Advent 4: The Love of God

1 John 4 and the Call to Test the Spirits

Please turn in your Bibles to the book of 1st John in chapter 4 and begin reading in verse 1. 1st John chapter 4, this is God's holy and infallible word. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God.

Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.

And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

They are of the world, therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God. He who knows God hears us, he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

The Love of God Manifested in the Incarnation

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.

And this is love, not that we love 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 seen God at any time.

If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit. We have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

Please pray with me now. O Lord, we thank you for your inscripturated word. We thank you for perspicuous, clear passages of scripture like this. We ask that your people would be nourished and strengthened.

O Lord, whatever need they have, we pray that you would supply it in the power of your spirit. O Lord, we are weak in body, many with illness and weariness from the weak. I pray that you would reinvigorate us and make us strong in the Lord.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. The fourth Advent theme is love. Today I've chosen to preach from 1 John chapter 4 with an emphasis primarily on verses 7 through 11. And the title of the message today is The Love of God.

Love One Another Because God Has Loved Us

1 John chapter 4 verses 7 through 11. For those of you who need some structure for an outline for notes, first you'll find that we will be talking about, this is found in verse 9, God has sent his only begotten son into the world.

The very language from verse 9. The second point is derived entirely from verse 10. He loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Then finally, number 3, since God has also loved us, has so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

That's found in verse 11. We're going to start and end on that same point. There is an inclusio that basically is this, love one another, which surrounds our text. Probably the most well-known scripture and most often memorized is John 3 .16.

One of the dangers of that familiarity is that we hear it and it almost goes in one ear and out the other because it's just so familiar to us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.

The part that I want us to think about in relation to the message today with this theme of love is for God so loved the world. In verse 17 of that same chapter in John's Gospel it says, for God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, that the world through him might be saved.

That's a very powerful verse and it's often lost in the shuffle of verse 16. God has sent his son not to condemn the world, but to save it. Jesus Christ in his incarnation, his sinless life, his atoning death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, and in the second coming, these are the grandest, greatest displays of God's love.

It seems that the purpose of 1 John is to assure genuine believers that they have a real faith, a sincere faith. But today we're going to focus on this concept of the love of God. The reason I want us to focus on that is because I think it is probably one of the most neglected topics in the life of the church and really the ultimate causality for all that we see in redemptive history.

This theme has been preached by me on two or three occasions in the last couple of years because it has come up in the text. I'm going to emphasize it again today, hopefully to your edification and our building up in the faith.

What is this concept and this notion of the love of God? How is the love of God so beautifully manifested in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ? In this book, John has already stressed the centrality of love as a defining evidence of the new birth.

That's riddled throughout 1 John. His exhortation in our section is for us to love one another. Verse 7 and verse 11, that inclusio that I mentioned, they both say love one another. The reason we are called and are able to perform this great idea of loving one another is because God's great demonstration of love, its substance, meaning, and purpose is found climactically in the sending of his Son.

Let's look at our text again, beginning at verse 7. The true child of God both believes and loves. It's really important for us to see this. If you are aware of some church history of modern times, about 100 years ago, the social gospel was very popular.

And it was meeting the material needs and building hospitals and things like that. And this was all done under the banner of Christ. And it is good to meet needs and it's good to build hospitals. But without the proclamation of Jesus Christ and his lordship and his salvation, the gospel, there's a hollowness to the acts of kindness and good that people do.

Certainly in our time, you could say we have a want of good works. But to be a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ implicitly means that we have put all of our confidence in him. That we are looking to him alone for our salvation.

That we find in him alone our deliverance. Look at that first word in verse 7, beloved. This is a form of agape which is found throughout this section. But I want to point out to you something about this word beloved.

To be beloved in reference to Christians means that we are beloved by God. That we are beloved by Christ and therefore we are beloved of one another. There's something very powerful in this very simple language.

Unbelievers have a form of love. There's a lot of this love wins and love is love. Brethren, loving is entirely defined by God. This is one of the big apologetic areas that we need to defend the Christian faith.

This idea and this notion, this amorphous term of love. God himself defines what love is for he himself is love. So in order to understand what it means to love one another, you have to understand what it means to be beloved.

Christians are the beloved of God. They are the beloved to Christ. In fact, they have their salvation in the capital B Beloved who is Christ. Christ is the beloved one of the Father. Their salvation is found in their attachment and union to Christ.

You and I need to love one another because we are loved by God. I will not be giving a lot of time to this today. But isn't it interesting that the two greatest commandments have as their centerpiece love?

Love for God and love for our neighbor. So it seems that the Christian would be a very diligent student of the word. And he would be searching out and trying to determine and find out what love really is.

We have to acknowledge we have a distorted view of love. It's been influenced by popular culture, our upbringing, our own sentimentality. Love is defined by God alone. We have seen the grandest expression of love.

We peer into the mind and revelation of God and the fulfillment of promises when we see that God in Christ has loved the world. She remains in condemnation without him, but the love of God compels and Christ comes.

Look again here at verse 8. It says, he who does not love does not know God for God is love. It would be tragic for us as Christians to not know how to love our spouses and our children, our parents. As God has called us.

Or to love our fellow Christian in the life of the church. I think all of us should take it seriously today. And take a stand and make a purpose and a resolve that we are going to search out the scriptures and to find out really what it means to love.

Not only to love God, but to love one another. We're going to find that we have some worldliness, some syncretism has crept in and we have a distorted view of love. God is the originator, the creator of love.

It's his idea. God himself perfectly loves. And at the end of the day, our salvation and our redemption is only because of the love of God. Let's consider our first point. In this, verse 9, the love of God was manifested toward us.

What is it? It's the incarnation. It's the life and ministry and atoning work and triumph over death and sin on the cross and the resurrection and the ascension. God has demonstrated his love toward us.

He has sent his only son into the world. This is what we ought to be celebrating today. When we love each other, we want to give each other good gifts. And sometimes the gift itself is overshadowing the substance of love.

How much does God love his creatures if he would send his only begotten son into the world? That the world, that the people of God, that the elect might live through him. He's this glorious only begotten.

There isn't another one like this. As we said in the last couple weeks, there's not another virgin birth. There's not another savior before or since. At just the right time, in the fullness of time, the promises of God being revealed.

Jesus Christ has come into the world. Good Christian men, rejoice. The love of God has been manifested in Christ. There's another element to this idea of loving. And this should shape our love for each other.

For the believer, to love means to actively do what the Lord prefers under his power and direction. You could say, I love my wife in my way. You might be wanting. The believer is to actively do what the Lord prefers.

It is unloving for us to not proclaim to our neighbor the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is unloving of us not to tell our neighbor the reality of their danger. Because they have rejected the only salvation that is found in Christ.

If we are silent, we are unloving to our neighbor. For us to be silent in the face of an eternal hell, when it concerns our neighbor, it's very unloving. It seems things are upside down. Today, the culture says that toleration is the greatest expression of love.

To never say what you're doing is wrong would be the greatest expression of love. It's a counterfeit kind of love. God has revealed his great love. Most pointedly, most sharply, most distinctively in the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Continue. The end of verse 9, it says, He sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. And the question has to be asked, why? God is righteous and holy and just. God would be right to send sinners to condemnation eternally.

Why does he send the Son into the world? Why does he give us life? At the end of the day, the only answer is because he loves us. Mark, you mentioned, I think this is true in corporate America. As an aside, we were talking, I remember R .C. Sproul talking about exhausting someone's knowledge with why questions or a problem that you're trying to solve in the corporate environment.

The pattern of these questions that I'm going to offer you, we could interject other questions and other proper answers, but I want you to see how this progresses. And it's utterly captivating. It will grab your heart and it'll be a cause of your rejoicing if you if you catch this.

Using the argumentation of verse 9, I want to ask a series of questions and I'm going to give it a basic answer. And again, we could have put a different question and different answers would have been legitimate.

But watch the progression of the logic. Why did God send Jesus? The word may flesh into the world. On your own mind, you should be thinking of their scriptural answers that you could come up with. I'm going to say as an answer to save his people.

Very basic child could understand that answer. Why did God send Jesus? The word made flesh into the world to save his people. Why does God desire to save his people? Follow the progression. The reason that Jesus comes to save.

Well, why does he want to save his people? Well, the answer, at least one of the answers you could give, is to reconcile them to himself. Why does God desire to save his people? That he might reconcile them to himself.

How does God reconcile his people to himself? Through the sacrifice of his son. Why does his son have to be sacrificed? To satisfy divine justice. That sin might be punished and atoned for. Why does divine justice have to be satisfied?

Think about the holiness of God. We have to go back to one of the earlier answers. For God to reconcile sinners to himself. In order that man might commune with God. Why does God want to commune with man?

Because he loves them. Why does he love them? Now we've exhausted the answers. Because he loves them. So when we think about the law court, and rightly so in the reformed world, we are very committed to justification by faith alone.

But there's something very impersonal about it in our own imagery in our minds. The righteous judge has to be satisfied. And I think we are content with the word acquittal. But what's happening when God saves sinners, is the judge is pounding the gavel and he is declaring us to be righteous.

But he comes down off of the bench and he grabs us and he takes us back to his house with him. And he feeds us and he embraces us and he loves us. Our conceptions of God as impersonal and austere are wrong.

Our God is a God of relationship, of covenant, of fellowship, of communion, of love. If we were to have a big tapestry here in the church building, and it had all of the intricacies of redemptive history woven into the beautiful tapestry of history, and we were to find a thread to pull on that would be intertwined throughout the entirety of the tapestry, that single thread would be the love of God.

The exhaustive end of all of the why questions is the love of God. Brethren, Christ has come into the world to bring salvation. He's come to live a sinless life. He's come to suffer a brutal death, a brutal death which includes to have God his Father turn his back on him, and for him to become sin for us.

He does all of this because of love. I was reflecting on this idea today, early this morning and last evening. Love is what makes my life great. Love of wife and children. They say they love me. That makes me feel really good.

The best things in life come through love. And children of God, you who are in Christ are loved by God. It is utterly astounding that you would be the objects of his affection. There is no other reason other than he loves you.

You're not righteous, you're unholy and profane, and he makes you holy. He washes you and purifies you and makes you clean. And all of this has to be resolved by a final conclusion that God does this because he loves us.

Jesus Christ came in the world because he loves us. The Father sent him to do this work in the world to bring many sons to glory because he loves us. The Holy Spirit applies the work of redemption. That bloody cross gets applied to you and to your account because he loves you.

Propitiation, Divine Justice, and the Gift of Salvation

Verse 10 it says, and this is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and became the propitiation for our sins. The question of divine justice comes again in verse 10. How is this divine justice going to be satisfied?

God doesn't wink at sin, he doesn't brush it under the table. God himself deals with sin in the person of Christ. He lays upon him the iniquity of us all. Christ is the satisfaction, the appeasement for our sins.

Because he is, our sins are forgiven. Tonight and tomorrow, in your celebrations, I want you to realize that the greatest gift in your life is that you have been loved by God. That Christ has taken you to be his bride.

Isn't that something? That he wants you to be part of him, to live with him eternally. There's a couple other ideas I'd like to consider. We get to verse 11. It follows that the people of God, if they have been loved by God, also ought to love one another.

I believe Mark touched on this in his Ephesians message related to identity. Our identity in Christ makes all of these things possible. They have to be appropriated. You should not have strife in your marriage because you have been numbered among the beloved, and your spouse has been too.

Christ has been your peace. You can be at peace with one another. As Mitch prayed, our church should never be riddled with strife and backbiting. We are the redeemed in Christ. That should cause us to be charitable and loving in our dealings with one another.

Our entire ethical and moral responsibility is summed up in our love for neighbor. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Verse 11. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

There is an incredible list of texts about the love of God. I'm just going to read a couple of those to you, and we'll have a word of application. We'll close here. In Isaiah 54, it says,. That mercy word has a very strong connection to love as well.

Romans 5 .8. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That verse is very powerful because it shows man's absolute inability. He contributes nothing to his salvation.

We were at enmity with God, and we were enemies of God. The love of God conquered us and brought us into his family. Psalm 36 .7 says,. Most famously, Romans 8. Verses 38 and 39. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The incarnation is because of the Trinity's love for the elect. The love of God is the reason. Brethren, we have the most privileged place and standing we could have in the universe. We have Christ as our elder brother, our friend, and our savior, our bridegroom.

We have the Holy Spirit who intercedes for us with groanings that we cannot even utter. And lost in all this is a loving father who sends his son into the world that we might live through him. The love is this.

We didn't love God, but he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. In closing, I want to run an idea by you. There is a romantic dance that happens when a couple begins to court and to get to know one another.

And somehow the man finds the lady attractive in some way and she reciprocates her attraction, her affection for her suitor. And this becomes really the basis. If she likes me, I can like her or vice versa.

What's so astounding about this concept and why our view of love is so deficient. We love for reciprocation. Our God loves out of his essence. It is fitting for us to reciprocate our love for God. We should be worshipers.

We should have great adoration for our God when we consider what he has done and how he has loved us. But the text tells us we didn't love him. And yet he loves us. This is the great news of the incarnation.

This is the great news of our salvation in Christ. The love of God has prevailed. It has conquered hard hearts. It has defeated sin. It has defeated unbelief. It has defeated unholiness and unrighteousness.

How's your love today? Is your love for your family members, church members, is it defined by God? Or have you made up your own definitions? How do we know what love is? In 1 John it says,. By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us.

And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Would you lay down your life for the brethren? Maybe some of you, you might say. You see a deficiency in our love. We lay down our lives for our spouse and our children, certainly.

But if we have been loved by God, we would have this great abundance of love for the brethren. How do we know what love is? We know what it is because of the incarnation, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And it tells us that this is all because of the love of God. To be beloved has two special applications. This is a title of Messiah, Christ. He's beloved beyond all others. And we find ourselves in the beloved in Christ.

And the second application of this idea of being beloved is that we as Christians are beloved by God, beloved by Christ, beloved one to another. Christmas has a lot of trappings. Today is not really Christmas Eve as much as it is the Lord's Day, the Sabbath.

But in the spirit of this season, let us think rightly about good gifts. The best gift has come and it's Christ. It rivals, it has no rival. What did you get for Christmas three years ago? Didn't tell you.

The trinkets, the plastic, the paper will be forgotten by next week. But this gift is eternal. What is this love that John speaks of? The one who is born of God. God himself is the one who creates it and defines it.

You better become well schooled in what love really is. It's only found in the scripture. You have contradictory notions about what love is. The scripture tells us what it is. How is God's love manifested to us?

He sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. Have we loved God? No, but God has loved us and has sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. And if God has so loved us in this way, it follows that we ought to love one another.

Today, I hope your hearts will be filled with love, knowing that the origin of that love is the love of God, which comes really out of nothing as it concerns you. It only comes from his character and his grace and his mercy.

Salvation has come to you and to your house only because God has loved you. In this we can rejoice. Amen? Let's pray together. Oh Lord, we are an unloving people. We are quick to keep a record of wrongs.

We are unforgiving. We have a Hollywood sentimental view of love and Lord that causes many problems for us. We ask, oh Lord, that we would love as you have defined it. That we would see in Christ the great love of God for sinners.

And Lord, that our hearts would be filled with such joy and thanksgiving and gratitude today and tomorrow and this week as we consider what Christ has done in his coming. Surely we have been loved by God if he would send his only begotten son.

Amplify and magnify these in our hearts, we pray in Jesus name.