Confident in God's Love

Well, good morning. Here we are. Love one another. Take three. With a third sermon in just a couple months that we have heard of the church focusing on the command to love one another. Now, we're talking about it again because John brings it up for a third time within his epistle. He said that within our particular passage this morning, 1 John chapter 4, verses 7 through 21, some 30 plus times, he uses the word love. He even addresses the folk in this particular section as the beloved. Love is a central theme. John keeps returning to it because it's the most important doctrine we have. So it's important doctrine we have concerning who God is, who we are, and what we're supposed to do. Now, if you look at it for a third time, we're going to look at it from a different perspective. Really, what John continues to do every time we bring love back up is we add another layer to the great doctrine of loving one another. And now we're going to add the particular connection with loving one another to the doctrine of God. John's going to make a very explicit connection to the doctrine that God is love, and therefore we are to love one another. So in case you think you've heard enough about loving one another, I pray that our ears will not grow deaf, but they will hear the great doctrine of love yet again. As many of our teachers will tell you, repetition is one of the greatest pedagogical tools we have. Let me read our passage for us. 1 John, chapter 4, verses 7 through 21. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test... I'm sorry, that's verses 1. 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 He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. The love 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 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 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 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. We come to this particular text. And John has given us three great truths thus far. God is light. God is spirit. God is love. The three great doctrines of God that we see in 1 John. God is light. God is spirit. God is love. In this one, He makes the strongest connection to us. Because it is God's love that saves us. And it is God's love that gives us our highest calling. To love God and to love our neighbor. So as we look at this text, we're going to have two main parts. First, we're going to look at the glorious doctrine of God's love. We're going to look at the glorious love of God. And secondly, we're going to look at how we're supposed to respond to this love for His glory. So first, we'll be looking at how we worship the God who is love. As we think about Those three words that we heard repeated twice in the text. God is love. Simple to say, difficult to understand, to comprehend. The first thing we have to realize is that we do not take our concept of love and cast it upon God. We do not try to figure out what we think love is, or how we've experienced love, and then define God according to our concept of love. No. What we do is we think about God, and we think about His love, and we think about how He has defined love, and then that corrects our understanding of love. You see, we're supposed to think God's thoughts after Him, not make a God in our own image. So we can't think of our greatest ideals of love and conform God to them. No, our ideals of love must be conformed to God. So we think about love, it's not warm feelings. It's not just warm feelings, just positive thoughts, not some ideals of peace and harmony that ignore the real problem. And that is sin. And the fact that we have sinned against God and are under His wrath. Love is not random acts of kindness. No. As we think about love, as God has defined it, we must be weary of abstracting it. We must be weary of coming up with some kind of ideal, because what we see in God is that His love is taught to us in His actions. God has revealed His love to us most Assuredly, most clearly, he has demonstrated it and how he has loved us intentionally, explicitly in his acts to redeem us. Look at verses 10 and 11, and this is love, not that we have loved God, but he has loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another. Look at verse 14, and we have seen and testified that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If you want to look at love, if you want to see love, if you want to experience love, love was most demonstrated on the cross. Love was most demonstrated in Christ, who took upon Himself our nature, who humbled Himself to become like us in every way, so that on the cross, as He became our Savior, He died for us. This is love defined for us. God is love and He has manifested that love in sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us. As we think about what it means for God to be love, as we think about what love is, that is the event that we must focus upon. That is the event that should consume our thoughts. Because there we see the greatest love that's ever been portrayed or manifested, given to us on the cross of Jesus Christ. There the Father sacrificed His Son. There the Father sent His Son to die. And why? So that His Son could take away the wrath of everyone who has rebelled against God. There the Father sent His Son to die for us who believe in Him. You see, it's our sin that should be punished. It's our sin that should feel the full wrath of God. But their love on the cross, Jesus Christ took that wrath upon Himself. The Father sent His own Son to experience that wrath, so that everyone who believes in Him would not. There the Son gave Himself up. And think about that. That event. Jesus is dying for all those who were there watching. Even those there who might nail hands into the wood. Even those that put the cross on His back. Those who put the crown of thorns on His head. Those who believe in Him and did those actions. Jesus says, forgive them, for they know not what they do. If they profess faith in Jesus Christ, He was there loving them by dying on the cross. As I think about the love of God, we think about the great power of the cross. We think about the great action of God. Now, recent events have given me, I think, a pretty good illustration of what this looks like. Monday, as most of you know, I got lost in the woods. And it wasn't just me, it was two of the deacon's children with me. We had 12-year-old Noah and 10-year-old Thomas. And we had a long, long hike. And as the day got longer, as the sun was going down, yes, I was freaking out. It was the first time in my life I actually thought, I've got to survive and make sure these boys survive. I started looking for coverage. I tried not to show that I was scared. Thomas said that he saw right through me. But as I was sitting there, we got lost in the Appalachian Trail, which thankfully parallels the Skyline Drive. And so as we were hiking, We descended from the Skyline Drive, hoping to hit the camp. And as I was ascending, 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, I knew I was going to get back up to Skyline Drive. Last, worst case scenario, we're going to go up there. We're going to hitchhike, which the boys were a little freaked out about, but the Lord took care of us. Worst case scenario, we're going to get home. We're going to get taken by a ranger to my in-laws who live nearby. We're going to be fine. What I started worrying about, with Sean. Now, Brian's living in ignorance at this point. He's driving, he's driven home. He doesn't know what's going on. But Sean, he's there. With the other fathers. Jim Fitzgerald, Steve Menyer, Steve Morales, Hayden Scruggs. All these fathers are sitting around a camp. Hour goes by, hour goes by. Imagine the anxiety. As I was thinking about survival, I knew I had a plan, but my fear was what those fathers were experiencing. My fear was the kind of anxiety that was coming up in their hearts and their minds about what could have happened and the kind of action they may take because of it. Because, you see, I believe most likely those fathers were sitting there thinking, if only I knew where they were. If only I had the power to go rescue them. You see, they had great love for these children and myself. They had great love that only a father could have for Thomas and Noah. But they couldn't do anything about it. It's got to be the worst possible position to be in. At least I knew where they were and that we were okay. But there they are, not knowing, completely powerless. It contrasts with the love of God. God knows exactly where we are. God knows exactly who we are. God knows us better than we know ourselves. And God knows exactly how lost we are and exactly how rebellious we are. He knows our hearts. He knows our thoughts. He knows our desires. He knows those actions that take place in the secret parts of our own homes and our own lives. Yet, He still loves us. And not only does He know exactly who we are and where we are, He has a mighty right arm that is able to extend out and rescue us. He knows who we are. He knows where we are. And He's able to accomplish the greatest act of rescue. Overcoming hard, rebellious hearts with His great love. What a great Father. What a super power of love. Our Father is able to save us. And the scariest thing is He has to save us from our own sin. Let's look there at verse 10. And 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." Now, this is the second time this word propitiation has come up. Literally, it just simply means that Jesus has appeased the wrath of God. In order to truly understand the great love God has for us, we have to try to wrap our heads around the fact that he's loving us in our rebellion against him. as we fight and kick against God. As our every action, our every thought, our every breath is actually in opposition to God, He is loving us. The wrath of God should be poured out upon us. But instead, He chooses to love us. As the Deuteronomy passage says, not because there's anything nice about us, Not because there's something He needs from us. He loves us because He loves us. What glorious reasoning. What gracious logic from God. He loves us because He loves us. He should pour His wrath out upon us. See, the problem with a lot of the ideals of love, as we heard from Sean's testimony last week, he was a hippie, so I've been thinking about the hippies a lot lately. The idea of love that streams in our culture, through the Beatles and others like that, is this some idealistic love that we're all just going to get along somehow? The problem with that idea of love is it ignores the problem. It ignores that we're sinners. It ignores that we are sinners against one another. It ignores we're sinners against God. It ignores that we're selfish. That's the cause of the pain and suffering in the world. Our selfish desires that control us. Jesus Christ came. to die on the cross to appease the wrath of God. Because the wrath of God was going to be poured out upon us for our rebellion. But instead, the Father sent His Son in love for us. If we look at verses 15 and 16, 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. Friend, if you're here this morning and this is all foreign to you, this love of God, the command is clear. Confess. Confess Christ as the only Savior. Confess Christ as the only means of salvation. I remember early in my spiritual renewal, The first few months as a Christian, I'm riding in the car and I ask my dad, what does it mean? How do you know someone's a Christian? Getting to a bare minimum, how do you know? Well, my father gave me great words of wisdom. You know, Jesus Christ is the only Savior. You know, the Father's only way of reconciling you to Himself is through Jesus Christ and His act of love on the cross. Friend, if you're here this morning and you don't know this love, if you've never experienced the forgiveness of your sins, confess. Confess Christ to be your Savior and God will abide in you and you can abide in Him. And you abiding in Him means you finally find peace with God. You're finally reconciled with God. You finally have a hope in God. And He abides in you. More clearly there in verse 13, by giving you His Holy Spirit, another act of love. Not only does the Father send His Son to die for us, but then He sends His Holy Spirit to renew us, to give us new desires, to change our hearts. Because without the Holy Spirit and His redeeming work inside, we're just going to continue to love sin. Without the Holy Spirit and His redeeming work in our hearts, We're only going to continue to love ourselves and be controlled by selfish desires. But God gives us a spirit to make us new. Well, friends, we think about this great God of love, the God who loves sinners, the God who loves those who rebel against him. We now must look to how we respond to this God of love and that we are called to respond to his love by loving one another. This is the clear command that drives much of the theology that we have already discussed. God is love is really the ground for this command as you look at it. Let me first talk about human love. We are all made in the image of God. We all have the capacity to love. I believe there are many non-Christians, to our shame, that probably love one another better than a lot of Christians do. So, I'm not simply saying that only Christians can love one another. I don't think John is saying that. I think we all have the capacity to love, but the particular kind of love that John is talking about is unique. Because it's not a love defined by our greatest ideals. It's defined by God Himself. The kind of love we're going to be talking about isn't just caring for other people. I believe the world is, all human beings are able to do that. No, it's a higher calling to love. Look at verse 11. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Alright, well here we have just some real clear reasoning. Loving one another is a logical consequence of being loved by God. This really, I think, reminds me of Matthew 18 in the parable. There was a servant who owed the king a great sum of money. And the king brought in that servant and he said, you're going to be punished unless you give up this money. And the man throws himself before the king and says, I have no money. I have a family. Please have mercy on me. And the king sees this penance. He sees the humility and he says, your debts are forgiven. Then the story gets illogical. Because that same man who received great mercy in his great debt, he goes and he starts beating his servants for little debt. What's the king going to do when he finds out about this illogical lack of mercy? Well, he takes them back and he says, now you owe me the debt. You will be punished because you were shown great mercy. You are supposed to show mercy. Because you were shown mercy, you show mercy to others. It's a logical consequence. If we have received great love that we did not deserve, we should give great love that is not deserved. Here is the key to the text. Look at verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. The kind of love that John is calling for here is a Consequence. It's based upon the doctrine of being born again. It's based upon the fact that the Holy Spirit has come into your heart, renewed you, given you a new life, a new birth, a new identity as a brother and sister of Christ, as a daughter or son of the Father. If you have been reborn, you are to love one another. If you have received the love from God, the giver of every good and perfect gift, you are supposed to then have a changed heart, a changed life and love one another. Being born from above is the key to this transition. Because God creates in us a new heart with new desires, this reflects the theological truth of being brothers and sisters in Christ. Being born from above is evidence is evidenced. Let me rephrase this. A proper confession and proper action of love is the evidence we should have of being born from above. Now, if you think about this, John makes it very clear that your love for one another is fruit for your confession of Jesus Christ. And there's going to be people here who they're going to question their hearts and they're going to say, I have no evidence. I have no fruit. I have no love for God in response to His love for me. I have no love for others in response to God's love for me. This may be a great opportunity for you to really pursue your heart. This is a great opportunity in that questioning, in that sensitive conscience. Does God's love control you? Does God's love define you? Has God's love conformed you? Friends, if you're sitting here questioning, brother, I pray that you would question, what is the fruit of my confession? What is the fruit of my confession that Jesus Christ is my Savior? What is the fruit of my confession that Jesus loves me? Is it that you love one another? There'll be another group here that I want to address, and that is believers that are very sensitive and they're constantly weighing and seeing that there's so much sin in their heart. There's so much selfishness. They go through constant doubt that they have truly confessed Christ. Friends, let me remind you what John's already told us. have overcome the evil one, because He who is greater in you is greater than the evil one. You have overcome the evil one because He who is in you is greater than the evil one. Here's what's happening in your heart. Satan is accusing you. Guess what? We're all sinners. No one's been perfected yet. No one's received a glorified body and a glorified heart and a glorified mind. We all have that dual nature inside of us, the spirit creating good desires and our sinful nature that continues to bubble up selfish, sinful desires and sinful actions. You can't simply look at those and meditate upon them because they're only going to cause you to doubt. And you can't sit there and listen to the accusations from the evil one saying, look at the sin in your heart. How can you confess Jesus Christ? Friend, if you listen to the accusations, you're letting the accusation against our Savior have fruit in your life. Because when Satan says, your sins are still against you, look at all the sin in your heart, you're not trusting the work of Christ. You're not trusting the power of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection to truly forgive you of all that sin. When you listen to the accusations, you're letting Satan attack the work of Christ. Friends, what you have to do, is look at that sin. Stare at it face to face. Say, Jesus Christ has died on the cross so that I am no longer guilty for that sin. I confess and I know the power of the death and the resurrection. And this sin cannot bind me to hell. This sin no longer controls me. This sin no longer puts guilt upon me. Jesus Christ, in His power, has overcome that. Friends, you must go to battle to hate that sin and to hate the accusations that come against you along with that sin. And you do that. by reminding yourself of the gospel every day. So we look at what it means to love one another. If you're burdened with guilt, confess that guilt. Put that guilt at the foot of the cross. Put that guilt in front of the empty tomb and let it be destroyed by the power of Jesus Christ. So now let us look at what it means to love one another in light of what Christ has accomplished for us. Because we may have some ideas of what it means to love one another, and these need to be corrected based upon God's love manifested in Jesus Christ. First, love is defined by giving yourself to others. Your time, your energy, your care, your entire being. If we're supposed to love one another as Christ has loved us, we're supposed to give ourselves to one another within the church. This means we're supposed to sacrificially give. Sacrificially give. That makes us feel uncomfortable. That means I've got to give up my own pleasure, entertainment, benefit, well-being for the sake of someone else. That doesn't make me feel comfortable. That doesn't sound like a lot of fun. That's a very intentional, direct decision and action that we have to do because our natural tendency is to be self-entertained. Christ did not keep himself from us. Christ did not keep Himself out of pain and suffering for His benefit. No. He sacrificed. He sacrificed His relationship with the Father. He sacrificed His life. He sacrificed His well-being. So, if we're going to love one another as Scripture commands, according to how Christ has loved us, we're going to sacrifice ourselves. No, we're all willing to say that we'll take up our cross and deny ourselves for Jesus. We'll take up our cross and deny ourselves for Jesus. But are we willing to do the same for one another? Are we willing to say, I will take up my cross and deny myself for the body of Christ? Will I take up my cross and deny myself for the brothers and sisters whom Christ has also loved and died for and risen again? I would say to you, if you want to love Christ and deny yourself for Christ, you deny yourself for one another. When Jesus was teaching, He said, whenever you stand before Me, I'm going to say, I was hungry and you didn't feed Me. I was thirsty and you didn't give Me drink. I was in need and you didn't help Me. And they would respond, when did I ever see you? And Jesus said, whenever there were the least of these, you ignored their needs. I think it's easy to apply that to the body. If Christ is our head and we are the body, the way we can love one another, the way we can love God is by loving one another. The way we can sacrifice for Christ is by sacrificing for one another. Secondly, in addition to sacrificing one another, we actually have to love our enemies. This is one of those real difficult concepts of the Gospel as well, isn't it? We have to love those that hate us. Now, I hope that this has more practical application for outside of this church. But is there anger within the body? Is there hatred among brothers and sisters in here? Only you know that because only you can see your heart. Well, you and God. Do you have the proper fruit of repenting? Is there someone in this church that you need to apologize to for loose words or loose actions? You see, we're going to have to love the world. We're going to have to take the gospel outside of these walls and show the love of God to the world. But how can we ever start thinking of doing that if we can't even love one another? See, I think the first step is actually loving those who are not like us. And then we can think about loving our enemy. There's a great diversity in this body. I love the diversity of the body of Christ. But the problems that can bring is that we get put in different positions. We try to keep to our own and we only love those who are like us in the same situation of life with us. That's not love. How could you even think about loving your enemy if you can't love those who are different than you, but have the same confession as you? Friends, be intentional. Go search out those who are not like you. Go search out those who you may feel uncomfortable around, who are part of the body. This is glorifying to Christ. This is you denying yourself. This is you sacrificing yourself. Love those who are not like you, and then we can start working on loving those who hate you. Third, these are all uncomfortable. Love requires that we confront one another. Love requires that we confront one another for sin, for wrongdoing. Love requires it. See, that's what the love of God is doing on the cross. That's what love is doing. He's saving sinners. He's correcting us. He doesn't just bestow mercy without telling us that we're sinners and calling us to repentance. No. He points out our sin. And He corrects it. If we're going to love one another, it's not just about happy thoughts and happy words. We have to start loving one another in a way that we are confronting one another in our sin. Now, this isn't going around and just pointing the fingers. That's a whole other problem. What we need to do is have enough courage in the Gospel to prayerfully... Key word there. We need to have enough courage in the Gospel to prayerfully confront and correct one another. Because if we're going to make the most basic confession that makes us the brothers and sisters of the body of Christ, we are sinners. Someone confronting us as sinners shouldn't be that offensive. We should know we're sinners and expect confrontation. We should know that we're sinners and expect correction. But as we do this, we must be careful. not to do itself righteously so that we're building ourselves up by destroying others. We must do it prayerfully, trusting that our words will be empowered by the Holy Spirit. We have to remember that what causes quarrels and disunity among us, it's our sin. We must confront it. We must seek to correct it with the gospel. Finally, loving one another means we seek reconciliation. So, when there's two parties, and there's sin involved, there's always the offender and the offendee. Now, it's rarely 100% and 0% offender-offendee. But as we think about seeking reconciliation, reconciliation takes place when two things happen. When the person who offended apologizes and repents, and the person offended forgives. That's when reconciliation takes place. So if we've sinned against someone, we should go and apologize. That's your responsibility. That's the action that you can control. That's your duty as a Christian. And hopefully they forgive you. Or if someone's forgiven you, your proper duty is to forgive them. even if they don't repent or ask for forgiveness. The goal of reconciliation, we have to realize that when someone sins against you, you don't wait for them to apologize. You forgive them and pray for an apology or talk to them about an apology or talk to their brother and sister about the situation, hoping that true reconciliation takes place. You see, I can forgive someone who sins against me. Fellowship, binding and building, reconciliation doesn't take place until the apology and the forgiveness take place. But the lack of an apology or the lack of forgiveness does not keep us from acting according to our duty. Finally, there have been two places that we've seen this phrase, love perfected, verses 12 and verses 17. What does it mean that love is perfected? Well, quickly, God's love is perfect. Without us doing anything at all, God's love is perfect. We don't meet Him halfway. We don't meet Him 1% to His 99. God's love is perfect. It accomplishes exactly what it wants to accomplish. So, what does it mean that God's love is perfected in us? when we obey His commandments. I believe it simply has its proper fruit. It has its proper goal and purpose. God intends to love us so that we love Him and we love one another. Love is perfected in the sense that what God ultimately intends to accomplish is finally accomplished when we love one another. As we end, let's look at verses 17 through 21. 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 the 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 cannot love God, whom he has not seen. In this commitment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. The first part of the section, love casts out fear. Love casts out fear. That's another way that it's perfected. When we stand before God, we stand before Him as sinners. When we stand before God, we stand before Him as those who have rebelled against Him, who have kicked against Him, who have hated Him. And it's here that you're going to hear that God's love for you was manifested in Jesus Christ dying for that rebellion. But if you do not make that confession, If you die before you realize the love of God, you should have great fear. Because God is holy. That's why the Son had to come to appease the wrath of God. God's holiness will consume you in judgment. God's holiness will bring wrath upon your sin that you will experience for eternity. Friend, today is the day that we can confess, no, I don't want that wrath. I don't want to face the Holy God on my own with just my sin. I want to confess Jesus Christ as the one and only Savior for me for my sin. I don't want to be fearful of standing before God. I want to have great hope. I want to know that the love of Christ will cover my sin, so that when I stand before the judgment, there will be no fear. And Christian, let me assure you that if we hold fast our confession, the love of God has truly perfected us and is being perfected in us. We have every assurance that we stand before Him. The Father will not judge us based upon our own sin, but He'll bring us into His home and let us fellowship with Him in the beauty of the gospel that will glorify Him forever. Let us pray. Lord, the three words are so overwhelming. God is love. May we as a church just be moved to meditate upon that. And how you manifest that love in Jesus Christ. May that take such root in our hearts and our minds and our souls and our conversations. Lord, if only that were all we thought about and talked about. If only that was the basis of our fellowship. Of our coming together. Lord, let it be. Let Your love so move in us that we sacrifice in our love for You. We sacrifice in our love for one another. Lord, let Your love so move us that we hate the sin that calls Christ to die for us. Move us to repentance, Lord. Move us to respond with love for You. We pray these things in your name. Amen.