Motives for Brotherly Love

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Sermon.

The Prince of Preachers. He once stood before his congregation at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London and he trumpeted these words. We'll just leave it there.

He said,.

The true test of any action lies in its motive. Many a deed, he went on, which seems to be glorious, really is mean and ignoble because it is done with a base intention, while other actions, which appear to be poor and paltry, if we truly understand them, would be seen to be full of the glory and beauty of a noble purpose.

What is Spurgeon saying here? Here Spurgeon was preaching on the importance of our motives in the Christian life, in our daily Christian obedience. And later in the sermon, as Spurgeon was going through the motives of a man's heart, he used an example from the mainspring of a mechanical watch.

Maybe some of you are interested in watches, and so you know about all the different kinds of watches that are out there. And you will find that there are smart watches, there are digital watches that we know about, there are even battery-powered watches.

Now mechanical watches, as Spurgeon was speaking about, used to have what was called a mainspring, a spring that was housed in the inner workings of the watch that served as the power source for that timepiece.

And kids, if you can imagine this for a moment, what this would have been like. In Spurgeon's day, you did not take your watch off at the end of the night and sit it on a charger so that it would power up.

It did not have solar cells, it's surprising that's even a thing, little solar cells that collect energy from the sun in order to power the watches. It did not have those little pill batteries that seemed to last forever and ever.

But every morning the owner of the watch would get his watch out, set the time, and then dial the arm until that mainspring would tighten up and then full of potential energy it would slowly unwind throughout the day.

And if it was a good watch, as that mainspring unwound, it would move the minute and the hour hands and it would keep proper time. And what Spurgeon was trying to explain is that within each one of us, out of sight and often out of mind, there is a mainspring.

There is a power source in each one of us that influences our every word, our every action, and our every inaction. Within each one of us, if we look carefully, there are secret thoughts and intentions of our hearts that motivate everything that we do.

And just as a mechanical watch is only as good as its mainspring, our actions are only as good as our motives, if you're following along with me. And as John writes to us in chapter 4 and verse 7, he's come to a place where he's going to, if I can put it this way, recalibrate our mainspring.

John has already dealt with the theme of brotherly love twice in our book. We saw in 1 John 2, he dealt with the necessity of brotherly love. And then in 1 John 3, he dealt with some of the qualities of brotherly love.

And now in this third and final appearance of brotherly love in this theme, John gives us the true motives for brotherly love. Now perhaps you're getting to a place where you're looking at this and you're growing tired of hearing about this concept of love for the brothers.

But God inspired this very text. He who knows us better than we will ever know ourselves. And he is not yet done with us. It is essential for us to see that it is not enough to know that God commands us to love.

It is not even enough to know how it is that we are to love. But if we are to truly abide in the Lord our God and to please him and to serve him from the heart, we must know why we love the brothers. We must be equipped for a persevering brotherly love, for a commitment that lasts through thick and thin.

We must be furnished with motives that outlast the most fickle of winds and the fiercest of storms. And this will not come by giving you some hallmark slogans or mushy platitudes or dutiful notions. Just press on, soldier.

But this comes loving one another as brothers and sisters in Christ through thick and thin only by rock-solid motives founded in God's rock-solid truth. We must know why it is that we are to love one another.

And more than that, if you aren't sold yet on it, we need to have the right motives because God is not like man. He does not look at the outward appearance of man alone. But everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

That's why Peter tells us when he wrote his first letter about loving one another, he says, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. It is because brotherly love can only truly exist where there are true motives.

And today, John gives us the motives. Now, I had you turn to 1 John 4 and verse 7. I could have made this, I think, many more points, but I have whittled it down to five, and they are five shorter points, I assure you.

But I'm going to give you today five motives for brotherly love. And by necessity, each of them will be brief. But what I'm hoping is that as we look at each of these motives that the Lord gives us in his word, it would tune the main springs of our hearts to love one another with pure motives.

Because God Is Love

So we need to be fast. We're going to get right into it. In verses 7 and 8, John puts before us the first motive that we are to rely on, that we are to look to, that we are to have as we love the brothers.

We love the brothers, John's going to tell us, because God is love. Because God is love, in verses 7 and 8. 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 passage that is before us, if I have counted it correctly, there is the reference to love, 25 times. We're going to see John repeat this again, and again, and again.

Just as John has done several times, he begins his opening verse, in verse 7, with this exhortation to love one another. It's a present active verb, meaning that it is ongoing. It's not enough to have loved our brothers and sisters at one time, it is not enough to have ambitions one day to love our brothers and sisters in Christ, but we must.

You in this room, as you sit in these seats, you are commanded by God to love one another. And as John mentions this command, he immediately goes to this next word, for. Now for my fellow grammarians, this is a coordinating conjunction.

What it's conveying to us, it is conveying to us reason. It is conveying to us purpose. It is conveying to us motive. You are to love one another, for. And John is going to give us the very motives that we are to have as we love one another.

And in verses 7 and 8, John gives us a basic theology of the origins of love, and of the nature of God. First in verse 7, John explains that we are to love one another, because love is from God. And because love is from God, he concludes that whoever loves, proves by this love, that he has been born of God, and knows God.

And the reason why John begins here, dealing with knowing God, and having been born of God, is because he is continuing to address the claims of those apostates who left the church for an early form of Gnosticism.

This group that we have heard a lot about, calling them secessionists. You've already heard that the Gnostics believed that God was a spirit, and that he was the source of all knowledge. The Gnostics made a very big deal of this idea of knowledge.

And it was through the awakening of this divine spark, as they called it, within them, that they experienced something of a new birth, and a true knowledge of God. And the key to this experience, as the Gnostics thought, or these pre-Gnostics, was Gnosis, a special kind of knowledge, saving knowledge, that led to this rebirth in spiritual awakening.

And so for the average Gnostic, it was knowledge that proved that one was a Christian. But here John confronts them. He comes at them point blank, by showing that it is not a secret knowledge, but it is love, brothers and sisters, it is love for one another that proves our standing before God.

And then in verse 8, John adds that if we do not love one another, we can be sure that we do not know God. How can he be so sure? Because John tells us, God is love. Now what an intriguing statement that is.

God is love. Here in our passage, we see it repeated twice in these few verses. And I want to put the question to you, what does it mean that God is love? If let's say an 8-year-old child were to come to you, many of you have been believers for several years, and they see you, and maybe they hear that your parents have trust you and speak well of you, and they come to you and they say, Mr., Mrs., Miss, what does it mean that God is love?

The reality is that this is one of the most quoted Bible verses. You will find it on pots and pans and knitted into fabrics and pasted on people's walls and on t-shirts. It has to be, it has to be one of the most quoted Bible verses in the world, quoted mostly by people who have no idea what it actually means.

What does it mean that God is love? There is a perfectly sound explanation for this, and we need to understand it in order to know how this motivates us to love one another. When John says that God is love, he is not saying that God is made up of love, like you and I are made up of matter, that there is a substance that we are made of.

Nor is he saying that love is God, and we know people who say these kinds of things, as if there is some kind of generic conception of human love that rules the universe. But rather, John is speaking about the very nature of God.

In the words of Joel Beakey and Paul Smalley, that they have a reformed systematic theology, it's a massive volume, it's worth its weight in gold, they define it this way, the phrase God is love tells us about God's very essence.

Love is not merely a relationship that God has with those outside of himself, or an activity in which he engages toward his creation, but love is God's very being. That God cannot be separated from love.

Perhaps it is a weak illustration, but let me use you and I as an example for a moment. There is never a time, there never will be a time in our earthly existence when we will not be sinners. Now, we are saints, it is true, but we are sinning saints.

It is true now that we offer worship to the Lord that pleases him, and we render obedience to him, but everything that we do is tainted by our sin. Now, in a positive example, to make a much stronger case for it, everything that God is, is love.

And everything that he touches is not tainted with love, or tainted with sin, but blessed with his love. There are four times in scripture that we see that the nature of God is described in this way, and I want you to see this glorious God with me for a moment.

John loves these kinds of phrases. In John chapter 4, we're told that God is spirit, meaning that he does not have a body like man, but that he exists in the spiritual form in his essence. In 1 John chapter 1, again, John bringing out these nature statements, he says that God is light.

And what this means is that he is not just bound to a standard of moral excellence, but that God is the standard of moral excellence. That he dwells in unapproachable light, that he is filled to the brim with perfect righteousness.

In Hebrews chapter 12, we're told that God is a consuming fire, meaning that his holiness, that he has holiness and justice embodied. If anything were to come that is unclean into his presence, they would be consumed by him like a moth that is introduced to the surface of the sun.

This means that everything that we experience in this world is a manifest expression of God's loving kindness. And yet, if God were, think about this, this is what it means that God is love. Everything that he creates, everything that he touches is blessed by his love, and yet, if God were to create nothing at all, and do nothing other than merely exist, he would be no less loving, because he is love.

At this point, we arrive at our motive for loving one another. I know this is tricky, this is somewhat esoteric, this is probably the most esoteric point I have, speaking about the essence of God, his being, and his nature.

But brothers and sisters, we must love one another because the very nature of God demands it. Because he is our God, and he is love, we are bound by his nature. And this is something that I think that we struggle with.

When we hear the saying, or the statement, that God is holy, I think that you and I, we can relate far better to this. That God is holy, that he demands holiness of us, and that is why he sent his son.

And that is why we must believe in Christ, and that is why we must seek to obey him in response to his gospel. Because God is holy, and because God is holy, we too must be holy. We can understand as well, I think, that God is true, and that he demands that we believe the truth, that we hold fast to that which is true, that we speak the truth.

But what does it mean then when we say that God is love? It means that anyone who claims to know God, anyone who has been born of God, must love just as God loves. Just as holiness and truth are priorities in our lives, love too must be an equal priority.

And what's more, if we have been born of him, then we have been born again into the likeness of our father. And just as it is his nature to love, so now it is our nature to love as well. John Stott writes this on this point, he says it clearer than I can, and so I'll read what he says.

He says, For the loveless Christian to profess to know God, and to have been born of God, is like claiming to be intimate with a foreigner whose language we cannot speak. It is like claiming to have been born of parents whom we do not resemble in any way.

It is to fail to manifest the nature of him whom we claim as our father and our friend. Love is as much a sign of Christian authenticity as is righteousness. Can you see, brothers and sisters, that just as it is the nature of the sun to give light, and just as it is the nature of water to make things wet, it is the nature of God to love.

And because we have been made anew in his image, it is now our nature to love as well. I know this is very philosophical. This is the most difficult point to understand. Now John goes on further in verse 9.

He says, 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. So we love one another not only because God is love. We love one another, number two, because of God's love for us in Christ. Because of God's love for us in Christ.

As John comes to verses 9 through 11, he puts three important truths before us that must motivate our love for time and for eternity. In verse 9, see this with me, he highlights Christ's incarnation, that Christ came into the world.

In verse 10, he points to Christ's propitiation. And then, literally in verse 11, he presses us with our obligation that we ought to do this. Now first in verse 9, we're told about the cost of this love in Christ's incarnation.

Here Jesus is referred to as God's only Son, or as it says in some of your translations, God's only begotten Son. Now I ask you a question. It's a trick question for sure, but I ask it to you. Does God have any filler words in the Bible?

When God came to inspire the biblical text, did he have a word count that he needed to live up to? Like some of us who are still in school, we need 2 ,500 words, we have 2 ,497, I just need to fit three words in here and I've met the mark.

And I can get my grade. Of course we know that God uses no filler words. So why would he say in verse 9, monogenes, as it's in Greek, the only Son of God. It is because of this. As God calls us to love one another, he's showing us that he did not send an angel into the world, as our Jehovah's Witnesses neighbors would tell us.

He did not send one among many of his sons, as the Mormons might tell us. He did not have many sons. But like Abraham, think Abraham on Mount Moriah with Isaac, his only son. God sent his only begotten Son into this cruel world to live in the flesh and to accomplish our redemption.

What he's communicating here is cost, the greatest of costs. And it's remarkable how this intersects with God's eternal love in his being. In John chapter 17 and verse 24, John tells us about God's love that existed before the foundation of the world, before the world had been made, or any stars or planets or any man at all, there was love.

Where was this love taking place? Jesus says in his high priestly prayer in John 17, 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

Before there was a creation, God the Father loved the Son with a perfect love. But when man needed rescuing, God's love was made manifest to us in this, that God sent his only Son to die that we might live.

Translation, immense cost. And you see, sometimes we really struggle with this idea of parting with something that is our one and only. For those, probably most of the young men who collected hockey cards as a kid, I know we've got a couple of hockey card collectors, you have your binder of hockey cards.

When you're a six-year-old and unbelieving family, I assure you this is your pride and joy. And filled with your hockey cards, you have, at least if you were like me, every player on every team on each sheet.

It's impeccably organized. But then you have, in some of those sleeves where you tuck the hockey cards, you know, because you know your hockey cards, which ones have doubles. And so when you go to school to trade, you trade always from the multiples that you have.

You exchange doubles, but you always do what? You always keep that one original for yourself. That is your one and only. You're building your repertoire, but you're keeping your one and only. Now that sounds ridiculous, but many of us do that with our books, don't we?

And we find a book that we love. And we don't take that book that we have come to treasure, that has been very edifying to us. Most of us don't naturally just walk up to someone and give it away. But if we think it's really good, we buy multiple copies and we give those copies away.

But what do we do? We keep the original for ourselves. God the Father had one and only son. I know this is a cheap illustration, but see this with me. He had one and only son. Not a multitude of sons, not a myriad of sons, but he had one son.

And what did he do? But he gave him for us all. He sent us into this world to pay the ransom that we owe. And then verse 10 adds to that cause when it speaks about Christ's propitiation. In recent weeks, I've been reminded of how we need to know what God means when we see this word propitiation.

There are people we know now that have redefined this word. The word is under attack. Many are seeking to redefine it. And when God tells us that he gave his son to be the propitiation for our sins, it doesn't merely mean that he gave him to be a pleasing sacrifice.

It doesn't mean, as we have looked at different theories of the atonement, that he put him there on that cross to show us nearly how much he loved us. But it means when we say that Christ became the propitiation for our sins, that Christ himself became the atoning sacrifice to pay the penalty that we deserve.

Scripture tells us from the words of this book that he himself, it says, bore our sins in his body on the tree. That Christ redeemed us by becoming a curse for us. That he was crushed for our iniquities, Isaiah 53 says.

That upon him was the chastisement. What does that mean? It is the Hebrew word muzar, which means discipline. Upon him was the discipline that brought us peace. It was not a mere offering. It was a sacrifice and it was a penal substitute.

Or as Peter would say in 1 Peter 3, that Christ suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. When we say that Christ was made to be the propitiation for our sins, it means that he took upon himself the concentrated wrath of God as he hung on that cross and there he satisfied the demands of God's justice in our place.

Could there be a more radical display of love than this? Matthew Henry writes on this point, he said, search the whole universe for love in its most glorious displays. It is to be found in the person and cross of Christ.

John tells us in verse 11 that we must set the main spring of our hearts with this truth. He tells us about Christ's incarnation. He tells us about Christ's propitiation. And then in verse 11 he says, if God so loved us, we also ought, we are obliged, we are bound to love one another.

Here he brings us under what I'm calling a gospel obligation. The same thing that Paul said in Ephesians 5 in verse 2, and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. The words of one brother, no one has ever been to the cross, or no one, excuse me, who has been to the cross and seen God's immeasurable and unmerited love displayed.

There can go back to a life of selfishness. But instead, we must love even as God loved us in Christ. We must love the undeserving as God loved us undeserving in Christ. We must love those who seem to be unlovable to us as we seem to be unlovable to Christ.

We must love at great cost, even as Christ paid the greatest cost in his love for us. Here Christ and his cross offer us an inexhaustible source of motivation to love one another. God is love and God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The Visibility of God's Love in Christian Witness

But John goes on to verse 12 and says, no one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. We love one another, number three, because our Christian witness necessitates it.

Here John points out that even though God is invisible, when we love one another, we bear witness to God and his goodness before a watching world. John Stott writes this, he says, the unseen God who once revealed himself in his son now reveals himself in his people, if and when they love one another.

The invisible God is seen in us when we love one another. God's nature must motivate us to love one another. God's gospel must be the driving impetus in our life, but we must also be motivated by God's glory.

God's glory is displayed in his creation. It is displayed in his special revelation, but it is also displayed in the love of his people in the church. I'm reminded of one example I think that is especially relevant to this point.

In the late 1800s, there was an English pastor named Robert Chapman. He was called by many around him the Apostle of Love. I don't believe that he believed he was an apostle, but that was his nickname.

And he exemplified the kind of love that believers are to have for one another. And as is often the case, or too often the case, there was a man in their church who fell into a grievous sin. And as a result of him persisting in this sin, the church put him out of their fellowship.

He was excluded from the church. And following this event, the man declared that he would never again have anything to do with Chapman. In fact, he said he would never speak to him. He went so far as to speak very uncharitably about him to other people.

And one day, Robert Chapman was walking down the street, and maybe he was looking down at the ground, who knows what was happening, but he glanced up and he saw that this man was coming in his direction on the sidewalk.

And he was faced with a decision. Do you look away and pretend that you don't see him? Do you keep looking down and carry on? Do you glare as you pass by? Do you cross to the other side of the street to avoid the awkward confrontation?

And there's Chapman, came down the sidewalk, looking at this man. He met at the sidewalk, came face to face, and Robert Chapman approached the man. He put his arms around him and he said to him, my friend, God loves you, Christ loves you, and I love you.

And in that act of love that seemed almost otherworldly for this man, the Lord used that very act to break his heart and to bring him back to repentance and back into the fellowship of that local church.

That it was at that moment an expression of the love of the invisible God. I've been thinking about it this week, that for many of us, as we go about coming and going in this lost world in which we live, that the closest thing that most lost people will ever get to reading the Bible or interacting with God's special revelation is interacting with us.

It is observing your life. And I ask you, what do they see when they see your life? Do they see the love of God? Or do they see just another person? Task oriented, trying to get things done, going to the next thing.

The Indwelling Spirit and Abiding in Christ

John gives us another motive, a fourth motive. Verses 13 through 16, he gives us this, we should love our brothers and sisters because of God's abiding in us. Because of God's abiding. In verses 13 through 16, he writes this, by this we know that we abide in him and he in us.

Because he has given us 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. In these four verses, John mentions this reciprocal abiding.

Abiding in him and him abiding in us seven different times. And it can be a bit, cause our heads to spin. We don't slow down and look at it carefully. So let's break it down very simply. In verses 13 through 15, John speaks of a new relationship that every Christian has with the Triune God.

And I've told you this in the past, I love looking for these. I will, as long as I am in this pulpit, I will always, always, always point this out to you. And we see again another appearance of the Trinity in verses 13 through 15.

This is not the doctrine of Rome. This is the doctrine of scripture. We see the indwelling spirit in verse 13. We see the father saving initiative, sending his son in verse 14. And then we see the confession of Jesus, the son of God in verse 15.

And the simplest of terms, this is what John has said. We know that we abide in God and God abides in us when we have his spirit. We know that we abide in God and God abides in us when we confess that Jesus is the son of God, the savior of the world.

And we know that we abide in God, God abides in us when we abide in love. Brethren, we are brought to this place of loving one another, not merely by a sense of duty, not by relying on our own inner gumption as if that could accomplish anything, but the motivation and the power that you and I possess if we are in Christ.

If Christ, the spirit of Christ is in us, the motivation and power to love one another comes from the life of the vine and can only come from the life of the vine. We are the branches and Christ is the vine.

And as we confess Christ and receive the Holy Spirit and abide in him, he alone gives the power and the ability to love one another. Some of you have asked in recent weeks, why is there such a scarcity of love in me for my brothers and sisters in Christ?

Some of you, as you've listened to part one and part two, you've thought to yourself, why? I hear what he's saying. I hear what the scriptures are saying. Why do I feel so cold about this? Perhaps it is because you are looking to the wrong power source.

We have such an inflated view of ourselves. We are so fiercely independent, or so we think at least. Oh, that God would grant us such an abased view of ourselves so that we would be able to see beyond us to the real source of power for the Christian life.

It is God working through us, the powerful life of God working through us in Christ as we abide in him and as his spirit abides in us. I love what one brother says about this. He writes, the Christian often tries to forget his weakness.

Isn't that true? We see how we are weak and it reminds us of how imperfect, how insufficient we are, and we push it away. He says God wants us to remember our weakness and to feel it deeply. It is our weakness, heartily accepted and continually realized, that gives our claim and access to the strength of him who has said my strength is made perfect in weakness.

And he goes on. This needs to be heard. At the same time, a soul filled with large thoughts of the vine will be a strong branch and will abide confidently in him. Be much occupied with Jesus and believe much in him as the true vine.

If we will ever set our mainsprings, we must watch and we must be much occupied with Jesus. We must discover more and more that love for the brothers and sisters will only arise out of a sincere faith and a confession in Christ and a deep and dependent walk with God.

This is why many of us struggle not only with a weak brotherly affection but with many aspects of our Christian obedience. It is because we have become much occupied with everything but Jesus. In Christian life, we must occupy ourselves with Christ and to seek him and to know him and to abide in him and to draw our power in him.

Confidence for the Day of Judgment

And then verse 17 and 18 and beyond. John offers us the last motive because of our confidence. How does that make sense? In verses 17 and 18 we read this. By this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as he is so also are we in the 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. Here John speaks about a kind of love that gives us confidence for the day of judgment.

A kind of love that dispels all fear. A kind of that grants us assurance that John has been fighting for in us this whole letter. What love is this? If you are anything like me you might wonder to yourself what love can spare me from fears of condemnation, fears of punishment.

What love can give me a perfect confidence before a holy God? This confidence does not come by our love for him. This confidence is not received by us in exchange for our love with our neighbor. What confidence is John talking about?

It is an apprehension of God's love for us. That when God's love is perfected in us then and only then are we free from fear of condemnation. In verse 16 John told us to abide in God and him in us. That when we abide in God and him in us we come to know and believe the love that God has for us.

And now in verse 17 we see that when this love and our grasp of it is perfected in us we can have confidence before him. We can say with the hymn writer and Lord haste the day when faith shall become sight and the clouds be rolled back as a scroll and the trump shall descend trump shall resound the Lord shall descend even so what it is well with my soul.

John Calvin speaks of this he says the faithful do not fear when mention is made to them of the last judgment but that on the contrary they go to God's tribunal confidently and cheerfully because they feel assured of his paternal love.

And what a love it is brothers and sisters. I know that you can go to a thousand churches in North America today probably more and they're all happy to tell you about God's love that God loves you. But it's couched in the most vague and unprofitable language that God loves all people everywhere without distinction without definition as you've heard me say before.

What does the bible say about God's love for you? God so loved you he sent his what does John say his one begotten son so whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. That God loves you in truth in Christ.

I love what Augustine said that God loves each of us as if there was only one of us. To think on that for a moment that the omnipotent omniscient God loves you as if there was only one of you and yet he loves all of us in that way.

One Puritan says I am swallowed up oh God I am willingly swallowed up in this bottomless abyss of thine infinite love and there let me dwell in a perpetual ravishment of spirit till freed from this clog of earth and filled with the fullness of Christ I shall be admitted to enjoy that which I cannot now reach to wonder at.