Title: How Great is God's Love
Text: 1 Jn 3:1

John talks about love a lot in this letter. He uses love in one form or another 36 times, 17 of those refer to agape love or as we commonly refer to it God's love. I'm sure the most well known is the phrase in verse 8 of chapter 4, "God is Love."

Here John isn't just talking about the fact of God's love, but how or how much God loved us. "See how great" is a statement of astonishment, of amazement, of wonder, of awe. John is literally overwhelmed when he considers degree of love demonstrated by God towards us. That is, God bestowed His love on us when we did not deserve it.

Romans 5 reveals how God saw us. Verse 6 says "While we were still helpless," when we were unable to make any contribution to the redemption we desperately needed, when there was nothing we could do about our condition, we were totally bankrupt, even our good was polluted by self-interest, when our righteousness was like filthy rags and we were mired in sin and simply sinking further and further, Christ died for us.

It goes on even further. On verse 8 the Bible says, "while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." While we were proud, and arrogant in our attitude toward God, rebellious, alienated from Him by our thoughts and actions. (Col 1:21) Living for self and serving sin Christ died for us.

Even that doesn't exhaust Paul's description. He continues in verse 10, "while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son ..."while we were enemies; not only helpless, not only sinners, but when we were absolutely opposed to God, enemies of His grace, treacherous, hateful, resenting what God was doing and resisting every attempt he made to reach us, Christ died for us.

John says, that's amazing love! When we are lost and hopeless and helpless and rebellious resistant and literally at war with God, Dr Ray Steadman said, God flings the bloodstained mantle of his love over us and calls us his children. John says we are not only called Children of God we are in fact children of God. Not only does He calls us His children, but He actually makes us His Children.

Understand God does not call all mankind His children. There is no such thing as the universal fatherhood of God taught in the Bible. God is the creator of all mankind. WE share with every other being on this earth a common heritage of humanity, but we are not all children of God. The Bible makes that clear in John 1:12 "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, {even} to those who believe in His name," also in Gal 3:26 the Bible says, "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus." (NAS)

Verse 1 alludes to one of the great doctrines of the Bible Adoption. Paul introduces us to this doctrine in Romans 8. It refers to the legal process where a man brings an unnatural child into his family giving him all the rights and privileges of a natural born child. Paul uses it metaphorically to illustrate that God, by the manifestation of His grace in Christ, brings men into the relation of sons to Himself, and communicates to them the experience of sonship. As we saw last week Paul used the illustration of branches grafted into the olive tree and Jesus used the illustration of the vine and branches as ways of teaching this same doctrine.

All those things we talked about, our sinfulness, our helplessness, our being enemies of God mean that we are not a part of God's family we are not his Children, until and unless we accept His offer of salvation by grace through faith. Then we are grafted into the tree and as Paul says in Rom 8:15 we receive the spirit of adoption as Sons and can cry out Abba Father and in 8:16 he writes, "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God," (NAS)

Of course the greatest evidence or demonstration of how great God's love for us is, is found in Christ's death on the Cross. The cross is the symbol of Christianity. While the resurrection of Christ proved He was and is who He claimed to be, the symbol of Christianity is not the empty tomb. The symbol of our faith is a tool of execution! While the Cross has become a item of jewelry for many, it was a place of execution. If we were to think in a more modern time frame It's like wearing a little golden electric chair or hangman's gallows or guillotine around your neck. It's a strange symbol to represent abundant life.

But the Cross is the symbol of Gods love. It symbolizes the sacrifice He was willing to make on our behalf. It is a symbol of Christ willingly giving His life (Matt 20:28; Jn 10:11, 17-18; 15:13;) for us so we could be forgiven and cleansed from our sin (Gal 1:4; 3:13; Titus 2:14; 1 Pet 2:24). It is the unique symbol of the depth of Gods sacrificial love.

All humanity, every person has the opportunity to become a child of God, redemption is provided for all. John shared that with us in I Jn 2:2, "and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for {those of} the whole world." (NAS) There is sufficient grace in Christ for everyone. That's why John is so amazed by it.

But the Bible doesn't teach universal salvation. God's love is truly amazing it's unfathomable that He would do such a thing for mankind. But God is also Holy and righteous and just. His love does not overlook sin. The cross is the place where the sin of humanity was atoned for. It is the place of restoration and forgiveness only when a person responds to God's grace, accepting by faith God's gift, Christ's sacrifice on the cross for sin, does that person become a child of God.

When we do become children of God there in a new orientation in our lives. A new way of relating to both God and man. God looks at us in a different way and so does the world. I always want to make clear when I say world that the Bible is referring to the unbelieving world and world view that stands in opposition to God and the things of God. When we abide in Christ we stand in contrast and opposition to that kind of world system.

John says don't be surprised. Don't be surprised if the world discounts your Christian testimony, laughs in your face, and makes scornful, contemptuous remarks about what you believe. Don't be surprised when you're characterized as foolish, bigoted, hateful, uncaring, intolerant and ignorant. Don't be surprised. they responded the same way to Jesus.

When Jesus lived among men, when He walked for thirty-three and a half years there was never a moment he didn't clearly and continuously manifest righteousness. The nature and character of God was as clear and unmistakable. There was could never be a more clear revelation of what God is like than there was in Jesus Christ. He was a perfect picture of God. Even then, they failed to recognize him, they refused to recognize Him.

They choose to see only the externals. They saw him as a peasant's son, a carpenter, zealot and trouble maker. Why? Because they shut their ears to what he taught and what He did. They refused to believe him, and, therefore, they could not see him.  If they did not know him in spite of His perfect manifestation of righteousness we can't expect the world to recognize us. They didn't know him and they will not know us.

The very principle by which we find power, joy and strength is, in the eyes of the world, foolishness. Paul says in 1 Cor 1:18, "For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." In verse 23 he wrote, " we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness." (NAS)

The message of the cross, the principle which denies self-interest, which risks income, position, and sometimes even life itself, in order to be honest, moral, ethical pure and committed -- that principle, the world says, is foolish. "You'll never get ahead like that." "Save that for church, it won't work in business. Everybody, does that, surely you do too, you don't really believe that why it's foolish." That's what the world says, and I'm sure many of you have heard it. Yet to us who are being saved, if we have the guts to act on what God has said -- not only at church but in the world, at home, at school, anywhere else in life -- it is the power of God. It achieves what God has come to do in human life.

Our country was founded on biblical principles and biblical ideology. The late David J. Brewer Associate Justice of the Supreme Court wrote a book in 1905 entitled The United States: A Christian Nation. Almost a hundred years ago Brewer shows how Christianity and the government of our country are woven together. It was these principles that made our nation great, it was these principles that kept our nation great. It was these principles that created a nation others sought for asylum. Yet these Christian principles are being attacked while our nation continues its descent into abomination.

As children of God we must never be willing to sacrifice these principles to become like the rest of the world. It didn't work for Israel it won't work for us. We must continue to stand firm following wherever He leads.