So Loved // Perfected in Love

Hey, if you have your Bible, open up to 1 John.

That's where we're gonna go today.

And I do want to thank uh Walt Robertson who brought a fantastic message last week.

Are you guys here for that?

So fun.

Um which makes me think I should leave town more often, right?

No, it was great listening back and just the this we've been in this time of exploring the love of God, both, you know, even last week talking about receiving the love of God and giving the love of God.

And we're just gonna continue that theme.

I'm gonna draft off of last week's message a little bit today.

And so would you stand with me as we read the word?

This is 1 John chapter 4, starting in verse 11.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

Says this, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God.

If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his spirit.

And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent his 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.

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.

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 the world.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

This is where you say, thanks be to God.

Try it again.

This is the word of the Lord.

Come on, take a seat.

So I heard this story recently of Einstein.

There was a time that he was traveling by train, and he was sitting in the in the carriage and and uh in the train car, and a conductor was moving through the carriage collecting tickets from the passengers.

He eventually reaches Einstein.

The conductor, already recognizing the famed physicist, waits as Einstein searches for his pockets to find this elusive ticket.

But it's nowhere to be found.

He can't find it.

So he checks his coat, vest, and trousers.

Still no luck.

The conductor, aware of the man's stature, kindly says, Dr.

Einstein, we all know who you are.

I'm sure you bought a ticket, so don't worry about it.

Einstein, grateful for the understanding, nods but continues the search.

And his determination is almost comical as he's looking under the seat and around the floor.

Just imagine the famous Albert Einstein searching out on the floor for this ticket.

Amused and perhaps a bit concerned, the conductor returns and says again, Dr.

Einstein, really, it's fine.

We know who you are.

But then Einstein unforgettably replies with sincerity, he said, Young man, I too know who I am.

What I don't know is where I'm going.

And can you imagine being the smartest, most brilliant man?

And you're on the train, and just in a moment, it's like, I know exactly who I am, but I don't know where this car is headed.

Sometimes when we're following Jesus, when we're off to the races in our walk with Jesus, we we learn a lot, we understand the scriptures, but we need to be reminded of where God is taking us and where God is leading us.

And in this particular passage in 1 John, I believe what he's doing is he's reminding us of both our starting point and our destination.

He said, if you want to know what this is all about, where you're going, all of this can be summed up in this you are being perfected in the love of God.

That is what God is doing, that is where he is leading you.

A few weeks ago when we started this So Love series, I remember after the service, somebody asked me, they said, Wow, like this is like Christianity 101.

I was like, Yeah, yeah, it kind of is.

It's kind of Christianity 101.

Go love people, right?

It sounds so basic.

And I confess, even for me, um having walked with Jesus for a number of years now, uh, I I face temptations of wanting to kind of move on beyond the basics, right?

I want to graduate into bigger, more important topics, right?

Um, let's let's get on to some more complex things, let's preach some more complex sermons and really get into the weeds of all the things.

And I love doing that.

I love thinking about deep things, and I love circling the wagons on all kinds of uh biblical and scriptural issues, issues, think uh theological issues.

Um but you know, I think it's really important for me, for all of us, that we remember that at a certain point we actually never graduate from the love of God.

We don't graduate, we don't get a certificate of completion.

Okay, you've got the love thing, let's move on to some other things now.

Uh, the love of God is Christianity 101, it's Christianity 201, it's Christianity 301 and 401.

You can get your master's, your doctorate.

You will never stop in your earthly or eternal existence experiencing the massive, profound depth of the love of Jesus Christ.

Feel free to get excited.

Because that's what we're here for.

We can change topics as much as we want.

But at the end of the day, everything comes back to the love of Jesus being established in us and expressed through us.

Everything that we talk about comes back to the core thing.

And some of you, you just need to know that this morning.

You're coming in, and you need to know that you're loved.

I just want to tell you, there is nothing more profound that has ever happened on this earth than the Son of God would come and lay down his life for you and for I.

In the middle of our brokenness, he did not wait for you.

He did not wait for you to get your stuff together.

He said, I'm gonna die for you, and I'm gonna take the penalty for all your wrongdoing upon myself, so that you can come and you can know me.

And this is the good news that we respond to.

And so this is why we highlight, why we're kind of we're spotlighting this love thing.

It can kind of get crowded out from time to time, but from time to time.

But just as a reminder, when we talk about love, we're not talking about the gushy sentiment, sentimental, Valentine's y kind of love, right?

Nothing, nothing bad with Valentine's love.

But when the scripture talks about love, it it's a little bit, there's, there's, there's more, it's broader, it's deeper than we tend to go in our culture.

When the scripture talks about love, and even in this letter, when John's talking about love, he uses this word agape, which is this profound self-sacrifice, self-giving, this laying down.

It's not soft love, it's love that interrupts and disrupts, it's a love that scales mountains and knocks down walls, it's a love that unleashes the attention and affection of God on all of those that he sends our way.

This is what love does, this is what love did for us, and this is what he is doing in us.

And so that's why he doubles down in the in the in this letter that John writes, he doubles down on the fact that if God has one goal in our lives, it is to perfect us in his love.

So this letter, when you read it, it almost reads a little redundant, like, did you have to say abide that many times?

Right?

Did you have to say love that you just said that and you just reset it in a different way?

And if you read this, it's a short letter, it's only five chapters, but when you read 1 John, he uses the word love no shorter than 46 times.

And what's really curious about this, if you know the letter of John, it was written by the disciple, the apostle John.

He's the same John that wrote the Gospel of John.

And this is about 55 to 65 years after Jesus had died and resurrected and ascended, right?

55 to 65 years later.

Okay, so this is written probably around 85 to 95 A.D.

He's he's sending these letters out to the church.

And I just want you to imagine as an old man, John is still ruminating, he's still in the aftermath of everything that Jesus came to do and to say and to live.

And in his old age, he hasn't yet moved on from the depth of the love of God.

If you, if you if you cut John, what he's bleeding is like, this is the only thing I have to say, is I'm still being perfected in the love of God.

May we be the same.

That as we grow in our maturity in the Lord, that we don't get away from the fact that everything comes back to the endless work of God, the endless work of Jesus in our hearts to convince us thoroughly in every fiber of our being that we are beloved.

So, John, he's writing to a group of people that are having a hard time believing that Jesus loved us so much that he would actually come and die for us in the flesh.

They had a really hard time that this is a group of people called the Gnostics, which was kind of in the first century.

This is this was a way of thinking that really separated the physical world from the spiritual world.

They said the spiritual is really what's good.

This whole physical world is passing away, it's bad.

Everything of the flesh is bad, it's all flawed.

What's really good is just like, let's get out of here, let's focus on everything up here.

And John has to remind them: listen, Jesus didn't come to vacuum us out of the world.

He came into the world to put on flesh, to love us in these everyday, earthy, sweaty, dirty moments of life.

This is what he came to do.

This is why the love of God is so extraordinary.

Isn't it funny how sometimes we tend to do the same thing?

We tend to want to over-spiritualize the love of God.

It's just up here, it's just an idea or a concept.

And if we want to be convinced otherwise, just turn your face to Jesus and He's gonna show you what love looks like.

Love puts on skin, love takes action, love comes closer than we could ever imagine.

This is what Jesus came to do.

And so John is reminding them that Jesus came into our world and we ought to do the same.

Here's what he said: he said, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God.

If we love one another, God abides in us and we are perfected in his love.

Now let's just unpack that phrase, just leave that up there for a moment.

Perfected in love, perfected in us.

We just to kind of clarify the full intention or meaning of this word, it doesn't mean that his love is imperfect and now he's going to make it perfect.

It doesn't mean we're moving from flawed to all of a sudden precise and completely clean.

Perfected is this actually this Greek word that actually means completed or accomplished or we're finally hitting the end goal.

That that love is reaching its end goal in us, right?

So it doesn't mean that when we we get to a certain point, all of a sudden we're perfect in our love.

How many of you know, like we're I'm not perfect in my love?

I'm not perfect, and I'm not perfect in my love.

And so that's not what he's saying.

He's not talking about you do this long enough, you're gonna be, you're, you're gonna nail it.

You're gonna nail it every time, you're gonna be respected, and you're gonna be just, you know, just all around.

That's not what he's saying.

He's saying there's something happening that's going to be completed in us.

And how does that happen?

John says, it's as we seek to do what Jesus did, as we give away what he's given us, it completes what God was trying to do in us the whole time.

Okay?

As we give away what God has given to us, it actually completes what he's been trying to do in us the entire time.

Are you guys tracking with me?

Now that that sound that sounds that that sounds very basic, but this is so profound because it's true, and we talked to Walt talked about this last week.

You cannot give what you do not possess, right?

So we receive the love of God so that we have a wellspring, we have a reservoir out of which we live.

But the the opposite side is also true.

If we will withhold what we do possess, if we withhold what we do possess, we were we will be lack, we will be found lacking and incomplete.

Because in God's kingdom, you can only you only get to keep what you're willing to give away.

In the kingdom of God, you only get to keep what you're willing to give away.

So if that's love, if you receive the love of God, when we when we withhold that love, when when we resist the movement of the Spirit of God inside of us given to us, it actually stops and blocks the love of God from being perfected within us.

We think that we can accumulate all we want and then sometimes give away.

That's not how it works in the kingdom.

What we don't give away, we don't even get to keep.

And that that that has to do with love, that has to do with encouragement, that has to do with uh provision.

And you know, some sometimes for me, when I feel like I need encouragement in my soul, and I feel like that's exactly what I need.

I come to the Lord and I I receive encouragement from him, but the proof that I've been encouraged is my willingness to give away the thing that I thought I needed most, and I give it away, and somehow in my giving it away, whatever God was trying to do to encourage me comes into a full cycle of completion.

That's how he perfects me in his love.

It's because I don't wait for somebody else to do it for me.

I I choose to give away the thing that I most needed in my soul.

And so something happens as we enter into this flow of God, right?

And so John says, No one has ever seen God.

All right.

So now this should spark you because um in the gospel of John, he says the very same thing.

Uh in John chapter one, he also says, No one's seen God, but but Jesus has come, and the fullness of the face of the Father can be seen now in Jesus.

And so here we see in 1 John, he says this thing, same thing.

No one has seen God, but see what it says on the on the screen here.

No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

And so there's something about he's he's he's positioning this like, listen, as you are living this out, you have to remember that there's there's people that have not seen God, and their best chance of seeing God is going to be love expressed through your life as you're abiding with him.

People don't really see God until it is revealed to them through the lives of people that are walking with God.

And and the thing is, we have to accept the fact, and you need you need to know this, we need to accept the fact that there's some people in your life.

The closest they are going to come to seeing God is going to be what is expressed through you.

There are people that will not, they're not gonna come, they're not gonna show up to 7845 Lookout Road.

Not everybody.

They're not just gonna come waltz to the door and say, tell me what, tell me what you say about God.

Now, some people do that.

Maybe that's who you are today.

Maybe you just showed up randomly today, which is awesome.

But there's so many people in our lives that the closest thing that they will get to get to glimpse God is what they get to see reflected to them in the lives of the people who are following Jesus.

And this is made possible through the work of the Spirit.

How many of you guys, how many of you guys like being around people who actually believe that they're beloved and loved by God?

Isn't it refreshing to be around somebody who's like really loved through like they actually like themselves?

They like other, they genuinely enjoy people, right?

There's kind of a lightness to them.

And not to say that their lives are perfect or they don't feel any other thing, but I I love being with people who are so settled in their identity that they've been called a son and a daughter and they've embraced that and and they live with that.

Because when I'm around those people, what it does is it opens my imagination to what is possible in the fullness of Christ in my life, right?

So when you do that, when you are working out, when you're going to the grocery store, when you are living with your neighbors, and the love of God is expressed out of your being, you have to remember that this for a for this is how the gospel spreads.

It's through him sending us out as ambassadors, representatives of reflections of his very nature and very image to the people he wants to reach with his love.

So further down in this verse, John continues and he says, This God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God.

And God abides in him.

By this is love perfected in us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world.

So he gives a little bit more to this.

Why must we be perfected in love?

He said the way that we're perfected in love.

The first part, he says, it's perfected as we as we do what he does, right?

And he kind of reiterates that here.

He says, abiding in him, which is walking just like this every day.

Abiding is not a word we tend to use in our culture, but abiding is just an everyday conscious awareness that we are not alone, that we are with him, and he has his presence will never depart from us every day of our lives.

And it's a walking, talking, like prayerful life with God, inviting him to the most menial tasks when we're washing the dishes or mowing the lawn or doing our work or working on an Excel spreadsheet.

God knows we need his presence when we're doing that.

When we're doing the everyday stuff of life that people tend to say those are not the spiritual things, now they become the spiritual things because we're abiding in him, and everything is spiritual when you're abiding in Jesus.

Every task becomes holy and sacred ground when you're abiding in Jesus.

And so there's something about abiding him.

Love is perfected in us.

And why does John say that's important?

Because we get to have confidence on the day of judgment, that his love is perfected so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment.

How do you know that there is coming a day, whether you want it to or not?

Well, you were stand before the righteous and good judge.

God is judge, and we will all stand before him.

And the person we have become will be made made plain in his presence.

And I guarantee you, when you get to when you get to meet Jesus face to face, he's not gonna ask you how much money you have in your bank account.

He's not gonna ask you how many trophies, how many certificates you got.

He's not gonna ask you how you did with your cryptocurrency and your stock options.

He's gonna ask you, did you become a person of love?

And this is where we get to we get to experience this.

Even at Celebration of Life Service, I wasn't able to be a part in person of last week someone in our community, um, Karen Armstrong, we hosted a celebration of life service.

I know many of you were here, and I got to watch some of it online.

But isn't it amazing at a celebration of life service, the people that are talking about someone's life, they're never talking about what they accomplished, they're talking about what kind of person they were, right?

So author David Brooks, in his in his book, Road to Character, talked about the difference between Resume virtues and character virtues.

We tend to live a lot of our lives building up resume virtues, things that impress people, but those are almost resume virtues are almost never the things that actually get talked about at our funerals.

It's character virtues.

What, how did I feel when I was around them?

And this is gonna happen with you too.

At your funeral, when you stand before God, the things that are talked about aren't gonna be often the things that we think are gonna be talked about.

It's gonna be the way, the kind of person we became in our time walking with him.

Did we let God perfect us in his love?

Did we become persons of great love?

Because what happens is as that happens, it gives us confidence to stand before him.

And where does that confidence come from?

It doesn't come from, it doesn't come from, man, I I really nailed that.

It comes from, like John says, because as he is, so also are we.

So there's there's a confidence that comes from knowing, oh God, I think I'm becoming more like you, Jesus.

And that's why when you do an act of love, you feel really good.

All right, there's probably a lot of reasons you feel really good when you do an act of love.

But I think internally, part of the reason you feel really great when you do something uh beyond yourself for somebody else is because your spirit knows that you're becoming more like your maker.

You're becoming more like God.

And it actually, I was talking with somebody this week, he said they were in a grocery store and somebody was having a hard time reaching, you know, the top shelf.

And they said, Hey, would you help me?

And all he did was said, sure.

And he got, you know, whatever can or thing was on the top shelf and brought it down to her, and it was very helpful for her.

But he said, in him, he was the recipient, he was the recipient of the gift.

He's like, I felt so good.

Why did he feel good?

Yeah, because you got to help somebody, but inside you know, your the spirit within you knows this is what you were made for.

You were made to become like Jesus in self-sacrificial love.

And that's what creates confidence as we become more and more like him.

Are you guys hearing me?

This is how we become like him.

My heart so desires to stand before Jesus one day and said, in my life, your love overwhelmed me.

Your love got to me and changed the very person I am.

I want him to see me and see the reflection of himself in me.

That's what I want.

I think that's what John is saying here, too.

And John is reminding him all like, listen, if you get confused about where you're going, you just need to remember that all of this, everything God is doing in your life, it's about you being perfected in his love.

Now, that sounds great writing it out like that.

Great, let's go get perfected in his love.

But you guys know being perfected in love is not a perfect process.

This is messy and it takes a lot of time.

A lifetime of walking with Jesus.

This is not always just a walk in the park, right?

So uh tomorrow's a fun day for me because uh my wife and I celebrate our 19-year anniversary tomorrow.

This is us, little babes, little lovebirds.

Um and uh man, we were talking just uh uh two nights ago and just how um 19 years in.

I was like, is this what you thought it would be like 19 years in?

And like both of us were like, we had no idea what marriage would be like 19 years in.

Uh but we both agree it's like this journey is incredibly rewarding, but it it takes an incredible amount of work and resilience to just keep showing up.

And and one of the things, one of the things I love about marriage, and this isn't the only way that God does this, but this is a profound way that God does this, is marriage is one way that God perfects us in his love.

Okay, it's one way that that happens.

Why?

Because somehow in the course of this life together, this journey, this almost abiding in each other, too, um, over time you are receiving multiple and multiple and multiple chances to lay your life down.

And in the process, there's things even being chipped away in your own very life.

And that's what I think is the sneaky thing about marriage.

Marriage is this living in proximity close enough to where all the rough, abrasive parts of my life will be exposed and sanded down over and over and over again.

And that's not to say that it's drudgery, it just has to say that in the process of building a life together, it's somehow in the opportunities to lay our lives down that God starts to chip away at the false self or what doesn't belong to reveal what He's who He's actually making us to be.

Marriage does this, having kids does this, but that's not the only way this happens in any kind of relationship, in community.

When God calls us to each other, it's relationships that often end up kind of grinding uh, you know, against each other, and over time in the working out of relational love, somehow we become more like Jesus in the process.

It's a really a beautiful thing.

That's why relationships are um so profound.

See, relationships are what we're made for, but relationships are also the thing that ruin us, and then relationships are the things that will heal us.

So that's why we have a lot of relational trauma, but relationships is how we're healed, and it's how we're perfected in the image of Christ.

And so, you know, I uh years ago when I was officiating a wedding, I I I was I used this analogy of marriage being kind of like a rock tumbler.

I don't know if you guys have ever had a rock tumbler.

We got our our son a rock tumbler years ago, and a rock tumbler is simply just a little canister that you put rocks in, you put some sand in, and some water, and then literally you turn on the machine and it just rolls and it tumbles for a long time until after a period of time the rocks come out and they're just they're stunning, they're just something completely different.

So we're like, oh, that sounds awesome.

Let's let's do this.

So we went and got a rock, we uh my my son got a rock tumbler, I think for Christmas, and I started going through the instructions because I'm always the guy in the family who has to put everything together and you know actually do everything uh after you know we un unbox the things, right?

Um there's there's no regret in any of that.

But I uh I got the canister and did the thing, put the little sand thing in, put the rocks in.

I'm like, okay, and I'm reading the instructions, and here's what it says it says, all right, now you just need to wait, just turn it on, and it's only going to take six to eight weeks.

And I was like, what?

What kind of sad gift is this?

He said it's it's gonna take six to eight weeks, but listen, look on the bright side.

Normally this takes thousands upon thousands of years, so it's only gonna take you three to four months, right?

I'm like, oh gosh.

I'm like, okay, so what does that mean, six to eight weeks?

And if you've never heard a rock tumbler, this is what we discovered a rock tumbler actually sounds like.

So a rock tumbler is a cylinder and you plug it in, and it's gonna be this for about four months, all right?

So I didn't make one sensible decision.

I'm gonna put four months.

So I put it in the uh grumble, and um and then I'm gonna forget about it all that I believe my chemistry work and I come open the grompuster getting out of my okay.

You can turn it up.

So you can you get you know what a rock tumbler is now, right?

And so every day I'd come home and then hear the same sound.

I'm like, oh my gosh, is this the this is the only way?

This is the only way to get these rocks in shape.

Like, there's gotta be a faster way to do this.

And uh no, it's like you're gonna do the rock tumbler thing, and you're gonna hear this grinding sound every day um uh for months.

And so and then what happened was after three or four months, um, we took it all apart and we, you know, took the top off, and you take the rocks out, and these rocks that were just in this process of colliding with each other with the sand, with the grit, with some water, all of a sudden in this environment, and given enough time, were actually polished, everything was chipped off the side, and whatever rock was under this rugged surface was turning into this like smooth, beautiful, colorful, vibrant thing.

And I I I walk through this thing with the rock tumbler and realizing that it's not just marriage, but it's in our lives.

The way that God actually takes us through the process of perfecting his love oftentimes feels like we get thrown into a rock tumbler, doesn't it?

We want it to go faster than it than it goes, we want it to be quieter than it actually is, we want it to be less abrasive than it feels, but it's in the process of God inviting us into a life of abiding and even just kind of a life of I'm gonna put you in conditions that allow the rugged parts to be shaved off so that whatever is underneath the surface can actually be made manifest.

This is what God does in our lives.

This is how he perfects us in his love.

And I share that because I know that in this room, some of you feel like you're you're you're you're trying to make sense of your life right now.

And some of you, it feels like, man, I just have, I feel like I've been in a rock tumbler for a long time.

And that's what it feels like.

And that could be relationally, it could be circumstantially or situationally.

I know that in this room, there's some of you who are just you're walking through things right now that it feels, it does not feel like you're being perfected in love.

There's nothing lovely about it.

This doesn't feel fun, this isn't beautiful, but I'm telling you guys, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, the way that Jesus perfects his love is by asking by inviting us to follow him into the same kind of life that he came to live, which is a laying down and willing to be misunderstood, willing to be betrayed, willing to be hurt, that in the process he could show us what love looks like and invite us to do the same thing.

This is what it means.

This is the invitation to be perfected in love.

I guarantee everything that you're walking through in your life, even right now, as you come into this room and you've been even thinking about things that you need to start thinking about this week.

It may be even hard to even concentrate this morning because you're thinking about so many other little things in your life that feel like they're rumbling around.

I'm telling you, every single one I'm not saying every painful or bad situation came from God, but I'm saying this every single situation in your life is an invitation from the Father to receive love and to be perfected in his life.

A lot of us know John 3.16, which is for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

Very few of us know first John 3.16.

And this is uh what I'm gonna read and kind of end.

And this is in the Passion Translation that says this This is how we have discovered love's reality.

Jesus sacrificed his life for us.

Because of this great love, we should be willing to lay down our lives for one another.

If anyone sees a fellow believer in need and has the means to help him, yet shows him no pity and closes his heart against him, how is it even possible that God's love lives with him?

Loves in him.

Beloved children, our love can't be an abstract theory we only talk about, but a way of life demonstrated through our loving deeds.

We know that the truth lives within us because we demonstrate love and action, which will reassure our hearts in his presence.