Time flies doesn’t it? Earlier this week, my oldest brother and his wife were up from Houston for a quick visit and they, along with my mom and dad, all came out for dinner. We had some great Texas BB-Q and then proceeded to sit around and talk and laugh like there was no tomorrow. What a great time we had catching up and sharing life moments past and present. Something came up about taking cruises and we recalled the cruise that 10 of us in the family all took to celebrate mom and dad’s 50th anniversary. Next month they will be celebrating 55. Has it really been 5 years? It seemed like it was just yesterday that we were all around a dinner table on that huge cruise ship blowing out candles on an ornate chocolate anniversary cake. There’s definitely something to the fact that the older you get the faster the time passes. Some type of strange life anomaly. And as I process that strange life anomaly it makes me think about the day we have before us. What will you do with the day you have been given today?
There’s been times in my life, where if I’m honest, I’ve just wished the day would pass. Because of stress, fear, or dissatisfaction with my current situation, I just wished the day would go away. That it would quickly and silently fade into an unkown and unseen collection of days held somewhere beyond my yesterdays. But then I think back about the days that I cherish. The sweet days that I wished could last forever, and even after they’re gone I want to go back and revisit them often, basking in the goodness they offered. What was so special about those days that hold high points in my memory? The more I think about them the more a common thread comes to light. Those days held high doses of the presence of God, His goodness, and especially, His love.
We’re told twice in 1 John chapter 4 this morning that God is love and if we love God, we will love others. If you have the love of the Lord in your heart, you have love indeed. The days that I live in the love of the Lord are the days that resonate within me. The days that cling to my memory along with His sweet aroma of what it is to love well using not my level of love, but His. The way that we love is a gift from God. We love Him because He first loved us. He teaches us how to love. My goal is to make more of my days, ones that I can look back and revel in. And the only way I have found to do that is to base each day in the love of Jesus Christ. To call upon the love that Jesus supplies me and then give it all back to the people that He places in my day. I pray today that you can give away the love that God first provides to you. Time passes faster and faster, make the days memorable by loving others as God loves us. Rich memories lie ahead of us when we love as God loves.
Today we are exploring 1 John chapter 4 and we see exactly why it is called the book of love. The word love occurs 27 times here in this chapter alone. Yesterday we saw it occur 9 times and in our study we covered each of the 8 verses that dealt with love those 9 times. It was eye-opening for me to see the many different ways that God can address love. There is the Father’s love for us, Jesus’ love displayed on the cross, our love for Him, our love for other believers, our love for the lost and the love that causes us to work and bear fruit for Christ. One word and many powerful results. Today each of the verses are just as rich, powerful and meaningful so I’m going to do the same thing as yesterday and briefly hit them all. I mean really, can you have too much of God's love in your life today? Let’s take at look at love 27 times.
1) “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7
We start out not with a single mention of love, or even a 2fer, but a 3fer! Love is mentioned a whopping three times in verse 7. That’s a lot of love! We are told to love one another. A command. Do it. Where will we get this love? From God. God provides the love and He teaches us how to use it. It’s important to note here that there are four types of love in the bible. There is agape love, the highest of the loves. It represents the love of God, it is perfect, sacrificial, unconditional and pure. There is Eros love which is where we get the word erotic. This is the love between a husband and wife. There is Philia which is brotherly love. This is where we get the city of Philadelphia’s root name. And finally there is Storge love. This is family love, the love between parents, brothers, sisters, etc. The love we have here in verse 7 is agape. Deep, rich, unconditional love that defies human logic. To be able to love like this is a gift from God. This type of Holy Spirit fueled love is between believers in Jesus Christ and will resonate with the harmony and purpose of God.
2) “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.” 1 John 4:9
I started noticing after listing all of the love verses one right after another, the importance and significance that occurs every time the word love is used by God. Each one had such a tremendous doctrinal emphasis. You cannot mention the love of God and what He did for us without a major impact. This verse is yet another example. God so loved us by sending Jesus Christ here to die for us. That is something that we can never forget. We can never lose the impact of just how great God's love for His children is. By God sending Jesus, those that claim Him as Savior can live through Him and the sacrifice He made for them. This is agape love. Sacrificial, unconditional love, that defies human logic.
3) “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.”
Another 3fer. It’s said that when God mentions something once in His Word you take notice. When He mentions it twice in a short span, you should take special notice. But folks, when love appears three times in one verse and on top of that there’s two 3fers within 4 verses….well, this is God shouting to us about His love! He wants us to REALLY grasp this love thing! The thought that you really need to grasp here is that God first loved us. Because of Adam and Eve, we have all inherited a sin nature. Each and every person that has been born since has not had the ability to be perfect before God. Remember that in order to ever stand before God, you have to be perfect. Not good, not kinda OK, not I try to do good sometimes. You have to be perfect, and folks, no one is perfect. (I’ve been working at VBS all week and let me tell you even 5th graders and filled with sin!) But really think about this verse, even in our sinful, imperfect state God first loved us. Even though we are sinners He still loved us enough to send His Son here to die so that if we call upon His name we can be reunited with God eternally. Folks, that is a love difficult to process.
4) “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:11
Another 2fer. Is this starting to sound like a broken record to you? Do you think that God wants us to know that we should love each other? This reminds me of my earthly dad. I grew up with 2 older brothers and there was always some type of fight going on between us. All dad wanted was for us was to love each other. When we would fight and he would have to discipline us, I could see the hurt in his eyes. He would tell us, “I just want you to love each other and be good to each other.” Folks, this is all that God wants for us. To love each other and be good to each other. Don’t fight, don’t argue, don’t quarrel. Love the other person enough that you’re willing to let them have their way. Love the other person enough that you’re willing to walk away before it escalates. Love the other person enough to not only be good to them, but to outbless them abundantly. Don’t just love enough, love more.
5) “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” 1 John 4:12
Yet another 2fer. This is an amazing passage. You will not see love mentioned like this anywhere else in God’s Word. We’re told here twice in chapter 4 that God is love. God is indeed love and 1 John describes His love like no other book. No one has ever seen God. Sure Moses, Elijah, Daniel, Isaiah, and Ezekiel saw a manifestation of God, but that was not God in His purest form. No one has ever seen God in His full glory. So, what happens when we love all believers with agape love? That is proof that the love is truly from God and it will be perfected in the way we use it.
6) “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” 1 John 4:16
Another 3fer. You’d be hard pressed to find a verse in God’s Word that uses the same noun/verb the same time three times, but this is our third 3fer in 16 verses. Amazing, the emphasis that God is giving us here. We have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. How? He showed us on the cross. He sent Jesus here to be a sacrifice for our sin. We have seen the love, believe it, and through that faith, we now know that love. If you abide (live) in this love, God abides in you. When you call upon Jesus to save you, a miracle happens in that moment. The Holy Spirit of God comes into your heart and lives there. You are in an instant a new creature. The old is gone and the new is of God. Abide in God’s love and He will abide in you. What a promise!
7) “By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.” 1 John 4:17
Confidence in the day of judgement. You may have heard this question before. If you died today do you know where you would spend eternity? Our spirit will go somewhere after we die. Don’t be so foolish to think that we just somehow evaporate and disappear. We have a body and a spirit. Our physical bodies were never meant to live forever but God built our spirits to live on. When God sent Jesus here to die for us, He out of His love, made a way for our spirits to live with Him for eternity. But in order to claim this free gift of Salvation you have to do something with Jesus Christ. You can’t get to heaven by being good enough or working for it. “No man is righteous, no not one.” (Rom 3:10) Jesus says that “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) You can accept Jesus today as you Savior and you can have this confidence in the day of judgement. When we die, believers will ascend to heaven to be judged by God. Not condemned by God but judged. Your good works for the kingdom of God will be judged for a reward. Your acceptance of Jesus as your Savior means that you will never be condemned, He paid that price for you. When you die and go to Heaven to stand before God, He will not see your sin, only the precious blood of His Son in the place of your sin. But for those that reject the Gospel of Jesus, they will not have the redemptive power of His blood. They will suffer condemnation and eternal separation from God. That is what Hell is, it’s not just a place of utter darkness and torment, it is merely one existing in the complete absence of God. If you have anything today my friends, you should have confidence in the day of judgement, that you are saved by the atoning blood of Jesus.
8) “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” 1 John 4:18
What a beautiful, beautiful verse. There is no fear in God's love. Fear in the human heart can manifest some terrible things. It can cause you to lose sleep, it can affect your health, and it can affect your peace. But the perfect love of God for us casts out all fear. The love of God is pure and absolute. It will never leave us or forsake us. It will never fade or subside. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39) Lack of fear is confidence and we can have confidence in knowing that the salvation of Jesus is absolute and eternal.
9) “We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
You might not be able to get more power into 7 words. The love God demonstrated for our souls on the cross has a ripple effect. The love that God showed for us moves our hearts. We love in return. And not just any love but agape love. We love in return with the same love that He first introduced into our hearts. We love because He first loved us.
10) “ If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” 1 John 4:20
Strong words here from God. You CANNOT love God and hate a brother or sister in Christ. You can try your best to explain your circumstances or explain how bad they treated you, but folks it won’t work. God loved us ALL as we were still sinners and in that same perfect love, we are to love the believers in the body of Christ. I hear and read stories about churches splintering and dividing because of people that are viciously fighting and hating each other. Could I be so bold as to say that if you are a part of a church that is experiencing this…run. Get yourself to another church that sows harmony and love because a church that does not have love for each other is not of God. This is not Dan’s opinion, this is the Word of God. Where there is love and harmony within the brethren, God is there. Where “believers” fight and quarrel with each other, God is absent.
11) “ And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” 1 John 4:21
Another powerful verse that speaks in absolutes. The key word here is must. God gives us zero wiggle room for interpretation. If you love God, you must love your fellow believers. Notice it doesn’t say it is easy, it just says you must do it. Let’s face it, some fellow believers are really hard to love. Some are grumpy Gus’s and wear a constant frown. Some are bitter in their current walk with Jesus and He might be dealing harshly with them resulting in them looking for a fight, but regardless, we still are given this simple command, love them.
Wow, that’s a lot of love! What we have just experienced is a chapter like no other in all of God’s Word. You’ll be hard pressed to find a more condensed study of love anywhere else in God’s Word including the other chapters of 1 John. I hope that as result you have a better understanding of God’s love and what it means for us to have “perfect” love in and through God. But understanding God’s love is just the beginning of the process. The real proof is in the execution. The delivery of that love to the world around you. I pray today that you love others with the unconditional agape love that was first shown to us by God sending His Son to the cross.
Our command for living this day is simple...Love God and love others.
God bless your day and may God bless the way you love ~ Dan
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