The Cross Shaped People of God

[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church, located in Plano, Texas, for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry, please visit CitizensChurch.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning, Citizens Church.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's good to see you guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have for those of you who don't know me, my name is Mike I'm along with Karen Mays.

[SPEAKER_00]: I helped to oversee our Bible classes in our theological training.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've got your Bibles, go and grab them.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be in 1 John chapter 4 verses 7 through 12.

1 John 4:7–12

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you saw it, but a couple of weeks ago, something happened on the news, NASA sent the first man to mission to the moon since 1972, Artemis II.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't land on the moon.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to happen next year, Artemis III.

[SPEAKER_00]: This year was sort of a test flight, but they did do something that had never been done in the history of humanity.

[SPEAKER_00]: where the first people in all of history to actually lay eyes on the dark side of the moon.

[SPEAKER_00]: Prior to that, we have had photos, there's an orbiter, there's a satellite going around the moon and it takes pictures.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we've never had 4K high-deft photos of the far side of the moon, and we've never had people actually having looked upon it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why is there a dark side in a light side of the moon?

[SPEAKER_00]: The way the moon orbits the earth is peculiar and that one side of the moon always faces the earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one side of the moon always faces away.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know you know this, but the moon doesn't produce its own light, it's just a dead rock floating in space.

[SPEAKER_00]: It can only reflect the light that it receives from the sun.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, when you're looking up at the moon at night, how do you know that the side of the moon that you're looking at is in the path of the sun?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's real easy.

[SPEAKER_00]: It'll be glowing.

[SPEAKER_00]: First round, four, seven, beloved.

[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, let us love one another.

[SPEAKER_00]: For love is from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And whoever loves has been born of God and those God.

[SPEAKER_00]: How do you know that the moon is in the path of the sun?

[SPEAKER_00]: It will be glowing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It will be reflecting the light that it receives.

[SPEAKER_00]: How do you know what, if a person is in the path of God?

[SPEAKER_00]: John says, they will be glowing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They will be reflecting God's light.

[SPEAKER_00]: They will be reflecting God's love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Receiving God's love causes us to reflect God's love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or to put it in another way to know the God of love means that we will show the love of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look at the reverse, verse eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone who does not love does not know God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: If there's a moon that says, I am in the path of the sun, but it's not glowing that moon is a liar.

[SPEAKER_00]: And John says, if anyone says I love God, but hates his brother, he's a liar.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, sounds straightforward enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is love, so go love people.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're done.

[SPEAKER_00]: The saying God is love is perhaps one of the most famous in the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even people who've never been to church know that God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also one of the most missed understood.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's because the word love refers to all kinds of different feelings that we have.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are many different kinds of love, and most of those things, John certainly does not have in mind in this passage, in this particular way.

[SPEAKER_00]: For example, I love pizza, I love watching movies, I love a good book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that the love that John is talking about here?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is preferential love, because that's what I mean.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I say I love movies, I mean I like movies I prefer movies over other activities.

[SPEAKER_00]: I prefer a good book over a bad book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that the love of God that divides believers from unbelievers preferential love?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, God's love is not a preferential love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or another kind of love, if I were to assist somebody, if I were to give a stranger a whole boatload of money.

[SPEAKER_00]: or maybe something less grandiose like, I got them a great job, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I help them out with a huge favor.

[SPEAKER_00]: They might say, man, thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love you, man.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that the kind of love that God is?

[SPEAKER_00]: Transactional love.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love you because you're useful.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love you because you're helpful.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love you because I got something out of you?

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe something a little bit more noble.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love my wife Kathy.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've been married for 15 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love my daughter, Tathas.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's going to be turning three in July.

[SPEAKER_00]: And doesn't the Bible say that God is like a bridegroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't the Bible say that God's a father?

[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, even these beautiful loves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Although they do reflect the character of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are not the thing that John is talking about here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Romantic love, family love, friend love.

[SPEAKER_00]: John is referring to something very particular.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because none of these things are the defining characteristics, characteristic that discerns the line between the Christian and the non-Christian.

[SPEAKER_00]: The one who believes in Christ and the one who does not, because you don't need to believe in Jesus to be a loving husband, to be a loving father, to be a good friend.

[SPEAKER_00]: to love food or to love prefer movies, to love your job or to love your country.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are many people who don't believe in Jesus and they do all these things, why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because every single person is capable of expressing these general kinds of love because every single person is made in the image of God and God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he expresses all of these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is all true.

[SPEAKER_00]: But John here has a specific thing in mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: John here is not talking about all the general kinds of love, but he's that all the people exhibit because we're all born of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: John says he's talking specifically about a kind of love, a divine love that can only be exhibited by people who are not just born of the world, but who are born of God, born a second time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not just born into God's world, but born in God's way.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've said this before.

[SPEAKER_00]: The love of God is the world, rather, is heart-shaped.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the love that John is describing, the peculiar, particular unique love of God that he is describing here, is not heart-shaped.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is cross-shaped.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what I mean by cross-shaped is that John is going to say that God's special, unique love can only be discerned, can only be defined in the cross of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not found anywhere else.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, again, are many facets to the diamond that is God's love.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in this text, John specifically owns in on three unique aspects of the cross-shaped love of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are the three.

[SPEAKER_00]: God's cross-shaped love is a love of self-sacrifice and not of self-gain.

[SPEAKER_00]: The cost is all his and the gain is all ours.

[SPEAKER_00]: God's Crusade love is an initiating love.

[SPEAKER_00]: It does not wait for us to be ready to be worthy or even be lovable.

[SPEAKER_00]: God's Crusade love is both propitiating and expiating.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry, I promise, extra explain those two later.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so let's start again, look at verse seven and eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: And before we can even finish asking the question, whoa, whoa, but John, what do you mean by love?

[SPEAKER_00]: He's already answering, look at verse nine.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this, the love of God was made manifest among us.

[SPEAKER_00]: The gods and his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I keep saying that God's love is crushing?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's because of these words, in this, in this, chances in this, the love of God was made manifest, revealed, made visible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Think about what the opposite is.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying that outside of this, God's love is not visible, is not revealed, is not manifest, cannot be found.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the shape, the container, the boundary markers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Love God's love.

[SPEAKER_00]: That God sent His Son into the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: for specific reason, not on a field trip, not on a tourist visa, not on a sightseeing, but to die, so that we might live through him.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanna put something up on the screen here.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can see how this verse is essentially identical to John 360 in construction.

[SPEAKER_00]: I put it in the CSB for clarity.

[SPEAKER_00]: For God, love the world in this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: He gave his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

[SPEAKER_00]: First on four nine, God's love was revealed among us in this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: God sent his one and only son into the world, so that we might live through him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see how they're all the essential characteristics are exactly there?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is essentially just a restatement of John 3, 16.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what John is saying is that God's love is in the sending of his son to be a sacrifice.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do I mean by that?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure anyone who's ever been on the playground has experienced this, I'll be your best friend if got dot dot dot dot dot, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: If I can get access to your stuff, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I love you, not because you're lovable in yourself, I don't love you.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to use you to get the thing that I actually love for itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're useful to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love your use.

[SPEAKER_00]: We might have experienced this with friends or neighbors or family member, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But God did not send Jesus because he was lonely or he needed anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, God sent his son because we were all alone because we desperately were in need.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at both of those verses on the screen and I want you to notice who does the sending and who does the receiving.

[SPEAKER_00]: God pays all the cost.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does he receive?

[SPEAKER_00]: In the verse, we are the ones who receive.

[SPEAKER_00]: God pays and we receive all the gain.

[SPEAKER_00]: We receive eternal life.

[SPEAKER_00]: We live through Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the Bible, God says of mankind, we are but dust.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're like vapor in the wind.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're like grass that's here today and gone tomorrow.

[SPEAKER_00]: but Christ the Son was never created.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's the image of the invisible God, the radiance of His glory, the exact imprint of His nature.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is holy, almighty, and has been eternally beloved of the Father, and more than that, He is worthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: All the angels bow before Him singing, worthy are you, are Lord, and are God to receive glory, and honor and power for you, created all things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And by your will they exist in and they were created worthy are you?

[SPEAKER_00]: I know you know this, but worthy means you have lots of worth.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's really important because God did not exchange one treasure to get an even greater treasure.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like where some hidden gem that you find at the antiques roadshow.

[SPEAKER_00]: You just spit and polish it up a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh man, good as new.

[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, this was a lot of money, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not just someone who looks wretched and is secret valuable, how deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that He should give His only Son to make a wretched, His treasure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why should I gain from His reward?

[SPEAKER_00]: I cannot give an answer, but this I know is all my heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: His wounds have paid my ransom.

[SPEAKER_00]: The cross shaped love of God teaches us what it cost God to love us and also have he paid it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It cost him everything and he paid it with joy.

[SPEAKER_00]: For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now the joy of gaining anything for himself, but the joy of our receiving, both his son and all other things with him, Paul says this in Romans 832.

[SPEAKER_00]: He who did not spare even his own son, but gave him up for us all.

[SPEAKER_00]: How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

[SPEAKER_00]: If he did not withhold from you his own son, what is he holding for lack?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: 1st John 410.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, in this is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not that we have love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, look at that, in this is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: That means a little love that He's talking about cannot be found outside of this statement.

[SPEAKER_00]: The contours, the outlines, the shape, the container, the boundary markers of God's love is not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son, while we didn't love

[SPEAKER_00]: God's caution, love is self-sacrificial, but it's also initiating.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is pursuing.

[SPEAKER_00]: God sent his love for us before we were ready, before we were worthy, before we were looking for him, he was looking for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: In Matthew 9, the religious leaders of Pharisees are disgusted with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: We think He's being foolish.

[SPEAKER_00]: They ask, his disciples, why does your teacher eat with those traders, those sinners, those disgusting people?

[SPEAKER_00]: And before the disciples can even jump into answer, Jesus himself gets into the conversation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, it's not healthy people who need a doctor, but the sick, I did not come here looking for righteous people.

[SPEAKER_00]: I came here looking for sinners.

[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that God's love,

[SPEAKER_00]: His cross-shaped teaches us that God is not in heaven with His arms crossed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tapping His foot, weighing for us to change our tune before He'll relant and turn towards us.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible teaches us that there is no one who loved God before He loved them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or in other words, that everyone that God does love, that everyone who loves God, he loved them, he loved you while you still hated Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We loved because He first loved us, Romans 5A.

[SPEAKER_00]: But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, while we were in the middle of our rebellion, while we were hating God, Christ died for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: God's love is both self-sacrificing and initiating.

[SPEAKER_00]: But let's look at the third aspect of God's cross-shaped love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at the verse 10 again.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you're using a Bible that's not the ESV, your transition may have something like to be the atonement for our sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: The atoning sacrifice for our sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: the expiation for our sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: The atonement of Jesus on the cross accomplished many, many, many things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is the apex of all of human history and all of the covenant revelations and faithfulness of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it bears a lot of weight.

[SPEAKER_00]: The atonement, sacrifice accomplished many different things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll list a few.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus on the cross as he died.

[SPEAKER_00]: He, what he was accomplished was victory over the forces of evil.

[SPEAKER_00]: The cross was a ransom, a redemption from spiritual slavery for his people.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was the inauguration of a new creation, and it was a demonstration of God's covenant faithfulness, and there's so much more.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in addition to these concepts, there are two core concepts, central to the work of Christ on the cross, and what that means for sinners.

[SPEAKER_00]: And those are the two five dollar words, expiation and propitiation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Expiation refers to the removal of sin, the removal of guilt, the canceling of that debt, and the purification from the effects of sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: Propiation refers to the satisfaction of God's just condemnation of sin, his verdict of guilty.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the turning aside of God's wrath towards the sinners who are guilty in the first place.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the first concept, the expiation, the removal of sin, the removal of guilt, the purification of the person, has a lot of fans among Christians.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty much not very controversial.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the second one, propitiation, determining a side of God's wrath, is not very popular.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a hymn that I love in Christ alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a wallback that was a denomination that wanted to add it to their hymnal.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they wanted to make a change.

[SPEAKER_00]: They wrote to the songwriters, Stuart Townsend and Keith Gettie, to see if they would be willing to change the words.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's a line that says, till on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they asked, can we change this line to, till on that cross as Jesus died, the love of God was magnified?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's true, isn't it?

[SPEAKER_00]: They said that this original line about the wrath of God is not just an ad online, but it is one of the most important lines in this song.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that denomination declined to add the song to their hymnal because they said that that line did not line up with their theology.

[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to swap out appreciation for expiation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this just picking at nits?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is this just a semantics?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you an illustration.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was in college, when I first went to college and for those of you about the good colleges going to have to you, when you walk on the college campus, there's like credit card vendors everywhere trying to get you to sign it, because they know you know nothing about money, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's 250% interest in who knows, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Your parents will pay for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I got a credit card, because I'm a smart guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I had a friend.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was a little down on his luck.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I let him borrow my credit card.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you know the story is going.

[SPEAKER_00]: OK, so, but it's worse than you think.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he racked up dead in my name, and he charged up all kinds of stuff.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I went to Carnegie Mellon University, which is a computer science school, and I was majoring in AI.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this guy was a hacker.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so he reversed and engineered all kinds of things, and he opened up a bunch of credit cards in my name and wrote programs to do all kinds of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of felonies were a community in my name.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of money was owed, and I apparently committed crimes, and so to make a long short, eventually all was uncovered, he confessed to me, and he was able to pay back everything he owed to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was made whole, and so I would nothing monetarily, and my name was cleared, I have no felony record on my, on my name as far as I know, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm in the clear, I made whole, no harm, no fall, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Good, do you think I ever gave him my credit card again?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I didn't talk to him again.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: We stopped being friends after that whole stressful incident.

[SPEAKER_00]: Expiation had occurred, but there was no propitiation.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why it's such a crucial part of the atonement.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Crochet Love of God teaches us that God doesn't just merely tolerate us.

[SPEAKER_00]: God doesn't have a love like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I don't remember.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's as far away as the East is from the West.

[SPEAKER_00]: First Corinthians 13 says, love keeps no record of wrongs.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean that God literally doesn't know is that his relationship to your story.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knows your story, but his relationship to your story has changed.

[SPEAKER_00]: His countenance has changed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us have experienced this sort of forgive, but don't forget, you know, you can come back home, but don't you ever ask for your own key.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll pay it off this time, but don't ask for money ever again.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can be around, but you don't get to hang out with the kids, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't get to see that side of the family, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us understand that God forgives.

[SPEAKER_00]: He paid the debt I couldn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: My sins are cleansed on a new person, but we secretly think that God resents us.

[SPEAKER_00]: that he merely permits us to be around like like you somehow you snuck into the back door and you better keep your mouth real quiet and shut otherwise you might notice you.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need more than just expiation.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need propitiation.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need our relationship to be fully restored.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that God is for us and not against us anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the mistake among many.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the mistakes that the prodigal son made.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you remember, he took his dad's money and, you know, he spent it all in horrible ways and then one day he comes from a census and he comes back and he makes a plan, a ridiculous plan, that I'm going to work really hard and the thing that he's hoping for, that we're really hard, maybe just maybe from really lucky I can accomplish expiation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll pay my dad back for all the money that I took, I'll clear his name.

[SPEAKER_00]: He won't be a laughing stock anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if I work really hard, maybe he'll let me live in the barn with the servants.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's walking to his father with that plan to work towards exfiation.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what does he see?

[SPEAKER_00]: The initiating love of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The father, Jesus says the father saw him from a long way off.

[SPEAKER_00]: And before the sun could even begin to articulate his plan, the father's running full speed at a sun.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I want you to imagine you're the son you've been gone for a long time, you know, you ruin the family and amoling, and you see your debt, you're booking it at you.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think he's going to do as soon as he catches up to you, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: He might be flinging like, okay, I deserve it, you know, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Ready to get beat up.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what happens when the father gets to him?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no punches through.

[SPEAKER_00]: Arms are wrapped around his neck.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kisses all over his face.

[SPEAKER_00]: That in a moment, wrath is transformed into love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of you thief, how dare you show your face here again?

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's my son, my son, you were dead, now you're alive.

[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of, let's work out a payment plan to figure all this out.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get you even Stephen.

[SPEAKER_00]: If others are no, no, no, no, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't owe me anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, take my robe, take my ring.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's have a party.

[SPEAKER_00]: All I have belongs to you is not even that you don't no longer owe me anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I give you everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: My son was dead and now he's alive.

[SPEAKER_00]: The son wanted to work towards expiation, but what he receives at no cost to himself is both expiation and propitiation.

[SPEAKER_00]: No cost to him, but it costs someone.

[SPEAKER_00]: All of it is at the cost of the father.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the father's robe, it's the father's ring, it's the father's food, it's the father's house, the fatted calf.

[SPEAKER_00]: The prodigal son has nothing with which he could have repaid the father.

[SPEAKER_00]: And everything is at the cost of the father.

[SPEAKER_00]: And everything is his gain.

[SPEAKER_00]: He pays the father pays everything in the sun receives.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: The cross-shaped love of God teaches us that God isn't just putting up with you waiting for you to mess up again.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need so much more than a clean rap sheet.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need so much more than an even balance line.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need God's heart to be turned towards us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We need our relationship to be healed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's Christ alone who accomplished that.

[SPEAKER_00]: He alone satisfied God's just judgment and turned away God's righteous wrath.

[SPEAKER_00]: When John says rather, that God is love and then he defines love in a particular specific way as being defined by the person and work of Jesus Christ, John is saying that in Christ and in Christ alone can we learn that the love of God is initiating and self-sacrificing and propitiating relationship restoring.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is so important.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the basis of all of our faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: But John is not writing the satithia-satheology lesson.

[SPEAKER_00]: The thing I love about John is that all of his theology is application and all of his application is theology.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything that I've just laid is the foundation to get us to the actual main point that he cares about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse 11.

[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, you've got so loved us.

[SPEAKER_00]: That word so is the same as in John 3 16.

[SPEAKER_00]: If God loved us in this exact way, through the cross of Christ, then we also ought to love one another in the same way.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not saying love people a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's saying love people like Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, hi.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because we are like the moon.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have no light of our own.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is light.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are not.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is love.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are not.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can only reflect what we have received.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because God is invisible.

[SPEAKER_00]: His love is shown through the way that we love one another.

[SPEAKER_00]: No one has ever seen God.

[SPEAKER_00]: No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected, is completed, is matured, reaches its goal in us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're to love one another and to show the love that we know in this manner, in this way, the way of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me close with one last story to illustrate.

[SPEAKER_00]: What it means that God's love is perfected, completed in us, and how that perfected level see later, cast out all fear.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is really important because that verse, perfect love, cast out all fear, is misused a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, hey, you're afraid, you're going through anxiety, you're going through fear.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here, don't you know that God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, here's some theology.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's stopping afraid, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: Now you know it.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was in seminary, I had a wise, older mentor.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was an older Korean pastor who patiently loved me for over a year, year and a half, maybe.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I was a good student, I was a sharp kid, but I had a lot of father wounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was very harsh, he was highly critical.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it formed me to be the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like everything that I hated about my dad, I'm never gonna be like you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was exactly like him.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is the curse of sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I used my sharp mind to power my sharp tongue.

[SPEAKER_00]: My critical thinking was weaponized to my critical heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this man was trying to share wisdom, theology, how to preach, you know, how to lead a church, all these beautiful things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would just cynically point out, well don't you know about this or don't you know about that or what I've just learned in class, you know, he hadn't been in seminary for, you know, like, 30 years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm like, don't you know about this book or about it?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was so rude.

[SPEAKER_00]: thinking I was so clever.

[SPEAKER_00]: And instead of kicking me out of getting rid of me, he was so kind, he was so patient, so gentle.

[SPEAKER_00]: He initiated again and again and again.

[SPEAKER_00]: I never called him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He called me all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, do you want to get lunch?

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, what are you doing today?

[SPEAKER_00]: This guy was a very busy guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: He had multiple jobs.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I ghosted him multiple times.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he kept reaching out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And his love was costly.

[SPEAKER_00]: He would have me over for dinner at his house.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not just with money, but with his time, with his emotional weight having to put up with me again and again and again, it was expensive to love me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't very lovable.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I kept kneeling and pushing and all these things, and he kept being the reconciling, propitiating, wrath turning away, mentor.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for over a year, we met, and we talked, we prayed, and experienced this.

[SPEAKER_00]: A kind of healing that I did not get from learning theology alone by itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: This man through his patient initiating self-sacrifice and propitiating cross-shaped love, essentially rehabilitated my relationship with myself, with God, with older, creating Korean authority figures,

[SPEAKER_00]: the father wounds that I had, and it made what I was learning in my head seek deep down into my heart, and want to come out in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: What started to happen is I began to glow in an area that had been dark for so long.

[SPEAKER_00]: The invisible God became visible to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I became like Job who said, until now I just heard of you, but now I see

[SPEAKER_00]: For those of you who have a story like mine, who have received this kind of love, do you have anyone who could say this about you?

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what John's asking.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you this someone in someone's story?

[SPEAKER_00]: That is the desire and the design, the perfecting love, the completion, the aim of God's love is that we would be this to a world that has never seen God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The foundation of God's cross-shaped love is the person to work of Christ and the aim of that love is that we would grow into maturity, to reflect the love that we receive.

[SPEAKER_00]: To meet its goal in the expression of God's love, unique love to one another.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's very possible that you might be here and you've never experienced that kind of love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come down for prayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come to recovery on Wednesdays.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our desire here at Citizens Church is that we would be a people who love not just a lot, but who love like Jesus loves.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to think about, this is the same exercise we did a few weeks ago with Jamen, think about a person in your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who if you didn't initiate, they wouldn't respond.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who isn't really worthy of your love, they burn too many bridges.

[SPEAKER_00]: Someone who's expensive and costly, difficult to love, someone who's honestly irritating to love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Someone who's broke in that relationship with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Could it be that God is calling you to love the way He loves?

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a kind of love that anyone can do.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is a kind of love that's common.

[SPEAKER_00]: What Jesus is calling us to do is to do this particular love that no one has ever seen.

[SPEAKER_00]: It would take an act of God for this to happen in your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: But love would let us love one another for love is from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And whoever it loves in this way has been born of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And no God, anyone who does not love in this way does not know God because God is this love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, Lord, today, especially the message feels far from the messenger.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I know how poorly I do these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not worthy to speak these words, to teach these ideas.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Lord, I am so relieved that it's not on the basis of my worth, that I'm safe.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the basis of the worth of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now on the basis of my faith in this, but on the basis of the faithfulness of Jesus, where we thank you that you are not like us, a cold, dead rock, stony hearts, but Lord, you are a blazing, radiant light, blazing with love.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh God, that we would receive and reflect the love of God in Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, let it be.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, let us feel it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let us understand it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let us experience it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Lord, that we would be at church that reflect and live in that love, that we might abide to your glory and to our joy.

[SPEAKER_00]: We pray in the matchless name of Jesus.