doesn't mean that it's bad or we roll our eyes at it or kind of check out at this part. This is actually an essential word for our vocabulary. But before we get into that, I just want to just point out how important language is for our culture and for our theology. If you're new here, we're glad you're with us. We want you to be here. We want you to come alongside of us. We believe that the Bible is God's word. We believe that God has spoken, that God's word is sufficient, clear, authoritative, and necessary. So when we come across a word that we don't use every day, what we try to do is not just ignore it, we try to learn what it means because it's important. So if you're new here, we're glad that this is a time for all of us to learn together. And as a church, let's just remember that God's word is all of those things. Let's not shy away from necessary vocabulary. We want our message to be accessible. We want it to be apprehendable to the world around us, but sometimes that means helping them understand our language rather than changing it to accommodate them. So we'll see now as we think about propitiation, something essential to the gospel is at stake. The word propitiation refers to the covering of sin that separates us from God. It's all about our relationship with God. So propitiation tells us that our relationship with God is broken. It's broken. We have rejected God as our rightful ruler and his wrath is against us. We have betrayed God. He is displeased with us. Propitiation then is the solution to God's wrath against us and His displeasure with us. Now some of you are saying, wait a minute, wait a minute. We were just talking about God as love. But where did all this wrath stuff come in? That's not what I want to hear on a Sunday morning. But this is precisely, friends, why God's love is so unique. Because propitiation shows us the amazing nature, the amazing quality of God's love. God is absolutely righteous and holy. We as human beings were created in his image to reflect that holiness to the world. But when we rejected God, we became a contradiction of that image. And because of that, God is holy. He cannot let sin go unpunished. If God is truly righteous, then He must uphold perfect justice and righteousness. And so God's wrath is against us. Every second that we continue in rebellion against Him, we are compounding His wrath against us. His perfection demands that we honor Him as God, that we give thanks to Him as God, that we worship Him with every fiber of our being. That's what we were created to do. And because of our failure to do that, we store up wrath for ourselves in eternity. Sometimes we, even as Christians, can sort of think about God like he's a permissive grandpa. You know, you love going to grandpa's house because he lets you get away with things that your parents don't let you get away with and things that he didn't let your parents get away with when they were growing up. You know, he just kind of smiles and winks when they talk back or when they disobey. Sometimes we think of God like the teacher who just grades on a curve because everyone bombed the test. So it must be the test's fault, not the poor student's. But friends, we have to see that God is perfectly righteous. Just as we wouldn't honor a human judge who kind of winked at murderers, at thieves, just kind of let them go because they deserve a second chance. No, our sense of right and wrong demands justice. We know that when people wrong us, we want justice. Sometimes we don't see it as clearly when we wrong other people. If you've ever disobeyed your parents, you really messed up at work or at school, you know something of wrath. The right anger of a parent or a boss or a teacher, you know the weight and the shame and the fear that it invokes. Those things are just a taste of the full fury of the wrath of a holy God, the eternal torment and suffering that we deserve for our sin. But friends, there is good news for us this morning. There is good news because Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sin. Jesus came as the Son of God to exhaust the wrath of God against God's people. As the Son of God, He could actually bear the eternal weight of a sovereign, holy God against sin of mortal man. And as a man, he could stand in the place of other men just like him. So on the cross, all of God's anger and judgment were poured out completely upon Jesus. Jesus cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Because that's what each of us would be saying in our sin. We deserve to be forsaken and abandoned and left to the consequences of our sin. Every sin that God has ever forgiven or will ever forgive is accounted for on Calvary's hill. For everyone who believes in Jesus, brothers and sisters, God's anger is over. The storm of God's wrath has passed. We are sheltered in Christ. And as Paul says, God set aside the record of debt against us by nailing it to the cross. For all of you who are here this morning in Christ, God has removed the penalty of your sin, past, present, and future. So brothers and sisters, what is love? Is it not this, that God should die for us? You see, without the doctrine of propitiation, we have no gospel. We have no relationship with God. In this text, in these verses, we see love in its purest form. God is love, and He shows His love like this. He loved us. He desired us. Even though we were rejecting Him, He was pursuing us. Rather than leave us to our sin and destroy us, as He rightly could, He had compassion. And at infinite cost to Himself, He sent His Son to rescue us from our end and make us His own. Even though we were unaware, most of us blissfully unaware of God. So He graciously interrupted our lives with His love and grace in the Gospel. God's love is demonstrated in His commitment to our good. We were created to be in a relationship with Him. That's what's best for us. And He didn't let us continue without Him and apart from Him. He sent His Son, not just to make a relationship possible, but to secure that relationship for everyone who believes. God is the only truly worthy object of our love. And so He graciously enabled us to love Him. God works. God has shown His love for us by working for our good. So that's God's love for us. But second, I want us to look at our love for God. So picking up in verse 13, John says that God gives us assurance by the Holy Spirit. The New Testament teaches us that we have to be born again by the Holy Spirit. God makes us alive spiritually, as I said before, sending the Holy Spirit to live inside of us, to change us into people that are in the image of Christ. And then verses 14 and 15 go on to describe the nature of the Spirit's ministry within us. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So just think about what John is saying here. John experienced this firsthand in the flesh. He walked and talked with the resurrected Christ. Whoever makes the confession, John says, that Jesus is the Son of God, gives evidence to his or her union with God. They abide together. By the Holy Spirit, believers throughout time have the same connection that the apostles had with the Father through the Son. So we should think about what it means to confess this morning. Is John merely saying that just uttering those words, just saying the words, Jesus is the Son of God, is some magical spiritual formula? Well, of course not. Of course he's not saying that. To confess Jesus as the Son of God is to affirm all of the realities that propitiation asserts. It's to say that God is holy. It's to say that we are sinners. It's to say that we are hopeless in our sin and we deserve God's wrath. But it's also to say that God sent Jesus to die in our place, to suffer His wrath against us on the cross, to offer new life to all who repent and believe in Him. To confess that Jesus is the Son of God is to affirm everything Jesus said about God, about Himself, and about us. It's to affirm that we are so sinful that it took the death of God to save us, and yet so loved that God would, indeed, die for us. That's what the Spirit does in us. If you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, again, we are so thankful that you are here with us. What I just said is the gospel, it's the content, it's the truth that you must believe and confess in order to be a Christian. It means you reject that your former life of sin and you live a life of pleasing Christ, seeking Him, trying to glorify Him, repenting of sin, believing and trusting in Him. If you're not a Christian and you have questions, please see me or a member of this church after the service. To confess the gospel is to confess your absolute unworthiness before God, and yet the magnitude of God's love, that He loves you despite your unworthiness. The Spirit, John says, gives us confidence and assurance in God's love. John says in verse 16 that we come to know and believe God's love for us, and then this manifests itself very practically, 17 and 18. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. Because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. So John says God's love is perfected, it's completed, it's accomplished when we rest in his love. In other words, God's love is supposed to give us assurance. Christians have confidence on the day of judgment. How do you feel about the prospect of God's judgment? Again, if you're here this morning as a non-Christian, that very thought should terrify you. It's a day that when we are called to give an account of ourselves for every word, every deed, every thought, God knows and sees all. And He will hold us accountable for all of it. His wrath will be poured out on that day. And yet Christians should be confident, is what John says. Confident. Because as Christians approach the throne of God's judgment, there is no accusation that can be made on judgment day that Christ's blood has not covered. We are free as his people now to enjoy him forever. So brothers and sisters, listen, if you are here this morning and you're scared of God's judgment, you have a deficient understanding of the gospel. John is pleading with you now, saying, brother, sister, understand God's love for you in Jesus Christ. As he is now, so also are we in this world. How is Christ now? He is exalted. He is beloved. He is reigning. And what John says is, so also are we. united with Christ, co-heirs with Him, beloved sons and daughters of God. So, brothers and sisters, look into the mystery of the gospel, of the cross, until you see there God's love for you. We actually get to catch a glimpse of John doing this. We heard in our call to worship, chapter 3, verse 1, see what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. And so we are. John says God has given, he has pledged, he has bestowed his love upon us through Jesus Christ. We don't usually think of our love that way, do we? We think of it in different ways, it's sort of gradually given out in pieces. But here he says God bestowed, he has given his love, he has pledged his love. But I think this text actually captures one place that we still get to catch a glimpse of this kind of love, and that's in adoption. In adoption, parents give their love to a child. A family gives its love to a child. They commit to that child. So let me read to you words taken from our daughter's decree of adoption. The child, from and after today, shall be deemed the child of the petitioners, and shall be considered for the purposes of inheritance and succession, and for all other legal considerations, the natural, legitimate child and heir at law of the petitioners, the same as if born of their body, with all of the obligations, rights, and privileges of a natural child and heir. The parental control of the child is hereby granted to the petitioners and the said petitioner shall hereafter be under the same responsibility to the child and be entitled to the same rights and privileges as if the child were their natural child. This is a final judgment. It's one of the great blessings in my life to have heard and recited those words, not because of what they mean for our family, but because of what they mean for our relationship with God. And yet God's love is something so much more than that. God's love is so amazing because we, we should be called His children. God adopts us. Us. We have nothing desirable, nothing lovely, nothing worthy. We don't complete God. We don't fulfill His dreams. We offer Him nothing. But He loves us anyways because God is love. The phrase there in 3.1, what kind of love, is translating a phrase that we don't really have exactly in our language. Literally it means, from what country is this love? John is saying this kind of love is otherworldly. It's from another place. Or as some of us might say, it ain't from around here. As you're wrestling with this truth this morning, I think sometimes we are tempted to say, my sin, my sin is so great. There's no way God could possibly love me. He couldn't possibly forgive me because of my sin. But friend, I want you to see how arrogant that claim is. To say that your sin is too great is to elevate your sin to the throne of the universe. It's to say God is not powerful enough to deal with my sin. It's to say Jesus' sacrifice was not sufficient to cover my sin. It's to deny God's power. It's to deny Christ's sacrifice. Brothers and sisters, this is what God has done for us in Christ. Every ounce of His wrath has been poured out. Not one drop remains. So how much does it grieve our Heavenly Father? And how much does it minimize the sacrifice of our Savior when we doubt God's love for us and when we live in fear of His judgment? Something that helps me when I have that struggle is to preach the words of this song to myself. Arise, my soul, arise. Shake off your guilty fears. The bleeding sacrifice on my behalf appears. Before the throne, my surety stands. Before the throne, my surety stands. My name is written on his hands. He ever lives above for me to intercede, His all-redeeming love, His precious blood to plead. His blood atoned for every race, His blood atoned for every race, And sprinkles now the throne of grace. Five bleeding wounds He bears, Received on Calvary, They pour effectual prayers, They strongly plead for me. Forgive Him, O forgive, they cry, Forgive Him, O forgive, they cry, Nor let that ransomed sinner die. The father hears him pray, his dear anointed one. He cannot turn away. He cannot turn away the presence of his son. His spirit answers to the blood. His spirit answers to the blood and tells me I am born of God. My God is reconciled. His pardoning voice I hear. He owns me for his child. I can no longer fear. With confidence I now draw nigh. With confidence I now draw nigh. And Father, Abba, Father, cry. We can approach God as Father, not because we are worthy, but because Christ has won us. Christ has reconciled us to the Father. Just as sure as He lives, just as sure as He is at the right hand, we can come to God as our Father. You see, fear is paralyzing. When we live in fear of God's judgment, we have no confidence in His love for us and therefore we have very little zeal for His work. But when we are confident in God's love, when perfect love has cast out fear, we are then freed to love and serve as God wills. So friends, the right response to God's love is awe and wonder and adoration and praise and thanksgiving. It is indeed love from another place. We don't understand it, but we believe it. Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me? It's possible that some of you maybe are here this morning and still thinking about wrestling with all this, thinking you know that you have love for God, but you are still not sure if God has love for you. So let me share a quote from you from Pastor Spurgeon. Now it is impossible for you to love God without the strong conclusive evidence that God loves you. I once knew a good woman who was the subject of many doubts, and when I got to the bottom of her doubt, it was this. She knew she loved Christ, but she was afraid he did not love her. Oh, I said, that is a doubt that will never trouble me, never by any possibility, because I am sure of this, that the heart is so corrupt naturally that love to God never did get there without God's putting it there. You may rest quite certain that if you love God, it is a fruit and not a root. It is the fruit of God's love to you and did not get there by the force of any goodness in you. You may conclude with absolute certainty that God loves you if you love God. There never was any difficulty on His part. It was always on your part. And now that the difficulty is gone from you, none whatever remains. Oh, let our hearts rejoice and be filled with great delight because the Savior has loved us and given Himself for us. Amen. As verse 19 says, we love because He first loved us. So brothers and sisters, see here that assurance and dependence and trust are the necessary responses to God's love. It's how we show our love in return. We believe in the doctrine of propitiation. We trust that Christ's work was indeed sufficient, that he has removed every obstacle that would keep us away from God loving us. And so with assurance and confidence, we draw near to him, we love him in return. And so you see, continuing as a Christian is a matter of appropriating, applying the gospel on a daily basis, remembering what Christ has done for us. And with that said, we're ready to think about the church. And John has been telling us all along through this passage, we must love one another. So number three, our love for one another. We see in this text that love is the definitive mark of having experienced God's love. So if I ask you if you've ever hiked Old Rag or seen a sunrise or eaten Royal Red Shrimp, the answer is either yes or no. There's no question about it. You either have or you haven't. And so it is with God's love. If you have truly experienced God's love, you are never the same. If you have been loved by God, you love. God is love and God's effect is love. Verse 21 tells us specifically, in this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. So the gospel message that we've been thinking about takes sinners and rebels against God, unites us together as a family. All Christians throughout geography and time are one in Christ. We thought about that last week. In the New Testament, we see this fraternal spirit among churches and individual members of those churches. We see congregations in fellowship with one another, helping each other out in their great commission task of making disciples. Paul tells us that we should do good to all, and especially to those of the household of faith. And Peter tells us that we should honor everyone, but love the brothers. So at Jefferson Park, we try to do this in different ways. We cooperate with missionaries and organizations that are like-minded. We give our financial support to institutions that we agree with. We try to pray for other churches regularly. If you're here with us, you'll hear us praying for churches around the world. And even here in Charlottesville, we want to partner with other churches for the Great Commission. Verse 21, he refers to a commandment that we received, and John's referring to the commandment from his gospel, chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. These are the words of Christ. A new commandment I give you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. So Jesus says that we are to love one another as he has loved us. And John says in verse 11, beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. And so I ask you, how has Jesus loved us? By laying down his life for us, by dying for us. And so I would say, Christians, we cannot die for all Christians throughout history. We cannot die for all Christians around the world. We can send checks. We can open our homes occasionally. We can dabble in Bible studies and prayer in the community. We can love and serve in general ways. But brothers and sisters, none of those things are dying. But each one of us has 182 opportunities to die. I'm talking about the members of this local church. As we consider one another, we have the opportunity to love as Jesus loved, to die for one another's good, to show the world that you ain't from around here nature of God's love. And just think about the beauty and the wonder of this. This is how Jesus designed for us to make disciples of the world. He could have picked any number of strategies. He could have stayed on earth and visited every place and preached the gospel, showed them the holes in his hands, told them who he was. He could have done anything. Instead, he chose churches. He commissioned his disciples to form and assemble these little outposts of the kingdom of heaven, embassies all over the world. He promised that he would be there with them. He said that people committed to one another under the confession that he is the Christ, that that would be the means that Jesus would show himself to the world. And as local churches live together in Christ-like love for one another, the world sees Jesus. As we think about that, I want us to consider practically two ways that we can manifest that love. First is by loving the unnatural. So love the unnatural. A church that makes sense is a scary thing. A church that's logical, a church where everyone has a common kind of situation in life, common socioeconomic status, common commitment to peripheral and superficial things, That kind of church is scary. And there's ways that that may not characterize a whole church, but it's clear that within the church there are factions that run along those lines, where there are cliques and groups that just are associated because of the things that they have in common. That church is scary because Jesus' love is irrational. Jesus' love doesn't make sense. It's not worldly. and to be a faithful church who represents the love of Jesus, we need to love across those natural barriers. So brothers and sisters, let me ask you this morning, who do you love? Maybe a better, more precise way to think about it is, to whom is your love demonstrated? Who do you love the way Jesus loves? What relationship do you have in the church that's not explainable apart from the supernatural, otherworldly love of Christ working in you and through you? So who do you sit with on Sundays and Wednesdays? Who do you get together with throughout the week? Who do you have over to your house to show hospitality to? Brothers and sisters, it is so easy for us to take our eyes off of the cross and to drift toward what feels comfortable and natural to us. Let's resist that with all of our might and press beyond to the kind of love, from the kind of love this world has to offer into the supernatural love that comes only from above. Find the people in this body least like you and go and talk to them and get to know them and invite them over. Share your testimonies together. Let your common love for Jesus Christ draw you together and learn to appreciate the beauty and the wisdom of God in ransoming men from every tribe and tongue and nation and age and socioeconomic status. Jefferson Park, we must be a people united by the gospel. So don't be afraid to initiate gospel conversations with one another. Let's just kind of go ahead and push through, let's set aside, let's all agree to commit to overcoming that awkwardness of talking about spiritual things. Let's just be honest with one another about who we are and how we're doing. Remember that when we confess the gospel, we confess our absolute unworthiness and the magnitude of God's love despite that unworthiness. That's the bond that holds us together. So there's nothing that you can share with one another that is not accounted for on the cross of Jesus Christ. And there's nothing that you cannot overcome within yourself by looking toward the cross of Jesus Christ. Love the unnatural. Second, love the unworthy. So let's look at verse 20. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. Someone who says I love God and hates his brother is a liar. It's impossible. I don't know about you, but I've never struggled with hating people I don't know. I may have different opinions about certain people, but I don't say that I actively hate people all around the world, people throughout history. But I can be honest and say that it's tempting to hate people who sin against me. Maybe you've experienced that yourself. When others sin against us, we have everything we need to take off our good manners and our happy face and just to give them what they absolutely deserve. And yet we're haunted, we're called by Jesus's words, as I have loved you. If ever there was someone unjustly offended, it was Jesus. And yet the Bible tells us that he willingly entered into the world and suffered and died for our sins. God had every reason to hate us, but he chose to love us and to die for us. And so what better way can we demonstrate the otherworldliness of our love than to extend love and forgiveness as Christ has forgiven us? This is the same thing we heard last week in Ephesians 4. Bear with one another. Put up with one another. It's hard to do this because we are sinners, but it's a necessary response to the gospel. John and Paul and Jesus all assumed that in the context of our life together in the church, there will be ongoing sin. Therefore, the ongoing need to practice forgiveness and reconciliation. Jesus teaches about this in a parable about a king and a slave. He says that there was a king once who decided to settle his accounts. Lots of debtors, it's time, calling them in, it's time to settle. And so he brought in a slave, a servant, a working class person who owed him the equivalent of several billion dollars of debt. Several billion dollars of debt. And so the man begged the king and said, don't throw me in jail, let me pay you back, let me work it off. Now that in itself was absurd because it would have taken hundreds of lifetimes for the man to work off that kind of debt. But it says the king had pity and he forgave the debt. He forgave him. The text tells us that the man immediately went out and found someone who owed him what was the equivalent of a few thousand dollars. Not an insignificant sum, right? And he had that man thrown in jail. The king found out about it, and he called in the man he had forgiven, and he said, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? So in anger, the king sent that man to jail. And Jesus says, so also my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. It had nothing to do with the legitimacy of the debt. It was a legitimate debt. But what it showed was the man had not been changed by being forgiven of his enormous debt. What this parable teaches us is that forgiven sinners forgive. We love because God loved us. So the church is to be the place where God's love demonstrated by putting away our sins against Him is put into practice, is put on display as we put away each other's sins against each other. One of the things I hope that we clarify as a church is forgiveness. So I've heard forgiveness used to kind of describe setting aside the pain and the hurt and the past offenses. So we've dealt with that. I've forgiven him of that. It's not there anymore, but we haven't reconciled. We haven't overcome the distance that remains between us. And so I want you to see that's not biblical forgiveness. Biblical forgiveness involves not just the putting away of the barriers, but also the distance that remains. Biblical forgiveness always results in reconciliation. It results in a closeness, despite a reason for distance. You see, friends, this is how we display the radical love God has shown us. If anyone had a reason to hold our sin against us and to remain removed from us, it was God. And yet the wonder of his love is in the gospel of Jesus. He didn't just set aside our offenses, but he came to us and he made us part of his family. So we have the opportunity to do the same thing every time someone sins against us. And we not only don't retaliate and withhold that, but we pursue forgiveness and reconciliation. That is what proclaims the gospel to the world. I think there's another kind of hate that we can be susceptible to. That first kind I was describing is kind of an active bitterness and malice toward a person. There's another kind that's equally evil, but much more subtle, and that's apathy. We can see a brother or sister in need, clearly struggling, and just not do anything about it. Not say anything, not ask to help, not go to that person just to kind of glance away or look down at our phones. We can greet each other warmly as we pass in the hallway and then go about life as if each other just don't even exist. That's a scary kind of hate. That is not the kind of love that Jesus showed to us. Jesus sought us when we were rebelling, when we were wandering, when we were God's enemies. And John says if we have truly understood the love of God, we must do the same. We must be characterized by the kind of love that pursues people, people who reject our advances, people who mistrust our motives, people who are defensive and rude, people like me and like you. See, in the name of love, we can actually do some pretty unloving things. We can turn a blind eye to sin. We can avoid conflict at any cost. We can fail to speak up when we should. We cannot deal with real offenses that need to be dealt with. We can claim people are unloving when they tell us something that we don't want to hear. But that's not Christ-like love. Jesus's love sees us helpless in our sin and he intervenes. He comes to us, he exposes our sin, but he offers himself to cover it. With God's love, with true love, with real love, love and truth are always together. So to borrow from Paul Tripp, the cross of Jesus Christ is the only model you need of what love does in the face of wrong. Love doesn't call wrong right. Love doesn't ignore wrong and hope it goes away. Love doesn't turn its back on you because you were wrong. Love doesn't mock you. Love doesn't mean I turn the tables and work to make you hurt in the same way you have hurt me. Love doesn't go passive and stay silent in the face of wrong. No, love moves toward you because you are wrong and need to be rescued from you. In moving toward you, love is willing to make sacrifices and endure hardships so that you may be made right again and be reconciled to God and others. God graces us with this kind of love so that we may be tools of his love in the lives of others. I hope you caught in that quote one of the most loving things we can say to each other. Ready for this? You're wrong. Stop doing that. Stop thinking that. It's wrong. That kind of love is sacrificial. It's inconvenient. It's hard. It's the opposite of the way that I normally want to love. Typically I want to love at my convenience, on my time, in my way, on my terms, on my schedule. And brothers and sisters, I'm the pastor, one of them. But Jesus' love is exactly the opposite of that. As we'll hear next week, Jesus' love is shown by emptying himself for our good. God didn't save us for what He gets out of us. We can never repay Him. And so don't love people for what they can do for you or because they reciprocate that love. Christian love frees us to simply love because God is love and to persevere in loving even if we never see a return in this life. 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. So John says, no one has ever seen God. Jesus says that if you have seen him, you have seen the father. And later he said that the world would see him in his disciples. So local churches are places where those who have experienced the love of God show that same love to one another. We are called to put the gospel on display so that as people observe us, our little local church in action, they see God. An old hymn puts it like this. Beneath the cross of Jesus, his family is my own. Once strangers chasing selfish dreams, now one through grace alone. How could I now dishonor the ones that you have loved? Beneath the cross of Jesus, see the children called by God. Brothers and sisters of Jefferson Park Baptist Church, let us go to that cross. Let us behold God's love there. Let us behold God's love there together. And in so doing, let the world see in us that God is real and that God is love. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we praise you this morning because you are love. We confess that, Lord, we would have no idea of what true love is if you had not demonstrated that love for us. We praise you that your love is seen so clearly in sending Christ to cover our sin, to reconcile us to yourself, to return us to what we were created to do, to enjoy you and love you forever. Help us, God, to continue to behold the beauty of your love Help us not to be distracted by other things that rival our attention. Help us to trust in Christ's completed work, to rest secure in your love, to know that your wrath is gone, and to live in confidence and boldness before you. And Father, we pray that you would help us to love. Help us to really care about and work for the good of one another. Help us to see that the way that we live together, the way that we love one another, is how your glory is displayed in this world. We ask these things through Christ our Savior, amen.