Please bow your heads with me as we go to Lord in prayer once more. Lord, we do ask that you would bless now the reading and preaching of your word. Please open our eyes, unstop our ears, captivate our hearts, afresh with the truth of your person and your work. Please help us to know you a little bit better. Help us to grow in understanding of the greatness of the gospel, the greatness of your person, the wonders of what you have done for us in Christ. Grant us to worship, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. God is love. Have you ever heard that before? I hope so. It's in the Bible. God says that about himself. God is love. How do you react when you hear those words? Maybe you react with philosophical questions. What is love? What is is? What does it mean to be love? Maybe you react with incredulity. I don't believe that. I do not believe. This world, my pains, they completely preclude acceptance of the idea that God is love. Perhaps you respond with indulgent abandon. God is love. He must be affirming and supportive of all that I do. When you love someone, you support them. Or maybe because that's how some people respond. When you hear God is love, you respond with, yeah, but God is holy. Or, yeah, but God is just. You're quick to qualify God's love with some opposition. But how does God want you to react? I mean, he tells us this. I am love. And how does he want us to react? What is God's intent in telling you, I am love? Well, this morning we're going to look at 1 John 4, which is where we find this statement. Specifically, we're going to zoom in on verses 7 through 10. So I invite you to turn with me there to 1 John 4, verses 7 through 10. Now our ESV doesn't do this, but some translations set these four verses off as though they were poem or some sort of creed. The ESV doesn't do it, but I think it's right. I think it's right that these verses are self-contained. They are the beginning of a whole section. They're just the beginning, but they do have a tight unity in and of themselves. So we're going to zoom in on just these four verses this morning. It's 1 John 4, 7 through 10. We'll read them now in their entirety. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. 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. We should see immediately that the entirety of these four verses and indeed the entire rest of chapter four are a presentation and an elaboration on a singular command. Let us love one another. John wants the church to love each other. God wants us to love each other. Now depending on your frame of reference, your current mood, your individual recent and or distant histories, this might sound like the easiest command you have ever heard or it could sound like the hardest thing you have ever heard. It often sounds easy because it's so simple, so straightforward. It could be summed up in a single three-word sentence. Love one another. And when things are going well, when you're driving with your friends and your church family, it is all joy. Many of us know, oh, it is all joy. What a light burden. Kind of like marriage vows. Keeping your marital vows to love your spouse is super easy when you're on the same page about everything, no one has rubbed the other person the wrong way recently, no one's hangry. But if you tilt things off just a little bit, then suddenly those sweeping, profuse vows of unconditional, eternal love suddenly become very conditional. Well, not if you're gonna behave that way. Similarly, loving your brothers and sisters can often be easy in the abstract, but when you plop yourself in a church and specifically apply the command, it can become, at times, the hardest thing you have ever been asked to do. When you're actually doing life together with your church, sometimes your sinful, selfish self rubs up against another sinful, selfish self, and the friction generates new sins, and it seems like it's gonna start a raging fire of sin that threatens to burn the whole church down. Loving each other can be very hard. In fact, it's actually supernaturally hard. We just don't have what it takes to do it on our own, at least not in a satisfying and enduring way. That's why in our passage John doesn't just say Christians love one another. He props up our love with divine truths that swirl together to form a matrix of gospel motivation in order to cause love to well up inside of our hearts and overflow and put out the fires that our sins so easily start. What John does is he puts gospel truth before you So that you'll take your heart, so he'll take your heart and mind to a place where you first love God. Then that love overflows into love for each other. And if we look at these four verses, we find the command to love and specifically three supports. So he, he says, let us love one another and then he gives three supports for these love, for this love, for this command. Number one, love is from God. Number two, whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Two-parter there. And number three, God is love. These are the supports. Another way to say this is that in helping us to love one another, John tells us something about love, and he tells us something about ourselves, and then he tells us something about God. And so we're gonna dwell on these truths one by one, hopefully receive the strength that John intends to give us. So first, consider what John says about love itself. John is able to say that love comes from God. In context, the love he's talking about when he says that is primarily our ability to love one another. Look at verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another, for our love for one another is from God. John is saying that our love for one another has its source in God. That means if we are going to love one another, we have to receive this. We have to receive this from God. God has to gift us love for each other. How is that? How does he do it? How does he give us this love? And that's what verses 9 through 10 do. That's what they answer. Verses 9 through 10 expound on how God gives us love for each other. Look at the beginning of verse 9. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us. There's another way of saying, I'm about to show you how the love of God appeared to us, how it came to us. So now John is again talking about love coming from God, but here he means primarily the love that God demonstrates for us. And the relationship between the love that God demonstrates toward us and the love that we demonstrate toward each other is that our love for each other should be a response to the love that God demonstrates towards us. That's why John puts verses 9 through 10 here. Our love for each other, if we're gonna love each other, that has to come from God showing his love to us. When God shows his love to us, that grants us the ability to love each other. So then how does God manifest love to us? In this the love of God was made manifest, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. 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. God says, John says four things about God's love here. God's love sent Jesus. This is the first thing. God the Father loves Jesus. God the Father loves God the Son. We're going to talk more about that in a few minutes. But for now, just consider, the Father loved the Son, and He still sent Him into a fallen, corrupt, evil world. You know, when John uses the word world in his letter, it almost always, if not always, has a negative flavor to it. He's not thinking about creation or matter neutrally. When he talks about the world, he means to invoke the fallenness of the present creation. It's brokenness. God sent Jesus into the world, into a realm of evil and darkness and brokenness. He sent his son to endure suffering, to be rejected. He sent him to go through toil and danger and pain. We also see that God's love was unprompted by us. God sent Jesus to us on his own initiative, not based on anything else. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us. See, in the flesh, when you or I love, we tend to do it, if not always do it, in response to something in someone that pleases us. But God's love flowed out to us in spite of who we are. He looked at people who did not love him or deserve his love, and he gave it freely. God's love to us was not a response to us based on our deserving of that love. We didn't woo God. We didn't draw him out. We didn't attract God with kindness or benevolence or devotion. We weren't sitting around praying and hoping and waiting so that we could know the all good, all glorious, wonderful, amazing creator. We weren't singing songs to him and making him feel so good that he just had to love us back. All we like sheep had gone astray. We were doing our own thing. We didn't want anything to do with God. And Adam, the entire human race, said, we don't want anything to do with you. And we were happy in misery, blind to the dirt and death we were playing in. And God still sent Jesus. Paul echoes the same truth when he said, while we were enemies, Christ died for us. We also see here God's love provided propitiation for our sins. Jesus' coming was saving for us because it provided propitiation. Some of your translations will say a sacrifice of atonement. Propitiation, that sounds like some heady theological jargon, but there really isn't a better word to capture what is being described. This word is trying to capture what Jesus' death specifically accomplished, at least part of it. To propitiate means to satisfy wrath, to appease, to satisfy wrath in such a way that the wrath is removed, so there's no more wrath. So when the Bible says that Jesus was a propitiation, it means that Jesus satisfies the wrath. The wrath of who? The wrath of God. The wrath of God due to evil wicked people. The wrath of God due to us. To propitiate means to provide the necessary appeasement so that the punishment that we deserve for our sins need not be brought down upon our heads. Our sins deserve wrath. Evil deserves punishment. And we all know this instinctively. And we heartily affirm it when the sin in question is not our sin. When we see evil, we know it ought to be punished. Because the law of God is written on our hearts. And try as we do to suppress it in some cases, or especially in our case, we know justice is necessary. It would be wrong for God to ignore evil. God is just. And our biggest trouble in this life is that we are not exempt from God's wrath. We are liable for our evil. We are responsible for our lack of love, for our rejection of our Creator. We deserve divine punishment. You deserve divine punishment. You deserve God's anger and displeasure and all His holy power aimed at you for your destruction. We deserve to be snuffed out and no longer besmirch the name of our good creator. Whatever other problems or pains in your life, and I don't mean to minimize those, but whatever problems or pains in your life that you may have, the most significant problem, the most significant pain that you have is your estrangement from God. But, great gospel logic, but because of His great overflowing love, not being drawn out by us, but because of His very nature, and it overflows from Him, God sent His Son to take away that punishment. Not to sweep our sins under the rug, not to not be just and just ignore them, but to satisfy justice in a way that everything would still be right in the universe, but we would also survive, we would be preserved, we would be saved. All we like sheep have gone astray, Isaiah said, but the Lord has laid on him the guilt of us all. Jesus didn't just come to us. Jesus didn't just come to suffer. He came to die for us. That's why when you think of the cross, you shouldn't just see an accident or political machinations that resulted in this unfortunate death. You should see the Son of God taking the punishment that you deserve, absorbing the wrath of God so that you don't have to. And thus, we escape the judgment that we otherwise deserve, which is why in the same passage a little bit later in chapter 4, when John comes to his summary paragraph, he says in verses 17 through 18, we may have confidence for the day of judgment. There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. God's love has dealt with our most significant problem. God's perfect love has removed all need for fear of judgment, and thus all need for fear, period. For if we need not fear God's wrath, then we need not fear anything, because God is for us now, and if God is for us, who can be against us? Which leads to the fourth thing John tells us about God's love here. God's love grants life. Look at verse 9. God sent his only son so that we might live through him. That's paralleled with sending Jesus as propitiation in verse 11, right? You see the parallel. In this the love of God was manifest. In this is love. That we may live. That Jesus would be a propitiation. In other words, Jesus' wrath satisfying death was not just to save us from punishment. It was to provide us with life. You see, when John says life, he does not just mean preserve us alive, keep us from dying. That's not what he's saying. John means so much more than breathing when he talks about living. Throughout the letter, John describes the life as eternal. as walking in light, as dwelling in God, and as God dwelling in us, as being privileged to true knowledge, and as overcoming the world. Jesus came to give us this kind of life, a life of light and fellowship with God, filled with spiritual knowledge, and overcoming and outlasting the world, because this life never ends. And all this is ours. Because our sins have been forgiven. John is alluding to the same gospel logic that Paul laid out in 1 Corinthians. Because in his death Jesus dealt with sin, he was raised. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15, death is the result of sin. Jesus' resurrection proves that sin has been dealt with. If sin is dealt with, then death no longer has any ultimate power. You see, Jesus' resurrection isn't just a bonus. It isn't just proof of his divinity. It isn't just proof of his messiahship. Because Jesus propitiated the wrath of God, resurrection from death is a necessary conclusion to his work. It is the necessary outcome. Because Jesus was raised, that means so too those who belong to Him. Those too who belong to Him and whose sins are covered by His death will be raised. After your death, after you shed the final remnants of your fallen humanity, Jesus will raise you with him to new resurrection life. You will literally be raised from the dead with a new body that is free from the former corruption and curse. John is echoing his master in the words much beloved by all Christians, the words we already read, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that everyone who believes on him shall not perish but have everlasting life. And this everlasting life will eventually be one of pure joy, free from sin, shame, sickness, doubt, fear, and death. Because God's love has removed our most significant problem, in and through his love, we will outlast all our other problems. That's love. That's the love God revealed to us, and the love that when experienced and understood, will result in our love for each other. But that's only one third of the picture in these verses. So consider also what John says about ourselves here. In verses seven through eight, John says, whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God. Our relationship to each other is defined by our relationship to God. He says this positively and negatively to reinforce the point. Love comes from being born of God and knowing God. If you don't love, you don't know God. To be born of God and to know God are two sides of the same coin. To be born of God is to be gifted a living spiritual heart that is receptive to God's Word, that desires God. We know this language from the rest of John's epistles, from John's Gospel, to be born again. And then to know God, it's not just intellectually, but experientially, personally. You know Him when you have been born of Him because now you're capable, with your new life, of fellowshipping with Him, of drawing near to Him, of being considered His friend. Whether or not we love, whether or not we love each other, is dependent on being born of God and knowing God. Love is one of the evidences of the new birth and a relationship with God because love is one of the fruits of the new birth and a relationship with God. So love is demonstrated for us by God, but that's not enough. It's not enough for us to start loving each other. We actually have to be born again We actually have to know God personally. We have to have experienced God's love with the eyes of faith. We have to have personal fellowship with God. Our love for each other flows from new birth and relationship with God. But remember, love here is also an exhortation. It's primarily an exhortation, our love for each other. It's a command. First and foremost, in these four verses, John is exhorting us, encouraging us, commanding us to love each other. Now, if love is a fruit, an evidence of the new birth and knowing God, then why the need to exhort love? Why not exhort the more fundamental realities? Be born again. Know God. If those result in loving, why exhort the loving? Shouldn't you exhort the more fundamental? And if the audience has already experienced those fundamental realities, why do you need to exhort the derivative? Why do you need to exhort the natural results? Why would people who are already born again, who already know God, need to be commanded to love? Won't they just naturally do that? Well, the answer cannot be because John thinks his readers are unbelievers. John is speaking primarily to believers. Now, of course, there's always the possibility of unbelievers among the audience. Each of the epistles in the New Testament always has that dimension to it. Earlier in the letter, John spoke of the hypotheticals of still being in darkness, not meant as a way to judge outsiders, but as a diagnostic. Judge yourself. So, yes, there is an element of examine yourself to this. There's an element of examine yourself to all the letters in the New Testament. but the letters, the epistles, they are primarily written to believers. John calls his audience beloved many times. He tells them confidently, your sins are forgiven. He says, you know the Father. He tells them that they are strong in the faith. John's writing to believers primarily. So again, if they're believers, if at least the majority of them are believers, why exhort them to love? If we're already born again, if we already know God, why do we need to be told to love? That John commands born-again believers to love reveals at least three things to us. At least three things. Number one, with a new birth does not immediately come sinless perfection. So though being born of God and knowing God result in love, this is not an instantaneous transition from sinless lovelessness to perfect selfless love once someone is converted. It is assumed in the very act of commanding that one can be a real Christian and have really imperfect love. This means, number two, that we need to learn more of God. We need to know Him more. Yes, to be born again is to know God. There is a definite point in time, a definitive moment at conversion, whether you know your moment of conversion or not, that's not actually that important. But there is a definitive moment that you met God if you're a believer. So you can say, as a believer, completely truthfully, I know God. But personal knowledge on our side is never exhaustive. Just like you can truthfully say, I know my friend, or I know my spouse. And at the same time, you'll learn something new about them every day, until the day you die. And even after decades of learning, you will still die in some ignorance, having things you never knew. To know God personally does not mean to know God exhaustively. Therefore, knowledge of God grows and it deepens. And since our love is connected to our knowledge of God, therefore our love grows and deepens as part of the Christian life. In these four verses, John is telling his people something new about God, or at least it's never been phrased this way anywhere else in Scripture. So it's old, but also new, said in a new way, with a new emphasis, a slightly different vantage point. John is telling his people, reminding them, truths about God, not presented anywhere else in the Bible exactly this way, so that his people can know God more, so that we can know God more, more than we did yesterday. John, in these verses, is trying to increase our knowledge of God as the means to increasing our love for each other. Therefore, number three, The way God produces love is through the exhortation of His Word. God produces love through growing to know Him more, which is done through John's Word, here. That's how we're growing to know God more, it's through this Word. John gives us verses 9 through 10 so that we will see and savor, taste and respond. So God's love produces love in us through our understanding of God's love, and that understanding comes through His Word. This means that God's Word, the Bible, the Scripture, is productive. It's not given just to inform. It's given to transform. In this case, it is His Word about His love and even the command to love that is the vehicle for His love to be produced in us, to produce our love for each other. You see, we need to be born again and to personally know God if we are to love each other. You can't put the cart before the horse. If you don't have personal faith in Jesus' sacrificial, propitiating death on your behalf, before you try to muster love in your heart for your neighbor, you have to throw yourself on the mercy of God. You have to know God first. And even if you're born again now, even if you do know God, you still need to grow in your knowledge. You still need to grow in your love for each other as the fruit of growing in your knowledge of God. Don't be discouraged by your imperfect love, but also don't be satisfied with it. Seek to know God more and so love each other more. Towards that end, let's consider the last piece of the puzzle in these verses. Look at what John tells us about the very nature of God. God is love, he says. The most foundational argument, the most fundamental truth, the most basic reality that John puts before us in this text is the very nature of God himself. We see it there in verse 8, if anyone does not love, he does not know God, because God is love. Later in the same chapter, verse 16, John summarizes again, God is love. It's the only place in scripture this is stated. The reason love comes from God, the reason God sent Jesus to save us, the reason He demonstrated love toward us, is because ultimately God Himself is love. John goes all the way back to who God is, to who the Creator is, to who the Redeemer is. Your Lord, your Maker, your Master Christian is love. But what does that mean? What does that mean? Well, first of all, this is not a hyperbole. Sometimes we speak like this. It's a way to say someone is very good at something, or some quality is very characteristic of something. I don't know sports, but saying something like, LeBron James is offense, or Gordon Ramsay is culinary insight, or Oxford is academic excellence. John's not doing that. God is love does not just mean God is very loving. John is being much more literal here. You know, of all the gospel writers, John was definitely most poised to produce this succinct statement of truth. And it is in John's gospel and his letters that we find the most obvious clarification, flushing out of what John means when he says, God is love. You see, John, the writer, gives us the most explicit glimpses in all of his writing into inner Trinitarian love and relationship. Inner God Fellowship. Consider just a small bit of that witness this morning. In all the Gospels, Jesus makes a number of startling claims to deity that are sometimes missed by modern audiences. We'll look at one from John. Recall, when he heals a man on the Sabbath, as recorded in John 5, Jesus says in his defense, the Pharisees get mad at him. He heals a man on the Sabbath, the Pharisees get mad at him. But Jesus says in his defense, my father is working until now. and I am working." This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him. Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. When Jesus said, my father is working until now, and I am working, Jesus isn't just saying he's imitating God. He's not just saying, oh, I'm being like God. All men are supposed to imitate God morally, ethically. Scripture tells us to be like God. God says, you shall be holy, for I am holy. Be like God. Jesus is saying much more than just, I'm imitating God. As John narrates Jesus saying, my father is working until now, I am working. We see immediately the Jews want to kill him. It wasn't just when he broke the Sabbath. It's when he says that, that triggers their anger. That triggers the charge of blasphemy. Why? What's so offensive about saying, my father is working until now, and I'm working? Well, you know, there was actually a debate within Judaism in the first century. I don't know. Maybe it continues today. There's a debate in the first century whether God himself observed the Sabbath. That's an intriguing theological puzzle for the rabbis. I mean, it's the kind of question that would be fun to chew on. I don't think there's anything wrong with that kind of theological speculation. Does God observe the Sabbath? And the rabbis would debate. And on the one hand, some argued that God provided the pattern of the Sabbath initially in creation. He was the first Sabbath-rester, and he therefore must continue to observe it. On the other hand, others argued, well, the world requires God's sustaining work to continue to exist. Like, if he did nothing, we wouldn't be here. We don't exist independently of him even now. He has to sustain us, so he must do some work on the Sabbath, otherwise we would all pop out of existence. You know, most Jews seem to lean towards a kind of qualified yes. God observes the Sabbath, but obviously for him there are some things that he has to do every Sabbath, like sustain the world. God has the prerogative to do some work on the Sabbath. God has a divine necessity that no one else can claim to be working on the Sabbath. So when Jesus says, my father is working till now, like he has to be doing work, and I'm working, he's claiming a divine prerogative to work on the Sabbath out of necessity of his person. That's why they said he's making himself equal with God, not just because he used the word father. It's because he said, I need to be working now. You need to be working now? Jesus was saying, I'm allowed to work because I'm like the father in the way that allows him to work, in his necessary supporting creation type way. Jesus is saying, I have a relationship with the father that predates the law. It predates creation. Any work I do is as necessary as the father's work. I mean, you think about the audacity. You shouldn't be doing that. everything I do is literally necessary, like God, the Father. That's the context in which you need to hear Jesus' follow-up explanation, as he goes on to say to them, the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all that He Himself is doing. And greater works than these will He show Him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. The Father loves the Son, and has concern that the Son be glorified and honored by all of creation, the same way we hear over and over in the Old Testament that God is concerned for His own name to be glorified and honored. The Father loves the Son, and this is a relationship that predates the planet. and the sun and the stars. It predates the physical cosmos. It predates the angels and all the supernatural powers of the heavenly realm. Jesus says explicitly in his prayer in John 17, Now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. And later in the same prayer, you loved me before the foundation of the world. This is the context in which you need to hear the other words that Jesus speaks in those prayers. Even though the world does not know you, I know you. I know you. I love you. I loved you before time began. I've loved you before there was time, just as you loved me, just as we enjoyed fellowship together with the Holy Spirit, the Comforter who we will send to our people. Don't miss the stunning conclusion that we must draw from these words. Jesus, the Son, is God and has been in loving communion, loving the Father and loved by the Father before there was any creation. God has always been in loving fellowship. God has always been in loving relationship within His very being. before there was anything else. I mean, we might not be able to wrap our minds around this, but we can at least recognize and marvel that within the one being of God, the fellowship and love between the persons of the Trinity is fundamental. Always there. Basic to God. Love is basic to God. God is love. Joyful, self-giving, self-pouring, closeness, affection, and commitment has always existed. before fire and water, air and dirt, before molecules and atoms, love, personal communion, fellowship, relationship. It is more fundamental to reality than quarks, neutrons, protons, and electrons. Love is literally more fundamental than matter, space, and time. Any theology or Christian devotion that does not reckon with and reflect this fundamental truth is deficient. You can recite the Old Testament in Hebrew. You can plumb the depths of the New Testament in Greek. You can master the Fathers in Latin. You can converse with Calvin in French or Bovink in Dutch. You can parse all the nuances of Nicene Orthodoxy. Not miss a beat on the Chalcedonian definition, but if you are a selfish theological shut-in without time or service for your brethren, you are not like your God and you do not know Him. That's why Paul said in 1 Corinthians, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Because God is love. He has always been love. And don't yeah but this truth away. What I mean is don't hear this and then be too quick to say yeah but. Right? In the circles we run in, that is a danger that we're prone to. There's a good reason. There's a good reason. Don't get me wrong. Maybe I'm just being a bit too pedantic about language. But there's a good reason, even if I don't think it's the best way to shape the response. Right? In many pockets of our culture, this truth has been misunderstood and waived as a banner in order to justify evil. God is love, so he never judges you. God is love, so he's your biggest fan and approves of everything that you are and do. And so when we hear someone say, God is love, we hear all that baggage, and we want to correct the error. But God is holy. But God is just. But by now, hopefully, we should know that God's love, properly understood, is not qualified by his holiness. It's essential to his holiness. No other being is like God, perfectly loving, perfectly satisfied in love, in need of nothing, and giving freely to everything. God's love is not qualified by His justice, it's essential to His justice. God the Father will not ignore the slights against God the Son, whom He loves, nor will God the Son ignore rebellion against God the Father, whom He loves, because the Father and Son love each other. God's love is so pure and wonderful that it responds to sin perfectly with just, righteous, heroic wrath. I mean, we already mentioned, we instinctively know evil should be responded to with justice. God's love undergirds both the need for and the provision for propitiation. If God wasn't loved, there would be no need for salvation from sins, because God wouldn't care about the sins. But he does, because God the Father loves God the Son, and God the Son loves God the Father. You know, I didn't think of this illustration on my own. I wish I did. Samuel Godson gave me this illustration. People cheer when Batman says, I am vengeance. We're OK with it. We're happy about it. We know Batman is a character opposed to evil. Yes, heroic opposition to evil. I love it. No one is so committed to goodness and beauty and honor as God is. God is vengeance, holy, perfectly, because God is love. So our language ought to be careful. We are right to want to correct bad understandings of God's love, but we never, never should get to a place where because of bad thinking of others, bad theology, we're preventing from savoring the full force of any of God's revelation. Just because of how abused this verse might be, we ought never to get to the point where every time we hear this verse, we also hear the abuse. And so the abuse is the primary association we have with it. The language we use subtly reflects our hearing and our understanding. When someone says, God is love, and we say, but, but God is holy, but God is just, that sounds like we're setting up an opposition. but implies opposition. Jesus never set himself up in opposition to the scriptures. He opposed the abuses of the scriptures by the Pharisees, but he never set himself up in opposition to the scriptures. God is love is scripture. So when someone says God is love to justify something terrible, to promote some sinful indulgence, don't contradict the statement in and of itself. I mean, don't grant God is love to them as if it belongs to the fleshly unbeliever. That statement belongs to us. That statement belongs to God's people. Instead of saying, yes, but God is holy, as if there's some opposition between the two, how about saying, amen. Praise the Lord. I am so grateful that God is love. I am so grateful for the propitiation of Jesus Christ. And then they say, what is propitiation? And then you get to say, The satisfaction of the wrath of God on our behalf, so we don't have to face the judgment of God. Wait, I thought God was love, and He is. And the very text that tells us that tells us the way God has revealed His love to us is in saving us from the very real wrath against sin that His love demands. The problem isn't that God is love is somehow a deficient statement. The problem is that people don't know God, and so they don't know love. So we have to help them understand what the Bible means, what God means when he tells them, I am love. Never treat God is love as anything other than what God intends for you to treat that statement as. We should always respond to this the way John intends, the way God intends for us to respond. God wants you to marvel at being invited into something eternal and fundamental. You are invited into the joy of inner Trinitarian love. You are invited to experience the love that exists between the persons of God. Jesus also said in his high priestly prayer, but now I am coming to you, praying to the Father, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. My joy. What joy does Jesus have? Jesus wants us to experience his joy, and don't forget the context. He has already spoken of the glory and fellowship that he enjoyed with God before the world began. That's the joy Jesus wants to give to his people, to know the Father the way, at least in a qualified way, that the Son does. I mean, he says it again at the end of his prayer. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. I have made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. You need to have this prayer in mind when you read the beginning of John's epistle. And he says, our fellowship is with the Father and the Son. He's talking about eternal, pre-creation, reality-defining love of God. You're invited, finite though you are, finite though you are, to participate in that. God is inviting you into something that predates and undergirds space and matter and time. And God wants your heart to soar as you remember that all this you are invited into comes despite the fact that you deserve sin and death. He wants you to wonder at the wrath satisfying death of Jesus provided for you when you didn't love God. He wants your heart to soar. And finally, and most explicitly in this passage, God wants you, because of that marveling, to extend mercy and grace to others. God wants you to love in response to this love, in response to his nature, So let's close by reflecting on Christian love in light of this passage. Just a few reflections. In light of 1 John 4, Christian love is necessary. It's imperfect. It always will be in this fallen world, but it is necessary. If your heart wants absolutely nothing to do with this command, then you are still in darkness. 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. When John says you can't love God whom you haven't seen, I think there's more bite here than we tend to read it. He's not talking about the invisibility of God as if his point was it's easier to love your brother than it is to love God because you can see your brother and you can't see God. John has made the point, both in his gospel and in the letter, that Jesus reveals the Father. He shows the Father. I think John's point is an indictment. If you don't love your brother, you can't love God, whom you have not seen. You haven't seen him. You haven't seen his face in Christ who reveals him, because if you had, if you'd had your eyes open to Jesus, you'd be moved to love your brother. You wouldn't do it perfectly, but you'd want to keep growing in it. Secondly, Christian love should be given freely apart from specific merit. Our love should reflect God's love for us. So just as God loved us, apart from our deserving it, we too should love our brothers and sisters apart from them meriting our love, apart from them deserving our love. We should give of ourselves to each other here, here, practically. Grace Covenant Baptist Church, we're here. We're sitting next to each other. We should give of each other without waiting for each other to earn our giving. You will always, I promise, I'm really good at this, I'm really good at finding fault. You will always be able to find fault. You will always have an excuse at your fingertips for why someone in the pew next to you is unworthy of some service or kindness of yours. I mean, the biggest card to play in that regard is, they never loved me. They've never really showed any love to me. They aren't all that sacrificial and tender to me. If God's love looked like that, we would all be in hell. Love freely, especially those here who haven't particularly loved you. Love them. Let the love of Christ overflow. Don't look for people to draw out your love. And Christian love should be sacrificial. Jesus gave his life as our propitiation. He came into the world. He came to suffer and be rejected. So, too, we ought to be willing to die for each other. I mean, literally. Greater love has no other than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends. We should be literally willing to die for each other. Now, as far as I can see, I'm assuming most of us, if any of us, will probably not be called to literally die for each other. But John knew that, too. Earlier in his epistle, in chapter 3, he says, by this we know, love, that he laid down his life for us. We ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth. Did you catch that? In saying that we should lay down our lives, be willing to die, he elaborates that in terms of sacrificial giving. Sharing the world's goods. Don't just say you wish someone well. Use what you have to love them. Use your resources. Use your time. Use your money to love each other. Christian love should be sacrificial and it means loving people with your stuff. Finally, Christian love should be God-centered. It should be Christ-centered. God loved in such a way that we would know and enjoy himself. That means we should love in such a way that people know and enjoy God. Our love should orbit around God. Our love should invite people into greater fellowship with God. Our love ought to be evangelistic. It ought to be worshipful. It ought to be reverent. It ought to be a delight, and it ought to give delight in God himself. Christian love ought to constantly return to the person of Jesus Christ in all our advising, our counseling, and all our comforting and exhorting and all our celebrating together. Christian love points people back to the cross. Remember that God's love for us is a love that does away with sin and so does away with all cause for fear and judgment. for fear of judgment. So too, in our love for each other, we ought to point people always back to Jesus and his death and his sufficiency so that we might find comfort and hope there. We ought to come together and assure one another in Jesus through prayer, through meals, through cleaning, through visiting, through study, through singing. Let's enjoy God's love and all the assurance that comes from living together in that love. Let's help each other to have our fears relieved in Jesus. Beloved, let us love one another. Let's pray. Lord, we do thank You so much for the love that You have shown us in Christ. We thank You that You have revealed enough of Yourself that we can say that You are love. We thank You for the glimpse into Your inner life, something that predated this creation. So help us to understand You, to marvel at You, to marvel at the love that You have shown towards us, to be excited at the reality that You are love. And we do pray that this would well up inside each of our hearts an overflowing love that spills out towards each other. Help us to love each other. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.