Well, we if you've not been with us through our summer series, a brief explanation. In the month of June, we took the month to look at faith because we came out of 1 Corinthians 13:13, which says these three remain faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. So, we took June to look at faith. July, we looked at what is hope biblically. And then this month, August, we're going to now look at what is love. The greatest of these is love. And so we're going to spend these weeks examining what is love.
So if I were to ask you, I'm not going to, but if I were gonna ask you, try to define for me what love is. Think in your minds, how would I define love? That question has been posed to many over the years. And it's including children. And so I came across this little site where a whole bunch of children had been asked what you know what is love? Try to define love. And here's I'm just going to read you a few of their answers. This is Manuel, age 8. He said, "I think you're supposed to get shot with an arrow or something, but the rest of it isn't so painful."
Noel, age seven, said, "Love is when you tell a guy that you like his shirt and then he wears it every day." Attracts. Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him to make sure that the taste is okay. That's from Danny who was age seven. This next one didn't have a name attached to it. There was a picture of the the kid that or the the the writing of the kid that had written this thing down.
The spelling mistakes and everything. It was quite cute, but there was no name attached to it. But this kid, whoever it is, said this. Love is telling your husband he is handsome, even if he looks like a dump truck. Thank you, honey, for one more. Tommy, age six, said, "Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well." That's getting a little closer, but yet still it falls short.
We do our best to try to define love but how is love defined and we're going to go to the scriptures because in the word of God we have it defined for us and my mind in initially went to 1 Corinthians 13 and I might reference 1 Corinthians 13 later and certainly there are some descriptors of various manifestations of love in that chapter for sure and yet those things are not the ground of our love the the bedrock of love that is found for us in 1 John 4.
And so I'll invite you to turn there. I had Mary read to us verses 12 to 21 because the passage in its entirety is verse 7 to 21. That's the fullness of the passage. I'm going to preach today from 7 to 11. And I want to examine there from that text. What is love? So here's what we what we read starting in verse 7 of 1 John 4. 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 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 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.
It's a great passage and there's lots in here. In fact, there's a progression here of the the the definition of love. And so, we're going to work through the progression this morning. The defining mark of love, ground zero, the basis of love is found in verse 8. It's in three words. God is love. In fact, that's another reason why I had Mary read to you from verses 12 to 21 because it's said again in verse 16, God is love.
Same phrase used twice every word, every time the word love is used. In fact, in this entire passage from verse 7 all the way down to verse 21, every single use of the word love here is either the noun or the verb form of the Greek word agape. We'll examine that in a minute. Even the words beloved, which comes up here, that that phrase is an adjective describing someone who has come under this agape love of God. And so it's very focused on one thing.
What is this love that God has made clear to us? Well, God is love is important. All the other things that we're going to see about love, all the descriptions, even all those things I read about the from children, those are manifestations of love. Those are examples of love, but they come out of a deeper source. What's the deepest source? God is love. That's ground zero.
Everything, every act of love that we do as believers is grounded in that God is love. So let me look at that statement. Three words. The Greek is theos imi agape. God is love. Each of those three words is significant. Theos that is the overarching term for God, but specifically it's God the father. And we and we know that actually the passage helps actually explain that because verse 8 says God is love.
And then the next words in verse 9 in this the love of God was made manifest among us that God theos same word sent his only son into the world. So the father sent his son. So God in in verse eight there God is love. Theos is God the father specifically. The word is, let us not skip over that. Some might think that's a throwaway. That's just a conjunctive word. It's far more than that.
This word is a verb, the word imi in Greek. And John uses this word throughout his writings. Most significantly, it's used in John 8 verse 58. If you have a Bible, I'd encourage you to just zip over there for a moment. John 8:58. Here Jesus is interacting with some Jews who are have become opponents of his and they're resting on their on their heritage as sons of Abraham as if that will gain them entrance into heaven.
And Jesus is making it clear that that's not true. And in the course of their interaction, he says this to them in verse 58. Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." Now, that's not a grammatical mistake that Jesus made here. No, no, that that's a very much by design and on purpose what he says here. That phrase, if you if if that phrase I am, rings a bell for you, it should. When Moses was talking to God in the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3 and he said, "Who shall I say is sending me?"
Remember what God's response was from the burning bush? I am. Tell them I am is sending you. And here Jesus says before Abraham was, I am. He was the one who was speaking to Moses in the burning bush. And here he is interacting with him. But that word am, I am. I am me. It's the same word as God is love. Same word. That is to say, this is who he is. It's his very core. It's his very essence.
God's essence. All love radiates from God. All true Christian, God-honoring love radiates from God because he is love. He's the person personification of love. This is who he is. It's like saying Earth's core is magnetic. It is. All the gravity that we experience in this world that extends all the way up into our atmosphere, all of it comes from the Earth's core. All the grav gravitational pull that we experience comes from Earth's core.
And so it's true to say that all the qualities of gravity come from Earth's core. Earth's core is magnetism. In the same way, God is love. This is who he is. It's wrapped up in his very character and his very essence. So, theosi God is agape, love. Time fails us to fully explain what that word means.
We could have a whole sermon in itself just on that one word. But briefly, this is speaking about the covenantal faithfulness of God. It is not speaking about emotions or feelings. This is important and it's true in our own relationships. We just had the privilege of spending time with Roy and Shirley Mandelle yesterday celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. That's significant. If I were I I haven't asked Roy and Shirley this, but I imagine they're here today.
You can ask them later. Is all of your 60 years has H has the foundation of your marriage, the thing that's kept you together been the warm fuzzies? I'm guessing the answer is no. Any relationship that's built just on emotion, just on feeling, just on those, oh, the Twitter paded. I hate to break the news to you, that will fade. Now, that's not to say there's no feelings. No, of course you have you love with feeling the one that you're pledged to. Absolutely.
But there'll be es and flows with that. If it's only based on emotion, what happens when things go tough for a time? You. It needs to be something other than that. God's love, praise the Lord, is not like that. God's love is not based on emotion. It's based on a decision of his will. He chooses to love whom he chooses to love. The scripture is replete with examples of that.
Therefore, when I fail him, when I flounder, when I struggle, praise God, he doesn't cease to love me because he's chosen to love me. He will not disregard me or discard me. His love is constant and it is unfailing based on his sovereignty. This is agape. So when we put everything together, we understand that God the Father is the ground and the essence of true covenantal faithful enduring love.
That's glorious. Every other s every every manifestation of his love comes from that source. And and this has been pre-existent. This love didn't just start in Genesis 1. No. No, it was there long before that. In fact, there's never been a time in history, not just human history, but of all time when that didn't exist. It's always been. You know how I know that? Jesus said it in John chapter 17 in his high priestly prayer. He says this in verse 24.
Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. The triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have eternally dwelled with this love. And now we who are sinners, who do not deserve it, get to be recipients of this love. Wow, that's enormous. God is love.
Now, before we move on, I want to make sure we understand one thing. I want to pause here for a moment. We should never say love is God. Some would say, someone put an equal sign. God equals love. Ergo, love equals God. No, there's not an equal sign here. The word imi is here. Is God is the is the foundation of love. He's the essence of love. Love has it has its core in him, not the other way around. Why is that important?
This is why it's important. You and I, we're all tainted by sin. Romans 3:23 tells us that all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. All of our all of our thoughts, all of our intentions, all of our motives have been clouded by sin and love within man's heart is because of sin skewed and corrupted. So devoid of God's intervention in our hearts miraculously through salvation.
Apart from that, when we speak of love, it is opposed to God's love. So we cannot say my view of love defines who God is. No. But this is how the culture at large goes about it. Look no further than Whoopy Goldberg. Few years ago on the daytime talk show The View, she went on a tirade talking about her view of love and then said, "Well, this is how I view love.
Ergo, this is who God must be. God must r God must be okay with this." really recently, James Terico, who is a Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, a man who claims to be a Christian, has talked about his view of sexuality, and it is directly opposed to the scriptures. But he says because I'm a I'm a Christian and this is how I view love, this God must be okay with this. So he's saying love is God.
No friends, let us understand God gets to define what love is. And he has defined love and it's found in his character. It's found in his nature. It's found in who he is. And the word of God in its totality from Genesis through Revelation explains the love of God. And so any kind of love that the world would try to explain that is opposed to the clear teaching of God about what his love is and how it's seen in our world. It's not right.
God is love, not the other way around. So God is love. But then now there's this progression. So God is love. This is the ground of love. How does it get seen? How is it how is it visible to us? What's seen in verses 9 and 10 of our passage. God loved sacrificially. Look at verses 9 and 10. In this, so he's verse 8, God is love. Now in this, the love of God was made manifest among us.
So now he's about to explain how God's love is visibly, tangibly seen amongst us. How? That God sent his only son into the world. That son's name is Jesus Christ. He sent his only son into the world that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation of our sins. I'm going to explain that word propitiation in a minute.
This is the love of God. Visible, sacrificial. Love is sacrificial. And God demonstrated that most of all. You see, here's the thing, friends. You and I are bound for eternal death because we're sinners. We have rebelled against a holy God. And God is right to judge because he's just. God does not sweep sin under the carpet. Where there's crime, there must be punishment. We all understand that instinctively.
Sin is a crime against God. And it needed to be punished. And it was man who sinned. Mankind sinned. Ergo. There needed to be a man who could atone for it. But can I atone for my own sin? I can't. There's no amount of good works I can do to make myself right with God because I'm a sinner. I can't do it. I certainly can't do it for anyone else. I can't even do it for myself. And so it appeared that eternal death was inevitable. But God but God who is love displayed his love for us in sending his one and only son in the likeness of men in order to deal with our sin fully and finally in his own body on the tree.
Let me take you to a few texts to explain that. In Galatians chap, you can either turn with me or you can look it up later. Galatians 4:es 3:5, it says this. In the same way also, when we were children, we were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
So here is Jesus born in the likeness of man, born of a woman to redeem those who were under the law, to purchase us back. Praise God. Hebrews chapter 2. Listen to what we read here starting in verse 9. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
Drop down to verse 14 there. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise parttook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it's not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of his people.
There's that word again, propitiation. What does that mean? Propitiation means essentially wrathbearer. Christ bore my wrath. I was due wrath. God was right to pour his wrath out upon me, a sinner. And yet Jesus stood in my place. He was the atoning substitutionary savior in my place. He stood in my place so that I instead of getting wrath get freedom in Christ, new life, hope, eternity, heaven because Christ took my place.
He propitiated me. Richard earlier spoke from first Peter chapter 2 that he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. This is what he did. He propitiated us in that way. He saved us. He atoned for us. This is the display of the love of God for us. And friends, I want you to I want you to hear me. Nobody nobody has ever loved you like that. Nobody.
Now, there are some people, I have no doubt, that have loved you richly and immensely. Maybe it's your parents, grandparents, children, you name it. But nobody has loved you the way the Lord has loved you. And I'm going to take it a step further. Not only has no one ever loved you like that, you will never love anyone with this kind of love. You might say, "Wow, I have a lot of love for this person over here or that person over there. I I'm I'm quite certain I can love to some degree like that. Well, certainly we can love to some degree like that, but we will never love with that depth in that way.
And you might say it, prove it to me. I'm so glad you said that. Go with me to Romans chapter 5 for a moment. Romans 5. I'm going to start with verses six and seven and then we're going to pause. Romans 5 starting at verse 6 says this, "For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for who?" It says here, "The ungodly."
That's what it says. He doesn't He didn't die for the people who cleaned themselves up or who had earned their way or had worked their way closer to him. No, no. He died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. Let's pause there. We certainly hear stories of those who heroically give their life to protect others.
Certainly, we see that with our military and with our police. We see it oftentimes with people trying to take out active shooters. In fact, we saw it yesterday in ID in in Idaho where a man tried to take out an active shooter at an In-N-Out burger restaurant trying to risking his life for others. So, we see that from time to time and and I look around this room and I I'm I I think I I feel like in my heart I'm being genuine here. There's a lot of people in this room that I've grown to love a lot and I mean that sincerely.
And I do believe I really do believe that if push came to shove, I believe I would be willing to put my life on the line to save yours. I really do believe that. But I'll tell you this, I would be willing to put my life on the line for you, but I would never put my children's life on the line for you. I love you, but if this place starts on fire and my kids are still in the building, you better have the exit picked out on your own because I'm saving them first. I will protect my children fiercely.
Fiercely, as I'm sure any good dad would do. But God, I'm going to pick it back up for you now. We finished at verse seven. And now pick it up in verse eight. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners. Or as verse six says, while we were ungodly, Christ his son, right? God sent his son. Theos sent his son.
God shows his love for us. And that while we were still sinners, Christ his son died for us to bear my wrath in my place that I might go free. Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. That's love like you and I have never seen from anyone else and we will never be able to give to anyone else.
But praise be to God, he enables us by his spirit to live and to love more and more like him. And that should be our aim, which now is what we're going to come to in this progression we see in 1 John 4. So the progression is God is love. He's the ground of love. He's the foundation of love. And the manifestation of his love is most clearly seen in Jesus coming to take my place to deal with my sin. I can't work my way to salvation.
Praise be to God. God knew that and he sent his son to to do the work in my place. He He did the work. He saved me by his grace, by his mercy, by his blood. Oh, what a savior. So now, what's the next part of the progression? God's love is meant to be imitated by you and me. Look at verses 7 and 11 of our text here. They start with the same word, beloved. At least that's how it starts in the ESV. Beloved, those who are loved by God, those who understand this gospel love that Jesus has died in my place because of the the ground of God's love that he bore my wrath that I might be free in him. Praise God.
For those who are beloved. You know, you're loved by God. If God, verse 11 says, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Go back to verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another. There's that same instruction. For love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. And it says this then in verse eight, anyone who does not love does not know God. If we understand the gospel, friends, I'm a sinner. I'm a worm.
I truly I've rebelled against God. I deserve any punishment he would be right to dole out on me. But because of the ground of his love, he sent his son Jesus to deal with it. And so that now instead of getting hell, I get heaven. If I understand that, why would I then turn around and say, "Okay, look at this. I deserve great punishment. I am a worm. I'm miserable.
I'm a sinner. Yet God loved me. He gave himself for me. He saved me. I'm going to turn around to this fellow sinner and say, "Yeah, but I'm going to treat you like dirt." Do you see the inconsistency in that? So the one here says John says if anyone does not love that one doesn't know God. And this passage goes on to even give an explanation of it in verse 20 and 21 or an example of it. If anyone says in verse 20 there, 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. It's true. We no one here has seen God with their natural eyes. But we've seen the love of God worked out and made clear to us through his word, through all the historical documents that prove the validity of scripture. All of this is true, but we've never seen him with our natural eyes.
But we know he loves us. We know he's given us hope for eternal life. And the outworking of that now is that I love my brother or my sister. This appears to be a litmus test for the believer. Anyone can say that they're a Christian. One of the proofs and the evidences is in our otherworldly love for one another. You know, a an unregenerate, unsaved man or woman can fake it for a time and can even look like they love other people well, but eventually it will break down.
This love is a supernatural love where God has redeemed and changed and shaped and transformed my heart. He's given taken out my heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh so that I now long to glorify him and exalt him by loving my fellow brother or my sister. And it's different. It's a different kind of love. It's a love that sacrifices for one another. It's a love that puts others first. It's a love that endures even when afflicted or even when slighted. One of the great pictures of this is found, as I mentioned earlier, I was going to turn there to 1 Corinthians 13.
This is often referred to as the love chapter. I will ask you to ask for a show of hands. How many of you have had this quoted at your wedding? Yeah. Yeah. It's a fair fair number of hands. Look at verses 4 through7. These all come from the Lord from the ground of his love and through Christ because of Christ. All of these pictures of love find their zenith find their ground zero in the Lord. Love is patient.
Oh, how the patient the Lord is. Richard explained that to us earlier. Love is kind. The kindness of God's love for us is amazing. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
This is a an outworking of the one of the love of God in that one who knows what God has done for them and how much God loves them. We're going to explain more of this in in more practical detail next week. But let me just say this. This this week, friends, I would urge you to meditate on the love of God and the outworking of his love toward us in Christ that you might consider how to live in honor of him today.
Years ago, John MacArthur had the opportunity to spend a number of days with with famous songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither. And so in the course of their time together, at one point, John MacArthur talked to Bill and said to him, I want to get his question right. What are the greatest Christian lyrics ever written aside from the inspired Psalms? That was his question to Bill Gaither. And apparently without hesitation, Bill Gaither recited these words.
The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell. The guilty pair bowed down with care. God gave his son to win. His airing child he reconciled and pardoned from his sin. Oh love of God, how rich and pure, how measurless and strong, it shall forever more endure.
The saints and angels song, the love of God. I'm going to pray and then we're going to close by singing that song together. God, we thank you for the enormity of your love. We are in awe of it because we are not worthy of it. And yet in your wondrous, gracious sovereignty, you have chosen to love us. I can confess, I do not feel worthy. And yet this is the enormity of your mercy toward us.
May we never take that for granted. May we consider carefully your love and the manifestation of your love in Jesus Christ. That we now live with hope for eternal life. It's not something we're worried about. For those who have repented and trusted Christ, we live with the assurance of our salvation. We know we're going home. This is glad news. And may we never take that for granted. And may we display your love with cheerfulness, with sacrifice, with endurance and faithfulness.
And may you be exalted as we do so. We pray these things in the precious name of our loving Savior Jesus. Amen. Let's stand together in closing song.
Transcribed automatically from YouTube captions, so names and words may be misheard.
