Charles and Sandra are walking along a beach on their
honeymoon. Feeling relaxed and happy
Charles turns to Sandra and says, ‘I love you!’ What does he mean?
He probably means, ‘Sandra, I need you, you complete me. You are so beautiful. Your smile knocks me out. Your good humour, your laugh, your beautiful
eyes, the scent of your hair—everything about you transfixes me.’
What he certainly does not mean is, ‘Sandra you have the
worst case of bad-breath—you would embarrass a herd of garlic-eating elephants.
Your nose is so bulbous it deserves to
be in a cartoon. Your hair is so greasy
you could lubricate an old Massie-Ferguson. Your knees are so disjointed you make a camel
look elegant. Your personality makes
Genghis Khan look like a wimp. But despite all this I love you!’
What does the God of love mean when he says he loves this
world?
He doesn’t mean, ‘I need you, you make me complete. Heaven
would be boring without you. Your personality transfixes me.’
No! Rather he means something like, ‘Morally speaking, you
have the worst case of bad-breath. Your
sins have made you disgusting. It is as
if you are people of the bulbous nose, greasy hair, disjointed knees and
abominable personality. You are morally
repugnant. But I love you despite your sin. I love you not because you are attractive. I
love you because it is my nature to love’(adapted from Carson).
Cheer up! You are a
lot worse than your realise, but God is more gracious than you know! Because of his love we can experience assurance.
We can come to him knowing that he will
forgive all the evil that we have done. We can trust him knowing that he is committed
to changing us. We must have him as our
king and then he will delight in us as his children.
The cross is to be our
model for loving each other (7-12)
God is love. ‘It is
not simply that God loves, but that he is love’ (Jackman). Love is at the very essence of God’s being. Indeed our God lives in a Trinity of loving
union. The Father loves the Son and the
Spirit, the Son loves the Father and Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father
and Son. God did not create the universe
because he needed someone to love—he lives in a perfect relationship of love. We should be blown away by the fact that God
is love and in his love cares for this wicked world.
God is love. He has
demonstrated that love in sending his only Son into the world that we might
live through him. This is not a
deserving world but a rebellious world. In love God looks upon a filthy people
and wants to make us pure. He sees our
spiritual deadness and wants to give us life.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Jesus was an atoning sacrifice for our sins. God has pardoned our sin against him at his
own cost. On the cross God gave his Son,
who bore his righteous anger at our sin, so that we the guilty ones might go
free. ‘Amazing love, O what sacrifice. The Son of God given for me. My debt he paid and my death he dies. That I might live.’
The great Welsh preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones never tired of
telling people of the importance of preaching the gospel to ourselves daily. We are to keep on reminding ourselves of the
gospel. We are prone to forget it. A forgetful people will be an ungrateful
people; an ungrateful people will be an unloving people.
For it is as we remind ourselves of God’s love, demonstrated
at the cross, that we should be moved to love one another—since God so loved
us, we ought to love one another. The
cross is our model for Christian love. Look
at the cross and try to justify why you won’t forgive a fellow-believer—it
can’t be done! Look at the cross and try
to explain why you would not go out of your way to help one of God’s people—it
won’t make any sense! The cross is our
model of love to the unlovely and goodness to the undeserving!
Indeed as one commentary points out ‘it is only when a
person loves his fellow-Christians … that he fully experiences the love of God
in his own heart and knows the presence of God with him.’ That
is what John says in verse twelve. No-one
has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is
made complete in us. It may seem like some Christians are a hindrance to our
relationship with God—they test our patience and get on our nerves. But God is experienced through living in the
community of his people. Showing love to
his imperfect people provides us with an opportunity to experience him more.
Look at those words again, ‘No-one has ever seen God…’ John has used this phrase before. Not in this letter but at the beginning of his
gospel. There he wrote that ‘No-one has
ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made
him known’ (1 John 1:18). As Jesus makes
God known to the world, so when we, the body of Christ, love one another we, we
make God known to the world (albeit in a less perfect way). Our sharing in love is essential to our
witness! People ought to see God among
us as they witness how we serve one another!
God’s love gives us confidence (13-18)
We have had the behaviour test, the love test and the belief
test—we are to look at these areas of our lives and see evidence of God
changing us. These tests are
complimented by the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. We know that we live in him and he in us, because
he has given us the Spirit.
The Spirit gives an inner witness that we are children of
God (see Gal. 4:6). When we start
thinking that God is our heavenly policeman waiting to catch us out the Spirit
says, ‘No! He is your Father.’ When we
are tempted to think that God is our heavenly prosecutor waiting to condemn us
the Spirit reminds us saying, ‘No! He is your Father.’
Of course if our assurance is to be real it must be grounded
in a true understanding of the historical person of Jesus. ‘If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son
of God, God lives in him and he in God.’ You might feel that doctrine doesn’t matter,
that there are more exciting things to do that listening to sermons and
studying the Scriptures but if we don’t guard our doctrine we will be led
astray, and being led astray will demonstrate that we are not born again! It is through this message of Jesus that we
know and rely on the love God has for us.
‘God is love. Whoever
lives in love lives in God, and God in him’—as we saw when we looked at the
love test, a person cannot come into a real relationship with a loving God
without being transformed into a loving person. In this way, love is made complete among us so
that we will have confidence on the day of judgement, because in this world we
are like him. The fact that we are like
Christ in love is a sign that God, who is love, lives in us giving us
confidence that we are saved. John says
that if we are afraid that God is going to punish us on the day of judgement
then we are not aware of the fullness of his everlasting love.
Many sensitive Christians fail to grasp that they are loved
and accepted by God. Perhaps you are one
of them! You doubt that a perfect God
would ever be interested in a failure like you. You struggle to believe that anyone would love
you if they knew what you were like—and God knows perfectly well what you are
like. You have grown up with parents who
were impossible to please and can’t imagine that God is ever pleased at your
efforts to live for him. You have a
distorted view of God thinking that he would rather condemn you than forgive
you. You are insecure and have projected
your insecurity towards your relationship with God. You struggle to love God because it is hard to
love a God you are not sure loves you.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones would tell you to preach the gospel to
yourself. Daily remind yourself that God
has demonstrated his love for an undeserving sinful world of people like you
and me. Cheer up! You are a lot worse
than your realise, but God is more gracious than we know! God was not attracted to us because we were
morally beautiful but because he is love. Christ has made atonement for our sins. He delights in the change he is bringing to
our lives even as we continue to struggle with sin in this life.
Conclusion (19-21)
Finally, our passage ends where it began—with the
inextricable link between loving God and loving his people. We love because he first loved us. ‘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 commandment: Whoever
loves God must love his brother.’
Do you say that you are willing to take up your cross and
lay down your life for the God of love? Prove it! Love his people, including the insensitive
ones who get on your nerves. After all
he loves us in spite of our many failings!
Do you claim that you are born again? Show it! Don’t bear grudges. Forgive, as we have been forgiven. After all God has forgiven us far more than we
will be ever asked to forgive another!
Do you enjoy singing God’s praise? Demonstrate that those words aren’t hollow! Speak words of encouragement to people in the
church. Don’t seek to knock them or
compete with them. Weep when they fall
and rejoice when they do well!
God is love. Let us
demonstrate in our actions that we understand and have experienced that love!
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