INTRO

Title of the series, Love & Light, the two ways John describes God.

John has addressed the subject of love already in 2:7-11 as an indication that one is walking in the light and in 3:11-24 as evidence that one is a child of God. Yet here, in 4:7-21, that he gives his fullest treatment of the subject.

1. Love is a person (7-8)

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:7–8

The Bible uses a lot of different words to describe what God is like. Gracious, merciful.

“God loves” might stand alongside other statements, such as “God creates,” “God rules,” “God judges”; that is to say, it means that love is one of His activities.

But to say “God is love” implies that all His activity is loving activity, even his judgment. If He creates, He creates in love; if He rules, He rules in love; if He judges, He judges in love. All that He does is to the expression of His nature, which is to love.

David Allen

May sound strange, how can God’s judgment come from love?

Let someone break into your house tonight and try to kidnap your little girl, and you’ll understand more.

Think of how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships… Do we respond with benign tolerance? Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Anger and love are inseparably bound in human experience. And if I, a flawed, narcissistic, and sinful woman can feel this much pain and anger over someone’s condition, how much more a morally perfect God who made them? Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is—and the final form of hate is indifference.

Rebecca Manley Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons

⚠️ Danger Zone

“I believe in a God of love, not…” Amen… according to who’s definition? Does He get to define it, or do you?

“I believe in a God of love, so I don’t bother about theology.”

  1. That is a theological statement.
  2. Normally a reaction to those who may be good theologians but poor Christians, which sadly happens a lot. We’ll deal with them later.
    • There are certain groups of people I’ve distanced myself from over time, not because I disagree with them theologically, but because their great theology seems to have no effect on their lives, love.
    • Eat meat, spit out bones
  3. If you love someone, you want to know more about them.

If I was proclaiming to you how much I love my wife, and describing what I love about her in particular, and I just went on and on about her Kay’s beautiful brown eyes… you might come away thinking, “Wow, he’s really crazy about her…” until you saw her the next time and saw that her eyes aren’t blue/green.

If you remember last Sunday, John just spent six verses telling us not to believe ever spirit that comes along, but to test the spirits. Love and truth are not enemies.

  1. Love is a person (7-8)

2. Love has been proven (9)

How do we know that God is love?

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

1 John 4:9–10
  1. Love is a person (7-8)
  2. Love has been proven (9)

3. Love must be practiced (11)

Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior.

1 John 4:9–10

When you’ve been hurt, when that person is driving you insane, when they don’t appreciate you and all that you do for them… what then?

Should you just say to yourself, “I’m need to love them, it’s what I’m supposed to do?” That’s not wrong, but it’s certainly incomplete, and it’s not really helpful in that moment, is it? I mean, if you’re struggling to love this person, you called up a friend and their advice was “Yeah, but you’re supposed to love them.” I don’t know about you, but my (loving!) response, at least in my head, would be, “Thanks for that, Captain Obvious! I know, that’s why I called.”

You should, but “you should” has no ability to change your heart. The only thing it can do is lead you to pride because “I did what you should” or despair because “I didn’t do what I should.”

Good news, that is never the way the NT teaches us to obey. You know what does have the ability to change hearts? The gospel. The good news. That’s the whole argument John’s making in these verses.

1. Remember who you were.

We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us,

Ephesians 2:3-4

When I see myself as I really am, nobody can insult me. It is impossible, because they can never say anything that is bad enough about me. Whatever the world may say about me, when I know myself, I know that they do not know the truth about me—it is much worse than they think. When we really see ourselves in the light of this glorious gospel, no one can hurt us, no one can offend us.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Love of God

2. Remember what He’s done.

You’re life is not your own

3. Remember who you are.

You are filled with the Holy Spirit.

4. Remember Whose (child) you are.

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven… For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what are you doing out of the ordinary? … Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:43–48

5. Love those who are just like you, just like Him.

They may have hurt you badly. Betrayed your trust. Abused you in ways I can’t even imagine. I’m not saying this to downplay your pain. But there is nothing they could ever do to you that’s as offensive as what you have done to God.

When the love of God is operating in our hearts, when we believe this gospel and reason out the meaning of this love, what happens is that we see the person rather than the thing that the person is doing. And is that not half the trouble in these human relationships? We see what people are doing—we do not see them. Now the gospel makes us see them as souls, objectively, and not only in terms of actions or in terms of what they are doing to us.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Love of God

A Clanging Cymbal

Love is not optional.

John not only repeats the imperative to love one another, but also he hits it longer and harder than at any other point in the book. He wants to make sure that we understand that love is not an optional virtue for the believer. It is to be the distinguishing mark of the church in the world. John goes so far as to say that if you do not love others, you do not know God (4:8). So we all need to examine our own lives by this supreme standard.

Steven Cole

It is possible for a person to be absolutely correct and yet not to be a Christian.

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but
didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13:1, NLT

I’ve

1 Corinthians…

in my physical life…

in my spiritual life…

in my church…

Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8