1 John 4:7-21
1 John 4:7-21
Big Idea: Our love of God has a supernatural effect that causes us to love one another.
I’ve broken this passage into 3 sections:
1. The Nature of God’s Love (7-12)
2. Abiding in God’s Love (13-16)
3. Perfected by God’s Love (17-21)
1. The Nature of God’s Love (7-12)
The reiteration of loving one another sets the stage for where John goes in this section. It’s in the form of comparison, as has been his strategy this whole letter. To continue creating clarity of distinction between those who follow God an those who don’t, he re-emphasizes the love that flows as a result of a true relationship with God. “Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God…Anyone who does not love does not know God.” There’s the distinction. It centers on our love for one another. And the main underlying truth to this is the fact that “God IS Love.”
Now, we talk a lot about context here at Family Church, and it’s important that we stop here to define the statement that John makes. If we were to take just those 3 words and pull them out of this verse, we could have a very broad understanding of what it could mean. God is love. At first pass it reads like he’s talking about God in His essence. And when taking all of Scripture into account, we can say with certainty that God, in His essence, is love. But here, we need to look at the surrounding verses to see specifically what John means.
Look at verse 9: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world...” When John says “God is love,” he is talking about the nature of God’s love being shown, personified, verb tense love, in sending Jesus to be the propitiation for our sins.
So the phrase “God is love” implies a love that results in action. This is important for us to understand as we move forward.
The nature of God’s love is seen in His sending Jesus, to be a propitiation. We defined propitiation in chapter 2 as “the satisfaction of the righteous demands of God in relation to human sin and its punishment through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ upon the cross, by which the penalty of sin is cancelled and the anger of God averted.”
We understand the love of God not because of our feelings towards Him, but His love in action towards us, by sending Jesus. This is the nature of God’s love, that He sent His only Son to die the death that we deserve because of our sin, opening the door to be reconciled back to Him.
Therefore, verse 1, actively love one another, because you have been born of God and God actively loves you. To put it another way, verse 11, “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
Love one another. We want to be a church that is known by our love for one another. We want to be known as a church that looks out for the interests and needs of one another. We want to be a church that sees the needs and meets the needs, no matter the sacrifice. Why? Because that’s the way that God loves us.
The nature of God’s love is the most extreme sacrifice, giving up His Son to die in our place. And so we die to ourselves to love one another like He loved and continues to love us.
2. Abiding in God’s Love (13-16)
There are 3 things that we see here about our abiding in Him.
A. The Spirit Empowers Abiding (13-14)
Proof of our abiding comes from the indwelling Holy Spirit. And proof of the indwelling Holy Spirit comes in the testifying that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. The role of the Holy Spirit in our lives cannot be understated. He is the promised Helper that Jesus talked about would remain with us after He ascended into heaven. One of the roles we see laid out here is on a spiritual level that is hard to comprehend. Somehow, at the point of our conversion, when the Holy Spirit indwells us, He grafts us to the Vine, who is Jesus. We are a branch, dead in our sin, and the Spirit attaches us to Jesus which then produces the life-giving relationship we have as Christians. The abiding relationship we have with God.
B. Our Abiding Determines Our Confession (15)
When we abide in God, our confession becomes that Jesus is the Son of God. Remember, one of the main differences in doctrine that had come to light with those who had separated themselves from the young church was that Jesus was NOT the Son of God, not God in the flesh. We talked much about this last week. Our confession is not simply found in the words that we say, but it’s found in our submission to Jesus as Lord of our lives, which backs up the words that we say.
So, proof of our abiding is that we not only admit with our words that Jesus is the Son of God, but we lay down our selfish desires and submit to the Lordship of Christ. We give Him rule and reign, the highest place of prominence in our lives.
C. We Abide in God’s Love (16)
This is all tied up together. We abide because of the Holy Spirit. We confess Jesus as the Son of God because of our abiding. We confess Jesus because we have come to believe the love that God has for us. God IS love. Therefore, we abide in love.
Take our working definition of abiding, and fuse it with God’s love. When we abide, we are attached to a life-giving source. Abiding in love means that we are drawing life from the source of Love. That means whatever is flowing into us must come out of us. This is why John can say with confidence that our love for one another is proof of our being God’s children, in our abiding in Him.
We have to take pause here and check ourselves. Ask yourself this question: Do I actively love my brothers and sisters? Does my abiding in God, in Love, flow out of me in the way that I respond to others? Am I happy to sacrifice my own time and energy to meet the needs of others? See it’s not just Jesus that is capable of great sacrifice. John 15:12-13:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
Love requires great sacrifice. Are willing to love like that? It’s a whole lot easier when our source of life is love.
3. Perfected By God’s Love (17-21)
This is the 3rd time now that John deals with the completeness of love. In 2:5 he says, “whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.” In 4:12 he says, “if we love one another…his love is perfected in us.” And now he speaks of God’s love perfected by breaking it down into a few different thoughts.
A. Perfected Love Gives Confidence for the Day of Judgment (17)
There will come a day when all of us have to stand before Jesus in judgment. He will sort out those who truly knew Him, and those who did not. When the love of God finds its completeness in us, in other words when we abide in love and love one another as Jesus loved us, then we will be able to stand before Jesus with confidence, because our love was evidence of a genuine relationship with Him.
As believers, we don’t have to worry about that day. In fact, we can look forward to that day. We can hope towards that day. And this first point is really neatly tied into the second.
B. Perfected Love Casts Out Fear (18)
Another mis-quoted verse in Scripture here. We hear people quote this a lot. Don’t be afraid, God’s love casts out fear! And while this is good, and true, contextually here John is talking specifically of the fear of punishment that comes at the Day of Judgment. What John is saying here is that fear and love cannot go together. They cannot be found in the same place. One cannot fear punishment and love God at the same time. We love God because we believe the truth about Him. We believe that He is a God that keeps His promises. Jesus took our sin AND the punishment that we deserved to the cross. And when we have a proper view of God, fear is cast out of our minds, and out of our hearts. We don’t fear the punishment because we are no longer destined to it!
C. Perfected Love Comes from God (19)
We could list verse after verse on this truth.
“For God so loved the world.”
“My lips praise you because your faithful love is better than life itself.”
“Love each other, just as I have loved you.”
“See what kind of love that Father has given us that we should be called God’s children.”
I think we can all agree that God is a loving Father. And love flowed out of Him through Jesus. And Jesus provided a way for us through His death, burial and resurrection. And when we repent and believe the Holy Spirit fuses us, as we’ve already talked about. We are fused to Jesus, the Vine, and love flows out of Him into us, the branches, and we bear fruit out of that love.
D. Perfected Love Loves His Brother (20-21)
And then John circles back to the initial argument. Love comes from God, therefore, love one another. This is a reiteration of what he already talked about in chapter 2, but there he spoke of light and darkness. One cannot love his brother if he walks in darkness, not like Jesus calls us to at least. But here, he seems to take it a step further by saying that one cannot claim to love God if he hates his brother. If you are face to face with your brother who you claim to have unity in the Spirit with, but even in physical presence you can’t seem to love, then how are you going to love God who you have never laid your eyes on?!
If you can find the depth of faith to believe in and love God who you can’t see, then surely you can love those whom you do life with each week.
And we can take each of these 4 and apply in the same way, in the form of a question.
1. Am I confident that when I stand before Jesus, my life will have reflected the love that Jesus calls us to? Will Jesus commend my love for the least of the brothers and sisters? Does my heart break for the needy and downcast? Does that drive me to action?
2. Am I fearful of that day? Concerned of what Jesus might say? Does fear of that future cripple my life today? Or do I live in the hope of one day standing face to face with Jesus?
3. Do I love like Jesus?
4. Do I sacrifice much to meet the needs of others?
And so we have this really deep and meaningful stream of love that is flowing into us and out of us. One pastor says “there is probably continuity with the theme of love that has run through the unit: an outgoing love that comes from God, is manifested in Jesus, gives us life, and remains in us actively manifesting itself in love of others and of God.”
Big Idea: Our love of God has a supernatural effect that causes us to love one another.
