1 John 4:7-11
Introduction:
As we move into a new section of the book of 1 John, I would like for us to read the entirety of 1 John 4:7-21. Over the next three weeks, we will be covering these verses, with verses 7-11 coming today; verses 12-16 next Lord’s Day; and verses 17-21 the following Sunday, May 3rd.
Let me also remind you that when I began this series of messages from 1 John back in November of 2008, I mentioned that three major themes which continually leap out at us when we read the whole of this great book are: truth, obedience, and joy. John says we must all know the truth about who Jesus really is (which is also an opportunity to refute false teaching about the Person of Christ); we must also seek to obey God as we walk in the light of who He is; and we must also do this with expectant joy, the joy of knowing that our sins are forgiven and that we have fellowship with each other and with God through Christ by the power of the Spirit!
Someone asked me later why I didn’t include the concept of love as a dominant theme, since it seems to be more prominently stated in 1 John than does joy. In one sense, this is of course true. The word and therefore concept of love appears far more often than the word and concept of joy. But what I had in mind when I mentioned the word joy was actually a combination of the two words, joy and love, and obviously their attendant concepts. You could say— without do any violence to the apostle John’s teaching—that the book of 1 John (and 2 and 3 John for that matter), ring with these three themes: truth, obedience, and joyous love! Yes, it is Christian love which helps to dominate the landscape of 1 John, but it is a certain kind of spiritual love, what we could call joyous love, precisely because it is distinctly biblical, Christian love we’re talking about here! We aren’t describing love the way the world loves; rather Christians desire to show love to one another from a heart of gratitude and grace toward
God! We love others because it is borne out of a Godward focus of seeing His initiatory love toward us as the first and foremost expression of love. I think you’ll see this borne out in verses 7-21 of 1 John 4.
This morning, I want to show you five specific aspects of joyous Christian love from 1 John 4:7-11. I decided to limit today’s message to these verses because, if you’ll notice, verse 7 says, “Beloved, let us love one another,” while verse 11 also says, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” This seems to me to be a wonderful rounding out of the first major section of this paragraph. This is what grammarians could call an inclusio. John starts this paragraph with the command to love one another in the body of Christ, and ends this first section with the exhortation that we ought to love one another in the body. And everything in between these two statements also hammers home this subject of love.
Here’s the first aspect of joyous Christian love from 1 John 4:7: I. Love’s Command and Source (v. 7)
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”
A. Love’s Command
You may have heard the children’s song which was directly composed from this verse. As simple as that song is to sing, the apostle John’s command is equally simply stated and straightforwardly given. We are commanded to love one another in the body of Christ. Love isn’t an option for us; it’s a commitment we must make to each other.
John keeps beating this “love-one-another” drum doesn’t he? • 1 John 2:9-10
I suspect John continues to drive this matter home to our hearts because it is not familiar to the unregenerate man. Yes, I meant to say the unregenerate man. You see, even though John is speaking to Christians—see his reference to the term “beloved?”— he is nevertheless reminding them to do what presumably for years as Christians they did not have a habit of doing! As non-Christians, they were selfish and self-serving; it was not their nature as unbelievers to love one another. That was true of us as well, wasn’t it, just as it was with everyone who once lived outside of Christ. And even though John is writing to Christians here—those whose hearts have indeed been changed by Christ—he must repeatedly remind, exhort, and command them to do what, in their history, before knowing Christ, was not natural for them to do.
B. Love’s Source
But—and this is a colossal “but!” these people have been spiritually transformed! These genuine Christians, John commands, can and must love one another, “for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” John defines how it is that we can love anyone else at all! We must love one another for that love of ours is in reality from the source of God Himself, and whoever loves—which means all true believers because they are the only ones who have the capacity to love others—has been born of God (future tense) and knows God!
You and I didn’t truly love others in our unregenerate condition, but now, because the very concept and reality of love itself owes its source from God Himself—it originates from God who is the creator of love—whoever loves does so because he has been born of God! Only those who have been regenerated—born again— or, as it’s translated by the ESV, “born of God”—which means we are spiritually fathered by God—have the capacity to love others.
In John Piper’s new book, Finally Alive (Christian Focus Publications, 2009, pp. 153-154), he writes about the new birth which transforms Christians into being loving people:
“The new birth is the act of the Holy Spirit connecting our dead, selfish hearts with God’s living, loving heart so that his life becomes our life and his love becomes our love. . . . [John] means that love is from God the way heat is from fire, or the way light is from the sun. Love belongs to God’s nature. It’s woven into what he is. It’s part of what it means to be God. The sun gives light because it is light. And fire gives heat because it is heat. . . . The new birth is the imparting to you of divine life, and an indispensable part of that life is love. . . . It is an experience of the divine love and an extension of that love to others.”
The only reason we can love others is due to the fact that we have experienced the incredible love of God, which comes to us from Him, from the source of His nature to ours! John even tells us that our love for others is the very evidence that we know God! We have a relationship with God, who imparts His life and love to us so that we can love others.
II. Love’s Knowledge and Essence (v. 8)
“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
A. Love’s Knowledge
John gives the opposite of what he has just taught us in verse 7. If anyone is found to be unloving, it
reveals that the reason for this is this person does not know God. This is a bold and declarative statement! If you don’t love others, you don’t know God. You can give all your excuses; you can equivocate on what love is defined as being in your own mind; you can debate with God about why you just couldn’t love others; John emphatically pronounces that anyone who does not love does not know God.
• John 1:10—“The world was made through [Christ], yet the world did not know him.” • John 17:25—“O righteous Father, even
though the world does not know you, I know you, and these [disciples] know that you have sent me.”
• 1 Corinthians 1:21—“In the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom.”
• 1 John 3:1—“The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”
B. Love’s Essence
The reason the world does not love each other is because it doesn’t know God, for God’s very essence is love! Notice that John is not saying that love is God, but rather that God is love. John has earlier written that God is light (1:5), and that God is faithful and righteous (1:9), God is said here by John to be, in His essence, love. When you are imparted new life in Christ, you are
partakers of His divine nature, and you then are transformed into being a person who loves others!
• Ephesians 5:1-2
III. Love’s Incarnation and Life (v. 9)
“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.”
A. Love’s Incarnation
To say that God is love could be seen by some as speculative and theoretical. Can this love be seen by us? Will we know what it looks like? Can it be tangibly shown to us in this world? John says God is love, and God shows, manifests, and demonstrates this love of His to us by sending “His only Son into the world.” This is the great truth of the incarnation of Jesus!
• John 3:17—“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
• John 1:11—“He came to his own.”
• Colossians 2:13—“You, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive.”
What was God’s purpose in demonstrating this love? John says it is, “. . . So that we might live through him.” Do you realize that God so loves that He sent His one and only Son into this world so that we might live through Him! Does this humble you? Does this truth show you the depths of God’s love for His children?
• 1 John 3:1a • Titus 3:4-7 • Romans 5:8, 10
IV. Love’s Initiation and Price (v. 10)
“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.”
A. Love’s Initiation
You must affirm as a Christian that we didn’t love God because at one point in time, we simply decided to do so. Not at all! We hated God! We despised Him and His law! We were estranged from Him, and had no thought of following Him. God, because of His great love with which He loved us, initiated His love toward us! We love—indeed this is what defines our very ability to love others—not because we inherently love, but that He loved us!
• Romans 5:6—“For while we were weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” • Galatians 4:4—“But when the fullness of
time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem
those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
• 1 John 4:19—“We love because he first loved us.”
B. Love’s Price
The price of love was this: “[God] sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
• 1 John 2:2
In George Marsden’s new biography of Jonathan Edwards, called, A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008, p. 141), he writes of how Edwards conceived of this dynamic essential reality that God is love and how that love is to be perceived by us. Listen to what he writes:
“‘Beauty’ is the term that Edwards most typically used to describe the character of God’s ongoing actions in creation and redemption. ‘Beauty’ for Edwards is not just an object of passive contemplation, but rather a transforming power. If one sees a beautiful person, said Edwards, one cannot help but be drawn to that person. One’s heart is drawn to that beauty, and one’s actions will follow one’s heart. So it is with the surpassing beauty of God as
revealed in Christ. The most beautiful thing in all reality is for a perfectly good being to lovingly sacrifice himself for rebellious, undeserving, and ungrateful creatures. If one glimpses the perfect beauty of such love, one cannot help but be drawn to it. So the role of the evangelist is to convey the truth of God’s revelation so that sinners who are blinded to true beauty by their self-love may, through God’s grace, have their eyes opened to truly see it. If they do, their hearts will be changed and their lives will be dedicated to loving and serving God and others.”
Do you see the price that was paid for love? V. Love’s Obligation and Duty (v. 11)
“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
A. Love’s Obligation
John points back to what he has just said and in effect, concludes: “Beloved, if God so loved us like this— that He loved us so much that He gave us His one and only Son to be the satisfaction, the payment for our own sins—we also ought to love one another!”
Do you grasp the depth of that love? Do you see how John ties in the death of Christ as the ground or the basis for our obligation to love others? We are
obligated to love others in the body of Christ because of what our Head—the Lord Jesus Christ—did to redeem us from sin’s enslavement! How could we not sense our complete and total obligation to love others in the way we ourselves were loved?
• John 17:13, 20, 21a, 23b, 26b—“I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they [disciples] may have joy fulfilled in themselves. . . . I do not ask for these [disciples] only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. . . . that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. . . . that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
You see, my friends, if the premise is true that God so loved us, we are obligated to love others in order to show that love with which God demonstrated in Christ for us!
B. Love’s Duty
So, John concludes this first major section on love in verse 11 like he began: “We also ought to love one another.” The question remains: Do we love in this way? Is this what the world sees from us? Does the greater Christian community see our love for another as a local church?
• 1 Thessalonians 4:9-11—“Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves
have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind you own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.”
Conclusion:
Do we understand the love of God as we ought? Do we truly understand John’s explanation of love?
• Love’s Command and Source (v. 7) • Love’s Knowledge and Essence (v. 8) • Love’s Incarnation and Life (v. 9) • Love’s Initiation and Price (v. 10) • Love’s Obligation and Duty (v. 11)
