The Love Connection: God’s Love and Ours
Introduction: A strange story hit our newspapers about two weeks ago involving two ten-year-old girls and their parents. One of the girls, Arlena Twigg, had a congenital heart defect, and when the doctors ordered some genetic testing to aid in her treatment, it produced a surprising result: her parents weren’t her parents. Regina and Ernest Twigg didn’t tell her the news because of her critical condition, and shortly thereafter, in August, 1988, she died.
The Twiggs hired private investigators who, over the past 15 months, have proved beyond reasonable doubt that Arlena was really the daughter of one Robert Mays, whose wife died in 1981. They also proved that the Mays’ 10-year-old daughter, Kimberley, was not really their daughter but rather the daughter of the Twiggs. What happened is that the two babies, born three days apart in the same rural Florida hospital, were accidently switched and went home with the wrong parents. Were it not for a very sophisticated DNA test, only recently developed, no one would have known who were the real birth parents of Arlena and Kimberley.
Our passage today indicates that spiritual parentage is also difficult to establish at times. In fact, there are people who claim to be part of God’s family for decades and are assumed by everyone to be His children, but they aren’t. Sometimes the truth doesn’t come out until death, but the Apostle John offers a diagnostic test that is very useful in establishing who is and who is not related to God. It is the social test: do we love one another?
This, of course, is not the first time the social test has come up in this little book, but each time he raises the issue the Apostle takes a different approach and offers new insight. The unique thing about this passage is John’s constant allusion to the strong connection between God’s love and ours.
I attempted a detailed outline of this text but eventually abandoned the effort in favor of a very simple list of five reasons why God’s people should love one another. We will not exhaust I John 4:7-21 by examining these five reasons, but I think we will learn its main thrust.
If you mark up your Bible, which I think every Christian should, I would encourage you to underline a phrase that appears three times in our text—once at the beginning, once at the end, and once in between. In verse 7 it is, “Let us love one another.” In verse 11, “We also ought to love one another.” And in verse 21, “Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” The theme of our passage is obvious, but what are the reasons behind this three-fold command. First, …
God’s people should love one another. (7,11,21)
Our relationship with God demands it. (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 is the Apostle saying here? Is it not that if we are related to God as we claim to be, we ought to share His most revealing characteristic? Love comes from God and is the very essence of His character. When John says God is love he does not mean that love is one of His characteristics but rather that love saturates everything God is and does. When He exercises His infinite power, He does so in love. When He judges, He judges in love. When He speaks truth, He speaks it in love.
John’s point, then, is that since love comes from God and is the very essence of His character, those who are born of Him should show evidence of His love in their lives. I recognize, of course, that there are times when people who have suffered deeply have a hard time believing that God is love, but the Bible never apologizes for the notion, even though it faces the issue of suffering without any denial. God’s love is trivialized when we question it over such things. We simply must keep in mind what the word “love” means: a consuming passion for the well-being of others. It does not mean a consuming passion to make things easy and comfortable for us.
By the way, when verse 7 speaks of being “born of God,” this is not the only time in the NT that birth is used as a picture of how one comes to know God. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Except a man be born again, or born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The term “born again” frightens some people, but it’s really a very simple and very biblical notion. The conception and birth process is the means by which we receive physical life from our parents. The new birth, on the other hand, is the process by which we receive spiritual life from God.
Every child has certain telltale characteristics that indicate he is related to his physical parents. It may be looks, it may be mannerisms, it may be temperament. Likewise, John suggests, everyone born of God will have characteristics that indicate he is related to his heavenly Father. The key one is love.
So much for the first reason we should love one another: our relationship with God demands it. John bases his second argument (verses 9-11), not on God’s eternal nature, but on His historical gift.
God loved us first, at Calvary. (9-11,19). The God who is love “loved us” in a unique and profound way. But let me read verse 19 first. “We love because he first loved us.” I memorized that verse when I was just a kid, but I memorized it from the KJV. It went like this: “We love Him because He first loved us.” Apparently some translator was uncomfortable with the missing object of the verb “love,” and decided to supply “Him” to complete the thought. But whoever it was made a mistake. The thrust of our passage as a whole is our responsibility to love one another, and John’s point is that we have the capacity to love one another only because God loved us first. His love is free, uncaused and spontaneous, and all our love is but a reflection of His and a response to it. Human beings left to themselves will not show love but rather will be selfish, egotistical, and narcissistic.
Now verse 9 describes how God loved us first: “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.” In other words, the greatest demonstration of love in all of history, the action that defines love more than any other, was God sending His Son into the world to die for us. That helps explain why the incarnation, as we saw last Sunday, is such a watershed truth—so much so that those who deny the incarnation are viewed as spokesmen for the antiChrist. One who denies the incarnation is turning his back on the greatest demonstration of love possible.
Let’s examine some of the particulars in verses 9 and 10. First, the gift of love which God gave was his one and only Son. The KJV reads, “His only begotten Son,” but the real meaning of that phrase is “one and only.” We always grieve with any parent who loses a child, but there is something particularly heart-wrenching when parents lose an only child. God gave his one and only Son and in doing so, He gave the very best there was to give.
Second, He sent his Son into the world. It is appropriate that this subject come up here on the First Sunday of Advent, for we are involved in a month of celebration of that great event in which God took on human form in the person of Jesus Christ. The fact that the Son was sent into the world implies that he came from somewhere else, and of course that’s correct, for he was originally with His Father in Heaven. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth is a great mystery, but one thing is clear—the Son of God did not come into existence in the womb of the Virgin Mary—only his humanity originated at that point. He existed as God from all eternity.
Third, the goal of God’s gift of love is mentioned at the end of verse 9: “that we might live through him.” That’s the whole purpose of the incarnation—not so God could find out what it was like to be a man, not to prove that man could live a perfect life, not for any other purpose. Jesus was sent to allow those who are dead in trespasses and sins to live eternally.
And fourth, the ultimate value in God’s love gift is seen in Christ’s atoning sacrifice. It is not at Bethlehem but at Calvary that the preeminent manifestation of love was seen. Had Jesus only been born of a Virgin and lived a perfect life and died a natural death, He could not have given us eternal life. It is only in His death on the Cross that there is payment for our sins and thus life-giving value.
So, what is the conclusion? Look at verse 11: “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” How could there possibly be any greater motivation to love others than that? How can anyone who has been to the Cross and seen God’s immeasurable and unmerited love displayed there go back to a life of selfishness?
Love is the contact point between the invisible God and visible men. (12-16). “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” When I first began to study this passage, I was puzzled about why John stuck in here the fact that no one has ever seen God. But finally I grasped his point. God cannot be seen because He is an invisible spirit. That has sometimes been thought of as a detriment to the Judeo-Christian faith. An invisible God is more difficult to relate to than the gods of stone or wood that the heathen worship, or the gods of materialism and power and success that modern man so often worships. But God’s spiritual nature and invisibility should not be considered a detriment, for while no one has ever seen God, people can see the children of God, and if they are demonstrating love toward one another, God’s character and essence can be seen through them.
You’ve heard the statement, “Your life may be the only Bible some people ever read.” That’s not a lot different from John’s point here. I like the way F. F.Bruce put it: “The love of God displayed in His people is the strongest defense (apologetic) God has in the world.”[i]
John goes even further. Reciprocal Christian love means not only that God dwells in us but also that his love is perfected in us. This is a staggering notion—namely that God’s love is brought to its completion in believers. Fantastic as it may seem, God’s love is not made complete in angels, but in sinners saved by His grace!
Before we leave this point, I want you to notice how many times in verse 12-16 the words “we live in Him” and “He lives in us” are found.
Verse 12: “God lives in us”
Verse 13: “we live in him and he in us”
Verse 15: “God lives in him and he in God.”
Verse 16: “Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”
I don’t believe repetition in the Scripture is accidental. John is obviously very concerned that we understand there is a deeply personal relationship between God and the one who acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God. So intimate is this relationship that when the world sees us, they should see God. And when we are showing love to one another that is when His love is being made complete in us.
Love is the instrument that replaces fear with confidence. (17,18). Skip down to verse 17 and 18: “In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” Friends, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know when I say that fear is a major problem in our society. There are so many phobias today that one couldn’t possibly be aware of all of them. New ones are being thought up all the time (sometimes, I suspect, just to give some pseudo-medical basis for bizarre behavior).
But the greatest fear of all, the root phobia that affects all mankind is the fear of judgment and punishment. This fear shows up in many different ways and has its origin in the fact that all of us know innately, whether we are willing to admit it, that we are sinners and deserve to be punished. Guilt creates fear and fear is paralyzing and destructive, so it is very important that we learn how to deal with our fears, particularly the fear of punishment.
We have seen some scenes filled with pathos in Eastern Europe the past few weeks. One that was particularly profound to me was a shot of an East German woman standing at the open border into West Germany looking timidly back to make sure there were no rifles trained on her. Another just this week was a scene where an older man in Czechoslovakia told a TV reporter how great it was to once again have freedom, but then he refused to give his name for fear of the secret police. I thought to myself, how much those people are like Christians, set free from sin and judgment but timidly looking back, concerned that their sinful past may yet catch up with them and trip them up just as they reach the Promised Land.
Well, how do we deal with fear? John tells us that love is the key; not courage, but love. Love drives out fear. Look at it this way. We fear judgment when we realize we have sinned. Just trying to live a good life doesn’t dispel the fear of punishment, because we know that at times we all fall short. The only way to have confidence rather than fear when facing judgment is to rest in the fact that the One who showed His great love by sending His one and only Son to die for us will allow nothing to destroy the eternal relationship which that death made possible. As we rest in God’s love the fear leaves. Fear and love are incompatible.
But not only does faith in God’s love deal with our fear of judgment, but in addition, other common fears in life are dispelled as we begin to practice love for others. Many white middle-class people express fear when driving through North St. Louis. But our World Impact missionaries live down there constantly and they do so without fear. How? Because they have grown to love the people and the love removes the fear. Some people have a fear of speaking in public. What happens when the group they are facing are all close friends? The fear leaves. Perfect love casts out fear.
John put it this way, “Our great characteristic if we are Christians, is not that we fear but that we love.” When I read that I thought of my early years in a very legalistic church environment, where I think the predominant emotion was fear—fear of breaking one of the rules or at least fear of getting caught. My whole perspective has changed since those days. My lifestyle today is not very different from then, but my attitude sure is. I understand God’s love and it has driven out fear.
If we don’t love one another, we cannot love God. (20,21). “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” Once again the invisibility of God is brought into our discussion. Only this time the point is made that it is far easier to love someone you can see than someone you can’t. Absence may make the heart grow fonder for a while, but there comes a point of diminishing returns.
By the way, do we agree that it is easier to love men than God? I doubt it, for our natural inclination is to think that it is easier to love God simply because He is worthy of our love and men are often not very lovable. Yet this passage says exactly the opposite, implying, no doubt, that unless we are really loving our Christian brothers and sisters on the horizontal level, we are deluding ourselves in regard to what we consider to be our love for God on the vertical.
Let’s face it. It is so easy for us to profess love for God. People expect us to say as much and it is all too easy to oblige. But much verbal expression of devotion for Christ can co-exist with remarkably un-Christian attitudes toward the people of Christ. John says ours is a phony profession if we don’t demonstrate love toward one another.
We might even conclude from John’s words that it is in learning to love men that we learn to love God. If we’re really honest I think we would all admit to thinking on occasion, “God seems so far away and so unreal. How can I learn to love Him more?” John might well reply that a Christian learns to love God by loving those he can actually see.
Conclusion: We are about to come to the Lord’s Table. The early Christians called it a “love feast.” It celebrated both the love of God and love of the brothers. Regarding the former, I would say to you that if you feel unloved, ponder the Cross.
Regarding love for one another, I would say we have no option because:
Our relationship to God demands it.
God loved us first, at Calvary.
Love is the contact point between the invisible God and visible men.
Love is the instrument that replaces fear with confidence.
And if we don’t love one another we cannot love God.
DATE: December 3, 1989
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Love
Fear
[i] F. F. Bruce, The Epistles of John, 109.