Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Letter of 1 John, 1 John chapter 4 and we'll begin reading in verse 7, so 1

John chapter 4 and verse 7.

Beloved let us love one another for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows

God. He who does not love does not know

God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent his only begotten

Son into the world that we might live through him.

In this is love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his

Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved if God so loved us we also ought to love one another.

I thought this might be a fitting passage for us to examine on Valentine's Day. There is a need to be clear on who

God is and what love is. Those would be

I would think fairly important questions to be answered in our culture in our time and the high levels of confusion that surround those two definitions lie at the heart of a lot of chaos in our world today.

Who is God? What is love? Not having a clear understanding of the first or the second leaves a whole lot of people in a whole lot of trouble, a whole lot of sin, a whole lot of pain and suffering and misery.

When we are in the picking up this passage here in the latter half of 1st

John it's important to remember that John is writing so as to clarify who are the people of God.

This is a very important question for the people living in this time because all you can remember are the arguments, the theological back and forth between Jesus and the

Pharisees or Jesus and the religious leaders. They were wanting to define things according to their own spin on the old covenant but Jesus kept on telling parables and mixing everything up in their world redefining everything in terms of himself so that even though these folks had all these credentials and had all of this experience

Jesus would say things to them like you're keeping people out of the kingdom of heaven and you yourselves are not going to even enter but you're going to be surprised when you see tax collectors and prostitutes and all kinds of sinners who have been saved and have repented and they are in the kingdom instead of you.

How surprising to find that the people of God are different than what we expected, what you grew up believing.

Who are the people of God now that Jesus Christ has come and lived and died on the cross and rose again and ascended to heaven?

Who are the people of God? And the New Testament answers again and again and again.

The old covenant was the shadow the main question was who is in Israel?

That's shadow, substance is Christ. New covenant people of God who is in Christ?

Well that could be Jews, could be Gentiles, male and female, free men and slave, barbarian,

Scythian, Italian, Mesopotamian, Ethiopian all kinds of people are now in the kingdom of God are considered the people of God because well one reason because they're in Christ.

And one of the key factors of determining who really are the people of God according to first John is by just observing what these people are like.

There's a whole group of people you see in John's day who are saying we're the people of God and they go around killing

Christians. We're the people of God and they go around kicking Christians out of their cities.

They go around saying we're the people of God and yet they greedily hoard all their money and ignore the plight of others.

Namely these were the stewards of the old covenant the Jews who were drinking the blood of the

Saints. Saints like Stephen and James and so forth. So these can't be the people of God, they hate their brethren, right?

So they have all these tests through first John. Well if you hate your brother obviously you're of the devil, you're not of Christ.

But love is one of those key elements to determine who really is in Christ and who is not.

Well who loves? Didn't Jesus say? By this all men will know that you are my disciple by the love that you have for one another.

And so this is a major theme throughout first John that the defining characteristic faith hope and love abide these three but the greatest of these is love and so John focuses in on love and what that looks like.

He's already brought definition to it in first John 3 16 he says by this we know love that Christ laid down his life for his own he laid down his life for his friends he laid down his life for the brethren so also we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

We get our definition of of what love is simply by looking at how the

Father gave the Son so that by the Spirit we would be born again saved.

So now we come to chapter 4 and again after several contrasts of well here are those who are not in Christ and here are those who are in Christ then

John exhorts his brethren and he says beloved and remember reminding them that they are those who are loved they're identified as those who are loved beloved let us love one another why because love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows

God being born again being of the true people of God means that you're alive in a very specific way your creator not only gave you the breath of life but also through Christ he has raised you from spiritual death so that you actually live and that life can be detected by your love he who does not love does not know

God for God is love now it's important to identify that God is not merely only love but he's certainly not less than love and that God is also described in other ways

John will describe God at the beginning of 1st John God is light

God is light in that passage he contrasts those who are in darkness with those who are in light those who are in darkness are those who deceive themselves and lie and say

I have no sin or I have not sinned and those are those who walk in darkness I don't

I don't need a Savior I don't have a problem I'm already clean as some of Jesus's opponents would have declared to him you know

Jesus said actually you know those who aren't sick don't need a doctor I guess but the great physician was sent to those who are sick the

Son of Man has come to seek and save sinners so if you identify as I'm not a sinner then

Jesus doesn't get you at all not at all so God is not only merely love he's also light which means

God is truth God is truth and he has no fellowship with those who are operating in deceit so already we've got something interesting happening here because if if God is love and and people think that love is simply unqualified affirmation that does not square well with God is light when he says

I don't have fellowship with those who live in deceit and walk in deceit John also says in John chapter 4 in the

Gospel of John God is spirit Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth so when we think of we see

God is love the understanding of what love is must be defined by who

God is and how he manifests that love and we're told how he manifests that love in verse 9 in this the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent his only begotten

Son into the world that we might live through him because we were dead in our trespasses and sins but God sent his

Son into the world that he would live for us die for us be raised for us that we might live in this is love not that we loved

God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins so very clearly

John is saying we don't get our definition of love from us from our experiences even if they're worshipful experiences in this is love not that we love

God but that God loved us we don't understand what love is because we have a a wonderful worshipful experience and then identify that that warm feeling of adoration as love that's not how we know love we don't know love by simply pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and saying oh

I've got to love others but in the in the exhortation in verse 7 and verse 11 that bracket this text when we're in when we're called to love one another he identifies who we are first right there's a name for us those who are called to love one another we're called something we're named something aren't we verse 7 says beloved let us love one another we've already done been loved how is it that we're going to love one another we are the loved that's how we know verse 11 says the same thing beloved right beloved if God so loved us we also have to love one another you see so we've got to begin with how

God defines love and how he has manifested love and he has done so preeminently through the display of his his love towards us through Christ scarcely for a righteous man would one die perhaps for a good man someone would die but in this in this what while we were yet sinners

Christ died for us when we think about the definition of love that we have from 1st

John 3 16 we compare that with with here we find that love is a righteous and sacrificial devotion it's it's a giving of oneself even if it costs that person a great deal but devoting oneself to another even if it costs them but doing so in the right way now some would be willing to devote themselves to somebody else at great cost but to do so in a wrong way codependency infatuation idol worship they sacrifice themselves again and again and and go to great lengths of of sacrificing themselves for this other person over and over and over again looking for their good but ultimately not doing in the right way you see to bring all these things together we see that when the way that God loved us he was concerned about righteousness he was concerned about our good and he did so at the cost of his only begotten son so we are informed what love looks like when we think about Jesus Christ we think about the cross and the resurrection we find that God is the one who defines what love is so that we may know how to love one another because Christ gave himself for us we know how to love one another right it's not that we're given we notice here in this is love not that we loved

God but that he loved us and gave us his law no he sent his son who is the end of the law unto righteousness for all who believe for there is no difference that the law tells us to love our neighbor but basically along the lines of the

Hippocratic Oath first do no harm don't do these list of things to your neighbor because to do so would be unloving towards your neighbor and that's the truth absolutely the truth and tons of wisdom is just built in there and yet Jesus comes and says you've heard it said that but I say to you love your enemies here's what

I say to you here's a new commandment that I give to you the old commandment was what love your neighbor as yourself here's the new commandment the new commandment is love one another as I have loved you hello that's a lot more it's richer it's deeper it's brighter it's more glorious okay so we think about all right what does

God who is God we can say God is love now that's all we're going to say but then we think about that and that means that being alive in God and being a child of God by the grace of God I want to love others as well and I know what that looks like because of Jesus okay so what happens when we think we don't need

God to understand what love is what happens well then we are where we are today right now it's just profound isn't it but what what is the message well you can't deny love if somebody feels something and they identify it as love then it must be love and you can't say anything against it love is simply love and there's no way you can deny it right the tautology here where you're just saying love is love by its very nature demands simple affirmation without qualification a simple affirmation as as there's no qualifiers to go along with it and then everybody must affirm that no matter what shape style it comes out as but this this almost seems like it's it's not a big deal because this would just be an individual's conception there's another there's another saying that goes along with this okay it's been around a little bit longer but it's not that much different live and let live

I say right just let people be and do what they want what what business is it is yours if somebody says love is love and then they have their own expression of it live and let live just let them be what business let them be free okay all right the sexual evolution has been going on for a long time some places in our world are looking a whole lot like the streets of Paris and another revolution not all that long ago what happens is if we adopt this this is not simply somebody's individual affirmation and say well this is just the way it is and everybody can just be their own way everyone can just live at peace and all have their own definition of love and your truth is your truth and so on and so forth because we're made in God's image inevitably inevitably because the worship switch is hardwired on love cannot just be love and the base cravings with in the in the desires of somebody just become their ruling directing worship you can't you can't take

God out of the phrase God is love if you take him out of the first side he becomes on he shows back up on the other side that idea of you just turned love into your

God you created God in your own image and so if this is the case this is why this is why the whole love is love is love doesn't work this is why it doesn't stay just however anybody wants to be just let them be libertarian style right libertarians are wrong there is authority in the world and this is where you end up this is why there has to be all these efforts to forcibly indoctrinate children

Stephen Black calls it the queering of our generation this is why you have to have laws forcing other people to accept and approve and affirm and so on this is why there is a they call it a culture war it's actually a religious war this is why we have a religious conflict on our hands it just the same as if Muslims had taken over the

US Senate and decided we're going to have Sharia law it's the same type of religious conflict because you can't take

God out of the picture right so this is why it's very important that we teach our children subject verb and indirect object and that we put them in the right order and diagram them properly because God is love is not the same thing as love is

God not by a mile so what we have here are some basic affirmations from first John and reminders of why people have gone so far astray any comments or questions it's enslavement so when your identity when your identity becomes your

God and somebody says your identity should not be allowed this is why they scream at you you're killing me you often hear like a mark hate this in love the sinner what would you're fleshing that out what would you say in light of what scripture says true love is or say for the sinner for the

Christian to basically interact with this simple generation around us yeah so um when it that the the duty of the

Christian is indeed to love the sinner and hate the sin and and we don't we're not called to hate sinners but this does not mean that God does not hate sinners right first 50

Psalms read those and you come away with God hates sinners he hates doers of iniquity he hates those who lie he hates those who shed innocent blood and it says it over and over and over again but also he for this he demonstrates his love and that he sent his son into the world for God loved the world in this way that he gave his only begotten son whoever would believe in him not perish but have everlasting life our job is indeed to love the sinner and hate the sin but you but most of the times that that phrase is used very often it gets interpreted as affirm the sinner ignore the sin because people think that love is affirmation but when we think about what love looks like it isn't

Jesus saying he gets us just basic affirmation just affirmation no it's it's

Jesus saying go and sin no more right where he is he's admonishing he's rebuking he's calling for he's like oh ye of little faith right it wasn't you guys you know no it's hey you know you need to believe you need to hold fast you you need to repent of your sins

Jesus Christ did not die on the cross and suffer under the wrath of God because he thought we were okay all right but precisely because he needed to raise us from the death of transgressions and sins and so loving the sinner is going to involve telling truth to the sinner in a way that is filled with hope and faith meaning that when we speak the truth lovingly to them it's not a matter of doing so outside the bounds of the faith but inside the bounds of the faith and it's not gonna be without hope we're gonna be hope filled and the hope that we have is that Jesus Christ saves and he heals he delivers and he transforms right you may you may be dealing with somebody who is so enmeshed in sin that you don't think there's honestly practically speaking you don't think there's a hope in the world for this person to ever come around but you refuse to to cave to that and you maintain hope and you love the sinner by telling them the truth and calling them to faith in Jesus Christ hating the sin would be would be being honest about the and saying what

God has to say about it because don't you want the sinner to confess his sins or her sins that means saying the same thing about their sins that God does that's confession so if you're saying something else other than what

God says about their sin you're not teaching them to confess their sins that doesn't make any sense so I swear you know there is plenty of examples in the scripture in the

New Testament examples of loving the sinner and hating the sin but again that can usually sometimes that glosses over affirm the sinner ignore the sin which is where a lot of folks are today all right well let's close with a word of prayer father