Message preached Sunday, December 14, 2014 from 1 John 4:6-11
Theme: The command to love each other is based on the love God has shown us at Christmas.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
As we draw closer to the Christmas holiday, I feel that it’s important that we deal with a passage of Scripture that shows us the impact that Christmas—I mean the real, biblical story of Christmas—should have on our lives.
With all the more ‘seasonal’ and somewhat ‘superficial’ pressures we feel around us because of the holiday—it’s easy to loose sight of the fact that the Bible presents the Christmas story of the birth of Christ as a real, historical event. And it’s truly astonishing what happens in us when we receive it that way. It makes all the difference in the world. After all, if the story of Christmas is to be taken as real, historical truth, then it means that the God of the Bible exists, and that He has done something inexpressably wonderful to solve the problems of this world. It means that He is not far away and unappoachable, but near to us and knowable. It means that, no matter how dark and dismal things may seem, there is real reason for hope and joy. It means that the promises of God in the Scriptures will be kept; and that the outlook for those who trust Him is very bright and glorious indeed!
Well; this morning, I ask you to turn with me to a passage that speaks of the impact of the reality of the Christmas story. It’s found in 1 John 4:7-11. It’s not typically thought of as a Christmas passage; but if you listen carefully, you find that it truly is a passage about Christmas. And it shows us how the reality of the birth of Christ is one of the most relevant things that we can share with the world today.
That passage was written by the apostle John to his believing brothers and sisters in Christ. And in it, he 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. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:7-11).
As I read those words, did you pick up on John’s reference to the Christmas story? It’s where he said that “God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him”; and where he says that God “loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” And that’s what Christmas is all about. Get past the decorations, and the stores, and the sales—and what Christmas is really about is what it tells us in that most beloved verse of the Bible: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
But there’s something more that this passage tells us. It tells us how the story of Christmas—the story of how God sent His Son into this world to save us—makes possible the command that you find at the very beginning of this passage; “Beloved, let us love one another.” In fact, this whole passage—and the Christmas truth that it declares to us—shows us the only way that it it’s possible for us to keep that command as God truly wants us to keep it.
This passage shows us that the command to love each other is based on—and can only be fullilled because of—the love God has first shown us at Christmas.
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Now; I’ll bet most of us here today are old enough to remember a song from long ago. It’s not a Christmas song; and I’m sorry to have to say that when I remind you of it, you’ll very probably be a little sore with me for the rest of the day—because you won’t be able to get it out of your head. But all I have to do is say the words, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love . . .” (Please don’t get mad at me. Get mad at Burt Bacharach.)
That song—or those words anyway—have been coming to my mind quite a bit lately. You probably share the feeling that I have that what it says is true; that in all seriousness, the world really ‘needs’ love desperately. In fact, you can’t help feeling that what the song goes on to say is also very true: “It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” I have always thought of that song as a rather corny one. But it speaks of something that, in moments of deep dispair and trial, we all long for and wish could be fulfilled. Did you know that after the shooting deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in the late spring and early summer of 1968, radio stations played that song over and over as a vigil?
Well; here we are—coming up soon to the fiftieth anniversary of that song’s creation. And when you turn on the television and watch the news, and see what is going on in city after city, you can’t help feeling that we haven’t really made much progress. The world still needs “love, sweet love”. And fact, it seems that there’s less of it now than ever before. It seems that hatred and animosity and divisiveness are pandemic to our culture. Try as hard as they may, the social forces around us seem completely incapable of making people love each other—or even just be decent to each other. If anything, the many efforts seem to only be aggrivating the hatred and division all the more.
And then, in the midst of it all, comes this passage with the command that it contains at the beginning—a message directed specifically to followers of Jesus Christ: “Beloved, let us love one another . . .” In the original language, John puts this command in a tense of the verb that means, “Beloved, let us ongoingly—as a regular habit of life—love one another”; that is to say, “Let ‘loving one another’ be the regular pattern of our daily practice as followers of Jesus.” He doesn’t say this to the unsaved world; because the unsaved people of the world can’t do it. But he says it to us who are followers of Jesus; and he then goes on to show us how the command to love one another is based on the story we celebrate at Christmas.
What the world needs now is love, sweet love. And brothers and sisters in Christ, we have the good news of the only message in the world that can make true love happen—the message of what God did for us on Christmas Day.
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Now; let’s look a little closer at this passage. And as we begin, we need to make a couple of things clear.
First, this is a passage about “love”. That would seem pretty obvious. After all, in just five verses, the word “love” shows up 11 times. But it’s important to understand that the word that is translated “love” has a particular kind of meaning. The word that is used in the original language isagapē; and this word speaks of more than a mere emotional feeling or a romantic sentiment. It speaks of a love that is active—a love that is giving—a love that is willing to sacrifice ‘self’ in order to bring about the good of someone else.
When the world sings songs about, ‘love, sweet love’; it isn’t typically meaning that kind of love. It typically means love in the sense of an emotional feeling or the romantic impulse. Rarely would the world sing a song that said, “What the world needs now is self-sacrificial giving, sweet self-sacrificial giving”. But that is, in fact, what there really is “just too little of”. (There’s pleanty of the other kinds!) And it’s this kind of love that this passage is speaking of—agapē love; the kind of self-sacrificing, self-giving love God has shown us in Christ.
And second, notice in verse 7, how John addresses his readers. He calls them “Beloved”. If you go on to look to the end of this passage, at verse 11, you’ll see that—once again—he calls his readers “Beloved”. This, I believe, is more than just a nice greeting. It’s a name that describes what his readers truly were from the standpoint of God the Father. They were truly “beloved” in His sight—truly loved by the Father withagapē love.
Do you realize just how much that’s true, dear brothers and sisters? Jesus once prayed to the Father and affirmed that—because of our relationship with Him by faith—the Father now loves us as much as He loves His own precious Son! You’ll find that in Jesus’ wonderful prayer in John 17:23. Now; you would agree with me that Jesus is the beloved of the Father, wouldn’t you? Well; Jesus affirmed that just as much as He is the beloved of the Father, so now are we—if we are in Him by faith.
If anyone could make the claim to be the “beloved” of the Father, then it would be us, dear fellow Christians! It’s sadly true that we don’t always act very “beloved-ly”. We don’t always behave like what we are. But nevertheless, ‘the beloved of God’ is indeed what we are. And it’s the fact of what God has made us to be in Christ that serves as the basis for what we are then to go on to do. I would say that this greeting—“Beloved, let us love one another”—is the best ‘brief summarization’ that I could give you of the great truth that this passage is teaching us. We are to rise up and truly love one another, because we have first been made the “beloved” of God.
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Now; let’s go on to see how John fleshes this out in this passage. Look first with me at the first couple of verses; and see what it tells us about . . .
1. LOVE’S ORIGINATION.
In verse 7, John writes, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” This tells us something very important about this “love” that the world needs so desperately. It tells us that it is something that has God as its source. Love—true self-sacrificial, giving,agapē love—has its origin in the Person of God alone.
Someone might argue; “But there are a lot of people in the world who are not Christians—a lot of people, in fact, who don’t even believe in God—who nevertheless ‘love’ others in a self-sacrificial way.” And that’s very true. We often read of stories of great acts of heroism and self-sacrifice that are done by people who are not “born of God” in the sense that they are saved in Christ. And many unbelieving people perform countless smaller acts of love toward others every day. Praise God for that! It makes the world a better place. But I believe that that’s because they are all human beings who were created in the image of God. It’s because all people bear the image of God in them—even if they don’t believe in Him—that they cannot help but, at times, reflect something of His character. But that impulse toward love doesn’t originate from them. It comes from Him; “for love is of God”.
It’s also important to understand that when John says that “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God”, he’s not talking about occasional acts of love. He’s talking about “love” in the tense of the verb that speaks of an ongoing, habitual, lifestyle pattern that is characterized by a willingness to sacrifice ‘self’ for the good of the one being loved. That’s the kind of love that comes only from God. And so, as John says in verse 8, “He who does not love”—that is, in that habitial, practical, self-sacrificing way—“does not know God, for God is love.”
Now, brothers and sisters; the importance of this to the world around us is hard to overstate. What the world needs now is love. But it’s the very thing that the world itself cannot originate. Love, as the world needs it today, cannot come from fallen humanity. It cannot come from any other source than God Himself. And that’s why it is that the more the unbelieving world around us pushes the heavenly Father off into the margins of life—and the more ‘secular’ it seeks to make everything to be—the further away it moves itself from the true and only source of the love it desperately needs; and the more frustrated people will be that they see so little love in the world.
That’s why we have such a important message to give to this world. That’s why the story of Christmas is the most relevant message this world can hear. It tells the story of what God has done, in love, to save this world. And as people hear it, and become reconciled to God through the loving sacrifice of Jesus for us, the more closer-drawn they become to the one and only source of true love.
He alone is love’s origination. “Love is of God”.
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Now; do you notice that interesting phrase at the end of verse 8—“for God is love”? May I tell you something about that? I don’t believe that is a mere sentimental phrase. People often treat it that way—saying “God is love”, and think of it merely as an expression of deep feeling. But I take it to be a statement of fact about the objective nature of the truine God.
You see; our God is but one God. But the Bible teaches us that, in the mystery of the trinity, that one God exists as three divine and distince Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Those three Persons—all three equally divine, but together constituting one God—have existed forever in a relationship of eternal love. The Father loves the Son eternally. The Son loves the Father eternally. The Father and the Son enjoy eternal communion of love in the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit eternally loves the Father and the Son. I say this carefully, because it almost sounds blasphemous to say such a thing; but if God were only one divine, eternal Person—and not triune—He could not “be” love in the nature of His eternal being; because there would not be anyone else to have been eternally loved by Him. But because God is triune in nature—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—then in a very real, objective sense, the eternal being of God is truly “love”.
And all of that is important when considering our next point; and that is . . .
2. LOVE’S MANIFESTATION.
Because God is triune—and is therefore eternally love—the Father is able to demonstrate to us the highest manifestation of love that could possibly be demonstrated. As John goes on to tell us in verse 9; “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”
First, consider what God did in love. He sent His only Son into the world. John refers to Jesus as God’s “only begottten Son”; and in saying this, he is emphasizing the fact that Jesus holds a unique place in the Father’s love. He is the dearest and most precious to His heart—the Son with whom He shared eternal love, and who He blessed with eternal glory. It was this “only begotten Son” that God “sent” from heavenly glory to take human nature to Himself, to be conceived in the womb of Mary, and to be born into this fallen and dark world of sin.
And second, consider why God did this. He sent His only begotten Son into the world, as John tells us, “that we might live through Him.” He sent His Son into the world of fallen humanity to take the guilt of our sins upon Himself and pay the penalty for them on the cross—and all so that whoever believes on Him would not perish, but have everlasting life.
You know; the world is not really left with any doubt of whether or not God is a God of love. We can know it by the fact of what He has done for us in the story of Christmas. How important it is that we tell that story to the world! That’s how they know the love of God ‘manifested’!
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Not only is Christmas the story of God’s love ‘manifested’. It is also the story of . . .
3. LOVE’S ACTION.
It was love that showed itself in an act of meeting our deepest and greatest need. John goes on to write in verse 10, “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” (v. 10).
You see, it wouldn’t really be a demonstration of God’s love for us if He looked down upon us, saw that we really loved Him—in spite of all our faults, and then in pity loved us in return. That would be a demonstration of the greatness of our love. But that’s not what John says. He stresses that the flow of action of love was from Him—not from us. It wasn’t that we first loved Him, but that He first loved us.
Do you see that word “propitiation”?—that God sent Jesus to be “the propitiaton for our sins”? In the New International Version, it’s translated “atoning sacrifice”; and what it means is that Jesus is that which satisfies the righteous anger of God for our sins. Even if we were to have made the first move and reach out to God in love, there wouldn’t have been anything that we could do to “propitate” God’s just anger for our own sins. And in fact, we couldn’t have even made the first move at all. We were dead in our sins—unable to do anything to make ourselves alive. But that’s where the love of God was demonstrated in action. He gave His only begotten Son to come into this world and become the “propitiation” for our sins—to be the “atoning sacrifice” on our behalf.
And that’s the message of what we celebrate at Christmas—the story of how God’s love was put into action on our behalf; the story of God’s love “demonstrated” in an action that meet our greatest need. As it says in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
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So you see; that thing that the world needs—love—is not something that the world can, at all, come up with. It is something that only ultimately has its objective reality and absolute source in the Person of God. That’s love’s origination. It’s not something that is hidden in the Person of God—far away from the view of humanity. It is clearly brought to light and set in plain view through the fact that God sent His Son into this world so that we might live. That’s love’s manifestation. And it is not something that cannot be defined; but rather is something that shown to be demonstrated in a sacrificial and practical way. It’s is clearly spelled out for us in the fact that Jesus was born into this world on Christmas Day to be the “propitiation” for our sins, and to personally pay the price for our sins. That’s love’s action.
And all of this stands as the basis for our love toward one another. Here is where John, in conclusion, tells us about . . .
4. LOVE’S OBLIGATION.
In verse 11, he writes, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (v. 11). Clearly, if we don’t love each other, it’s because we have not yet been impacted by God’s love. But if we truly have been impacted by God’s love, the obligation of love will press upon us so greatly that we cannot help but love one another.
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Let me close with a story. Jesus was invited one day to have dinner at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. And Jesus kindly accepted the invitation.
As they ate, “a woman who was a sinner in the city”—a woman who Jesus later describes as having committed “many” sins—came in to the place and stood behind where Jesus was. It would have made ‘righteous people’ very uncomfortable that she was there. She had a very expensive flask of perfume—probably the most expensive thing she owned. And as she wept, she washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair, and kissed His feet and anointed them with the very expensive fragrant oil.
The Pharisee was deeply offended by this; and thought that if Jesus was truly a righteous prophet from God, He would know what kind of a woman this was. Well; Jesus did know what kind of woman it was; and He told the Pharisee, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”
So he said, “Teacher, say it.”
“There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?”
Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.”
And He said to him, “You have rightly judged.” Then He turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in. You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil. Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little” (Luke 7:40-47).
That’s how it works. We love because God first loved us. If He so loved us, we ought to love one another. And that’s the kind of love that this world needs to know about.
So “beloved”—dear people who are truly loved of God; recipients of His love manifested and demonstrated on Christmas Day—“let us love one another.”