Love One Another – Part 2
1 John 4:7-21 (12-18)
July 17, 2022
Last week we began our look at the tremendous passage of Scripture
Here in the 4th chapter of 1 John.
I told you that John writes in sort of a circular manner,
And by the time he is finished you can look at the page
And it is obvious what he has been circling.
“love one another”
The word love appears in some form 25 times here in this passage.
John is making it obvious.
And so we are discussing this reality of loving one another
And why it is so essential.
We’re breaking this passage down into 3 points.
We saw the first last week.
#1 ATONEMENT DESERVES IT
1 John 4:7-11
The point which John so clearly made to us last week is that
We have received a great love from God.
John said in verse 9 “the love of God was manifested in us”
Which is to say that
God has made His love known in what He has done in our life.
What has He done?
He sent His Son into the world “so that we might live through Him.”
THERE IS certainly the aspect in which we will “live”
• In the sense of not going to destruction, but having eternal life.
• It is the sense in which our death sentence is overturned.
BUT IT IS ALSO the sense in which Christ has come and made we who were dead alive.
• He has given us new life in Christ.
• He has raised us from the dead.
• He has freed us from our penalty.
• He has saved us.
And of course John also pointed out HOW Christ accomplished this.
Christ was (10) “the propitiation for our sins.”
He came and satisfied God’s wrath through His death on the cross.
He came and laid down His life on our behalf that we might be forgiven.
He was given death that we might be given life.
So John wanted us to stop a moment and focus on
The love of God to atone for His enemies.
We all have to stop and marvel at this.
• When I was dead in sin and a rebel before God…
• When I had no interest in loving Him…
• HE CAME AND LOVED ME.
• He loved me by pulling me out of sin and making me alive.
• He loved me by lifting me out of the miry clay and setting my feet on a rock.
• He loved my be atoning for my sin through the death of His Son.
Christ received God’s wrath so that I could receive God’s favor.
It is just the remarkable demonstration of God’s love for us.
He saved us.
And John would have you focus on that for a moment.
AND THEN HE SAYS:
(11) “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
And I’d remind you that the word “ought” there actually means “to owe”
Because God has so loved us, we owe it to our brother to love them.
WHY?
Because God loves them.
• When we love our brother, we don’t do it because they deserve it, we do it because God deserves it.
I think it’s also important to recognize the word “so” in verse 11.
For that speaks of the manner in which God loved us.
John is not only referring to the necessity of loving our brother,
He is also talking about the manner in which we love our brother.
We are to love them as God loved us.
• We love them even when they don’t love us.
• We love them by sacrificing ourselves for their benefit.
• We love them by focusing on their spiritual life and growth.
THIS IS OUR DEBT.
Our atonement deserves it.
So there is our first great motivation for loving one another.
• We love because we are loved.
• We love because they are loved.
THIS MORNING let’s move on to
The second motivation for loving one another.
#2 ASSURANCE DEPENDS ON IT
1 John 4:12-18
Here we come again to that GREAT THEME of John’s letter.
He is writing because he wants you to have assurance.
And even as we have seen before,
Love and assurance are very closely linked together.
We already saw a few weeks ago:
1 John 3:18-20 “Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.”
John already taught us once that the presence of love in our lives
Goes a long way towards providing us with the assurance we desire
To know that we are children of God.
But John isn’t finished with the topic.
Here in chapter 4 he circles back to it again.
In some ways we saw it LAST WEEK.
(7) “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
That is a statement of assurance.
Loving one another is a fruit of being born of God or born again.
So the presence of love is in fact an evidence of regeneration.
And here in verses 12-18 that issue becomes THE FOCAL POINT.
If you want assurance, then you must love your brother.
As we begin to look at these verses
I want to bring a word to your attention.
It is the word “perfected”
• (12) “No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
• (17) “By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in the world.”
• (18) “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”
“perfected” is the word TELEOO (tel-ee-aw-oh)
Many times it is translated “accomplished” or “fulfilled”
A form of the word is what Jesus used on the cross when He said “it is finished”
What we are talking about is
The effect of God’s love being “perfected in us”
• Or God’s love being accomplished in us.
• Or God’s love being fulfilled in us.
• That God’s redeeming love has finished its work.
And this is a bit of A DIRECTION CHANGE for John.
Earlier in verse 9 John spoke of “the love of God…MANIFESTED in us”
• That of course spoke of God making something known.
• He revealed His love or made it known by what He has done in us.
But here the focus changes.
• Now in verse 12 it is “His love PERFECTED in us”
Now we are talking about God finishing something in our life.
Now we are talking about God accomplishing something in our life.
God’s love showed up by making us alive,
Now we see what it looks like when it is finished with us.
To aid in our understanding I do want to make some subpoints here.
More than anything to just help our train of thought.
Here’s the first sort of statement I want to make:
LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE REALITY GOD IS ACCOMPLISHING IN YOUR LIFE. (12)
And to begin let me just start with this question:
WHEN GOD COMPLETES HIS WORK IN YOUR LIFE, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT IT TO LOOK LIKE?
Or perhaps I should ask it like this:
If God was finished sanctifying you, what do you think the most obvious aspect of your life would be?
I can tell you the answer: LOVE
When John speaks of “love perfected in us”
He is talking about when the love God has shown you
Finally completes its purpose.
TURN TO: 2 PETER 1:5-7
This passage isn’t very long, but I want you to turn there because I want you to see it on the page and make a mental note of it in your mind.
What Peter gives you here is a sort of spiritual progression list.
You can read these verses and chart your sanctification progress.
You can sort of measure your spiritual growth in these 3 verses.
Now just to get your mind thinking,
What attribute begins your spiritual growth process?
What is the first spiritual discipline that you must exercise?
FAITH
• When you believe, God justifies you.
• Without faith it is impossible to please God.
• Faith is the beginning of it all.
That is where Peter begins.
But then Peter begins to talk about your spiritual growth.
It begins with simple faith but it grows from there upward.
(5) “Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence”
• So you start with faith but very quickly after that you start living a virtuous life.
• You begin to put away sin and to live more obediently, more morally, mor
righteously.
That is the natural progression.
You believe Christ and you start to put away sin.
“and in your moral excellence, knowledge”
Why “knowledge”?
• Because you begin seeking to know the will of God so that you might know how
to live more obediently.
The moment you were saved
You instantly knew of some things in your life that needed to change,
But you didn’t know about everything that needed to change,
So you add “knowledge”.
You seek truth so that you learn how to live even more righteously.
“and in your knowledge, self-control”
INEVITABLY in your quest for knowledge you will run across a command
Or requirement of God that will offend your flesh.
And in those moments you must “die to self” again.
In those moments you must buffet your body and make it your slave.
As a Christian grows in spiritual maturity,
He grows in the ability to know God’s will
And then to bring his body into conformity with it.
So he adds “self-control” to his “knowledge”
“and in your self-control, perseverance”
• You sense the battle raging here.
• But the more you fight it, the less you lose.
• The more you fight, the longer you hold on.
Early in your Christian life God’s word confronted a specific sin
And it was a battle to let it go,
But over time you begin to persevere in your victory.
And so you are actually conquering that sin continually.
That’s part of spiritual growth.
“and in your perseverance, godliness”
• We certainly don’t want to be those who persevere in sin.
• We persevere in “godliness”
This is more than just the “moral excellence” that began early.
Now we are moving BEYOND THE BEHAVIOR TO THE MOTIVE.
Early on it was ignorant obedience, now there is wisdom attached to it.
You have begun to know God and so you begin to walk like Him.
“and in your godliness, brotherly kindness”
This is the way your “godliness” begins to be manifested.
• God is love
• God demonstrated His love
• God loved sinners
• God Himself is kind to evil men
And the more godly you become, the kinder you become as well.
And then we see that final stage in your spiritual growth.
We see THAT CHIEF CHARACTERISTIC
That God is seeking to work out in your life.
“and in your brotherly kindness, love.”
You can chart your spiritual growth there.
Babes in Christ begin with faith, but they come with sinful behavior, ignorance, and a lack of endurance.
But as they grow,
• They seek the knowledge of God,
• They conquer the flesh,
• The seek to imitate God
• And that process of SANCTIFICATION CULMINATES IN LOVE
NOW, WHY DO I SHOW YOU THAT PASSAGE?
Because that is what John is talking about here as well.
He is talking about how you know
When God’s sanctifying work is at its best in your life.
“if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
• WHEN WE LOVE, for that moment, we are what we are intended to be.
• WHEN WE LOVE, we are demonstrating God’s effect in our lives.
The world doesn’t see God in the flesh.
But when we love they see the effect of what God does in a life.
Loving one another is the finish line.
Loving one another is the objective.
Now that should NOT be a foreign concept to you.
After all, we hear Jesus call it the second greatest commandment.
Beyond that, listen to this from Jesus:
Matthew 7:12 “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
And listen to this from Paul:
Romans 13:8-10 “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, YOU SHALL NOT MURDER, YOU SHALL NOT STEAL, YOU SHALL NOT COVET,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Or Paul again:
Galatians 5:14 “For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.”
All of those passages make the same point.
That if you want to sum up the point of the Old Testament it is simple: LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR
Love has always been the expectation of God.
• Even back to Sinai, if you wanted to sum all that God commanded of His people, you could sum it up with the command to love.
Love has always been the chief demonstration of righteousness.
AND JOHN IS STILL SAYING THAT HERE.
In those moments that we love we are showing God’s work in our lives to be completed.
And, if we were able to love perfectly 24/7
Then we’d say we were a finished product.
Now we don’t always love as we should.
• But in those moments when we love,
• We are showing a picture to the world of exactly what God is doing in our life.
DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?
So let me make that statement again:
LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE REALITY GOD IS ACCOMPLISHING IN YOUR LIFE.
WHEN YOU LOVE ONE ANOTHER,
• You give evidence that God is accomplishing his work in you.
• You show the world exactly what God is doing.
• You show people the God they cannot see.
Sanctification is happening…
You know that because you love one another.
Now, if you don’t love one another…
If you walk in selfishness…
• Where is your evidence that God is at work in you?
• Where is your evidence that you are being sanctified?
Is this making sense?
Here’s the next statement.
LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE TESTIMONY THE HOLY SPIRIT IS PRODUCING IN YOUR LIFE (13-16)
Look at these next 4 verses
(13-16) “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
There is another one of those assurance based statements:
“By this we know…”
“By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.”
John has JUST SAID that when you love your neighbor you demonstrate who God is to a world that cannot see Him.
Now he is going to prove that
The only reason you are able to do this
Is because the Spirit of God is obviously at work in you.
And so loving your neighbor is actually evidence that you are redeemed.
And let me show that in these 4 verses.
John here is going to show you 3 effects that occur in your life
When you have the Holy Spirit.
(This, along with John 16 and Galatians 5, are the greatest passages
on helping you identify the Spirit of God in your life.)
It will help you to circle these 3 words.
These 3 behaviors are how you know “He has given us of His Spirit”
(14) “testify”
• “that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world”
(15) “confess”
• “that Jesus is the Son of God”
(16) “believed”
• “the love which God has for us.”
Those are three things the Holy Spirit causes in your life.
John actually gives them in REVERSE ORDER
That they happen chronologically.
It’s like what Paul does in that famous Romans 10
“How will they call on Him who’ve they’ve not believed, how will they believe in Him whom they’ve not heard, how will they hear without a preacher, how will they preach unless they are sent?”
Backward chronologically.
That is what John is doing.
Namely because John has just said that
When we love we show God to a world who can’t see Him.
Or in verse 14 to say it another way, when we love “we testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.”
Those statements mean the same thing.
And John now is WORKING BACKWARD to show you why you testify.
IT IS BECAUSE THE HOLY SPIRIT IS IN YOU.
THE FIRST THING the Holy Spirit did in you was to cause you to believe.
He caused you to believe “the love which God has for us.”
• He opened your eyes to Christ.
• He opened your eyes to the gospel.
• He granted you faith so that you might believe “the love which God has”
• In this is God so loving the world that He sent Christ.
• In this is God demonstrating His love by crushing Christ on the cross.
• In this is God making you alive that you might be saved.
That is God’s love and that is what you believed at salvation.
THE REASON you believed that is because the Holy Spirit caused you to.
Faith is not of yourself, it is the gift of God.
But it didn’t stop with belief.
Belief always manifests itself with confession.
After you believed God’s love, the NEXT THING that happened is that you confessed “that Jesus is the Son of God”
Remember, Paul said this very thing:
Romans 10:9-10 “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
You believe first, but once you believe you confess.
Those who don’t confess Christ don’t believe Him.
But if you believe then you confess.
And just like your faith, your confession
Is also evidence of the Spirit of God in you.
The reason you confessed Christ is because of the Holy Spirit.
But after you believe…
And after you confess…
THEN WHAT DO YOU DO?
You (14) “testify that the Father as sent the Son to be the Savior of the world”
• There is no such thing as a Christian who is not a missionary.
• There is no such thing as a closet Christian.
• Christians do not cover their light with a basket.
The same Spirit that caused belief also causes confession.
The same Spirit that causes confession also causes us to testify.
John 15:26-27 “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning.”
DO NOT DECEIVE YOURSELF.
There are many people today who never testify of Christ
And yet assume they are saved.
Have you not read?
Matthew 10:32-33 “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. “But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.”
Charles Spurgeon said, “Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.”
How can you say that?
Because the same Spirit that grants life also testifies of that life.
BUT LISTEN TO ME NOW HERE.
What sort of testimony is John talking about here?
• John IS NOT talking here about a verbal testimony.
• John IS NOT talking about a verbal sermon. (Christians should do that)
• John IS talking about the testimony of love.
John is merely pointing out that when God’s Spirit is withing you.
• He will cause you to believe.
• He will cause you to confess Christ.
• And He will cause you to love like Christ loved and thus be a testimony to the world exactly who God is.
I HOPE THIS MAKES SENSE.
This passage is so circular and wordy that pulling it apart takes some real effort.
The reason love is proof that God’s Spirit is in you
Is because you wouldn’t and couldn’t love apart from Him.
And if He is in you, you will love.
And as you love, you show the world who God is.
Now, to sort of reinforce this,
Let me ask you to think about Jesus for a moment.
When Jesus came to this earth do you see His love for His brethren?
• He loved them to the end.
• He came to this world…
• He went from village to village preaching…
• He was moved with compassion…
• Ultimately He laid down His life for our redemption…
And you will be most certain that His Spirit is within you
On the day when you behave like Him.
• When you go in search of the lost sheep.
• When you proclaim the gospel in the world.
• When you show compassion and kindness to those who don’t deserve it.
• When you lay down your life for your brother.
When you do that…
When you love like Christ…
You will be a testimony to the world who can’t see God.
BUT YOU WILL ALSO provide yourself with tremendous assurance that Christ is in you, otherwise you wouldn’t do those things.
Now, let me bring all this together hopefully with these final two verses.
One more statement.
LOVE IS THE ULTIMATE CERTAINTY THAT YOU WILL ESCAPE JUDGMENT (17-18)
Look at these next two verses.
(17-18) “By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”
We are back to the issue of “perfected” love.
John says “By this, love is perfected with us”
By what?
By living like Jesus
(testifying through love to the world and showing them who God is)
When we do that, we show that love has had its work in us.
AND when you love like Jesus.
Or as John says in verse 17, “as He is, so also are we in the world”
When you live and act and love like Jesus.
What does that give you?
“confidence in the day of judgment”
You won’t fear standing before God
If you’ve been living like Jesus in the world.
HOWEVER, there is a flip side.
The opposite of confidence is “fear”
If you “fear” the judgment of God
It is because you can’t see any evidence of Christ in you.
It might just be that you have a love problem.
“perfect love casts out fear”
When you love as God commands you to love, it will eradicate your fear.
• It will prove to you that the Spirit of God is in you.
• It will show you that you are being conformed into Christ’s image.
• It will grant assurance that you are a child of God.
• It will give you confidence to face the judgment.
And to that we say that loving one another is necessary.
ASSURANCE DEPENDS ON IT.
To put it another way.
You will never have assurance without loving one another.
• You may try to convince yourself that you are saved.
• You may try to ignore the conviction.
But without love there will always be fear of judgment.
There will never be confidence.
God is love.
Love is the chief thing Christ did.
Love is the fulfillment of God’s Law.
Love is what God is seeking to produce in your life.
You are never more like Him than when you love.
When you love it is only because God has caused you to do it.
Love is the result of the Holy Spirit abiding in you.
Love is the ultimate testimony that God has changed your life.
SO:
How can you say that God has given you new life?
How can you say that God has filled you with His Spirit?
How can you say that God is conforming you into the image of Christ?
IF YOU DO NOT LOVE YOUR BROTHER?
You can’t.
• Without brotherly love you have no claim on redemption.
• Without brotherly love you have no testimony of godliness.
• Without brotherly love you have no confidence in judgment.
So we say to love one another.
ATONEMENT DESERVES IT
ASSURANCE DEPENDS ON IT
