May God add his blessing to the reading, the hearing, and the teaching of his Holy Word today. Amen.

Prayer:

Lord God, our heavenly Father, the sacred text, your sacred Word, is open before us and we stand in need of your divine help to open it up to our understanding and the building up of our holy faith. Send your divine Spirit, we pray, so that your Word will come alive to us in its truth and sanctifying power, we pray in Jesus’ wonderful name. Amen.

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The great topic of God’s love for us, and our love for one another, is not a new topic in this first letter of the Apostle John. But we see this again in our passage today because it is so basic and fundamental in our whole relationship to God and to one another.  The love of God is the corner stone on which our relationship with him rests and it is the cornerstone of the church and the Christian life. The love of God and mutual Christian love among the brethren is a truth and reality that you will not find in all the other great religions of the world, but we find it in Christianity. And why is that? It is because Christianity alone presents the great revelation of the very nature and being of God – that he is love. And so he calls his people to know him as the God of love; we who have faith in Jesus have received his love, and we share that love. It overflows out of us into the brothers and sisters in the church. God is the source of our love because He is the one who first loved us; we did not love him. We were satisfied to live an ungodly life – a life without God and his love – thinking the husks of the world that we were feeding on were more valuable and attractive than the glories and will of God. So, we were content in our spiritual poverty and destituteness, not realizing how far we were from the kingdom of God.

But something happened to change all that. Even as the Spirit came upon the dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision and made them live, so the Spirit came on us because of the love of God for us and he gave us life, where there was only deadness before.

Our passage today is rich – every line is full of divine truth that merits us to pause and reflect and to drink of the Fountain of Truth from the living God and his Word. So, let’s consider each verse and mine out of it the gold and silver of divine truth.

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 

In verse 7 we see…

7 - The Command, the Source and the Power of Love

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 

Here we see, first of all, the command: “Let us love one another.” Manifesting and sharing love is not optional for the Christian. It is fundamental to our relationship with our brothers and sisters in the church. And it gives us the reason we love one another: it’s because our love comes from God. The love of Christians for one another is not something we can work up in ourselves, but it is “from God.” God himself is the secret and source of our love.

As John Calvin said: “…the true knowledge of God is that which regenerates and reconstructs us, so that we become new creatures, and therefore, that it must be that it conforms to God.” P. 290. Since God is love, is people must be people of love. That’s why the negative is so true: people who have no love in their lives show that they don’t really know God; God has not touched their lives; the Holy Spirit has not come in to indwell them. When the Holy Spirit comes to us, he brings the love of God into our lives. When the spring rains fall in the desert, it blooms. It can’t help but bloom, because water brings life.

The power to love in our lives comes from the new birth, the birth that comes from above, and gives us the personal, intimate knowledge of God. This is the power of love, given to us by God.

Verse 8 of our passage says, “⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

In this verse we see two basic realities: The Unfortunate Truth and the Great Declaration

To “know God” means to be in intimate relationship with him – to know him in saving faith. And if we don’t love people, especially the people in the church, we are manifesting a fundamental lack in our lives – a lack of a real relationship with God. This is what I call “the Unfortunate Truth.” No love means no God in one’s life. The love I’m talking about here is not romantic love or natural family love but unselfish, sacrificing love, caring, compassionate love.

You see, in this verse we have what I call “The Great Declaration.” It is the statement as to the fundamental nature and being of God: God is love. There are only two other comparable statements in Scripture describing the fundamental nature and being of God:

1 John 1: 5 – “God is light” and

John 4:24 – “God is Spirit”

There is only one other place in the NT where we read that “God is love.” It is in verse 16 of this same chapter in 1 John 4: God is love, and ^(C)whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

What does it mean that “God is love”? It means that all he does he does out of love. He sent his Son to save his people from their sins because he is the God of love. Everything he does is out of his love. He creates in love, he rules in love, he even judges in love. In punishes sin in love because to love righteousness and holiness necessarily means he must hate and punish sin. If God chastises and disciplines us his people, it is out of his love. It is for our good and his glory.

We cannot really underestimate the importance of this fundamental characteristic of God. It underlies his relationship to us and gives us great assurance of his care for us. Even when great trials and difficulties and distresses come our way, we can rest assured in his love for us. He is in control of our lives, and he is working out all things for his glory and our good.

Verse 9 states, “ 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.”

If we grant that God is love, how do we know for sure that he is love? The sunshine and rain he sends on the earth is a sign of his care for his creation, but the supreme evidence we have of his love is that he send his Son from heaven to save us from our sins. You see, God did something. He took some concrete action. He sent his Son, who had been at his side from all eternity, he sent him to this earth to be born of a virgin and take upon himself our human nature.

But look at verse 10, “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 sin.”  What is the text saying here? It is saying that we were not the ones who first loved God; we did not, in fact, love him. We loved ourselves and were not concerned to reach out to God and find him.

So he took the initiative – though we didn’t care for him, he cared for us, for his people. God knew we would not come to him; so, he came to us. He knew we were helpless and unable to come to him, so he of his own free will and desire, decided to save a people for himself out of the whole human race.

How did God do this? He did not just speak from heaven and declare that his people’s sins were forgiven. But he took the holy action necessary that was the only way he could save his people, it was by taking on human flesh, and becoming a full-fledge human being, and living among us, and then dying on a cross in order to suffer the judgment of God against our sins. Verse 10 says he was the propitiation for our sins.

How are we to understand this word “propitiation”? It has to do with the wrath of God. The wrath of God against sin is referred to 585 times in the OT (Baker’s Dictionary of Theology, p. 425). For example, we read in Nahum 1:6, “^(A)The Lord is a jealous and avenging God;    the Lord is avenging and wrathful;^(B)the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries    and ^(C)keeps wrath for his enemies. 

God is holy and just and in order to maintain his righteous standards he cannot wink at sin or allow it to go unnoticed in his universe.

 The sin of humans is an affront to his holiness and righteousness. It is a denial and rebellion against his will. If God failed to punish humanity’s rebellion and sin he would be guilty of approving their sin or ignoring it. He could be accused of “moral flabbiness” as Leon Morris puts it. He cannot do that and remain the altogether righteous God. 

God’s wrath against sin is good in the sense that it is a comfort to us because it shows that God is serious about upholding his righteous standard for the governance of his creation. Yet it is also a dilemma because we are all guilty of sin and stand under his righteous judgment for our sin.

The OT revelation to the Israeli people through Moses of God’s absolute holiness and his perfect law left humanity guilty and exposed before the holy God, but God did not leave the situation as hopeless there. He provided for a way for the people to appease him for his wrath, and way to avert this wrath directed against them for their sin.

This was through blood sacrifices – the death of innocent animals was accepted as a substitute for the sins of the people. Instead of killing his people, he allowed them to kill animals and offer their blood as the payment for their sins: lambs, goats, and bulls.

On the great Day of Atonement in the fall of the year, we read in Exodus 16 that the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies in the inner sanctum of household and the blood of a goat for the sins of the people. The blood was put on the mercy seat, the gold covering over the ark of the covenant. And thus, the wrath of God against the sins of the people would be averted for another year.

But this constant slaying of animals to avert the wrath of God could never truly remove the sins of God’s people. It wasn’t until the Son of God came and died on Calvary’s cross that sin was once and for all truly paid for.

Heb. 9:11-14 - ¹¹ But when Christ appeared as a high priest ^(V)of the good things that have come, then through ^(W)the greater and more perfect tent (^(X)not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) ¹² he ^(Y)entered ^(Z)once for all into the holy places, not by means of ^(AA)the blood of goats and calves but ^(AB)by means of his own blood, ^(AC)thus securing an eternal redemption. ¹³ For if ^(AD)the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with ^(AE)the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, ¹⁴ how much more will ^(AF)the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit ^(AG)offered himself without blemish to God, ^(AH)purify our conscience ^(AI)from dead works ^(AJ)to serve the living God.

The word “propitiation” means averting, turning aside the wrath of God against our sins. Ligon Duncan writes,

Here John, like Paul in Romans 3:25, makes it crystal clear that God in love provides his Son as the propitiation we need. The Christian doctrine of propitiation is not that of our trying to get God to love and forgive us by placating him by a sacrifice that we take the initiative to bring to him. No, not at all. Instead, God takes the initiative toward us in love—even though we have betrayed him and rebelled against him—and provides for us precisely the propitiation we need…John’s argument in verses 9–11 is that God has shown the world his love in sending his own Son on a deadly mission to give us life. And God’s love for us is supremely manifested in the cross as Christ Jesus provides propitiation. In response, we ought to love one another in in this kind of costly, self-giving way. In other words, John’s pastoral application of the truth of propitiation is that the measure of how we are to love one another is in the self-giving of the Father in the gift of his Son.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/propitiation/#:~:text=Definition,Jesus%20Christ%20on%20the%20cross.

The thing that is so significant here is that we don’t see the picture of pagan sacrifices being made as humans try to placate, that is, pacify God by giving him offerings, by bribing him to turn his anger away from them. What we see in the Bible is that it is God himself who provides the sacrifice needed to avert his own wrath. What does he do? He sends his beloved Son from heaven, Jesus the Son of God, becomes incarnate of the virgin Mary, suffers under Pontius Pilate, is crucified, dead and buried, and rises from the dead on the third day according to the scriptures and ascends to heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God. From there he will come again at the end of the age to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom shall have no end.

Through the sacrifice of the Son of God, the Father’s wrath is satisfied, it is absorbed  as it is poured out on his Son, and the people of God are justified, forgiven, reconciled to God, and made new creatures in Christ.

So, John says, in conclusion, or as a result of what God did in sending his Son, ¹¹ Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

John R. Stott observes, ““No one who has been to the cross and seen God’s immeasurable and unmerited love displayed there can go back to a life of selfishness. Indeed, the implication seems to be that if God so loved us, we ought also – ‘so,’ in like manner and to like degree of self-sacrifice – to love one another.” Commentary, p. 163

The scriptures say the same thing:

“¹⁶ By this we know love, that ^(A)he laid down his life for us, and ^(B)we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

John 15:12-13   ¹² “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 

Eph. 5:1-2 - Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. ² And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

11 This demonstration of God’s love is the model, the example, as to how we are to love one another in the church.

11 – Jesus’ Work of Love is our own Model of Love

Some examples from the Apostle Paul’s life:

2 Tim. 2:9-10 - ^9 (A)… I am suffering, ^(B)bound with chains as a criminal. But ^(C)the word of God is not bound!¹⁰ Therefore ^(D)I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain ^(E)the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with ^(F)eternal glory.

Col. 1:24 - ²⁴ Now ^(A)I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh ^(B)I am filling up ^(C)what is lacking in Christ's afflictions ^(D)for the sake of his body, that is, the church,

1 Cor. 13:7 - ^7 (A)Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, ^(B)endures all things.

Many, no doubt, are books that could be written about the unselfish sacrifices that thousands of Christians have undergone over the centuries as they served the brothers and sisters in the church.

One was named Dorcas. Part of her story is recorded in Acts 9: 36-39:

³⁶ Now there was in ^(D)Joppa a disciple named Tabitha, which, translated, means Dorcas. She was full of ^(E)good works and acts of charity. ³⁷ In those days she became ill and died, and when they had washed her, they laid her in ^(F)an upper room. ³⁸ Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, hearing that Peter was there, sent two men to him, urging him, ^(G)“Please come to us without delay.” ³⁹ So Peter rose and went with them. And when he arrived, they took him to ^(H)the upper room. All the widows stood beside him weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them.

The last verse in our passage today is verse 12:

¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

It is true that no one has seen God. He is a spirit – invisible to us. This is what John 1:18 affirms:

^18 (A)No one has ever seen God; ^(B)God the only Son, who^[a] is at the Father's side,^[b] (C)he has made him known.

No one can see the Father, but we can and do see Jesus Christ. The apostles saw him face to face; and we see him in the scriptures. One day we shall see him face to face – at his return – and the apostle will have nothing up on us at that time!

But Christ is in heaven now. He has ascended bodily and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty – there he makes intercession for us, for the church- we have a friend, and advocate in heaven, who has us in his eye and in his prayer. And the Father always hears the prayers of his Son!

But there is a way the love of God can still be communicated to those around us. The text says here in verse 12, if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

As we Christians love one another, there is a special way in which the living God abides in us, he indwells us, he stays with us, and his love is shown forth in our words and actions and attitudes. People do not see Jesus Christ, but they see us, they hear us, they observe us, and what they hopefully see is the very love of the Creator and Savior God shining through our lives. So, I believe the point of verse 12 is that 12 – God’s Love is Seen in the world when we Love one Another.

So today the Apostle John has once again enriched our understanding of the working of God in our lives – written almost 2,000 years ago but still powerful and real and needed in our lives.

This is what we have seen today:

7 - The Command [to love on another], the Source [God] and the Power of love (being born again and knowing God).

8 – The Unfortunate Truth [no love = no God in one’s life] and the Great Declaration [God is love]

9 – The Manifestation of the Love of God [the sending of Jesus to rescue us from our sins]

10 – Propitiation Is the Divine Remedy for Our Sin [Jesus averted, absorbed and obliterated the wrath of God that stood over us because of our sins]

11 – Jesus’ Work of Love [his sacrificial suffering] is our own Model of Love

12 – God’s Love is Seen in the world when we Love one Another

We give unending thanks to the Father that he sent us Son to be the propitiation for our sins. May the Lord help us to love one another as Christ loved us and gave himself for us. To God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, forever and ever. Amen.

Let us pray:

Gracious God our Father, in your Son you have done all things will for the salvation, sanctification, and comfort of us your people. Even as the Lord Jesus laid down his life in sacrificial suffering for us, help us, as you may call us, to do the same for one another. In our Savior’s name we pray. Amen.