Podcast: 1 John: Why We Love

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For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
-1 John 3:11

In the last episode, we finished up chapter 4 of John’s first epistle, but before we moved on, I wanted to take a look at the section as a whole. John’s been telling us pretty plainly for about two chapters that we are supposed to love our fellow Christians. But he hasn’t been talking about it like it’s something we should be struggling with, but ultimately as something that Christians do by nature. The reason for that is, ultimately, that faith and love are tied up together, and you cannot have faith without loving God and you cannot love God without loving those whom God loves. It’s all one. That will be the message of the first verses of chapter 5, but before we get there, let’s take another look at the different causes John gives for our love.

I picked that word – “causes” – intentionally. I’ve read a lot of commentaries that talk about the “reasons” John gives us for why we love. I don’t have a problem with that phrase. Not at all. I’m only changing it because “reasons” seems like you are trying to convince someone. Here are some reasons for doing something. We’re going to find that love is something different. It is, of course, something we can choose to do, but John presents it more as the natural effect of what is happening in us. I think we’ll see that clearly as we go.

We’ve read the command, but that phrase is repeated in 3:14: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.”

Take a close look at what he is saying here. He doesn’t say, “love the brothers so you will pass into life.” He tells us that we can know we have passed into life because we love the brothers. We love the brothers, in other words, because love is an effect of passing from death to life in Christ. He’s saying it in the same sense that I would say, “We know that we have been swimming because we’re all wet.” The wetness did not cause the swimming, but the other way around.

In 3:24 he tells us why this is: “Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”

If we are careful about John’s wording, we will see it here again. Love is an evidence that we are in God. God is love, and so those who are in God naturally love. Again, it is an effect. We do not love so that we can be in God, but the other way around.

4:9 defines love a little more clearly: “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.” And John will say that we are the beneficiaries of this love, and so we ought to love others. We should love, in other words, because we were loved. And that is exactly what it says in 4:19: “We love because he first loved us.”

It is the love of God, overflowing in us, that produces our love for others. This is very natural. It is difficult for a man, giddy with love for a girl, to be mean to others. That love overflows into everything! The perfect love of God is so much more effectual than even that. Poured out for us, it splashes onto everything around us.

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.” In 4:16-17, love becomes our assurance of eternal life. If we have been changed, if we see that His love is overflowing in our lives, so that we cannot help but to love, we can be assured of our standing with the Father. We are secured for eternity.

And this love, spilling over in us, becomes a witness to the world about the truth of Christ. 4:12 says, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

It is love that drives us to talk to others about Jesus. It is love that persuades us to serve others so that they will see the love of God in us. It is love that changes us, and it will be a change that cannot be denied by anyone except those who refuse to see.

Am I preaching a salvation of works? Surely not. Surely you have seen from the very beginning that the love within us causes nothing, but is an effect. Love is the result, but not the cause. At least OUR love is not the cause. For truly it is love that has brought all of this about, but it is the love of God that causes, and love in us is the effect.

It is the love of God for a fallen people that caused Him to send His Son to the earth to die for us. It is that incredible love for those who did not deserve it that put Jesus upon that Cross. Make no mistake – love is a command, and it is a command that we have failed to accomplish in every day. That is the standard God has set for righteousness, and we prove with every selfish and hateful thought that we are not righteous at all. In justice, God could have destroyed us all. He could have rained down fire against us, and He would have been right to do it. Except for love. Except that God literally loved us to death, and in that death He took our punishment and paid the price for our sins. He died for us.

If I preach a salvation of works, it is the work He has already done. It is a finished work, lacking nothing. The love we show is merely an effect of the love He has already given. When we are convicted of our sin, that is the work of His love in us. When we fall upon our knees and beg His mercy, that is the work of His love in us. When we are forgiven, not because of anything we have done, but because of the work of Jesus alone, that is the work of His love in us. We find grace because of love.

Is it so difficult to understand how, once we are in the God of love, that we would begin to love as well? Is it so hard to understand that once we have been grafted into that sweet vine that we would produce the same sort of fruit? Our love is not how we earn salvation, it is the evidence that we are saved!

Please hear me on that point, because well-meaning Christians so often lie to us and tell us that just because we prayed the Sinner’s Prayer as a kid that we never have to worry about our salvation. That’s not what John is saying. He is saying, “Do you believe in Jesus? Has that belief manifested itself in how you treat others? If not, then you do not believe.”

Hear him, friends, and look at your hearts. Do you believe? Then surely you have shown the evidence of that repentance in how you see others. Look at your heart for the evidence of life in you! Then praise God for that life, and let it show in everything you do, for no one has seen God, but they will see how we love.