Grace Church exists to glorify our Heavenly Father by
 continually making more disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Love: It’s a family thing! 1 John 4:7-12 Get Real: A Study of 1 John Sermon #18 Have you heard that Jeffrey Jordan is playing basketball for the University of Illinois? In case you didn’t know, Jeffrey Jordan is Michael Jordan’s oldest son. It’s not really a big surprise. But if Jacob Devito, the son of Danny Devito and Rhea Perlman, was playing basketball for the University of Illinois, that would be real news! It’s not a big deal that actor Kirk Douglas has an actor son, Michael. Or that our 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush, is the son of the late Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut or that President George W. Bush and Governor Jeb Bush are his sons. We’re not surprised that baseball great, Ken Griffey had a Ken Griffey Jr or that Nascar racing legend, Ralph Earnhardt had an equally, if not more famous racing son and grandson, Dale and Dale Jr. We’re not even surprised at the mother-daughter team of Joan and Melissa Rivers.     Like begets like, it’s a family thing. That’s exactly what John is saying in 1 John 4:7-12 (p. 863), Love: It’s a Family Thing. Since God is love, His children, those who have been born-again, should also be loving and known for their love. It’s a Family Thing. The Jesus People had a song reflecting this, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”   It’s Sunday morning though and we’re in church, so we need to be honest. Do you think that the world really knows that we’re Christians by our love for one another? Do you believe that most churches are known for their love for one another? Let’s get a little more personal…are most Christian couples, are most Christian families, really known for their love for one another? To be sure, there’s some level of subjectivity here but I have to say, for the most part “No.” Some of us have been in churches that were like that old Hee Haw song, “fussin’ and a feudin’ and a fightin’.” If Love is a Family Thing for God’s family, why isn’t it that the case more often? Why aren’t more Christians known for their love for each other? By way of introduction let me suggest three reasons.   First, I believe that this is the case because there are tragically more professors than there are possessors. Love is of God. It’s a fruit of the Spirit. If you don’t really know the Father, then you’ll not have and be able to share true love.   Secondly, for those who do know the Lord, this love begins with a right relationship with the Father. If you do not have a fervent love for the Father, you’ll have difficulty having it flowing out of your life for the brothers and sisters. The fact is that we American Christians have so much other stuff in our lives that we truly struggle with having Jesus Christ first place in our lives…and it shows, particularly in this area of love.   Thirdly, too many Christians really do not understand or experience God’s love in their lives personally. They know God loves them and that Jesus died to save them. But if you were to get them to be real honest, I believe that they’re more afraid of God, that they’re much more familiar with His commands – the do’s and don’ts of Scripture – than they are with the wonderful reality that God loves them. Remember the Wizard of Oz and how everyone was petrified to be in the presence of the great Oz? That’s similar to how they view God. They’re scared He’s out to get them. And they need their soul re-wired so that they know the God Who is love, because while fear is a motivator, love is a passion that gets us to run while fear can barely get us to crawl.   Some 27 times the Bible commands Christians to love each other. Why does the Bible make such a big issue of Christians loving each other? Why couldn’t God just tell us to put up with each other or to tolerate each other? Every church I know of, every pastor I talk to, struggles with this idea of Christians loving each other. It’s not that Christians don’t believe it, but it’s that it’s so difficult sometimes. Some churches simply give up on the idea because it seems too lofty, too unrealistic. Other churches just pretend like they love each other, but peel away the surface and you find the poison of bitterness and resentment, seeping out in gossip and slander.   Here at Grace Church we too struggle with loving each other. Most of the time, at best, we just like each other yet we certainly don’t live up to the New Testament ideal of what it means to truly love one another.   Why is loving each other such a significant part of the spiritual journey? What is it about the quality of our relationships with each other that causes God to say, "That’s important!"?  What does our love for other Christians show about the reality our spiritual journey?   This morning we need to Get Real, set aside our excuses as to why we find it difficult to love each other and take a hard look at why loving relationships are so high on God’s priority list. We’re not talking about this today because of any specific problem, but simply because this is the next section in 1 John and we all need lots of help in this area. This morning we want to unpack 1 John 4:7-12 and see why it’s so vitally important that we love other Christians, starting with your brothers and sisters in this church. We want to help you so that this becomes the driving passion of your life and revolutionizes your life. If you’re taking notes then… 1. We should love one another because God is love, vss. 7-8. “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” What inspires you…really gets you going? Most great leaders were inspired by a mentor. Most great athletes were inspired by a coach. Champion basketball coach, Phil Jackson shared that he was inspired by his basketball coach, Red Holzman, when he played for the New York Knicks. One of my professors, Dr. Richard Weeks, gave me a passion for ministry.   John doesn’t want to threaten us into loving. He’s not trying to scare us into loving. He’s seeking to inspire us with God’s great love, His generous affection for us, His unconditional love for us…just as we are. John wants that to so catch us up, to so enthrall us that an outgrowth of it is love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Harlem Globetrotter, Melvin Adams wonderfully summarized God’s love this way, “No matter how much you do, God isn't going to love you more.  And no matter what you don't do, He's not going to stop loving you.” Twice in this passage John practices what he preaches. In urging them to love each other, he first assures them of his love for them. “Dear friends” is the Greek word agapetoi and is better translated Beloved. Obviously, genuine love requires much more than calling someone tender names, but John's readers knew him to be a man who practiced love for them. His words and his behavior were in complete harmony. Because God is love…   a) God alone is the source of genuine love; it comes from His very nature. “God is love.” John does not say that God loves or God is loving. He says “God is love.” Love is His very nature. This doesn’t  suggest that God is some sentimental, grandfatherly type who winks at man’s sin rather than punishing it.   This is the second time in this letter John uses a “God is…” phrase. Earlier, in 1:5 he writes, “God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.” That’s the same as saying God is holiness. His love does not cancel His holiness, nor does His holiness cancel out His love. Robert Law, speaking of the nature of God says, “That nature is holy love.”   For us to comprehend the sweeping character of this statement “God is love,” substitute the name of anyone you know – your mother, your spouse, a friend, a well-known Christian, some hero of the faith or even yourself – for God. Few are the people that we would describe simply with the word “love.” Your Mom might be the most loving person you know. She may have shown you what mature, self-giving genuine love is like. Yet no matter how full, rich or steadfast her love, the statement “Mom is loving” can never be changed into “Mom is love.” Love does not characterize her as it characterizes God. It’s not her very nature. But love is the very essence of God’s being and the very opposite is not true. We cannot reverse this to be “love is God,” as if any display of affection qualifies as divine. Because we know who we really are, to believe that God is love and loves us, is probably the hardest thing to believe.   The Apostle links love to the nature of God in a very subtle way in these verses. These statements regarding love and our need to love is linked to all three persons in the Trinity. The entire Tri-unity of God is involved. In vss. 7-8, the reference is to God the Father; vss, 9-10 are linked primarily to God the Son, in that He loved us and died for us. And verse 12 is linked to God the Spirit in that He lives in us. In other words, God the Father is love, God the Son is love, and God the Spirit is love. Therefore, if we know the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we will love.   Love has a double-relationship to God. It is only by knowing God that we learn to love, and it’s only by loving that we get to know God better. Love comes from God and love leads to God.   Of course, even unbelievers may demonstrate sacrificial love for others. Unbelieving parents often sacrificially love their children or their mates. Unbelieving soldiers may lay down their lives for their comrades. These loving deeds stem from God's common grace. While such love is caring and self-sacrificing, it never can be genuinely biblical, because unbelievers cannot seek the highest good of the one loved, namely, that the other person comes to saving faith and conformity to Christ. John wants us to know that whenever we see genuine Biblical love, it did not originate with the person. It came from God. God is the only source of love in the world. Then, because God is love…   b) God’s true children display His nature. “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (v. 7b-8). Dogs look like dogs because they come from dogs. Ducks look like ducks because they come from ducks. It’s their nature. On October 7th when we have our Hog Roast, no one is going to look around Thompson’s farm and ask, “Which one of those goats had this hog?” That’s against nature.   Since God is love, as His children, we must display His nature. John states this both positively and negatively, “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God.” John is simply saying that children take on the characteristics of their parents. If we have been born of the God who is love, and thus have come to know Him, we will be growing in love. The opposite is also true. One who does not love tragically shows that he/she does not know God.   If I said I loved my wife, Jane, but I never spoke to her or acknowledged her…never remembered her birthday or our anniversary, you’d have good reason to question if I really loved her. We need to take this to heart in a very serious way. Many in our churches claim to be born again, but they do not love others nor do they make any effort to do so. They’re angry, bitter, unkind, impatient, abusive in their speech, self-centered in their daily lives, and judgmental of others. They spread malicious gossip with great delight and they become very defensive if you try to point out any of these sins to them. Of such ones, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “Oh, my heart grieves and bleeds for them...they are pronouncing and proclaiming that they are not born of God. They are outside the life of God...there is no hope for such people unless they repent and turn to Him.” A stranger to love is a stranger to God.   A little boy came home from his first day at kindergarten. His mother asked what he’d learned. He responded, “We learned to play with kids we don’t like.” That’s the first lesson in God’s kindergarten. It demonstrates that we are truly God’s children. And that’s John's first point, because God is love, if we are truly His children, we must love one another. 2. God demonstrates His love for us by making the ultimate sacrifice, vss. 9-10. “This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”   How do we know God is love? It’s one thing to say it, it’s quite another to see it. In the play, My Fair Lady, Eliza is being courted by Freddie, who writes to her daily of his love for her. Eliza’s response to his notes is to cry out in frustration: "Words! Words! I’m so sick of words! Don’t talk of stars burning above, If you’re in love, show me! Don’t talk of love lasting through time. Make me no undying vow –Show me now!"   We don’t want to hear about love, we want to see love. In St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, there is a life-sized statute of Christ writhing in agony on the cross. Underneath is the inscription, “This is how God loved the world.” At the cross we see how God loved the world.S.D. Gordon said, “We would all easily agree that the greatest picture of God's marvelous, overmastering passion of love is seen in the Cross.” Peter Mackenzie said, “When God Loves, He loves a world. When He gives, He gives His Son. Such is the boundless love of God.”   This word “showed” in the original language means “to take something that you can’t see and to make it visible.” God took His unseen love and made it visible when He sent His one and only Son into the world for us. Think about it, how would we know God is love apart from the incarnation? When we see the suffering and pain around us, when we read of the holiness of God and that He is a consuming fire…apart from Christ coming into this world for us, we would never know that God is love.   Please note that it wasn’t one of many sons, it was His “one and only Son.” No greater gift is conceivable because no greater gift is possible. Had silver and gold sufficed God could have given tons and tons and still had tons and tons left, but He only had one Son. The wording is very similar to John 3:16 which John no doubt has in mind. How does God demonstrate His love?   a) In love God sent His only Son into this world so that we might live, “He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.” This implies that the ones to whom the Son was sent were spiritually dead and He came to give them life, eternal life. The Greek tense indicates this is an actual bestowal of life with the resultant ongoing possession of eternal life. Because of Jesus, we don’t have to wait until heaven to live eternally…it starts here and now. We’re as alive as we will ever be and it will continue into eternity future.   Christianity is not a matter of a person deciding to stop certain sinful practices and to start doing morally acceptable practices. It’s not a matter of changing from being a non-religious person who spends Sundays for himself, to becoming a regular churchgoer. Rather, at its heart, Christianity is a matter of God imparting new life to those who are dead in their sins (Eph. 2:1-5). That new life demonstrates itself in loving behavior. Born-again people who have experienced God's love will display His love to this wicked world that crucified the Son of God. God demonstrates His love in that…   b) In love God sacrificed His only Son so that we did not have to die, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”   If you really think about it, does Paris Hilton really have anything to be arrogant about? Everything she has was earned by her great-grandfather, Conrad Hilton, and then passed down to her family. Christians too really have nothing to be proud of. To keep the focus off of ourselves or from getting puffed up with pride over how loving we are, John directs us back to God's love that was demonstrated by His sending Jesus to be the propitiation for our sins. “Atoning sacrifice” or as it says in some translations, “propitiation,” means to satisfy God's justice and wrath toward our sin. His love didn't just brush aside our sin because His holiness and justice would have been compromised. Rather, His love moved the Father to send His own Son, who bore the penalty that we rightly deserved. The initiative was totally with God! He didn't wait until we showed some promise of changing or until we cried out for help. As Paul puts it, “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). In grace God gave us what we need, not what we deserve.   When the first missionaries came to Alberta, Canada, they were savagely opposed by a young Cree Indian chief named Maskepetoon. He ultimately responded to the gospel and accepted Christ. Shortly afterward, a member of the Blackfoot tribe killed his father. Maskepetoon rode into the village where the murderer lived and demanded that he be brought before him. Confronting the guilty man, he said, "You have killed my father, so now you must be my father. You shall ride my best horse and wear my best clothes." In utter amazement and remorse his enemy exclaimed, "My son, now you have killed me!" He meant, of course, that the hate in his own heart had been completely erased by the forgiveness and kindness of this born-again Indian chief. That’s what Jesus did for us. At the cross He killed our sin by giving His life in our place…giving us what we didn’t deserve. Since God has so loved us, John's conclusion is inescapable… 3. As recipients of such an unbelievable love, how dare we not duplicate His love in our love for one another, vss. 11-12. “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.” Nothing less than God’s love in Christ is the model for the love Christians should have for one another. Now most of us would have had no problem if John, in light of all God has done for us, told us that we must love God. But he didn’t, he told us to love our fellow Christians as God has loved us. And we really struggle here. Most of us can appreciate the candidness of C.W. Vanderbergh when he wrote, “To love the whole world for me is no chore. My only real problem is my neighbor next door.”     In all honesty there are some of Christians who are just hard to love. There are some people that we’d rather mug than hug.   More than we want to admit it, we’re like the lady who was sick, so she went to the doctor. The doctor examined her, ran some tests and then said to her, "I'm sorry to tell you this but you have rabies." This lady picked up a notepad and began writing. Her doctor asked, "Are you writing out your will?" She said, “No, I'm making a list of all the people I'm going to bite."     Our tendency is to want to get even with those who’ve wronged us. That’s our nature, yet the command to love one another does not rely on our human nature for fulfillment. It relies on the divine nature we received and the love that is given to us by God. The love that comes from God and is received from God at conversion enables us to love when we naturally could not and would not love. It’s love that’s the outcome of our personal relationship with God. John qualifies this in that…   a) We are to love one another as God has loved us, “since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Does it bug you to be in debt? If you’re really in need and someone rescues you, do you find that you have some nearly overwhelming urge to try to repay them? That’s what John is saying. This ought is a debt. Ought implies obligation or commandment. The recipients of such love can do nothing else but show such love to one another…because of the tremendous debt they have. John is saying, in light of such love, one would have to be a rock to not want to love other Christians. Our obligation to love one another is a byproduct of God’s loving generosity to us. That this love can be commanded shows that it’s not primarily a feeling, it’s an action based on commitment. While love is not devoid of feeling, it’s not based on it. We must love others or we are being disobedient to God.   Obviously, if everyone were easy to love, we wouldn't need this powerful example of God's love or such a strong exhortation to love one another. A lost world loves those that love them, but Jesus commands us to love even our enemies (Mt. 5:43-47). Implicit in what John is saying is that we must love those who may not be especially lovable or easy to love. If I may speak hypothetically (I'm sure no one can relate to this!), you may have a mate who is self-centered and difficult to live with but John says, "since God so loved you, you also ought to love that difficult mate." There may be people in this church you don’t like. John says, "if God so loved you, you also ought to love that difficult person." It’s in these difficult situations that God's amazing love in Christ shines forth in us. If you're having trouble loving someone, remember God loved you while you were still a sinner. He sent His Son to a world filled with sin. If you’re His child through the new birth, you must be the channel for His love to flow to those who may not be very lovable.   Can I make some important applications? This is one reason why I believe Scripture prohibits believers from suing one another or divorcing one another. Now Scripture does have an exception for divorce but for two believers to divorce one another apart from that is supremely unloving and a violation of this command.   God’s love demonstrates that real love forgets self. Real love doesn't count the cost. To love one another may mean the sacrifice of our own time and wants. It may mean a personal, emotional or even a financial sacrifice. Others are the object of our love, their benefit is the objective of our love, and it is a love that does not regard the cost of showing love.   b) While we cannot see God, loving one another is evidence that God lives in us, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.” At first glance this verse seems out of context. John’s been discussing God's love for us and our love for one another. Then, somewhat abruptly, he states, “No one has ever seen God.” And we wonder, "Why did he throw that in here? What does God's invisibility have to do with a discussion of love?" The same words occur in the prologue to John's Gospel, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known” (John 1:18). But in 1 John he continues with, "if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us." So what’s he saying?   He’s saying that the unseen God, who was historically revealed in the incarnation of His Son, is now revealed in us by the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit when we love one another. What an amazing thought! People do not see God, they may never read the Bible, but they do see and read the lives of Christians. They read your Christian home. They read this church in our love for one another. They read you as you interact with others at work or at school. If they see a remarkable, other-worldly love in those places-especially if they see love when they would expect retaliation-they see God abiding in us. But if they see anger, bitterness, verbal attacks, and hatred, then they don’t see God.   T. S. Randall was right, “Love always comes to visibility.” John is shat that when a lost world looks at the Church, they should see a love that can only be explained by the supernatural work of God. When they see our love for one another, they see God.   So what are they seeing? Can I make some obvious connections? If they are seeing love, should they ever hear Christians gossiping or trash talking one another? Should they see Christians at odds with one another? Should they see Christians making mountains out of molehills? If they’re seeing love, should we have to feel like we have to twist arms to get folk to make a meal for someone coming home from the hospital? Should we have to urge you to be on the prayer chain or to consistently pray for one another? Should we have to plead for children’s workers?   What’s a lost world seeing? John says that if we know the God who is love then they will see His love flowing through us for one another! Love will be seen concretely in our lives, not just talked about.   Maybe the reason there are so many atheists today than possibly at any other point in history is simply this: we don’t love each other so a lost world just doesn’t see God! We spend time learning arguments in which to defend the faith, when what is primarily needed is to learn to love one another. As someone rightly observed, “A saint is someone in whom Christ lives again.” Do others see Him living in us? Conclusion: Let me end with a story from J. Allen Blair. In his commentary on 1 John, Living Confidently, he shares this experience. He said that he was preaching on this truth, that one cannot be a believer and have a grudge toward a brother or sister in Christ, at the conclusion of the message; he gave an invitation for any unsaved present to come forward to receive Christ. And one of the most active members in his church came forward. His first thought was that perhaps she had misunderstood the invitation, for she had been a faithful worker in the church for years and gave every evidence of being a Christian. But she came to the front sobbing, tears dripping from her cheeks. Dr. Blair asked her why she had come forward, what decision she was making that morning. Quickly, she replied, “I came forward to be saved. My life has been a sham. I have merely gone through the motions. This morning for the first time I realized that my hatred for another woman had closed my door to Heaven. I want to experience God’s love through Christ so that I might reveal His love to the one I have despised for years.” Blair then writes, “And God did a wonderful miracle in her life that morning. Hatred was mastered by the love of Christ.”   John tells us that Love is a family thing. Does your love for other believers demonstrate that you are part of God’s family? Is His love pouring through you for your brothers and sisters in Christ? If not, perhaps you don’t have God as your Father and Jesus Christ as your Savior. “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”   .