1 John 4:7

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins... There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. He who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us. (1 John 4:7-19)

The invisible God makes Himself visible in the world through the tangible love of His people.

Returning to the Theme of Love

I'm going to attempt today the death-defying feat of preaching through more than three verses at one time—something rarely accomplished in this room over the last six months. All joking aside, I believe God has something He wants to speak to us in this passage.

John returns here to a topic he has already raised repeatedly. In 1 John 2:5 he writes, "But whoever keeps God's word, truly the love of God is perfected in him." In 3:1, "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God." And in 3:11, "This is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another."

This is the teaching Jesus gave His disciples on the night He was betrayed. It is not only His teaching but the teaching of the Old Testament—we find this command to love one another in Leviticus 19. But because our culture lacks a true comprehension of love, John explains what he means: "By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us, and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" (3:16). "Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth" (3:18).

Christians Love in Response to God's Great Love

With that backdrop, John says, "Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." This brings us to our first point: Christians love one another in response to God's great love.

What's fascinating is that the last few weeks I've been talking about identifying and separating from false teachers. Because of our misunderstanding of love, some might call that unloving. Our culture says love is most perfectly revealed by constantly accepting everything and everybody. But that is not what this passage teaches. There needs to be discernment, discrimination, and sometimes division.

How do we know God's great love? We read it in 3:16—"By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us." John reiterates it: "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." That word propitiation means the payment for sin. He deals with the problem of sin, which you and I could never deal with in ourselves.

Man's Failed Attempts to Cover Sin

Man has been trying to deal with the problem of sin since sin first came. Sin, John tells us in this very book, is lawlessness. When Adam and Eve ate of the tree, their eyes were opened, they saw they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. That was man's first attempt of many to deal with sin on his own—and it was insufficient. Every religious effort to remove the stain and shame of sin is insufficient. So God sent His Son to be the payment for our sins, a demonstration of His love: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."

This is the core truth of the gospel. It is not novel or fresh. It is the ground upon which the entire Christian faith is built, the truth Christians have sought to teach their youngest children for centuries.

God Is Love—Not "Love Is God"

These three words—God is love—are deeply embedded in Western culture, but have we taken time to understand them? They tell us something about the very nature and heart of God. At His core, He is love. We even see this within the doctrine of the Trinity: one God existing in three persons, love existing eternally within the Godhead.

But our culture has flipped the words around to say "love is God." For most of our culture, the supreme form of love is sexual intimacy, and they call that God. When we begin to understand God rightly—that He is love—it changes the way we understand reality. The further we move away from this truth, the more the wickedness of man shows through, as we have seen so vividly in our nation these last few weeks.

A Warning from the Culture

I read this last week in The Federalist by Thane Bellomo. He wrote: "Once upon a time, you had meaning. You knew you had meaning because you had a mom and a dad who told you so, and a God who loved you, and a community that needed you." He argues we have created a society that offers almost none of these things that make people truly happy—family, community, spiritual belonging—the foundational building blocks of human happiness.

"The outcome is predictable," he writes. "Isolation, depression, anxiety, despondency, drug abuse, and death." We live in a culture with more available to us than at any time in human history, yet we see all of this. Why? Something core to who we are has been removed. He continues: "We have discarded those regulating social institutions that have helped people understand their value and place in this world for thousands of years."

His closing lines: "Destroy the family. Abandon the community. Raze the church to the ground. What could go wrong? Everything." These truths are vitally important, and we see their value by watching what happens as our society moves away from them.

An Interesting but "Useless" Antique

A couple days before Christmas, I found a box on my doorstep. Inside was an old Macintosh 512—the second edition of a Macintosh, practically useless, but it still turned on with its floppy disks. It's interesting; it shows us where we came from, but it's practically useless. More and more, that's how our culture views the truth of Scripture—a quaint relic of where we came from.

But I want to suggest the things in Scripture are profoundly important. A follower of Christ exhibits his connection to God by loving other people. We see the very reality of God in the life of a believer by the love that flows from him. Inversely, if a person is separated from God—who is love—what will you see? A lack of love. And that is exactly what we see in our culture.

Christians Love as an Expression of God's Character

This brings us to point two: Christians love as an expression of God's character. In Galatians 5:22, Paul says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love." He says fruit—singular. Chiefly, supremely, the evidence of God's Spirit is love, and from love flows joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, and self-control.

We cannot see God, because God is spirit and He is holy. Since we are not holy, if we were to see Him we could not stand in His presence. But we see the evidence of His presence through the presence of love in His people. This is why Jesus said in John 13:34, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you. By this all people will know that you are my disciples."

So 1 John 4:11 says, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." Circle those words ought to—it is ethical language. The word if can also be translated since, as the NIV reads: "Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."

The Invisible God Made Visible

When I follow Jesus' example of love, what follows? "No one has seen God at any time. But if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love has been perfected in us." That word perfected means made manifest, revealed. We get to manifest God's glory by His love being resident in us. It is most clearly evident that there is a God when you see the love of God in the people of God.

This is point three: The invisible God becomes visible through His tangible love expressed in His people. This is a problem for modern Westerners who disbelieve the supernatural—"There's no God because I can't see Him." Near the end of his life the great atheist Bertrand Russell was asked what he would say if he stood before God. He answered, "I will tell God, you did not give me enough evidence."

But what is the supreme evidence? John says it is love. And here is the remarkable thing: you cannot prove the existence of love in a scientific experiment. It is not empirically verified—yet we know it is there. We see its effects. So God reveals His invisible nature through the tangible love of His people.

Enabled to Obey the Command

Since God is known through the love of His people, it makes sense Jesus would command His disciples to love one another. It is not a suggestion. And the awesome reality about God's commandments is that we are unable to fulfill them in ourselves, but God working in us by His Spirit enables us to will and to do His good pleasure.

It is like the man with the withered hand. I assume he tried to stretch it forth every morning of his life, and it never worked. Then Jesus said, "Stretch forth your hand," and with the command came the enabling power to obey. So when Jesus says, "Love one another as I have loved you," I am wholly incapable in myself—but by His power, I am able.

All the Law Summed Up in Love

In Matthew 22 a lawyer—an expert in the Hebrew law—asked Jesus the greatest commandment. The experts knew there were 613 laws in the first five books of the Bible; you and I know maybe ten. Jesus answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength," and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Then He said, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

All 613 laws, and the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the rest—all of it sums up to: love God, love one another. You may not know what Zephaniah says, but I can sum it up: love God, love one another. Paul echoes this in Galatians 5:14: "All the law is fulfilled in one word, even this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Love and Righteousness: Two Assurances

This brings point four: The abiding presence of God's love in my life assures me of my connection to Him. "By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit." There are two assurances John gives that we are connected to God: righteousness and love.

In 2:3, "By this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments"—that is righteousness. In 2:5, "Whoever keeps God's word, truly the love of God is perfected in him; by this we know that we are in him"—that is love. In 3:18-19, "Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth." And in 5:1-2, love for God and keeping His commandments confirm we belong to Him.

Both righteousness and love come from God; I cannot produce either apart from His power. So when I see His power overflowing in me to walk in rightness and to love, it proves I am connected to Him. Religion says you must make yourself right before God, and many live that way in frustration and despair—like the man trying to stretch his withered hand in his own strength. But when God is in you by His Spirit, He enables you to love and to walk in rightness, "for it is God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).

Boldness in the Day of Judgment

Point five: God's love demonstrated in the past brings me assurance in the present and boldness in the future. "Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in this world."

How many of you have at some point feared future judgment? Modern Westerners say that fear is merely the product of an oppressive Christian culture. But I suggest that fear of judgment is written upon your very psyche by the God who created you. It is accentuated by our cultural history, yes, but it is written on the human heart—this recognition of moral accountability. And when a culture removes all moral responsibility, people walk into a Walmart and shoot twenty-one people, with no sense that they will answer to anyone someday.

But if I have received the love of God in Christ, I can have boldness in the day of judgment. Not because I'm so perfect or have kept the law so well—but because He loved me. This is what the Jehovah's Witness or the Latter-day Saint lacks. They are often good, moral, generous people, but they do not have assurance. Why are they knocking on your door? To gain it. The Book of Mormon says you are saved by grace after all you can do. But I am saved by the grace of God demonstrated in the love of Jesus on the cross—therefore I have boldness.

The Good News That Casts Out Fear

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment." Christ bore my punishment, your punishment, on the cross. If you are afraid of future torment and not confident of your standing with God today, you have not yet received the fullness of God's love.

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:23). "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved... for whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Romans 10:9, 13)—saved from sin, death, and the wrath of God.

Jesus bore my sin and took God's wrath upon Himself so that you and I could receive grace and forgiveness. This is the demonstration of the love of God, and this is good news—the message we are to share with the people around us who desperately need to be brought back into connection with God and with one another. We can have assurance now and boldness in the future because He has dealt with our past wrongs.

Closing Prayer

God, thank You for the truth of the Scriptures. We thank You, Jesus, that You make it possible for us to know assurance and boldness and confidence, that we would have hope and joy. God, we thank You for what You give us in Christ. We thank You that You demonstrated Your love toward us, Jesus, in that while we were still sinners You died in our place, and that if we trust in You and call upon You, You will rescue and save us. Lord, we praise You today. Help us to rejoice in that good news of the gospel, to have assurance and boldness and peace in believing. In Jesus' name, amen.