Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105
(262) 763-3021
Sunday, May 24, 2009 1:56 PM
Grace Church exists to glorify our
Heavenly Father by
continually making more disciples of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Living in God’s Love
1 John 4:12-16
Get Real: A Study of 1 John
Sermon #19Personal Space. Personal space is defined as that region surrounding each person, that area which a person considers his/her domain or territory.
Cultural researcher and anthropologist, Edward T. Hall, identified four personal space distances: 1) Someone we’re intimate with, 0-18 inches; 2) Someone we have a casual relationship with, 1.5-4 feet; 3) Someone we have a social relationship with, 4-10 feet; 4) and with the general public, 10 feet and beyond. Obviously, different cultures have different norms for personal space closeness.
How do you feel when someone “invades” your personal space? Maybe you’re at a restaurant and someone sits too close, or you’re on a train or plane…perhaps standing in a check-out line at the grocery story and someone is having a very personal conversation on their cell phone right next to you. Do feel your “personal space” has been invaded? Do you feel uncomfortable, agitated, even irritated? They’re in your space!
Recently, I was at Caribou Coffee studying away for this sermon. Just a handful of people were there so there were plenty of empty tables and chairs. But for some reason two men starting pulling chairs in a circle obviously for some type of group meeting less than a foot away from me. I’m not exaggerating, I could have easily reached out and touched them and in moments about ten people gathered, coffees in hand for this intense and fairly loud group meeting. Now there were plenty of other empty areas throughout the coffee shop but they decided to lodge in my personal space…and I started feeling a tad agitated. To add insult to injury, it soon became apparent that they were not a group of rude, obnoxious pagans but they were Christians from a local parachurch ministry…and I felt myself becoming even more irritated. As I was working through various feelings of annoyance, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Here I was working on a message about loving your brothers and sisters in Christ and yet feeling very, very irritated and very unloving toward a group of my brothers and sisters…and I almost laughed out loud at the irony. And the Spirit convicted me for my own lack of love.
It’s much easier to talk about love, to philosophize, to hypothesize about love…than it is to live it out. That’s what our friend John is addressing in the passage before us. Turn to 1 John 4:12-16 (p. 864).
Just like us John’s congregation struggled with “Me Churchism.” Have you ever thought about this? Moments before Jesus told His disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another,” (Jn 13:34) they had been fussing and arguing about who was the greatest. The great Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, was written to the church that had a terrible reputation for divisions, cliques and quarrels. Nearly 25 times in this short book the Apostle John talks about love but he’s writing to a warring church, a church which has recently gone through a church split, a church known for division and controversy.
Most of us don’t have to think very hard to think of Christians who don’t love each other, who have trouble getting along. If you’ve been a Christian very long, sadly you’ve probably seen believers stomp out of a local church in a huff. Maybe you’re struggling with feelings of resentment and bitterness toward another believer this very morning.
Without wading into a “he said, she said,” rather than focusing on the fight, John turns our attention to the cure. His remedy is not some cheap hackneyed demand that Christians should love one another, instead John buttresses the command to love with a theological affirmation of what makes love possible in the first place. He’s also quite candid that love and gracious reconciliation are not easy. It’s much easier to believe the right things than to behave the right way, to be truly Christlike and loving. Orthodoxy is always simpler than orthopraxy.
So John points the way for men and women to be grounded powerfully in God’s love and then be able to experience divine transforming love that will affect community life. He envisions believers who are so completely healed inwardly that love and reconciliation within the community is natural byproduct of spiritual maturity. Living in God’s Love is to be normative. Whether you struggle with love for others in this church family or other Christians who cross your path, or even believers in your own personal family, John’s words are for each of us. Living in God’s Love is within reach, possible and to be the norm for every believer. The Christian life is to be a daily experience of growing in the love of God. 2000 years later mature Christian love is still the great universal need among God’s people. If you’re taking notes…1. Apart from God’s love, life just does not make sense. 1 John 4 could be called “the other love chapter.” Here we have one of the greatest single statement about God in the whole Bible, that statement that “God is love” and then verse 19, “We love because [God] first loved us.” It’s amazing how many doors the understanding of God’s love unlocks. It’s the answer to most of life’s questions. For example…
a) God’s love is the explanation of creation. Have you ever found yourself wondering why God created this world? For God this world has been a heartbreak. The disobedience, the rebelliousness, the lack of response in mankind is a continual grief to Him. Why should God create a world which was going to bring Him nothing but trouble? The answer is that God created the world because creation is essential to the very nature of God. Love, to be love, must have someone to love, and someone to love it. God's act of creation was a necessity of His divine nature, because, being love, it was vital for God to have someone whom He might love and who also might love Him.
b) God’s love is the explanation of free-will. Unless love is a free response it’s not love. There can be no love which is not spontaneous love. Had God been only law He could have created a world in which men functioned robotically, constantly obedient to the laws of the universe and of God because they had no more choice than a machine has. But if God had made men like that, there would have been no possibility of a personal relationship between God and man. Love is of necessity the free choice and free response of the heart. Therefore, before men could love God in any real sense, their wills had to be free; and, thus God endowed men with free volition that the very purpose of creation might be fulfilled.
c) God’s love is the explanation of providence. Had God been simply mind and order and law, He might have just created the universe, wound it up, set it going, and left it. He might have used it as a man uses a machine, never paying any attention to it unless something goes wrong. There are all sorts of items and machines we’re urged to buy because we can plug them in and forget them. Their most attractive quality is that they can be left alone to run themselves. Because God is love His creating act is followed by His constant care. He not only created the world, His love for ever sustains, upholds and broods over the world of His love.
d) God’s love is the explanation of redemption. If God were only law and justice, He would simply leave us to face His justice and the consequences of our sin. The moral law would operate; the soul that sinned would die; and the eternal justice would hand out its rewards and punishments. The very fact though that God is love means that God must seek and save that which is lost. He must find a remedy for sin and a cure for the sickness of the soul. It’s impossible totally to kill the love of a parent for a child, and God as Creator is the Father of all human beings.
e) God’s love is the explanation of life everlasting. If God were simply creator, then men might live their brief span and die for ever. The life which ended too soon would merely be another flower which the frost of death withered too soon. The fact that God is love though makes it certain that the chances and the changes of life do not have the last word, that there is the love of God which will readjust the balance of this life, that there is so much more beyond the grave for those who have accepted His Son as Lord and Savior, and are part of His forever family.2. Because of God’s unbelievable love He indwells us, vss. 12-16. If you could live anywhere you wanted to, where would you live? If one of these places were for sale, would you choose to buy one and move in? (show pictures of shacks) I doubt it. “God lives in us.” When God comes into our lives, He really moves into a dump, a hell hole. But He loves us so much that He willingly moves in.
At first these five verses seem unrelated to the subject of love that comes before and is picked up again in verse 16. But this great statement involving all three Persons of the Trinity is the key to our being able to love, to having God’s love flow through us. Apart from the indwelling of God in believers, it would be impossible for us to love and share God’s love. It’s this simple. God is love and if you don’t know God, then you’re not going to know love and it can’t flow through you.
The fact that God the Father sent His Son to be Savior of the world is John’s litmus test for doctrinal orthodoxy. It’s the supreme evidence of God’s love for us and our source of love for others. The Trinity, the deity of Christ, God’s love for us and our love for God and man cannot be divorced. Any belief system that robs Christ of His Deity, robs God the Father of the glory of His love and robs sinful, fallen man of both the belief and the source that generates a perfect love within him. To weaken faith ultimately deadens love. You cannot know God apart from the Cross, you cannot love apart from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and you cannot love apart from knowing the God Who is love. These wonderful divine truths are all interrelated. That’s why God’s indwelling is mentioned three times in this paragraph. An unsaved person can’t believe or be indwelt or love. In a fallen, unredeemed state man is blind and selfish.
Love is the first fruit of the Spirit. There can be no fruit where there is no root of His indwelling.
You and I like to think that we’re nice, kind people full of the milk of human kindness…we’re not. We dirty rotten sinners filled with depraved poison. It’s only because of Calvary, it’s only because God sent His only Son, it’s only because the Spirit indwells us, it’s only because of His power and work that we can love.
In the early days of radio in Britain, famous playwright George Bernard Shaw was giving a talk on the peculiarities of the English language. In the course of this talk he mentioned that there are only two words in English which begin with the sound “sh” but are not spelled “sh.” One listener wrote in to correct him and to say that there was only one such word, “sugar.” She received a personal postcard in response, on which George Bernard Shaw had written just one sentence, “Madam, are you sure?”
Being sure is risky business, yet John insists that God wants us to know that we are His and that our Christian experience is real. The foundation of Christian assurance is this fact “we live in God and He lives in us.” That poses all sorts of problems in our scientific age which teaches that only “seeing is believing.” We cannot see God or see that we live in Him or that He lives in us. Our feelings are an equally untrustworthy guide. They’re notoriously subjective and easily deluded. So how can we be sure? If we don’t know God, if He does not indwell us, we will not love. It’s a matter of source. One cannot be regenerate without loving and one cannot love without being regenerate. We could just park here for the rest of the morning and really for several days and never exhaust this wonderful truth. Let me point out two things before we move on.
a) The whole Trinity acts in divine love for us. This is John’s salvation doxology, much as we see from Paul’s pen in Ephesians 1:3-14. If I told you that Bill Gates loved you and was willing to spare no expense to demonstrate that love for you, you’d be staggered. This past week the media reported that Hollywood star, Charlize Theron, was crowned the sexiest woman alive by one magazine. Now if I told you that Charlize Theron was in love with you, it would get your attention.
The truth is that neither Bill Gates or Charlize Theron even know that we’re on the same planet. But John gives us something that so exceeds that, that it is truly awesome. God the Father, the Creator not only knows your name, He loves you and sent His Son to die for your sins. His Son, Jesus loves you so much that He willingly came and died a horrible death on the Cross to pay for your sins. God the Spirit loves you so much that when you committed your life to Christ, though your life was a dirty human shack, He personally took up residence inside of you. John mentions all three Persons of the Godhead in connection with his portrayal of redeeming love. And my friend, if that isn’t love, nothing is!
John wants us to know these things with assurance and certainly, and to be solid and secure in our relationship with God. He wants us to “know that we live in Him and He in us” (v. 13). In verse 12 the Apostle mentions God’s abiding in us. Then in 4:13, 15, & 16, he repeats the same truth in terms of mutual abiding, God in us and we in God. John wants to give us assurance of this mutual abiding relationship.
Please note that while “abide” is John’s word for fellowship with God, it would be a mistake to think that only some elite believers enter into this abiding relationship, while other average believers do not abide. To be sure, the abiding relationship grows and deepens over a lifetime. Those who have walked with Christ for decades typically enjoy a closer fellowship with Him than those who are new in their faith. But in John’s mind, every Christian abides in Christ and Christ in him.
It’s this simple. If you’re not abiding in Him and He in you, then you’re not saved. When we talk about assurance of abiding, we’re talking about the assurance of salvation.
b) Because we believe that God loves us and indwells us, we rely and live in His love. “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (v. 16). When we’re born-again, God does something in us. We too become participants in the great drama of God’s love.
A Sunday School teacher was reviewing a lesson his class was supposed to know. He asked, “What made Jesus come into the world?” But no one answered. The teacher became irritated and repeated the question: “What made Jesus come into the world?” Still no answer so he exploded: “Love! Love!” And he marched around the room hitting each child on the head with a ruler shouting, “Love! Love!” John doesn’t beat us over the head with a ruler shouting “Love! Love!” but instead gives us the Trinity’s example and reason for loving one another. Then, he points out that God is our source for love, “we know and rely.”
Love is the crowning evidence that we are indwelt by God. Jesus did not simply teach the love of God, He proved it by giving His life on the Cross. He expects His followers to do the same, to demonstrate sacrificial love for one another. If we abide in Christ, we abide in His love. As we rely and share this love, we prove we’re Christians, that we know the Lord and that He indwells us. There is no separation between a believer’s inner life and his outer life. When God’s love flows through us, we’re selfless in our love. God’s love is a selfless love. There’s no other explanation for His sending Jesus into this world. As believers love, we draw on God’s love letting it flow through us.
A man standing in the greeting card section of a store was having trouble picking out a card. The clerk' asked if she could help, and he said, “Well, it's our 40th wedding anniversary, but I can’t find a card that says what I want to say. You know, 40 years ago it wouldn't have been any problem picking out a card, because back then I thought I knew what love was. But we love each other so much more today, I just can't find a card that says it!” That’s the growing Christian’s experience with God. As he abides in Christ and spends time in fellowship with Him, he loves God more and more. He also grows in his love for other Christians, for the lost, and even for his enemies. As he shares the Father's love with others, he experiences more of the Father's love himself. He understands the Father's love better and better. "God is love" is not simply a profound biblical statement, it’s the basis for a believer's relationship with God and with his fellow believers. Because God is love, we can love. His love is not past history; it’s present reality. "Love one another" begins as a commandment (v. 7), then it becomes a privilege (v. 11). But it’s more than a commandment or a privilege. It’s the thrilling consequence and evidence of our abiding in Christ and His abiding in us. Loving one another is not something we simply ought to do, it’s something we want to do. To believe in Jesus Christ and to love our fellow believers are not conditions by which we may dwell in God, rather they are evidences of the fact that God has already taken possession of our lives to make this even possible. Love for the family of God is a valid test of the validity of one’s salvation. If you don’t love God the Father’s children, then you probably don’t know the Father. Absence of God’s love is an indicator of the absence of God’s life.Conclusion: Satan disrupts and causes disunity. He doesn’t want us to love one another but the Lord Jesus is the one who draws us together. How can we claim that we know an all-powerful God, that He loves us though we’re so unworthy – and yet somehow not love one another.
Our capacity to love at all is directly tied to the fact that a loving God first loved us. Because of this incredible reality, our love for each other isn’t something we can brag about or call attention to ourselves with. Any success we have in this thing called agape love is simply an example of the love of God flowing through us.
It’s inconceivable that we could truly love God--a person we’ve never actually seen with our eyes--when we demonstrate hatred or indifference toward God’s other children. In fact, one of the primary ways we love God is by loving his children...especially the unlovable ones who irritate us.
Do you remember the story of Midas? In Greek mythology Midas was the guy who turned everything to gold that he touched. It made it really hard to eat lunch or kiss his girlfriend. We say people have the Midas Touch when everything they touch seems successful. God has a kind of Midas Touch too, but it’s not a touch that turns things to gold. It’s a touch that turns people into lovers, it’s a touch that transforms our attitudes and motives into loving ones. When the love of God touches us, it transforms us into people who can love the unlovable.
Let’s be honest. If we could have our way, the spiritual journey would be to believe in Jesus Christ and to tolerate each other. But the top of God’s priority list is to trust our lives to Jesus Christ and then to love other followers of Jesus Christ, even the ones who irritate us, the ones who wrong us, the ones who make us mad.
In John’s Gospel Jesus stated, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Tragically, this kind of love is too often missing among believers. The late Francis Schaeffer said, “I have observed one thing among true Christians in their differences in many countries: What divided and severs true Christian groups and Christians – what leaves a bitterness that can last for 20, 30, or 40 years (or 50 or 60 years in a son’s memory) – is not the issue of doctrine or belief which caused the difference in the first place. Invariably it is lack of love – and the bitter things that are said by true Christians in the midst of differences. These stick in the mind like glue…It is these things – these unloving attitudes and words – that cause the stench that the world can smell in the church of Jesus Christ among those who are really true Christians … The world looks, shrugs it’s shoulders and turns away … It has not seen even the beginning of what Jesus indicates is the final apologetic – observable oneness among true Christians who are truly brothers in Christ. Our sharp tongues, the lack of love between us – not necessary statements of differences that may exist between true Christians – these are what properly trouble the world.”
A lack of love has done more harm to the cause of Christ and hindered the mission of the church more than anything else. Someone might say, “But I can’t love so and so.” “I have a hard time loving so and so.” That’s just not the case! First, God would never tell us to do something that we could not do. Secondly, the Holy Spirit lives in us to enable us to be everything God has told us to be and to do everything God has told us to do.
Now some may still be thinking, “I do believe in Jesus as the Son of God and as my Savior, but I don’t have strong faith. I often have doubts. I do abide in His love and seek to be the channel of His love to others, but I often fall short. How can I have assurance that I abide in Him and He abides in me?”
As we’ve seen throughout our study of 1 John, the issue is not perfection, but rather, direction. The important questions are, “What do you do when your faith wavers? Do you come before the Lord in confession, asking Him to strengthen your faith? What do you do when selfishness dominates your life, rather than God’s love? Do you grieve over your hardness of heart and ask God to fill you with His Spirit and to produce the fruit of His Spirit in you? Fruit is not an instant product. It takes time and cultivation. Faith and love take time to grow.
John wants you to know that if these qualities are growing in you, you can be assured that God abides in you and you in Him. If you do not see faith and love growing in your life, then do as Isaiah 55:6-7 directs, “Seek the LORD while He may be found; call on Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will freely pardon.” Living in God’s Love is to be the normal Christian experience. Is it your normal experience? Are you known for your love for other believers?
