Text: 1 John 4: 7-21
I. Intro.
A. (Att. Getter) It’s easy to love a god you cannot see. This is because we can imagine an unseen God to be however we like.
B. (Textual) John says that we must love God not according to our own imagination. We must love God according to who he really is. And how do we know who he really is? John says that we know who he is because he has revealed himself in Christ’s love and he has revealed himself in each other.
C. (Transition) Let’s take a look at how God has revealed himself so that we can truly love him for who he is.
II. The first way God has revealed himself is in sending his Son to die for our sins.
A. It’s easy to love a God we cannot see, but can we love a God who “sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins?”
B. To love God we must accept the fact that we are in such a bad condition that it required God to become a man and die in order to save us. Steve Brown has said God’s grace is a radical grace, but to receive it we must accept that we are radical sinners.
C. We are sinners who cannot save ourselves. We deserved God’s wrath and couldn’t do anything to satisfy his wrath.
D. (Ill) Sometimes we say to our spouse in exasperation, “What do you want from me.” In other words, “What can I do to make you happy.” What if our spouse said, “Nothing.” That would be a terrible, helpless feeling. But what if our spouse said, “The only way that I can love you is by giving my life for yours. Then and only then can you become a person I can love.” That is actually true. We could never love each other unless we sacrificed ourselves to our spouse. When we make sacrifices for our spouse it makes the other person lovable. “If we don’t sacrifice ourselves we end up sacrificing each other” (Glenn Kaiser). God paid the ultimate sacrifice for us so that he could make us the object of his love and save us. Therein we see his love.
E. This means that we should love each other by laying down our lives for each other. Love begets love. If you want something to be lovable start loving it. Love makes things lovely. Love has a redeeming power that transforms whatever it loves.
F. This is why Paul says, “Without love, I am a resounding gong or clanging symbol.”
G. C. S. Lewis wrote, “The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the church – read on – and gave his life for her (Eph. V, 25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is – in her own mere nature – least lovable. For the church has no beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. (the Four Loves 105-06).
H. We must make each other lovely to ourselves.
I. Someone once told me that they found it very hard to love someone. I said, “Love him and you will find him lovable.” This is divine, agape love. There is nothing lovely about us to the holy God, but he lays down his life in an act of love to make us lovely.
J. In this way, as Lewis points out, husbands are responsible for the loveliness of their wives.
K. John says in v. 17, “we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.” If we want assurance of salvation we must love others as Christ loved us with sacrificial love.
L. This is not impossible. Jesus is our source, “We love because he first loved us” (v. 17).
III. The second way God has revealed himself is in each other.
A. v. 12, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” What is John talking about?
B. God is invisible but he is made visible in each other. When we love one another sacrificially his sacrificial love is perfected in us.
C. When we go beyond just saying we love one another and actually start loving each other then we find his love in us.
D. v. 20, “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.”
E. The invisible God is made visible in each other. If we cannot love God as he is seen in each other, we cannot claim to love him as he is unseen.
F. It’s easy to love a God we cannot see. It’s another thing to love the God we see in Christ and the cross and each other.
G. But this is who God truly is. We see his sacrificial love in Christ and we see his diversity in each other.
H. Why can’t we love one another when God is in each other? We come to think that God is like us and those who are different are ungodly or unchristian.
I. But God says we cannot claim to love him as he is invisible if we don’t love him where he is visible.
J. (Ill) Gr. Charlie, the church split, and the man he wouldn’t let hate him.
K. This is why marriage is so important. It teaches us to love someone quite different from ourselves.
L. (Ill) there are two kinds of marriages: birds of a feather flock together and opposites attract. The research says that the more successful marriages are birds of a feather flock together. But I know of more marriages where opposites attract. God loves bringing people together who are quite different from each other. Their marriages might not be as successful but maybe they can be better and broader people. I wonder if birds of a feather might not get along better but become more lopsided as people. We are exposed to more through people who are different in temperament, personality, and taste.
IV. Conclusion:
A. God reveals himself in two ways: in his son’s sacrificial love on the cross and in each other.
B. The first transforms us and we see the evidence of that transformation in how we love or do not love people different from us.
C. It’s easy to love a God we cannot see, but loving the God we see in Christ and in each other is more rewarding.
