God is Love 11/06/2022

First Baptist Church Leominster

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Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the cross of Christ.

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We thank you for his sacrifice. We thank you for his life and his death, his resurrection.

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We thank you, Lord, that you provide the spirit to us, that the spirit convicts us of our sin, that the spirit enables us to receive your truth.

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We just thank you for all the blessings that are found in Christ Jesus, and we pray, Lord, that as we open up your word, as we hear about the love of God, we pray that we would line up under it.

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We ask, Lord, for wisdom and guidance, and we pray that we would leave here with a greater understanding of your character and a greater understanding of our duty.

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So help us now, Lord. Thank you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Out of all of God's perfections, out of all of his attributes, out of all of his divine characteristics, there is none that is more universally accepted by the world than the attribute of love.

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The overwhelming majority of those who believe that there is a God believe that God is a

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God of love. Indeed, God is a God of love.

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God is good. God is patient. God is kind.

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God is compassionate. God is forgiving. God is merciful.

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God is gracious. To attribute and believe that the Lord God is all of these things is very good, for the

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Lord God is love. He is good. He is patient, kind, compassionate, forgiving, merciful, and gracious.

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The Lord God is all of these things, but he is much, much more.

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The Lord God is also righteous. God is just. God is impartial.

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God is jealous. God is wrath. God is holy, holy, holy.

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This means that the Lord God is utterly distinct from his creation. God is separate.

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He is set apart. He is nothing like his creation, and his creation is nothing like him.

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Question four of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks the question, what is God? The answer,

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God is a spirit. God is infinite, eternal, and unchanging in his wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

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The Lord God is love, but he is much more than love. D .A.

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Carson in his book, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God writes, for this widely disseminated belief in the love of God is set with increasing frequency in some matrix other than biblical theology.

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The result, of course, is that the love of God in our culture has been purged of anything that culture finds uncomfortable.

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The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all, sentimentalized.

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In other words, our culture has taken the biblical doctrine of the love of God and run it through a strainer, removing every other one of God's perfections.

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Our culture has taken the marvelous truth that God is love and exalted it and elevated over and above the holiness of God, over and above the justice of God, over and above the wrath of God, over and above his omniscience, his omnipresence, his omnipotence, and his sovereignty.

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And in elevating this one attribute over every other, in elevating the love of God over and above all the other attributes of God, our culture has twisted and perverted their view of God and refashioned him into an image that is agreeable and complementary to their desires and their lifestyle.

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This distorted view, however, fails to take into consideration that God is one.

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God is a unity. The Lord cannot be divided. Just as he is loving, so is he holy.

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Just as he is holy, so is he merciful. Just as he is merciful, so is he just, and so on and so forth with every other one of his divine perfections.

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Beloved, you cannot pick and choose which attributes of God to accept and which attributes of God to reject without utterly destroying the biblical image of the

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Lord God Almighty. Today, many churches have welcomed and embraced this erroneous view of the

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Lord God. And it isn't ironic that the culture's version of God has infiltrated the church rather than the church's view of God infiltrating the culture, which is to be our primary purpose.

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Matthew 5, 14, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

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In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your

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Father who is in heaven. The church is to be the salt of the earth.

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The church is to be the light of the world. But this low view of God has significantly diminished the church's light to the world.

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This low view of God has significantly diminished the church's saltiness.

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Today many churches are just a faint flickering of light with literal to no flavor.

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In many churches and many Christian homes, the truth of God has been exchanged for a lie.

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So what is the fix? What are we to do? Well, in light of this exchange, the fix is to reacquaint ourselves with the true nature and the true character of the

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Lord God. As he has revealed himself to us in the scriptures, our goal, our aim are to conform our flawed and small view of the

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Lord God to the true and majestic view of the Lord God as he has revealed himself in the scriptures.

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Our goal and aim are to recognize the Lord God as God as he has revealed himself to us.

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Please turn with me to the book of 1st John. Our passage this morning is 1st

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John chapter 4, verses 7 to 12. And here in this very familiar passage, we read the treasured words,

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God is love. But what does this exactly mean? And what is to be our response to these truths?

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Let's read the text together. 1st John chapter 4, verses 7 to 12,

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Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God.

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And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know

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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.

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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.

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Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen

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God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

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In this passage, we see point number one, the mandate to love, verses 7 and 8.

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Point number two, the manifestation of love, verses 9 and 10. And point number three, the motivation to love, verses 11 to 12.

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The mandate, the manifestation, and the motivation. Let's look at each one of these points in detail.

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1st John 4, 7 and 8. Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God.

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And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyway, anyone who does not love does not know

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God because God is love. The first thing that we see in these verses is the mandate or the command to love.

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Beloved, let us love one another. Now this is the third time that John has reminded his readers in this short little epistle of the command to love one another.

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And before the letter is through, he'll repeat this command two more times. So five times in total to those whom the

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Lord God loves, to the beloved, the command to love one another is given.

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This command was also repeated numerous times in the gospel of John. Before the arrest and crucifixion of the

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Lord Jesus Christ at the last supper, the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed to his disciples,

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John 13, a new commandment. I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you.

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You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples.

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If you have love for one another, there has always been great weight and importance that has been attached to this command.

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It was heavy on the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the hours immediately preceding his arrest and his crucifixion, in the hours preceding his great humiliation, in the hours preceding his atonement of sin and the propitiation of the wrath of God, the

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Lord Jesus Christ commanded his disciples to love one another just as he had loved them.

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What kind of love are we talking about? The word love can mean many different things.

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This is a word that is used very differently in our day. I love pizza.

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I love my wife. Do I really mean to say that I love pizza with the same fervent intensity that I love my wife?

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Oddly enough, I do. In ancient Greek literature, there were three words that were used to describe the term love, eros, phileo, and agape.

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Eros refers to greedy and self -centered love. A person who exhibits eros loves someone for what they can get out of that person.

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It's the love that is typical of the world. It is sensual, lustful, and demanding love.

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It's the kind of love that seeks to please self. It is a self -benefiting love.

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Eros is the kind of love that is all about me. It's the love of self and self -gratification.

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Phileo refers to brotherly love, which describes the love of affection for one another.

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This is descriptive of the love that occurs between family members and close friends. Phileo is the love of give and take.

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In other words, I love you because of what I can get from you and because of what I can give you.

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It's the give and take of friendship. Agape refers to selfless and sacrificial love.

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Agape love is giving love. There's no taking involved. It is a volitional and determined love.

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It is a selfless and enduring love. It is a sacrificial love that sees the highest good for another and seeks to deliver that good no matter what the cost.

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Agape love is the love of God. And the Greek translation of the phrase, let us love in 1

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John 4, 7 is agapao, which is the verb form of the noun agape.

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Agape. Our love is to be agape. Our love is to be giving.

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Our love is to be sacrificial. It is to recognize the greatest need of another and deliver the highest good for another, no matter the personal cost.

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And do you know why we are commanded to love in this way? Take another look at verse seven.

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Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows

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God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.

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The first reason why we are to love in this selfless, sacrificial and giving manner is that love is from God.

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God is the origin of love. God is the source of love. God is the giver of love.

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We love 1 John 4, 19 because he first loved us. The second reason why we are to love in this selfless, sacrificial and giving manner is that love is a manifestation, is the manifestation of our new life.

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Love is the manifestation of our regeneration. In other words, those who love prove that they have been born of God.

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Those who love prove that they know God. And conversely, those who do not love prove that they have not been born of God.

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Those who do not love prove that they do not know God. 1

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John 3, 10, By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

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Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

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For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

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According to these verses, what is it that separates the children of God from the children of the devil?

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What is it that separates the children of God from the children of the world? What is the evidence?

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The evidence is love. The evidence is love which manifests our regeneration.

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Well what is regeneration? Another word for regeneration is rebirth or to be born again.

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Regeneration refers to our new birth. It refers to our new spiritual life that the

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Lord God imparts to us. Man in his natural state is born spiritually dead.

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Man in his natural state is born in his trespasses and sins. He is born with a cold and dead heart that is rebellious and hostile to the things of God.

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For man to receive the Lord God, the dead heart of man must be regenerated.

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The dead heart of man must be made new. The Lord God must first breathe life into the man.

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It is the Lord God who initiates and imparts this new life to us. It is the

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Lord God who removes our cold, dead and stony hearts and replaces them with a living and beating heart of flesh.

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Ezekiel 36, 26 and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit

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I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

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I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

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Let me ask you a couple of questions. Is it evident to the world that you are a child of God?

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Is it evident to your neighbors that you're a child of God? Is it evident to your friends and family that you're a child of God?

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By your actions, do you demonstrate that you were a child of God? By your actions, do you demonstrate that you belong to God?

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Beloved, the Lord God commands his children to love. Love should be the hallmark of our lives.

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Love should be the hallmark of this church because selfless, sacrificial and giving love is the proper response to those who belong to God.

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To this truth, someone may cry foul. I don't buy any of that. I don't think you need regeneration to truly love someone.

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I don't think you need to know God to genuinely and sincerely love another person. I don't believe in God and I'm able to love other people just fine.

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Well, certainly unregenerate husbands and wives can love one another. Unregenerate parents can love their children and unregenerate soldiers often lay down their lives sacrificially for their brothers in arms and for the security of their nation.

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But these loving deeds stem from God's common grace. These examples of love, while genuine, authentic and caring, are not agape love.

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Do you know why? It goes back to our definition of agape, which is a volitional and sacrificial love that sees the highest good for another and then seeks to deliver that good no matter what the cost.

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Well, what is the highest good for another? There is only one highest good and that is to know and love the

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Lord God. And the reason why unbelievers cannot love in this way is that they do not know the

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Lord God, nor do they love the Lord God. So how could they possibly love in this manner?

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How could they love in the same manner in which the Lord God loves us? Love is from God and only those who have been born of God, only those who know the

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Lord God are capable of loving others in this way, in a selfless and sacrificial manner to the glory of the

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Lord God. The third reason we are to love in this manner is that love is a characteristic of God.

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The Lord God is love. God's nature is love.

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God's essence is love. At His very core, at His very being,

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God is love. I'm a human being. And in the morning when

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I get out of bed, I don't have to try to be human. I don't have to work on being human. I am human and it takes no effort for me to be human.

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It is who I am. God is love. And God doesn't have to try to be love.

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God is love. God doesn't have to work on being love. God is love, which is why only those who know the

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Lord God can truly love because God is love. You see, it's the

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Lord God who defines what love is and not the other way around. Love does not define

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God. God defines love because God is love. To flip it around and say that love is

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God is completely incorrect. The nouns in this phrase are not interchangeable. The definite article belongs with God and not with love.

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Love is not God, but rather God is love. A .W.

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Tozer in his book, Knowledge of the Holy, writes, from God's other known attributes, we may learn much about His love.

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We can know, for instance, that because God is self -existent, His love had no beginning.

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Because He is eternal, His love can have no end. Because He is infinite, it has no limit.

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Because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity.

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Because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea beyond which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats, confused and abashed.

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The love of God has no beginning. The love of God has no end. It has no limits.

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It is true. It is pure. The love of God is never ending. The Lord God never sets aside one of His attributes to exercise another one of His attributes.

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The Lord God never sets aside His holiness to exercise His justice. The Lord God never sets aside

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His omnipotence to exercise His sovereignty. Every perfection of God, every expression of God, every aspect of God belongs together, forever intertwined and united.

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Every single attribute of God indivisibly bound together with every one of the attributes of God.

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God is love, and because God is love and because we belong to God, because we are the children of God, we must reflect

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His character. The children of God must reflect the love of God, the love of our

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Father. To help us further understand the love of God, John gives us the greatest and the most supreme manifestation of the love of God.

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God the Father sending God the Son into the world to be the propitiation of our sins.

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First John 4, 9 and 10. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us.

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That God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.

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In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent

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His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. The greatest manifestation of love, the greatest example of love, agape love, was

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God the Father sending God the Son into the world to live and to die so that through His life and through His death, we might forever live through Him.

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And this is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent

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His Son. John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that He gave

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His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

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God gave His Son. God gave His only Son. Why? Why would

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God even entertain such a thought? Do our insignificant lives profit

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Him at all? Does the Lord God suffer any great loss by leaving us to perish?

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Why would the Lord God go to such great lengths to redeem such an obstinate and sinful people?

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Have you ever wondered why? Love. God is love and God so loved the world.

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God recognized our greatest need, our great need for a Savior, our great need for a

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Redeemer, our great need for a Deliverer, our great need for reconciliation, our great need to be rescued from slavery to sin and from the clutches of death.

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And beloved, the Lord God delivered. Romans 5, 6, while we were still weak, at the right time,

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Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die.

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But God shows His love for us and that while we were still sinners,

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Christ died for us amid our sin and our rebellion, amid our unrighteousness and our spiritual apathy.

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The Lord God delivered the highest good for us at the highest possible price, the precious blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, who was the propitiation of our sin.

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Propitiation isn't a term that you hear very often. What does the term mean?

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To what does the term propitiation refer? Well the Greek translation of the word propitiation is helisterion, which means to appease or to placate or to satisfy.

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And this term was often was also used in the book of Romans, Romans 3, 21 through 26. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

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This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance, He had passed over former sins.

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It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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The Lord God put Jesus Christ forward as the propitiation, as the appeasement, as the satisfaction for sin.

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In other words, propitiation is referring to Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

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It's referring to Jesus Christ taking upon Himself the full wrath of God, bearing the full wrath of God in our place for our sins as a spotless lamb, as a divinely appointed substitute for sinners.

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Jesus Christ absorbed the full wrath of God till the very end, and in doing so,

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He has forever changed our status before the Lord God. Before the

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Lord Jesus Christ, we were lost. We were alone in darkness, without any light, without any hope.

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Before the Lord Jesus Christ, we stood before the Lord God guilty, but we have been declared righteous because of Christ.

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Before the Lord God, before the Lord Jesus Christ, we stood before the Lord God as debtors, but our debts were canceled out because of Jesus Christ.

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We stood before the Lord God as strangers, but we were made sons and daughters because of Christ.

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We stood before the Lord God as His enemies, but we were made His friends because of Christ.

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We stood before the Lord God as slaves, but we have received redemption and freedom because of Christ.

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Beloved, these are things that we could never have accomplished by ourselves. Man can never pay back that which is owed to the

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Lord God. Man can never pay back the crushing and tremendous amount of debt that we owe to Him.

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This is why hell is eternal. It takes an eternity to pay for our transgressions against an infinite, holy, and just God.

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But the Lord God took that certificate of debt. He took that which was hostile toward us, that which stood against us with all of its legal demands, and He canceled it out by putting it in the hand of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and driving a nail through it. This canceled out our debt completely.

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The truth of it is, man cannot become righteous on his own. So the Lord God intervened.

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The Lord God graciously provided for our redemption through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

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The Lord God put Jesus Christ forward. The Lord God publicly displayed

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His perfect Son as our propitiation. And in doing so,

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He forever removed from us the wrath that we so rightly earned.

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And beloved, in this, the love of God was manifest. The Lord Jesus Christ, who was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made

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Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man, and being found in human form,

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He further humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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And this, beloved, this is our motivation to love one another. 1

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John 4, 11 and 12, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

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No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.

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The conclusion that the apostle draws is crystal clear. If God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another.

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In the same way that God loved us, which is a volitional and determined love, a selfless and enduring love, a sacrificial love that sees the highest good for another and seeks to deliver that good no matter what it may cost.

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In this same way, we are to love one another. 1

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John 3, 16 through 18, by this we know love, that He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

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But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him, how does

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God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth.

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The Lord God has given us the capacity to love one another. The Lord God has given us the capacity to love one another as He has loved us.

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Because the Spirit of God, who is love, indwells within us. The Lord God has given us the capacity to love one another as He has loved us because we've seen it in the life and example of Jesus Christ.

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Beloved, we've seen the model. We have seen the pattern. We have seen the manifestation of the love of God.

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You never need to ask yourself the question, how should I love this person? Or how should I demonstrate love to this person?

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The true Christian already knows the answer. Look to the example of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and make whatever sacrifice is necessary. Enough with the talk, enough with the words.

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Don't wait for the feeling. Love is not a feeling. Love is not a state. Love is an action.

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Our love for one another, our love for others is to be shown in truth, in word, and in deed.

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Love is a deliberate, volitional act of the will that involves the meeting of other people's needs.

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Even if that involves personal sacrifice, pain, and discomfort on your part.

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Agape love does not wait for the other person to ask. Agape love does not wait for the other person to respond so you can reciprocate.

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Love is not conditioned upon anything. Love is not what the other person does for me or to me.

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Agape love is not even remotely focused on me. It is focused on others.

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Love is others focused. Love takes the initiative. Love pours out richly, expecting nothing in return.

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Regarding our loving action to one another, one pastor remarked,

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It is a biblical, discerning, discriminating service rendered to others in need, even if it means sacrifice.

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It is not an emotion. It is a duty. It is an act of selfless sacrifice on behalf of someone else.

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It cannot be reduced to an emotional feeling. The key to love is selflessness.

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The key to love is humility. The key to love is to be lost in meeting the needs of others.

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And the people who really love are committed to others, unselfish and gracious to meet others' needs, no matter who they are and no matter what the need might be.

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Everything begins with love. For the Christian, everything begins with love and everything that we do should be done in love because the

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Lord God is love and God has so loved us. Now, I've mentioned this many times before in my teaching, but I want to mention it again.

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In your life, there's nothing that can take the place of love. Agape love.

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Orthodoxy, right doctrine, is not a substitute for love. Good works are not a substitute for love, nor is anything else a substitute for love.

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There can be nothing that takes the place of love in your life. Romans 12, 9, let love be genuine.

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Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection.

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Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal.

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Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation.

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Be constant in prayer. Beloved, our love for one another is to be genuine.

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Our love for one another is to be sincere. Our love for one another is literally not to be pretend.

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It is not to hide under a false pretense. John Calvin knew the difficulty of this.

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He writes, nothing is more difficult than to love our neighbors in sincerity. For the love of ourselves rules, which is full of hypocrisy.

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And besides, everyone measures his love, which he shows in others, by his own advantage and not by the rule of doing good.

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Peter adds fervently, for the more slothful we are by nature, the more ought everyone to stimulate himself to fervor and earnestness, and that not only once, but more and more daily.

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Our love for one another should not be an act. It should not be just acting the part.

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It should not be phony. It should not be wearing a mask, and it must not be hypocritical.

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Our love for one another must be sincere. It must be genuine. It must be authentic.

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Our love is to mirror the love of God. Speaking of a mirror, the apostle gives us one last reason to love one another.

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1 John 4, 12, no one has ever seen God. If we love one another,

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God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. Why does

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John bring up that no one has ever seen God? What's he saying here? What is the implication?

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I think John is pointing out the obvious. The Lord God is invisible, and how are people going to know him if they cannot see him?

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If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

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If we love one another, the Lord God is put on display. If we love one another, the unseen

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God becomes seen. John 13, 34, a new commandment

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I give to you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You are to love one another.

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By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

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And when we love as we should, when we love God and it is perfected in us, we reveal that he abides in us.

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Our love is the evidence of his indwelling presence. Beloved, the

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Lord God has given us the mandate to love one another, for love is from God.

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And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. The Lord God has given us an example to follow.

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God the Father sent his only son into the world to be the propitiation for our sins so that we might live through him.

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And the motivation to carry out this love is rooted in the character of the

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Lord God. God is love. If we love one another, the

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Lord God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. Let's pray.

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Our Father, you have shown us such tremendous love. You chose us before the foundation of the world.

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You gave us the Lord Jesus Christ. You gave us your law. You gave us the prophets.

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You gave us Christ. You gave us the Spirit. You gave us gifted men and women to proclaim your truth.

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You gave us your Spirit to enable us to believe. Lord, we have everything we need to love one another, and yet so often we don't.

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Lord, we confess our lack of love for the brethren. We confess our lack of love for the world.

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We confess our love of self, and so often it beats out all the others. Lord, I pray that we would remember the gospel.

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We would remember that Jesus Christ is Lord and Jesus Christ died to save sinners so that we might love as you have loved us.

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We pray, Lord, that we would look at our brothers and sisters in Christ through this lens, through the love of God.

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Lord, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were antagonistic, while we weren't seeking you, while we were living our own lives, living life to our own advantage, you saved us.

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Lord, I pray that we would look at others in this church, that we would look at others in our lives with a great love.

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We pray, Lord, that we would recognize their great need, their great need for a Savior, their great need to hear the gospel, and that we would be bold and proclaim this truth.

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We pray, Lord, that this church would be known for their love because you, Lord, love us, and you are love.