In This is Love (1 John 4:7-21)

The second reading is from the first John of the fourth chapter, starting at the seventh verse.

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 God, does not love, does not know God, because God is love.

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.

In this is love.

Not that we have loved God, but that we loved us, that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

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 in 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 also, because as he is, so also are we in this 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.

We love because he first loved us.

If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.

For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

But this commandment we have from him: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So it's the last line on the last track on the last studio album of the Beatles.

Looking at Ned because he knows what I'm talking about.

The line goes like this.

You can say it with me if you know it.

In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Think about that for a second.

Do you have any idea what that means?

I don't know what that means.

I've been thinking about it a lot this week because as I've been studying this passage in 1 John, this is the line that keeps coming back to me.

Maybe it's just so catchy.

But there's something to it, isn't it?

It's sagely.

There's well, there's sounds-wise, at least.

What is it about this line we find so compelling?

This line that so often is ranked among the best rock and roll lyrics of all time.

I think it's speaks to something that we just know intuitively.

Something we're tuned in on, something we're just clicks in, so to speak.

This idea that at the end of it all, not just at the end of the day, but at the end of life, at the end of the universe, at the end of everything, love and the receiving and reciprocating of love, the sharing and participating in love, has something to do with the meaning of it all.

Maybe life isn't just a blank canvas on which we paint or create meaning.

Maybe meaning is something we're uncovering as we investigate this thing called love.

We intuit that love has something to do with the meaning of it all.

And as we pull on this thread, maybe we're pulling on the very thread that ties the universe and everything together.

I think John speaks to why something like this would resonate with us like it does, why a line like this resonates with us.

John writes, not that just that God loves, God is capable of love, but John writes, God, John writes, is love.

Love is not something extrinsic to God.

Love isn't just something God is capable of doing as though it was something other than himself.

I might uh, well, I might garden, but that doesn't make me a garden.

Doesn't even necessarily make me a gardener.

But God is love, that's who he is.

It's tied up with his very being.

Father who pours out his love on the beloved Son for all eternity past and all eternity future, the Son who reciprocates and shares in that love and glory of the Father and the perfect personal union of the Holy Spirit.

God is a triune community of love.

And because God is a triune, God can share love and receive love even within his very being.

Not without a co-eternal, coexistent being with whom to share that love.

God is this triune community of love.

That's who he is in his very being.

And God is a God who shows forth that love.

That love spills over, like it were, into creation.

God makes this love manifest.

But I wonder if we consider the kind of love with which God loves.

Do we stop and think about this love that God shows forth?

We might be, well, I suspect we've all heard the phrase God loves you.

And that's a profound phrase, it's true.

But sometimes it can sound a little like cotton candy, can't it?

With what kind of love does God love you?

Does God just get all gooey and fuzzy when he thinks about us?

Is that all there is to God's love?

How do we know what God's love is really like?

How do we know that God really, truly, completely loves us?

John writes in 1 John chapter 4, verse 9, in this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world.

1 John 4:9

God has put his love, his everlasting love, on display, as it were, in sending his son, his only son, into the world.

So that, verse 16, whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

It's this receiving and reciprocating love in Christ, in his son.

This receiving and reciprocating love in the perfect union of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

This is the kind of love we're invited into in the great mystery of who God is.

This is love not just as a concept, not just as cotton candy.

This is love incarnate, love made flesh.

See, I think John wants us to see something very important.

Well, two things that are really quite important about God's love, two remarkable truths that we should marvel at, that should fill us with awe and wonder as we consider this amazing love of God for us in Christ.

There might be more.

I want us to look at two things we see in verses 9 and 10.

We see that God's love takes the initiative.

And we also see that God's love turns away wrath.

God's love takes the initiative, it turns away wrath.

Friends, this is important stuff.

Because if love has something to do with the meaning and center of everything, if God is love and he sustains and holds all things, understanding this love of God in Christ, this taking the initiative love, this turning away wrath kind of love, is getting at the very meaning of everything, the very meaning of salvation, the very meaning of the gospel, the very meaning of our own lives.

Let's look at the unfathomable love of God in Christ.

God's love takes the initiative.

This is the first thing we see in verse 9.

Rachel and I have some friends getting married in the coming weeks.

It's going to be a very unique wedding because it's going to be a COVID wedding.

But being a COVID wedding, it's had the advantage of having all of these showers and get-togethers and all the wedding preliminaries over Zoom.

That means folks can tune in kind of from wherever and however they've met this couple, they get to come, they get to share stories, some of which are, you know, fairly embarrassing.

We all have those stories.

But we get to, well, we get to share this together from wherever we're at.

And so, time and again, some of the same questions have popped up.

Maybe there's some of the questions that we get asked if we have a significant other, if we're meeting someone else.

Questions like, um, questions like, well, you know, who asked out who first?

Who made the first move?

Who said, I love you first?

Who popped the question?

Who brought up this word marriage first?

Gets Rachel and I talking about the same and feeling all gooey inside.

The point is this: we're looking to learn something about this couple when we ask these questions.

Because even though now we certainly celebrate heading into this wedding that this has been the case and we get to track with their story, these are momentous milestones in a relationship.

They require great courage of us to take them, because we're really rather fragile creatures, aren't we?

We're really rather leveled to think about the idea that we could say something like, I love you, and not hear that back.

That's a frightful reality.

And so, to protect ourselves, so often we well, we shrink, don't we?

We kind of put a little distance and we try and suss the other person out.

Maybe encourage them to make that first move.

See, the point is this: so often, out of self-protection, we kind of shrink back.

We wait for the other party to make that first move.

But this is not the case with the love of God.

This is never the case with the love of God.

God's love takes the initiative, it takes priority, it always makes the first move towards us, as it were.

Let's look at verse 9 together.

In this, the love of God was made manifest among us.

It was put on display that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

God sent.

Who does the sending?

Who does the receiving?

Well, the fact that God sent means that his is the priority, his is the initiative.

God made the first move to us word.

And he didn't just send a gift basket, he didn't just send a token, he sent his only son, which is a phrase that John means to, well John says to mean as unique, his everlasting, co-eternal son, this inconceivably great gift of God for us.

It may remind us of Matthew chapter 21, the parable of the of the tenants.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

Time and time again, servants are sent to these wicked tenants who are beaten, turned away, and finally the master of this field says, I'm going to send my only son, because surely they'll respect my son.

What greater gift could there be than the gift of one's own son?

And the co-eternal, coexisting Son of God, God the Son.

God sent his only son, this inconceivable gift into the world.

And why is that?

John says, verse 14, to be the savior of the world.

Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.

That's how John introduces Jesus in the first chapter of the Gospel of John.

And so if there's a ringing in our ears, I suspect it's John 3.16, that verse we probably learned if we did Sunday school.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

God takes the initiative, he does the sending.

John Stott says that it is not our love that is primary, but God's.

Free, uncaused, and spontaneous.

And that's important.

Because what we do is we shrink back sometimes, don't we?

We try and encourage the other party to make that first move.

We can take that posture with God sometimes.

We could try and do those things that we think will call forth his love when God has promised no, no.

He loves us, he moves towards us.

He, his love takes that priority.

He does the sending, we do the receiving.

And not because we've done anything to deserve it, but because of his abundant and generous love.

In this is love, John writes, verse 10, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.

One biblical commentator writes, This love is no reciprocation by God, meeting a person halfway because he's shown some desire to be right with his master, the initiative is entirely God's.

He decides to manifest his love to those who do not love him and do not want to love him, to enemies and rebels armed to the teeth against him, to a world of lost sinners.

Let us acknowledge once for all that if it were not for the fact that God is love, we would have no expectation of mercy or forgiveness, no hope and no future.

The initiative and the work of man's salvation, of our salvation, belongs entirely to the God of love.

See, friends, God's love is not earned, it's not merited, we don't call it forth by virtue, we don't make the first move.

God moves to usward.

We love because he first loved us.

That's what John says in verse 19.

This is why Paul writes in Romans chapter 5 that while we were still weak, while we were powerless, helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, you know, at the best of times, though perhaps for a good person one might even dare to die.

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So what does this mean for us?

Well, maybe this can be a corrective.

Maybe this can correct some of our pagan inclination, our default setting, which is to say, I need to earn God's love.

I need to be good enough.

I need to do what it takes for God to take notice of me.

So often the Christian life even gets framed as one of an express way to earn God's favor through virtue or prayer, through whatever that is.

Friends, this for us is a corrective.

God sent his only son into the world.

His love takes priority.

He moves towards you, he moves towards me.

He does that first because he loves us, because he wants to claim us for his own.

And so what does that mean for us?

I well, I suspect that if we've received a love that takes initiative, then our love does the same.

We're called to show forth a love as Christians that takes the initiative.

For those of us who are caught in feuds or resentments, or those of us who find ourselves with an ever-increasing list of enemies, maybe it means this: that we're called not to treat them as we think they deserve, but to treat them as we've been treated in Christ.

To take an initiative in love.

Doesn't mean that we're without boundaries, if it's a toxic relationship, etc., etc.

But love always desires the good of the other, and it's willing to sacrifice for it.

There's no room in the Christian life for a flippant attitude even towards one's enemy.

Pardon the expression, but there's no room for a sort of, ah, so-and-so can go to hell.

Do we know what we're saying when we say that?

God's initiative, his love for us in Christ, has come to us.

Our love is called to go the same.

That's why John can write this.

If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar.

He doesn't abide in truth.

He who does not love his brother, whom he is seen, cannot love God whom he is not seen.

This is the command we have from him.

Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

If we've received this initiative taking love of God in Christ, what else can we do but show that forth?

It transforms us.

We've received a wrath-turning, a wrath-turning love.

Now we extend it.

We've received the initiative.

So, friends, would that new song would be a community of love?

The kind of community of love we read about in John 15, this commission, this commandment that Jesus gives to his disciples.

It requires that we abide in this initiative taking love of God in Christ.

That's who we're called to be.

God's love takes the initiative.

It moves first towards us, and we receive and we show forth.

But lest we think, well, God's initiative makes sense because, you know, I'm I'm a pretty good person.

I'm a I'm a great person.

Lest we think that this seems to make sense.

God loves me because, you know, I'm a pretty decent fella.

We need to seriously consider what the Bible has to say with the very difficult topic of God's wrath.

See, God's love takes the initiative, God's love turns away wrath.

I want to zoom in in particular on a word we find in verse 10.

In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.

There's the initiative, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

There's a five-dollar word for us, propitiation.

What does that mean?

Propitiation is a satisfaction for wrath.

It overlaps a lot with expiation.

Expiation does away with sin, sends it away.

Propitiation satisfies wrath against sin and wrongdoing.

And so we might be thinking this question that so many have asked.

Quite fairly, can a loving God be a wrathful God?

Can we reconcile those two?

For some, those would seem to be two antithetical categories, maybe to the point where we abandon this idea of God's wrath altogether as this antiquated notion.

We need to move past that and accept the fact that, like John says, God is love.

And yet, just as quickly as John makes this wild claim that God is love, he can just as well talk about propitiation, a satisfaction of wrath.

How does this work?

Let me give an imperfect picture.

Let's say that, well, let's say I wanted to take Rachel out to uh to celebrate maybe a special occasion, maybe one of those occasions I was describing earlier.

Oh, the first I love you, the engagement or wedding anniversary, whatever that is.

And let's say somewhere between the appetizer and the main, I disappeared.

And 10 minutes go by, 15 minutes go by, 20 minutes go by.

Might not be uncommon for me, but you know, Rachel's starting to get concerned, and now um, and now goes looking for me.

And when she finds me, I'm somewhere towards the kitchen, chatting up the waitress, trying to get her phone number.

This is not something I would do, by the way.

But let's say this is where she finds me.

To go old school, do you suppose Rachel would be wrathful at me?

Thank you, Rachel.

Amen.

From the first row.

You better believe it.

You'd better believe that.

And why would that be?

Because a sacred boundary has been crossed, has been trespassed.

And sin, John has already said, is lawlessness.

It's trespassing sacred boundaries.

So let's say we get home, you better believe voices would be raised, plates might get smashed, words would get said, and let's say I were stupid enough to say, What is all this?

I thought you loved me.

What's all this wrath about?

Well, my vision of love would be too small, wouldn't it?

My expectation of love would be this is nothing but an affirmation of whatever makes me feel good in this moment.

Love is called to something more than that.

Love is called to thrive within those sacred boundaries it was called to.

And so God's wrath, we might see, is his love burning hot.

Love and wrath are not antithetical to one another.

Rachel wouldn't be wrathful at me because she stopped loving me.

She'd be wrathful at me precisely because she loves me so deeply.

And when boundaries get crossed, wrath gets incited.

Wrath doesn't take place without those transgressions.

Wrath is not something inherent to God.

We couldn't say God is wrath, like we can say God is love, but wrath is God's response to those transgressions of sacred boundaries.

God's wrath is directed towards unrighteousness, the alienation and the corruption of sin.

That's why Paul can write, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

This is true in the particulars.

When we decide to step outside that sacred boundary of love and trust and perform sin.

This is true within the context of the inherited guilt that we have as those born into a sin-corrupted human race in Adam that we read about in Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

We are left rightly condemned by God in unrighteousness.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We flirt with the idols of our hearts all the time.

We transgress those sacred exclusive boundary marks of love and trust in God all the time.

And God's wrath rightly burns against us.

God's wrath is directed towards unrighteousness, and God in love provides for the means of satisfying his wrath.

In the Old Testament, we see God's wrath burn against sin, much as we see in the New Testament, by the way.

These are not, the Old Testament is not pitted against the New.

In the Old Testament, we see an image of God doing away with his wrath, making propitiation.

In the Levitical sacrifices, lambs are brought into the temple on which sin is symbolically placed, and they are put to death, as it were, so that sin could be put to death and wrath can be satisfied.

And this took place day after day after day to point towards that day where the great sacrifice would be made, where sin would finally be answered, and wrath completely satisfied.

Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world.

That's how John refers, John the Baptist refers to Jesus in the gospel.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

That's you and I as well.

But Paul continues in Romans chapter 3, and all are justified, all are made right by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as propitiation, as satisfaction for his wrath, by his blood, to be received by faith, by personal trust in him.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance, he has passed over our former sins.

What does all that mean?

God in his love provides the means to satisfy his wrath.

God is love, and God is a consuming fire.

And these two things are not antithetical.

God as a consuming fire will consume up our sin.

Set it to flame, as it were.

And it is his love that burns hot against us.

Taking wrath seriously means taking salvation seriously.

If we eject this category of God's wrath from our theology, we will jeopardize the heart of the gospel.

We will miss the significance of the cross on which Christ bore God's wrath for our sake and satisfied it.

In Christ, we are recipients of God's great transforming love, which pleads for us in Christ and not against us.

That's why John writes in chapter 2: if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, someone who speaks on our behalf, and that is Jesus Christ to the righteous.

He is the propitiation for our sins, not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.

In other words, before God we have the righteous one, the sinless one, who stands at the Father's right hand and pleads our case, who pleads forgiveness.

And this is not a compassionate son who pleads to a rather ticked-off father.

This is a father who is delighted to hear the son plead on our behalf.

A father who out of love sent his son to redeem us from our sin, who provided a means to satisfy his righteous wrath against our corruption and alienation and sin.

So now we can sing in Christ alone, till on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, for every sin on him was laid.

Here in the Christ in the death of Christ I live.

In Christ's propitiation, the satisfaction of God's wrath, we have life indeed.

God sent his only son into the world, verse 9, so that we might live through him.

The cross is the death of Christ, and the turning away of God's wrath, and his resurrection, his vindication is the hope of our new life in him, an eternal and everlasting life in Christ.

We have only to repent, to acknowledge our sins, to invite this transforming love of God in Christ into our hearts and receive it as a gift.

Friends, this for us is great confidence and assurance that when we look at the cross, we are reminded that God's word in Christ is not against us, but it is for us.

In the day of judgment, we have great confidence, verse 17.

Perfect love that we experience in Christ casts out fear, verse 18.

In Christ we need not fear the punishment of God.

Christ willingly bore our punishment on the cross.

Christ is raised to new life, and we live through him.

And we become a community of love.

This new life, this new love manifests itself among us.

That's why John says something so remarkable, verse 12.

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

We put this love of God in Christ on display for one another and for the world when we abide in him.

We get to show it forth to one another.

So in the end, is the love we take equal to the love we make?

Maybe John helps us see this mystery even clearer, this mystery at the center of everything.

God is love.

But love is received, not taken.

It's a gift freely given.

He has given us his son at his own initiative.

And the cross for us is proof.

Is the love we make equal to the love we take or receive?

Or is this love far beyond generous, far beyond anything that we could incite or reciprocate?

A love that rescues the powerless, a love that renews sinners, a love that adopts enemies into his family, a community of love.

This is the love at the center of everything.

A love that takes initiative, a love that turns away wrath, a love made manifest, put on display in our Lord Jesus.

Let me all thy love accepting.

Love thee ever, all my days.

Let me seek thy kingdom only, and my life to be thy praise.

Amen.