7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 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. 10 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. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
Once again tonight we are back to the topic of love and our calling to love one another. In 1 John chapter 2 we spoke about our duty to love one another and the reason why was because to love one another is to walk in the light and he who does not love walks in darkness.
“Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in the darkness. (1 John 2:9)
In this first lesson on loving others we spent much time talking about how sin boils down to being our failure to love God and others as we should love them. The entire ten commandments can be summoned up in the new commandment to:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)
Every time we sin, we fail to love. We fail to walk in love towards God and others as God has commanded us to. This really ties in with 1 John 3:9:
No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9)
Why can’t one truly born of God keep on sinning as he once did? He has a new nature within him and it is a nature to love others not to harm others as he once did before. To do evil means to do harm to another person. We are unable to make a practice of doing the evil that we once did without a second thought. We are unable to lie now like we once made a practice of lieing, know how much our lies hurt our loved one. We are unable to steal, to take something that does not belong to us, no matter how small it is because we know that our stealing hurts another person. We are unable to slander, to gossip and talk bad about others like we use to talk when they are not around to hear us because we know that our tongue hurts others, so we strive to speak only what may benefit others and those who listen to us. We no longer seek to get drunk and practice sexual promiscuity as Friday night fun because we know it hurts others. It hurts our friends as we make stupid decisions, it hurts our parents when we are young, it hurts our children when they are put in harm’s way or neglected or abandoned for a night of selfish fun. The things we once found “fun” when we walked in darkness, are no longer so “fun” to us. The things we once laughed at, we now cringe at and are ashamed of. We can’t laugh at someone else’s expense like we once could. We can’t put others down to lift ourselves up like we once did without consideration. We aren’t as quick to be as revengeful as we once were and to get even. Why? Because God’s seed is now in us. It might be small but something has taken root deep inside our hearts and we slowly begin to turn and we just can’t do the things we once did before because there is no pleasure in them. We don’t find our pleasure in harming others like we once did. Instead we are finding our pleasure comes though loving others.
That is why this whole section then ends with 2 John 3:10:
By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil; whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
In the last half of John chapter 3 we are once again exhorted to love one another.
For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. 1 John 3:11
“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. (1 John 16)
In this second call for us to love one another in chapter 3, we were shown what genuine love looks like by comparing it to what it does not look like, Cain murdering his brother Abel. Instead we are look to Jesus who demonstrated to us genuine love which is sacrificial in nature, not self-seeking and self-preserving. As Jesus laid down his life for us so we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. This is what genuine love looks like and by this we know love.
We love why? Because Christ loved us. If you need a second reason to love others in addition to it being sinful not to love, this is it. We love others because Christ loved us in this manner.
We would never have known this kind of love if Jesus had not demonstrated it for us. Such an unselfish kind of love is totally unconceived of in the heart of man. If we were to define love in our world, it is seen more of a two way street. You love me and I love you. There is always an expected return on our love even if it is in the future. We love because the other person brings us some form of pleasure, benefit or we hope to receive something for our efforts and endurance if even just some form of recognition. To love without a return and without any hope of a return is difficult if not impossible to our fleshly nature. God loves without a return. God sees love as a one way street. In this way He pours out his love upon us like rain, on the just and on the unjust alike. In God’s love, he sent his Son to die for sinners.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
Such is the love that the Father has lavished upon us as his children!
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.(1 John 3:1 NIV)
It is God the Father’s love that is our focus tonight as the third reason why we ought to love one another. The first reason was our love for others ought to cause us to love one another, the second reason is Jesus’ great love for us in laying down his life for us ought to compel us to love one other as brothers and sisters in Christ and this third reason is that love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. (1 John 3:7-8)
This is the beginning of our text tonight except for it starting with once again, John’s reference to us as “Beloved.” This is a great place to start, remembering who we are. We are the beloved ones. We are those who God lavishes his love on. We are the objects of God’s affection. We are those who God daily loads with benefits.
Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah. (Psa. 68:19 KJV)
We are those who were created to declare his excellencies.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light 2 Peter 2:19
Or as A.W. Tozer so aptly puts it in his book The Purpose of Man: Designed to Worship:
That is what you are here for, to glorify God and enjoy Him thoroughly and forever, telling the universe how great God is” – A.W. Tozer, The Purpose of Man: Designed to Worship.(pg. 47)
What a wonderful position we are in as God’s beloved ones. This is who you and I are as children of God. You are Beloved.
Beloved is from the Greek word Agapetos which comes from agapao to love , agape an unconditional love borne of by the Spirit. Galation 5:22 It means those who are loved, dear, very much loved, prized, valued. Agapetos is used only of Christians as united (by covenant, the New Convenant) with God or with each in love. In secular Greek the word agapetos is used mostly of a child, especially an only child to whom all the love of his parents is given.
This is our God referred to Jesus:
He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him. (Matt 17:5)
Jesus was God’s one and only son:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (1 John 1:18)
In this understanding the word agapetos would have had great meaning even to secular Greeks. Jesus was the Beloved. God demonstrated his own love for us by sending his son, beloved, agapetos, one and only son, highly treasured, loved and valued to die for us while we were yet sinners. We are going to come back to this thought in a few verses for now I just want this truth to marinate in the back of your mind.
Let’s first talk more about what Agape love is. It is used 115 times in the New Testament and is often translated as love, beloved or love feasts.
When Christians met together on the first day of the week, they were accustomed to partake of a common meal. The name of this meal was Agape or love-feast as used in Jude 1:12. It was the opinion of many scholars that this Agape meal did not only consist of bread and wine but all kinds of other foods that satisfied their physical hunger and thirst along with having the purpose of giving a sense of family, community and brotherhood in Christ. At the end of this feast, communion was often taken using bread and wine in remembrance of Christ and according to his command reminding them that all true Christian fellowship and satisfaction for hunger and thirst are provided to us through Christ.
Agape love is a willful, decisive, unconditional and sacrificial love that is often used to describe God’s love for us and the way we are called to love others. Agape love is not based on feelings like Eros love which is more sensual and sexual in nature or Phileos love which is more friendship love based on commonalities.
William Barclay notes that…
“…agape indicates an unconquerable benevolence, invincible goodwill…If we regard a person with agape, it means that no matter what that person does to us, no matter how he treats us, no matter if he insults us or injures us or grieves us, we will never allow any bitterness against him to invade our hearts, but will regard him with that unconquerable benevolence and goodwill which will seek nothing but his highest good.”…In the case of our nearest and our dearest we cannot help loving them; we speak of falling in love; it is something which comes to us quite unsought; it is something which is born of the emotions of the heart. But in the case of our enemies, (agape) love is not only something of the heart; it is also something of the will. It is not something which we cannot help; it is something which we have to will ourselves into doing. It is in fact a victory over that which comes instinctively to the natural man. Agape does not mean a feeling of the heart, which we cannot help, and which comes unbidden and unsought; it means a determination of the mind, whereby we achieve this unconquerable goodwill even to those who hurt and injure us. Agape, someone has said, is the power to love those whom we do not like and who may not like us. In point of fact we can only have agape when Jesus Christ enables us to conquer our natural tendency to anger and to bitterness, and to achieve this invincible goodwill to all men.
“Agape, is that unconquerable benevolence, that undefeatable good-will, which will never seek anything but the highest good of others, no matter what they do to us, and no matter how they treat us. That love can come to us only when Christ, Who is that love, comes to dwell within our hearts…”
Kenneth Wuest describes agape love as follows…
Agape is a love that impels one to sacrifice one’s self for the benefit of the object loved…(it) speaks of a love which is awakened by a sense of value in the object loved, an apprehension of its preciousness.
Wuest explains that phileo love is “an unimpassioned love, a friendly love. It is a love that is called out of one’s heart as a response to the pleasure one takes in a person or object. It is based upon an inner community between the person loving and the person or object loved. That is, both have things in common with one another. The one loving finds a reflection of his own nature in the person or thing loved. It is a love of liking, an affection for someone or something that is the outgoing of one’s heart in delight to that which affords pleasure. The Greeks made much of friendship, and this word was used by them to designate this form of mutual attraction.”…”We gather, therefore, that agape is a love of devotion, while phile? is a love of emotion. There is another distinction we must be careful to note, and that is that agape is love that has ethical qualities about it, obligations, responsibilities, where phile? is a non-ethical love, making no ethical demands upon the person loving.
In contrasting phileo and agape love, we might say that the former is a love of pleasure, the latter a love of preciousness; the former a love of delight, the latter a love of esteem; the former a love called out of the heart by the apprehension of pleasurable qualities in the object loved, the latter a love called out of the heart by the apprehension of valuable qualities in the object loved; the former takes pleasure in, the latter ascribes value to; the former is a love of liking, the latter a love of prizing.
(Agape is) a love that denies self for the benefit of the object loved.
(Agape describes the) love of the Spirit-filled husband, purified and made heavenly in character.
(Agape is) the love which the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in the heart of the yielded believer (Ro 5:5)The saint is to order his behavior or manner of life within the sphere of this divine, supernatural (agape) love produced in his heart by the Holy Spirit. When this love becomes the deciding factor in his choices and the motivating power in his actions, he will be walking in love. He will be exemplifying in his life the self-sacrificial love shown at Calvary and the Christian graces mentioned in 1Co 13:4, 5, 6, 7, – see notes 1Co 13:4; 13:5;13:6 ; 13:7.” (It is) a love that is willing to sacrifice one’s self for the benefit of that brother, a love that causes one to be long suffering toward him, a love that makes one treat him kindly, a love that so causes one to rejoice in the welfare of another that there is no room for envy in the heart, a love that is not jealous, a love that keeps one from boasting of one’s self, a love that keeps one from bearing one’s self in a lofty manner, a love that keeps one from acting unbecomingly, a love that keeps one from seeking one’s own rights, a love that keeps one from becoming angry, a love that does not impute evil, a love that does not rejoice in iniquity but in the truth, a love that bears up against all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. That is the kind of love which God says one Christian should have for another.”
(Agape love) speaks of a love which is awakened by a sense of value in an object which causes one to prize it. It springs from an apprehension of the preciousness of an object. It is a love of esteem and approbation. The quality of this love is determined by the character of the one who loves, and that of the object loved. (In Jn 3:16) God’s love for a sinful and lost race springs from His heart in response to the high value He places upon each human soul. Every sinner is exceedingly precious in His sight. “Phileo” which is another word for love, a love which is the response of the human spirit to what appeals to it as pleasurable, will not do here, for there is nothing in a lost sinner that the heart of God can find pleasure in, but on the contrary, everything that His holiness rebels against. But each sinner is most precious to God, first, because he bears the image of his Creator even though that image be marred by sin, and second, because through redemption, that sinner can be conformed into the very image of God’s dear Son. This preciousness of each member of the human race to the heart of God is the constituent element of the love that gave His Son to die on the Cross. The degree of the preciousness is measured by the infinite sacrifice which God made. The love in Jn 3:16 therefore is a love whose essence is that of self-sacrifice for the benefit of the one loved, this love based upon an evaluation of the preciousness of the one loved. (Wuest, K. S. Wuest’s Word Studies from the Greek New Testament: Eerdmans)
God calls us to agape love.
“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love (agape) for one another.” (John 13:35).
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)
Why are we to love one another? Because love is of God. It is of God’s own character, spirit and nature. He is the source of all love. If sin and hatred are of the evil one, the devil, righteousness and love are of God. We love because we are of God. Whoever has been born of God and knows God loves other as God loves others because they are of God. They cannot do otherwise. It is their design, it is their nature as it is God’s own nature and everything God does is out of love because God is love. God is agape. He cannot deny himself. He never changes. Everything God does, as it is done out of holiness, it is also has love at its very foundation. We can be sure of this.
Anyone who does not love does not know God. These are strong words. You cannot be a Christian and not love, not live a life that has been changed by love.
Let us make some discriminations. A man may come to a certain state of great and sudden joy, and of relish for religious exercises, and yet not be a Christian. Religious inspirations and great fertility of feeling, of fancy, fervour of emotion, and elegant utterance, are not evidences, in themselves, of piety. They are blessed concomitants of it often; but they may exist separately from and independently of piety. Your piety is to be tested by its consistency with God’s law of love. The power of right ideas, the clearness with which you take hold of them, the aptness with which you are able to state them, your zeal for them–all these, while they are desirable in piety, are not characteristic of it; and a man may have them and not be a Christian. God’s orthodoxy is of the heart always. That will make the head correct. A man, also, may have great faith and not be a Christian. I go further, and say that a man may be a very generous, good fellow, a very agreeable, companionable man, and yet not be a Christian. A man, likewise, may have an unflinching zeal in religion, and constancy in its service, even to martyrdom, and yet not be a Christian. How many there are that are wardens and doorkeepers of God’s house, who have no love, no benevolence, no conscience, no fidelity. Zeal they may have, but summer in the soul they have not.
I go still further, and say that religiousness is not piety. Far be it from me to say a word to discourage reverence, devoutness, awe, in the presence of God. But that alone, that without love, is not enough. With love, it makes piety broader and deeper, and life more massive and noble; but unless there be, first, intermediate, and last, the spirit and the law of love, there is no piety. When a man is converted, therefore, it is very important that he should be converted to the right thing. No man is a Christian till he is converted to the law of love. Since you made a profession of religion, are you kinder in the various relations of life? Is your life more full of the fruits of love? Have you a more comprehensive benevolence toward all mankind? Every year do you less and less accept the service of loving men as a task, and do you more and more accept it with cheerfulness? Do you find that the currents of your thought and feeling are setting outward instead of inward? Are you more full of the sweetness of true Christian’s love? In this direction you must measure to know whether you are growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (H. W. Beecher.)
Because God is love we cannot and must not say love is God because God defines love, love finds its very definition and existence in God. God does not find his definition and existence in love.
Great problems come when we try to say love is God. This is because love does not define everything in the character of God, and because when most people use the term love, they are not thinking of true love, the God-kind of love. Instead, they are thinking of a squishy, namby-pamby, have-a-nice-day kind of love that values being “nice” more than wanting what is really best for the other person.
The Bible also tells us that God is spirit (Joh. 4:24), God is light (1Jo. 1:5), and that God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). – Guzik
As we have talked about in previous lessons, much of what the world calls love, is not really love at all but a disguised lust cloaking itself as love.
What does it mean to know God? God is spirit. No one has ever seen God except for his one and only Son Jesus who has made God known to us.
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (1 John 1:18)
To know God we must be of God. Jesus was of God and was able to make God known to us.
To know someone some type of commonality must exist between them. What commonality exists between us and God who is holy?
Yet because of Jesus we now have the Holy Spirit who is given to us and imparts God’s seed in us, God’s very own nature, God’s very own Spirit and we are truly born of God.
12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God (John 1:12-13
Because of Christ, because of our new birth we can truly know God by knowing the Spirit of God. We recognize the spirit of God, the spirit of love when we see it in others. When we know God’s spirit we can recognize the false spirits. God’s spirit is one of agape, sacrificial love always seeking not its own but the benefit of others. That is the Spirit of God and the Spirit of this world is a Spirit of Murder that seeks its own pleasure, its own benefit at the expense of the lives of others. It cannot seek the benefit and life of others at the expense of its own life. It is against its nature.
If I mistake not, our first instinct is to suppose that to know God must be some result of hard thinking, something to be got by books, or something which is granted to intellectual power. Whatever truth there may be in this, there is no allusion to it all through Scripture which does not lead us to connect the thought of knowing God with the study, or the library, or the laboratory. It carries us into another region; it speaks of a knowledge which is open to the poor, the uneducated, the young. It speaks of a state of mind rather than of a degree of attainment; something which leads you to say and to feel as you see it in others, not “how wonderful!” but “how beautiful!”–not “how did he amass all those stores of learning?” but, “how did he become so noble and so like Christ?” He that loveth not, knoweth not God. Is that a hard saying to any of us? What, we ask, the mightiest intellect of modern times, rich with the spoils of time, does not that intellect know God? No, is the Divine answer, not if the man be selfish. It is one thing to know about God, to know what has been said of Him and written and thought of Him, and what science has revealed to us as to the modes of the operations of His hands. This is one thing; but to know God is another. To know God in any true sense is to be unselfish, to be loving, to have towards others the heart of a brother. He who gave us the intellect wishes us to use the intellect according to our age, our strength, our opportunities. Still all this knowledge is at the best knowledge about God not knowledge of God. Let us dare to look on yet further, and lift the wings of the soul. Are we speaking only of that which is, or of that also which shall be hereafter? Of what kind do you suppose will be that higher knowledge? Will it differ in kind from that which was learned often so painfully on earth? Will there be one measurement for the “pure in heart” who on earth have “seen God,” and another for those who wake up after His likeness and see His face in heaven? Will the higher knowledge be more of the illumined intellect, and less of the adoring heart? If so, it would not be a higher knowledge in the spiritual order; it would be a lower, with more of earth in it and less of heaven. Everyone that loveth will still know God, and he that loveth not will still not know God. Or, if we pass beyond the region of glowing words, and think calmly of what we have seen and felt in our short passage through life, what report have we to bring on this high matter? When have we seemed to ourselves to be least ignorant of our God, or, may I dare say, understand Him best? Has it been when we were trying to spell out some hard passages in the Bible, or the Creed, or when we caught the echo of some far off thunder of controversy; or has it not rather been when our hearts were touched by something “lovely” or “of good report”; when we mourned unselfishly some common loss; when something so moved us at the very centre of our being that all distinctions of age, of ability, of position were merged and lost in one full tide of brotherly affection, and we seemed for a time almost surprised at the nearness and clearness of heaven? There are times, for example, in early childhood, when we have committed some fault. Conscience acts with sternness, and makes her terrors known, but soon love casts out fear; we cannot bear to have done wrong to a mother, or a sister; confession is a necessity; we must have human forgiveness, because, though as yet we know it not, it is to us the image and the representative of the Divine. Then in that weakness and majesty of childish love which resists sin and insists on pardon, we have the knowledge of God. Young as we are, we look on life with the eyes of love and hope. We long to succour, to reform, to purify, to save. But these eyes of love and hope are in truth the eyes of God. Or once more, that which has touched us has been the closing scene of life. We have gathered round some good man’s grave. Who shall measure the teaching power of the great? What pulpit, what creed, what treatise on theology, can match for one moment with the open tomb in teaching the knowledge of God? And why? Because we then have ears to hear; because the heart is not closed, but open; because, if I may dare to say so, the spirit of Christian love is in the air. Our hearts recall the gifts and the graces of the Christian dead which made him the loved and honoured. Such lives, such characters, such memories are, indeed, teachers in the knowledge of God. Yes, if it be, indeed, the sober truth, if it be the real state of the case in the external world, that “everyone that loveth knoweth God,” then our best, perhaps our only teachers in this high knowledge are those who have loving, unselfish hearts, and draw us, whether by the loving voice of an inexorable silence, to think of Him who in the language of heaven is love. (H. M. Butler, D. D.)
9 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.
How was the love of God revealed among us? Through God sending his beloved, one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. This is how God’s love was made manifest among us. Apart from this we would have no way of knowing God’s love. No way of experiencing God’s love. It would simply be head knowledge, something we read about but that we couldn’t comprehend. Not that we can comprehend it now that it has been demonstrated with such magnitude that we can’t get our minds around it. Regardless, it has been made manifest before us and even if we can’t take it all in the width, the height and the depth of it being so great, we know it. We see it. We cannot deny it because it has been demonstrated before us and we enter into this love, experiencing it for ourselves, calling it our own, once we place our own faith in the finished work of Christ.
That we might live through him. In Adam we were dead. Spiritually dead and had no hope of being quickened. In Christ we live and have found life a greater life and position then we had in Adam before the fall of man. We are given every spiritual blessing in Christ. Adopted as Sons. Given an inheritance. Given Eternal life. Rewards and a restored relationship with God.
I had a bizarre dream once that left an impact on me. In my dream I was running with someone and we were running by the Grand Canyon and I remember looking to my left and seeing the moon sitting in the Grand Canyon. Only the top part of it was peaking over the edge and it was glowing and I slowed down from running as I stared. Even in my own dream this was too bizarre for me to comprehend. It was as if the moon had temporarily parked itself in the Grand Canyon. I was unsettled trying to figure out what it was doing there. It was as if a mighty heavenly authority was visiting us. As I was running by it, I could tell something was obviously out of place. I had the sense that something was going on that was huge, intentional by its placement, unsettling by its nature and outside our control and dominion. Something that caused such glory, majesty and honor from the heavens domain to step outside its boundaries and park itself in the depths of our great canyon. I couldn’t get this image out of my mind when I woke up. It was so nonsensical. Such an exaggeration. Everyone knows there is no way a moon could even fit in our grand canyon. Why would I ever dream such a thing? Yet, I later had the thought, Is this not Jesus, tabernacling and dwelling among us? The idea that God, himself would be made flesh and abandon his heavenly place to enter our canyons? Was not his presence here just as fantastic if not more fantastic the very idea of it? We just don’t comprehend the magnitude of the awesomeness of God sending his one and only Son into our world without such an exaggeration entering into our minds that help us actually comprehend the very truth of it. Is not this great truth just as preposterous to behold and yet true it is!
God sent his only Son into the world, this emphasizes the preexistence of Christ who existed with God before the world began. Christ was sent into the world. The cause of his being here was the will of the Father. God sent his one and only, beloved Son into the world so that we might live through him.
10 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.
My husband taught a bible study at our church on this verse a month or so ago and one of the truths that struck him in this verse has still struck me. It was this. It is one thing for you yourself to be willing to die for another person. Even more difficult to be willing to die for a sinner. Yet how much more so difficult to sacrifice someone else’s life, your beloved, one and only child, for the life of an undeserving, ungrateful sinner. To watch your child suffer so painfully. Tim said he did not think he could ask our own son to die on another’s behalf, a sinners behalf and in such an excruciating manner. He himself might be able to muster up the strength to do it but he could not send his son to do it. Such is the love of God that God sent his one and only Son to be our sacrifice for sins. It’s not because we are so valued but because God’s love is so great.
There can be no other greater demonstration of God’s love for us. Do you want proof that God loves you? There is no greater proof, no greater demonstration to be had or found then what God has already given to us through his sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. What else can God possibly do to demonstrate and make known his love to us then this? We simply have to believe, accept it and enjoy it by living in it. Living in the truth of it. Walking in the light of it. Trusting in it.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Rom. 5:8
Propitiation is the same term as used in 1 John 2:2. Jesus is the propitiation not only for our sins but for the sins of the whole world.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Once again John refers to us as Beloved, those who are loved by God and favored by him. Are you believing it that you are beloved to God? If this is the way that God loves us, in loving us enough to sacrifice his one and only Son on our behalf, this is the way we are called to love one another,
“By this we know love, that he (Jesus) laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for others.” 1 John 3:16
Why? Because love is of God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. That us why. We love because God first loved us. His love brought love to life in us and spreads itself among us. As sin spreads and duplicates and replicates itself in this world so the love of God spreads itself bringing life to this lifeless world through us. We love because love dwells in us.
“I like that word, ought. It suggests duty. Sometimes Christians do not like to be reminded of duty, for they have an idea that duty is not consistent with grace. But the grace of God, when it is active in the life, leads men and women to do the things they ought. Here is one thing we ought to do-we ought to love one another. We ought to love those who do not love us, who mistreat us, who speak evil of us, who harm us, and who would ruin us if they could. That is the way God loves us. Nothing that men did to our blessed Lord Jesus, nothing that they said about Him, could change the attitude of His heart toward them. As He was hanging on the cross and the angry rabble cried out for His life, He prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luk 23:34). This is not natural love. No one loves like this naturally. This is divine, spiritual love, and is possible only by walking in the power of the new nature, which God gives to those who believe.” – Ironside
12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
I love Ironside’s commentary on this verse:
No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (1 John 1:18)
“No man hath seen God at any time” (1Jn 4:12). This is not the first time this expression is found in the Scriptures. In Joh 1:18 you will find the exact same words, “No man hath seen God at any time.” Let’s examine these controversial words, for Scripture seems to indicate that there were many instances where men saw God. Didn’t God speak with Moses face to face, and didn’t He put him in a cleft of the rock while He passed by? Didn’t Adam speak with God in the garden? And doesn’t Isaiah say that “In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple” (Isa 6:1)? Didn’t Ezekiel have visions of God, and didn’t the glory of the Lord appear to Daniel and many others? Yes, and yet it remains true that, “No man hath seen God at any time.” God is a Spirit, infinite and eternal, and is Himself invisible. Christ, however, has revealed God to men. But before Jesus became incarnate, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit were all invisible. The Old Testament characters of whom it is written that they saw God, saw a form that God took-a Theophany-by which He revealed Himself to them. They saw His glory and splendor, but they could not see His deity.
No one, in a sense, has ever seen you. People have seen your body, your face, and your eyes, but they have never seen the real you-the spirit that looks out through your eyes. We cannot see the real man, for under present conditions the spirit of man is invisible. We shall never really see one another as long as we are in the flesh, but in eternity we shall see and know one another in spirit. No one has ever seen the sun. Someone might object to that and say, “How can you tell me that I have never seen the sun! Of course I have seen it. I have seen it rise, I have seen it moving through the heavens, I have seen it set as it dips into the west.” But you are mistaken. You have never seen the sun! You have seen the robe of glory that envelopes it, but you cannot pierce that glory and see behind the flame that enfolds mat great globe. That would be impossible. It is the sun that gives out that glory and you cannot even gaze on that in its full strength at noonday for one minute, because of its blinding glare. A great astronomer was so delighted when one of the finest telescopes was first invented that, in his haste to look at the sun through it, he forgot to put the dark glass over the lens. Swinging that great instrument into place, he leaned down and with the naked eye looked through the lens at the sun. The next moment he uttered a cry of pain as the blinding light burned his eye, destroying its sight completely.
Plato said, “The radiant light is the shadow of God.” David declared of God, Thou “coverest thyself with light as with a garment” (Psa 104:2). The light, the glory, the radiance is just the garment, and God is behind it all, invisible.
We read in Joh 1:18 that “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” Jesus Christ came into the world as God revealed in the flesh and made God known to man. We understand God as we could not have done otherwise. Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (Joh 14:9).
In Heb 1:3 we read that Christ is “the express image” of the Father. In other words, Jesus is the exact expression of God’s character. All that God is is seen in Jesus. Jesus walked this world for a brief period of thirty-three and one-half years, and during that time God was manifest, God was seen on the earth, in the person of His Son. When Jesus went back to Heaven was God left without any manifestation on earth? We read, “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God [abideth] in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1Jn 4:12). God dwells in all believers, but the Greek word for dwelleth is different from that for abideth. If we love one another, we exhibit the new and divine nature. If we walk in love, then men can see God in us, for God abideth in us. If we are living in fellowship with God, we are manifesting and making Him known.
We have read the account of the professed conversion of the President of China (Chiang Kai-shek). We hope there has been a real work in his soul, but only eternity will tell. I was reading how he came to his Christian wife who was saved long before he made a profession, and said, “I can’t understand these Christians. They have been treated most abominably here. They have been robbed, beaten, and many of them killed. They have been persecuted fearfully, and yet I never find one of them retaliating. Anytime they can do anything for China and for our people, they are ready to do it. I do not understand them.” “Well,” said his wife, “that is the very essence of Christianity. They do that because they are Christians.” That is how God is manifest in China, and how you and I are called on to manifest Him wherever we may be. There are many who will never read the Bible, but they are reading us. They are looking at our lives. How much of God is really seen in us?
You are writing a gospel, a chapter a day,
By deeds that you do, by words that you say.
Men read what you write, whether faithless or true;
Say, what is the gospel according to you?
People may never read the Gospel of Matthew, never look at the Gospel of Luke, never heed the Gospel of Mark, and never consider the Gospel of John, but they are reading the gospel of you-they are watching you, listening to you, and observing you. They are getting their ideas of Christ and of God from what they hear and see in you.
A number of years ago I was down in Ganado, Arizona, visiting a Presbyterian mission. In the hospital there was a poor Navajo woman who had been desperately ill but had been nursed back to life and health through the Christian missionary doctor and nurses. She was a poor Indian woman who had been cast out by her own people when they thought she was going to die. She had been thrown behind a clump of brush and left there for three or four days. It was the middle of August when the heat is terrific during the daytime and the nights become bitterly cold. There she lay without food or drink, suffering terribly. This missionary doctor found her, brought her to the hospital, and did everything that Christian love and surgical skill could suggest. At last he brought her back to health.
After nine weeks in the hospital, she began to wonder about the love shown to her and said to the nurse, “I can’t understand it. Why did he do all that for me? He is a white man and I am an Indian. My own people threw me out. I can’t understand it. I’ve never heard of anything like this before.” The Navajo nurse, a sweet Christian girl, said to her, “You know, it is the love of Christ that made him do that.” “What do you mean by the love of Christ? Who is this Christ? Tell me more about Him.” The nurse was afraid she would not tell it in the right way and so called the missionary doctor. He sat down and talked to her, and day by day unfolded the wonderful story.
After a few weeks (for she could take in only a little at a time) the hospital staff thought she understood enough to make her decision. They had a special prayer meeting for her then gathered around her bed and prayed that God by His Spirit would open her blind eyes. Again they told her the story of God’s love, and asked, “Can’t you trust this Savior? Turn from the idols you have worshiped, and trust Him as the Son of the living God!” She looked at them with her big dark Indian eyes and was silent a long time. Then the door to her room opened and the doctor stepped in. Her face lit up and she said, “If Jesus is anything like the doctor, I can trust Him forever,” and she came to Christ. Do you see what had reached her? She had seen divine love manifested in a man. That is what you and I are called to exhibit to the world.
“No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth [abideth] in us, and his love is perfected in us.” The love that was revealed so fully in Jesus is now being revealed in those who have trusted in the risen Christ. They are called to make known to a lost world the same wondrous love that led Him to go to the cross. So the apostle concluded this section by saying, “Hereby know we that we dwell [abide] in him” (1Jn 4:13). If we love in this divine way, we abide in Him. You cannot abide in Christ and have hatred in your heart. You cannot abide in Christ and have jealousy in your heart; you cannot have unlovely thoughts and unholy desires. All these break fellowship with the Lord.
“Hereby know we that we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.” Notice carefully these last words. Notice what John does not say, and then what he does say. The longer I live the more I am filled with admiration for this wonderful book. It is absolutely perfect. God does not say here that He gives us His Spirit, although He does that at salvation. We would not be Christians if He had not given us His Spirit: “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom 8:9). But He is speaking to people here to whom He has already given His Spirit and is telling them how they can show divine love. “Because he hath given us of his Spirit.” What does that mean? He has Himself implanted within us something that He has given us from His Spirit. That is the new nature. His Spirit is that of love, and this is the very essence of the new nature. All you and I have to do is to let the Spirit of God control us and we will manifest the love of Christ.
To an unbeliever, this seems like a high standard, and they may say, “I don’t see how I could ever live up to this, and what is more, I don’t know that I have ever seen a Christian who fully did so.” Yes, I know I have failed to live up to Christ’s standard, but that is my objective, desire, and aim. It is better to have a high objective and fail to obtain it than to have a low one and meet it. Perhaps you feel you could never be a Christian because you can’t live up to divine expectation. An Indian once said to me, “Well, you know what I see in this? Here we are in our sin, and a great abyss is before us. On the other side is Heaven. We must get from our sins over to Heaven. There is a bridge across that chasm, but it is like a razor edge, and I have to walk on that in order to get to Heaven!” On the contrary, Christ Himself has bridged the chasm and will carry us over from sin to salvation, from Hell to Heaven. And in order that we may exhibit the love of Christ, He has given us His divine nature. We are called to receive Christ, and then He gives us the nature that delights to love. “Whosoever loveth [in this sense] is born of God.” – Ironside
