Naracoorte Presbyterian Church

Scripture Readings

• Hosea 11:1-11

• 1 John 4:7-12

Introduction

My dear fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ,

Over the last few Sundays, we learned more about the attributes of God. We discussed His sovereignty, glory, holiness, and justice. Next week we will hear about His faithfulness. Today we learn about His love.

Speaking about the attributes of God, we must keep in mind that God never changes. One of His attributes is referred to as immutability. This means He cannot change. Immutability has something of the opposite in mutation. God is all He is all the time. Our Westminster Confession of Faith speaks about God as the

“… one only, living, and true God,  who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal…most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him”

The love of God is inseparable from His holiness, justice, righteousness, judgments, and hatred to sin. God’s love does not surpass His justice under any circumstances. His love and faithfulness are governed by His righteousness. His righteousness is consistently expressed through His love and faithfulness.

This is enormously comforting for God’s people, because God is always what He is. As He revealed Himself in Scripture so He will be into all eternity. There are no surprises with God. There will never be a time that God will shock us by being more just and more holy. He will not be more righteous than He was in the time of Noah. He was not more filled with hatred over sin than in the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is true also in the time of David, or when He gave his only Son to be crucified. When Jesus Christ comes, He will judge the living and the dead. Those who stand before his throne will know Him. They will recognize how He revealed Himself to Adam at first. No new personas or attributes.

Some emphasise God’s love over His other attributes, arguing that a loving God would not send anyone to hell. If this is your perspective, you may not fully understand the significance of the cross or the Gospel.

In our day, we might want to single out sinful sexual conduct and orientation as the only sin. But the apostle, in the same breath, mentioned other heinous sins. Read 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. He states that thieves, greedy people, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers will not inherit the Kingdom of heaven. This is also true for homosexuals and adulterers. All of us need to repent from these sins. The argument that God loves everyone, even the homosexual who does not repent from his ways is just not Biblical.

The concept of divine love is intrinsically connected to attributes such as holiness, judgment, and righteousness. Indeed, effective preaching of the Gospel is challenging without consideration of these aspects.

What else do we have to proclaim other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Indeed, God loves the world very much. He gave His only begotten Son. Whoever believes in Him will not perish. They will have eternal life. If Christ was not crucified, we would have no Gospel. Therefore, we need to know why He was crucified. Further we need to tell why He was crucified. We need to explain to others the difference it makes for those who believe in Him. God raised Him from the dead after He paid the penalty of our sin.

Who better to hear about this than John? He was first called with his brother, James. They were the Sons of Thunder (Mark 3:17).  They were probably people with a certain amount of volatility and disruptiveness. John once asked the Lord when the people of Samaria did not want to receive them and Jesus:

“Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” (Luke 9:54, NIV)

Somewhere along his walk with Jesus, John became known as the apostle of love. Read his epistles and you will understand. So, let’s go to the chapter we read earlier on.

God is love

John mentions God’s love and our love towards one another 43 times in this letter. He specifically speaks of it 32 times between 4:7 and 5:3.

John states:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. (1 John 4:7)

The next verse:

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:8)

God is the source of love. Just as He is holy, powerful, just, faithful, and righteous, He is also love personified. This has nothing to do with a sentimental expression of being lovely, winsome, and kind.

The very definition of what love is, is impossible without God. Platonic affection or worldly kindness has no reference point to describe love. Today’s reference point to justice, ethics, or right or wrong is futile and meaningless without someone external known to man. We just do not have the capacity to define these things measured by our own standards. It is the standard of God and his Law. Otherwise, the meaning of all these things is open for subjective interpretation. This is precisely why man finds himself in a bind. He calls out for toleration. This is an admission that without God there are no absolutes.

No one other than God knows love, because He is love. He loves; we can at the noblest point only be kind and considerate to one another. In doing so we still need God’s standard. Hitler thought he was kind to the German people be killing off 6 million Jews.  Dr Philip Nitschke was of the mind that it is kind to administer euthanasia to certain people. Other atheists of our day think it is kind to certain parents who cannot afford more children to administer abortion, even in partial birth.

But John states, “God is love.” God defines love, demonstrates what love is, and makes it possible to love one another. Anyone born of God understands what love is. John knows about this birth by the Spirit. Remember how he records the conversation between our Lord and Nicodemus. Without this birth from heaven, we cannot even see the kingdom of God. We cannot perceive or understand what it is about. Because we are born of God, we can understand what love is. The world should not be surprised if Christians truly love one another. Not loving one another indicates that we do not know God.

God’s love demonstrated

In Jesus Christ

Before God’s grace in Christ, our old nature understands nothing but selfish ambition. We are born with a heart which ultimately only seeks our own desires. We hate God and one another.

John puts our sinful condition in these words:

This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

In verse 19 he says:

“We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

What does this truth teach us?  We did not have any love for God for Him to love us back!  Our love is a result of his love.  Paul puts it like this:

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath”. (Ephesians 2:1–3)

So, how did we come to know what the love of God is. Paul’s words tell it like it is: we were by nature deserving of wrath.

John tells us how God demonstrated his love to us, and he uses something of the same thought of Paul. Listen,

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”(1 John 4:10)

Why would God do such a thing? We will never know, because there is no one on earth who will ever understand why God loved us. But sending his Son was necessary, because we could not and cannot save ourselves.

If God did not intervene, we were deserving of wrath. We would live only to die forever. This death would not be in a state of unconsciousness. Instead, it would be in a state of damnation.  The Bible calls it hell, a place of torment.

Now, and this is the Gospel: Jesus, is the Son of God. Because His Father loved undeserving sinners, He became an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Another translation of verse 10 goes like this:

“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.” (1 John 4:10)

Propitiation is what Jesus did in our place. He took the punishment of sin upon Him. He became what we were in the eyes of God, deserving of wrath. Paul says in 2 Corinthians:

“For our sake He [God] made Him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

This is love demonstrated as an action, not an idea. Born of God by the Spirit of God, we now know God, who is love. We now understand love, and we must apply love to one another.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:11)

Through the Holy Spirit

Through love, demonstrated in Jesus Christ, we understand love because God lives in us, and we live in Him. How do we know this?

By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of his Spirit. (1 John 4:13)

What the Spirit has done for us is to open our eyes that we can see, perceive and understand something of the Kingdom of God and our place in it as his children. Therefore, John writes:

“And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” (1 John 4:14)

This is the remarkable thing the Holy Spirit gives us. He opens our minds to understand that Jesus is the Son of God. We realize that God lives in us and we live in Him. Further:

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. (1 John 4:16)

God’s love drives out fear. First, we lived under God’s wrath.  We know that if we do not put our trust in Christ Jesus for salvation, we stand condemned in judgment. This leads to the eternal punishment of hell. The Holy Spirit works in us to look to Jesus Christ for salvation. We then understand God’s love. We also understand that He is love. Only then, when the Spirit reveals this to us, do we believe. We know that the wrath of God on sin was taken away from us and placed on Christ. We understand that we do not need to fear anymore.

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. (1 John 4:18)

Paul writes:

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15–16)

What God’s love demands from us

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.” (1 John 4:19–21)

Conclusion

Last week the Lord’s Table exhibited all these things to us. We took bread and reflected on Christ’s death who took God’s wrath away as He became sin for us. We drank the wine and remembered that His blood is the New Covenant. The old has passed away. The new has come because we are reconciled to God. We are included in His new family.

But at the Table we heard about the obligation to reconcile with one another. We should love one another as Christ loved us.

(c) Rev D. Rudi Schwartz