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Reading 1 John 4:7-12 that we may know where true and genuine love comes from, and love with a love that is from God. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another when we understand the text.
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Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. And wonderful to be with you all again as we enter another week continuing our study of the book of 1 John. We ended last week in 1 John 4, 6. So I'm gonna begin in verse seven and we'll read to the end of the chapter.
The apostle writes, 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God.
If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit. And we have seen and testified that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God. 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.
By this is love perfected in us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as he is, so also are we in this world. 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.
We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's 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.
We come back again to verse seven, where John says, beloved, let us love one another. Over the course of this letter, as we've been studying the book of 1 John, we've come to understand various assurances that John will give his readers that they will know that they are saved.
And God indeed wants us to know that we are saved. There are some teachers and churches out there that will say the opposite. They'll say, you're not meant to know that you are saved and God doesn't want you to know because that way you're always in fear.
You're always repenting and always seeking after God again, because if you knew that you were saved, then you would go, oh, well, I'm good. And I can go sin and do whatever I want because la-dee-da, I know I'm going to heaven anyway.
And God doesn't want you to feel that way. And so he leaves you in mystery. But that's not true. That's a lie from the pit of hell, quite frankly, to tell you that you need to be in this constant fear of not really knowing if God loves you or not.
The devil's name, Hasatan, means the adversary or the accuser. So constantly accusing you of not really being sure whether God loves you or not, that's the work of the devil. That is not at all the work of the Holy Spirit.
God does indeed want you to know that he loves you through his son, Jesus Christ, because we wear his righteousness. We have been adopted into the family of God and he is our father. We can call upon him as father because we've been adopted through his son, Jesus Christ.
And what kind of father keeps their children in mystery and doesn't tell his children that he loves them or gives them any kind of assurances of the love that he has for them? That's not a good father.
And our God is indeed a good father. And he has told us how we can know that we are in his love. And so we've read these various assurances over the course of 1 John, when we were in chapter three, two or three weeks ago.
One of those assurances was given in chapter three, verse 14. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. The love that we have for the brotherhood of Christ is one of the marks of a true believer.
John also says, little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. By this, we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. So we have these wonderful assurances that are given over the course of this letter that we may test ourselves to see that we are truly in the faith, something that Paul said to the church in Corinth.
We actually have another one of those assurances here right at the beginning of chapter seven, or I'm sorry, right at the beginning of verse seven. And it's the same way that John started chapter four, beloved, and he says it again in verse seven, beloved.
And we have it come up again in verse 11, beloved, calling his readers, his fellow saints, Christians in Christ Jesus, beloved. This is another title of assurance that we would know that we are loved by God.
You are beloved because you have been rescued from sin and darkness by Jesus Christ, his son. And so you are loved by God. Those who are not loved by God are under his wrath and make no mistake, God does not love every single person on earth.
It is not for us to know who is in his love and who is under his wrath. We won't get to see that until the final judgment. Our job is to be faithful and to preach the gospel and the Holy Spirit will transform hearts into kingdom people of God, adopting them even more so into the family of God.
That's the work of God that does that. That's not for us to know that, but we know that God does not have the same love for every single person on the earth. It is only those who are in Christ Jesus whom God loves and those who are not in his love are under his wrath.
That's John 3 .36. And so we who are called beloved, this is a wonderful assurance, beautiful, glorious to know that we are loved by God, that we were once children of wrath like the rest of mankind as Paul talks about in Ephesians 2 .3, but in Christ Jesus, we are now under his mercy and his love.
Beloved, since we've been loved by God, let us love one another. For love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Love is from God. As we have also read, God is love. That's what's coming up in verse eight.
And so if we are beloved by God, we must love one another for love is from God. We have the love of our creator God who has created all things, including love. So therefore let us have the mark of our creator by loving one another, since love is from God.
And then when we get to verse 10, 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. And then John says it again in verse 11. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
When it comes down to it, the only true and genuine love there is is the love that comes from God. There is no other kind of love. The only real love, the only true love is that love which comes from God because he is the author of all things.
He is the creator of all things. He himself has created love for love is from God, verse seven. So the only real love that we can have is that love which is from our creator. The world is gonna have their own kind of definition of love, but it's always gonna be selfish.
It's always gonna be self-serving. Even though you might see a person who is worldly, who is an unbeliever, they do not follow God, you might see them doing nice things for somebody else. And it might, for all intents and purposes, be very sacrificial.
They might be very sacrificial in their giving. They are putting away their own needs and desires and really giving up themselves for the benefit of somebody else. But when it comes down to it, that act, no matter how genuine it might look on the surface is still nothing but self-serving because they think that they are good without God.
And this act that they are doing for another person is in itself inherently good. Therefore, the righteousness that they show is a self-righteousness because it is not being done in worship and honor of God.
It is honoring the self. It is showing, hey, I can be good by myself without God. And that is, it's idol worship. It is proclaiming the self, exalting the self over God. And so all niceties that you might see exercised in the world, if not done to the praise of his glorious grace is selfish.
It is self-righteousness. It is not real and genuine love. The world is constantly gonna throw at us what they say love is, and they're gonna say that the Christians are unloving, but the world, hey, they've really got the true definition of love, and so you gotta follow them.
But the world is also gonna tell us who they say Jesus Christ really is, and it's really not the Christ of the Bible at all. When it comes to this worldly definition of love that isn't actually real and genuine love, I was reminded of this yesterday when I read a story about the commencement ceremony at Notre Dame University, which of course is a Catholic institution.
I was interested to find out that only about 85 of the student body is actually Catholic. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that. The school cares about football maybe more than it does Catholicism, so therefore, if a good football player comes in, it doesn't really matter if he's Catholic or not.
So, but nonetheless, at yesterday's commencement ceremony, Vice President Mike Pence was the speaker, and there were some students from within the student body that decided to make a statement by standing up and walking out of the commencement ceremony.
These were actual graduates. They just stood up and walked out of the ceremony, and you know that there was some sort of organization to talk about this. There was a group of students that got together and said, hey, we're gonna make a statement by standing up and walking out.
And I just have to wonder, was there anybody in that group that just kind of raised their hand and said, what statement would that be? And then, of course, everybody would get mad, and they would throw out reasons, and that person is going, really, what's the point?
Why? Why are we doing this? I don't know that that happened, but in my mind, that's how I would hope the scenario would play out, though probably not. But anyway, so the students decided to make a statement by standing up and walking out, and you can see it clearly in the video.
When you watch the students stand up and walk out the back, I even read an account from a teacher who was standing outside the stadium and was applauding those students as they came out. Just ridiculous.
But anyway, I still don't understand this statement that they were making. But you can tell, I noticed at least one person, I think there were two or three of them, that as they were standing up and walking out, were wearing gay pride flags on their back like they were capes.
And to me, that actually shows your hatred. It doesn't show the hatred of the speaker who you are protesting, which in this case would be Mike Pence, but it actually shows your hatred for everyone because you are embracing a sin that God has promised in his word that he will judge, and you would encourage a person to bow at that altar to a false God, and it would keep them from the kingdom of heaven.
That is not loving. It is not loving to encourage a person in a sin that God has promised that he will judge. It's going to result in a person's destruction. It doesn't matter how genuine their intentions.
I think it was last week I mentioned this. The road of good intentions doesn't lead to anywhere. As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So your good intentions doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what you felt in your heart that you were doing. Real and true, genuine love must come from outside ourselves otherwise it's subjective. If we think of love being according to our own proclivities, our own biases, our own interests, that's a selfish love, and that's not really love because it's not giving up yourself for another person.
It's all based entirely on your own sensibilities. True and genuine love has to come from something outside ourselves. It has to be based on something other than you. And in the case of understanding love as being from God, it is centering the love that we have on other people according to the word of God.
It's all there centered around the word of God, which Jesus said, Mark 13, 31, heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will never pass away. So God's word is eternal and unmoving. It's objective.
It is our objective source to ground our understanding of love when we exercise it in the world with the brothers, showing charity to others as well, then we are showing a love that comes not from us, but comes from something outside of us.
When we are acting in the better interest of other people and not our own, when we are loving to the praise of God and giving him all the glory instead of trying to take anything for ourselves or making silly proclamations like I can be good by myself without God.
But when it is a love that is focused on something that is outside of ourselves, then it is real and it is genuine. And when it is something unmoving as the word of God, we know it is also eternal. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13, these three remain faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.
Why of those three Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love is love the greatest thing? Because love is the eternal thing. Faith and hope we will only have in this lifetime while we inhabit these bodies and live on this earth.
But when we go to be with the Lord, we will no longer have any need of faith and hope. Our faith shall be sight. We won't need to hope anymore in the things that we clearly see, but love will remain. Love will go on forever.
Love lasts forever, especially when we are loved by the eternal God. Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Another assurance that John is giving us here that when we love, when we love the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, we know that we have been born of God and we know God.
We know the family of God because we know God. Anyone who does not love does not know God. And understand this here in verse eight, we're talking about the biblical definition of love. We're not talking about a worldly love.
We're not talking about love according to as the world would have us do it. We're talking about love as the author of love would have us do it. Anyone who does not love according to how God says we should love, does not know God because God is love.
The man who lives with a woman out of wedlock and says to her that he loves her, does not really love that woman because he's committing adultery with her. It's sexual immorality and he's causing her to sin.
So therefore this love that he proclaims that he has for her cannot be a real and genuine love. A man who will not remain faithful to his wife, but divorces her. And then tries to tell his children, but I still love you, does not actually love them with a real and genuine love from God, because he cannot obey God by loving his wife and laying down his life for her.
The person who encourages a teenager to rebel against the rules of their parents is encouraging a teenager in sin. By the way, one of my big pet peeves as a pastor is hearing about any youth group that is telling their teenagers, this is a safe space for you and whatever you share here, your parents don't have to know about it, we'll talk about it.
No, that is wrong. That is wrong for any youth group to enforce that kind of policy in their youth group. The primary discipler of those teenagers is their parents and they have every right to know the things that those teenagers are sharing with their youth pastors.
There should be nothing that is shared with a youth leader that would not be shared with a parent. Actually had a woman in my church that told a girl that, and I went to her and I said, sorry, that ain't gonna fly here.
And she left because she could not abide by the rules. She thought it was the right thing to do for a teenager to tell them, hey, you can tell me anything and I won't tell your parents. That is absolutely not the way to disciple a teenager.
That is not genuine love. True love is gonna be that love which is obedient to God. Just as genuine faith is demonstrated when we are obedient to the commands of God, it's the same way with love. Genuine love is shown when we are following the commands of Christ, when we obey what he has said love is supposed to be.
Let love be genuine, the scriptures tell us. And Paul said to the Ephesians that we are to speak the truth in love. If what we are saying is not true, then it is not loving. And yet here we have the truth of the word of God.
Nothing else is truer than God's word. And so therefore we know the love that God has for us is the real and genuine love. Is there any other kind of love anywhere in the cosmos that could be displayed like the love that Christ has for us, having given up his throne in heaven and died on a cross for our sins and risen again from the grave.
God who in every right could have just sat himself down on the throne and said, worship me. And he had every right to do that yet demonstrated his love for us by taking on the form of a man and dying in our place for our sins.
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. So just as God has laid down his life for us, we also ought to love one another by laying our lives down for each other.
This is the example that we have in Christ our Lord. So let us do that in imitation of our savior. Our Lord God, we thank you for this word and we thank you for these assurances that have been given to us in your word.
And let us be convicted to our hearts that we might love with a genuine love that is from Christ, not from ourselves, but it is from God who gave his life for us that we would be redeemed from all lawlessness.
You purified for yourself a people who are zealous for good works. So let us be zealous to love as God loves. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.
You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. We hope you are a part of a church family committed to gospel teaching. And we thank you for including us in your Bible learning.
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