Podcast: 1 John: All You Need is Love!

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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 God. Anyone who does not love does not know 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. 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
-1 John 4:7-13

I was just listening to an interview with a woman who claims to be a Christian, but is involved in habitual, unrepentant sexual sin. A pastor was invited into the same interview to try to ask her to turn away from this sin and obey God. I was most interested in what she was saying, because, as we’ve heard a thousand times, she kept falling back on the defense of love. She loves her partner, she said, and God would never command against that. After all, God is love! Besides which, if what she was doing was truly a sin, then God would forgive her, because He is love!

We’re going to be looking today at that very verse, so the timing of that interview was surely providential. I’ve heard this phrase quoted so often, and it is usually by those who are not repentant of their sins. They do not want to submit to God. They want to go about their lives and not be punished for what they have done. So they will say, “God is love, right? Then why would He punish me? Why would He not want me to be happy?”

It’s strange that we don’t accept this definition of love in any other area of life unless it benefits us. If your kids misbehave, we all recognize that the only loving thing to do is to discipline them. If a friend is messing up his life, the only loving thing to do is to try to talk to that friend.

But when you are the one messing up your life, you often think it is mean and hurtful to be confronted. See, we want people to love us in a way that always agrees with us, always stands by us, never confronts, never asks hard questions. We’re like a child who gets mad at his mother for sending him to his room, not understanding that the mother did that because love doesn’t always agree with a selfish and self-absorbed kid.

John talks a lot about love here, and he gives a good definition. See, when we say that God is love, we’re not just saying that God will act lovingly. We’re also saying that the actions of God are, by definition, loving. If your definition of love is such that you don’t think Jesus was loving, then you have a bad definition. If your ideas on love don’t line up with His, then your love isn’t love at all. And the truth is that Jesus was kind, compassionate, giving, and also sometimes harsh, insulting, sarcastic, and very willing to embarrass someone in front of a crowd when necessary.

So when John tells us to love one another, it’s not some touchy-feely warm feeling you have in your heart for someone. He’s not saying, “Oh, just hang out together, watch a movie, and always support each others decisions.” No, this love is wholly different.

Those who do not love but claim to be followers of Christ are not following Christ at all. See, God is love. If He is in you, then you have love. That is foundational. Paul gives us a rather detailed definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Test yourself. Measure yourself against these truths. Are you growing in love since you were saved by Jesus? If not, then were you saved at all?

John, in this text, gives the ultimate example of love in Christ. “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.” God loved us so much that He sent His Son to die so that we could live. No, this is not a love as this world thinks of love, which is usually just glorified lust or a subjective affinity with someone. This is love that puts others before life itself. God came from heaven in human form, lived as a poor carpenter and persecuted teacher, then was tortured to death on a Cross, and all because He loved us. That, my friends, is love.

You may wonder why God had to die for us to live. John tells us in the word “propitiation.” You may not know this word, but it is a truly wonderful word. My friends, we are sinners. We are selfish, lustful, hate-filled, ambitious, egotistical sinners whose first instinct is for ourselves rather than for others. We do not love like this! We say we do, but our love is a selfish love that is really no love at all. We love people because what they do for us, how they make us feel. We do not love, and in not loving we prove that we are not of God.

God is love, and His love is one that disciplines, that reproves. It is a love that punishes when someone deserves it, and we deserve it. It is a love that is just, and justice is not on our side.

But it is a love that also sacrifices for us. When Jesus died, what was really happening is that He was taking the punishment upon Himself that we deserved. He was satisfying justice on our behalf. If you are a child of God, then your debt is paid. That is what propitiation means. It is one of the most wonderful words in history, because it means that Jesus died so that I don’t have to. Because of what He did, I do not have to face what I truly deserve.

And it is a free gift. We cannot earn it. When we repent of our sins and believe in Jesus, His Blood saves us. He gives us His Spirit, and with that Holy Spirit in us, we begin to change. God is in us and God is love, and so we begin to love!

It is not a warm and fuzzy feeling in the gut. It’s a love that sacrifices. It is a love that reproves when needed. It is a love that will drive you to beg those around you to repent and believe in Him, no matter what they think of you for it.

No one has ever seen God, but God is love, and so this is our connection to Him. John 1:18 tells us, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.” Notice how the whole Trinity is involved in this. The Father sends the Son out of love. The Son dies for us so that we can become God’s children. The Spirit indwells us. It is through this process that we have are connected back to the Father, and we are connected in love to one another.

Let me stress that, because we so often forget this. We so often take it upon ourselves to be these great moral people, to be generous and loving, and we so often fail, because we’re looking to the wrong source. We are looking to ourselves, but if we could do that, we wouldn’t need Jesus! We don’t earn eternal life by this love, the love is the evidence of the eternal life. What earned it was the Cross, the fiery center of the Christian faith, the Blood that washes sin away. God works this out in us through repentance, through faith, and the indwelling of the Spirit. If you don’t love, then look to the Cross! That propitiation is everything here, not just the thing that gets us started.

God is love. If you don’t love, then go to God in repentance and faith. He is the only true source of love, so your answer must be there, not in your own efforts to be a better person.