Title: Let Us Love One Another
Text: 1 Jn 4: 7-21

Christianity has always emphasized two important concepts - truth and love. Jesus Christ was the preeminent expression of both. That's what the Christian faith is - truth and love. These concepts must be held in equal balance.

To emphasize love at the expense of truth produces what we call liberalism. Liberalism waters down truth and turns a blind eye to the realities of sin and evil in human life. It seeks to create a popular religion where no one is offended. On the other hand, to emphasize truth at the expense of love, produces a cold, hard legalism. And although it holds to the right doctrines, it is just as empty of genuine Christianity as is Liberalism. So we must hold to the truth and live that truth out in love.

Last week we looked at the first 7 verses of chapter 4 and saw John emphasizing truth. Test the spirits he wrote to see what is true. He provide us with the measuring stick you might say to judge truth the confession of Jesus Christ that He has come in the flesh. We looked at each aspect of that and saw how that confession emphasized His humanity, His deity, His incarnation and His mission.

Beginning in verse 7 John again emphasizes love. I think this is the 5^th message in this series that has stressed to love in some way. Verse 7 begins with the command to love one another. I want to say again that Christian love is more than emotional, more than feelings it is relational. My favorite saying - love isn't a hole we fall into or a tree we fall out of, it is a relationship. To love one another means that we are to relate properly to other people.

I love my wife, my daughter, my congregation, my brothers and sisters in Christ, and I'm suppose to love unbelievers as well. But I relate to each of them differently, but if I really love them I relate to them in a proper way just as Jesus would.

Love is not to be only for those who are good to us, who are nice, attractive, clever congenial people. We are not to love people because they are lovable, but because each is another person. Every one capable of a unique relationship with God, and not a thing to be dealt with impersonally, or to be opposed or accepted as it suits our purpose. Each person is a living, searching creation of God, just like us. We are to love one another, without regard to what the other person is like. We are to love objectively rather than subjectively.

How can we love people that way? Our natural tendency is subjective. We love people who love us. We love people we would like to love us and we have a tendency to reject those we see as unlovely and unlovable without ever getting to know them. The only way that kind of subjectivism can be replaced by genuine love is through God. Because John wrote love is from God. Everyone who displays this kind of objective persistent love for other people gives evidence of the new birth.

On the other hand, and John makes it very clear in verse 8, if we don't demonstrate this kind of love in our lives it is because we don't know God. Now that's a hard saying. That's one of those "in your face" kinds of things. If you can't treat people objectively overlooking their irritating, offensive qualities. If your reaction to those who offend you is one of rejection and antagonism. If you respond in kind to those kind of people, John says don't pretend you belong to God, because that's not God's way, that's not God's love. He said the same thing in chapter 2: 7-11 and chapter 3:10-18. Love is not an abstract concept but it is a part of the nature or being of God. To say God is Love means that objective unselfish love is at the root of all God does. His grace and His mercy and even His judgement flow out of love. John says to us if the life of God is present, the love of God will be there as well. This kind of love is "of God." In fact, God is this kind of love, God is love. Therefore, wherever the life of God is present that love is found. And if that love is not found, the life of God is not present.

How do we know what genuine love is? How do we know this kind of love exists?  Dr. H. A. Ironside one of the great preachers of the past told of a woman who came to him and said, "I don't have any use for the Bible and for all this Christian superstition. It's enough for me to know that God is love." He said to her, "do you know that?"  "Of course I know that, I've known it all my life."  "Dr Ironside said, "do you think that everyone knows that?"  "yes," she said, "everyone knows God is love." "Well," he said, "do you think the woman in India, who is persuaded by her religion to take her child and throw it into the river as an offering to the crocodiles, has any concept or idea that God is love?" "Well, no, but that's mere superstition."  "Do you think that the savage in Africa, bowing down to his idols of wood and stone, trembling with fear lest they should strike back at him and destroy his crops and take away his children and even injure his own person, do you think he has any idea that God is love?" "No," she replied, "but in every civilized country we know that God is love." "Well," Dr Ironside said, "how do we know that? How do we know that God is love? Do the ancients teach this? Do the other religions of earth teach that God is love, and show that God is love? Let me tell you something. Do you know that the only reason we know that God is love is because he sent his Son and manifested himself as love? The book that tells about the Lord Jesus Christ is the only book in the world that contains the idea that the God behind all created matter is a God of love? Creation reveals his power, his greatness, and his might, but there is nothing in nature that says, 'God is love.' The only way we know it is that God manifested his love in the giving of his Son."

John declared this truth in Verses 9 and 10: "By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son {to be} the propitiation for our sins. (1 Jn 4:9-10, NAS)

In I Jn 3:16 John wrote: "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us;"

Jesus Himself said in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." (NAS)  In John 10:15 Jesus said, ". . .I lay down My life for the sheep." (NAS)

Paul told us in Rom 5:8 that "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (NAS)

While we were the unlovable and the unlovely, the ones who were spiteful and offensive and obnoxious while we were enemies He gave Himself for us. How do we know what love is that it exists? Because God made it known to us in the most magnificent way possible. The cross of Christ forever stands as the symbol the explanation and the exclamation of God's love. If you have ever been to the cross, if you have ever experienced the love of God that cleansed and set free, if the life of God has ever been born within you, the love of God must be there as well. And if the love and life of God are there we have no choice we must love one another (v. 11).

But love and propitiation are linked together. God is not as some people picture him an indulgent grandfather who loves us so much that He lets us get away with anything, that His love means He will never demand an accounting and never insist on judgment.

The Bible says God didn't just love us and excuse us but instead sent His only Son into the world to be the propitiation the substitution to pay the price for our sin to satisfy justice. Love is not simply sentimental indulgence, love is also just.

That means that while God loves each of us He never excuses our sin. God loved us enough to cloth Himself in flesh and take upon Himself the penalty for our sin. He loved us so much that even though the wages of sin was death, eternally separated from Him, He gave us the gift of life through faith in Jesus Christ.

He gave us the demonstration of love through the cross. He gives us the assurance, the confidence, the presence and the power of love through His Spirit. That means that we love because He first loved us. The proof that we are His comes through the our demonstration of that love.

How do we demonstrate that kind of love? We said this kind of love is objective it is about being rightly related to others, it is about being rightly related to God. How are we rightly related to Him? God takes the initiative in salvation by providing the means necessary for obtaining it, by becoming the propitiation for our sin. We receive that salvation when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, then we rightly relate to Him through obedience, Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." John 14:15 (NAS)

In I Jn 2:3-5, John wrote: "And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him." (NAS)

And In I Jn 5:3 John wrote, "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome." (NAS)

What do we mean when we talk about keeping His commandments? Jesus said the first and greatest commandment was "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." (Matt 22:37 NAS) That means we are to relate to Him sacrificially, giving our very lives to Him. As Peter wrote in 1 Pet 1:16, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." (NAS) I think Jesus summed it up to the woman taken in adultery when He said, from now on sin no more. Love doesn't manifest itself through indulgence or trying to take advantage of God, love is manifested through obedience.

The second command Jesus said was what John wrote about in this passage, love your neighbor as yourself. (Matt 22:39) Verse 12 John explains a very practical concept or reason for our manifesting love towards others.  No man has seen God, but His love reaches it's completeness when it is manifested through us.

Dr. Ray Stedman said people today are not acquainted very much with the Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, but someone somewhere is reading the Gospel according to You. If they can't read it clearly, it is because there is not much manifestation of the love of God in your life as a Christian. But it is there, if God's life is there. The appeal of the Apostle John is, "let us" love one another. This is not an automatic thing; it demands the agreement of our will:

Let us deliberately love one another. Let us make channels for His life to be made know through us. Let us allow it to be expressed in deliberate activities of kindness, thoughtfulness and consideration, for one another, and through understanding, patience and tolerance for one another. Let us be a channel through which other people see the love of God, experience the love of God and find the Savior.