1-3 John - 1st John 4:7-10 Let us love one another

Alright, we're looking at 1 John 4, 7-10. So we've got four verses to work through here this morning. We're switching themes a little bit here. John, in his past several verses there, I taught two weeks ago and Bob taught last week, and in those verses we were looking at largely a warning. It was kind of a stop in terms of what John was doing. He took a moment to say, Take heed here, there's some things going on in the body that you need to be aware of and you need to be careful about it. And so last week and the week before that, we looked at this whole concept of testing the spirits and the dangers that come from false teaching and what the dangers of false teaching produce.

And I think that having looked and read through the verses that we're going to study today, it was quite important for John to warn the believers before he got to this theme of love. And that's what we're going to look at today. These next four verses have largely to do with this idea of loving one another and where love is sourced from. And it's interesting, though, that before he got to love, which is the verses that we're looking at today, he dealt with the potential division that can happen within the body.

He said, be careful that you don't fall into false teaching because if you get caught up in that, this whole love thing is not going to work for you. Not at all. If you're not one in the same mind and doctrine, The love thing doesn't matter. It's not going to work out.

And I think today, as we'll mention here as we get going, today there's an overemphasis on love at the expense of truth, isn't there? And I think that as we dive in here, we're going to see that really they're tied together. They're one and the same. They're meant to work together and travel along the same path, the same speed, the same distance. Go ahead. And one verse that tells it like that is, speak the truth. That's right.

Ephesians 5, 14. And we're going to look at that tonight, or this morning rather. I looked at it last night. I'm still in the last night mode. Yeah, so thanks for mentioning that. That's exactly where we're going to go. But let's go ahead and just get a running start here with the next four verses, 7 through 10. If somebody can just read those four verses together, I think that would be good.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

So verses 7 through 10, like I said, they major on the theme of love. And what we want to do is try to connect with what John is saying in this book. Rather than kind of using this as a jumping point to just dive into the whole concept of love and love within the church and love from God, we're going to stay tightly focused on what he's saying here. And he starts off with that endearing term that he has used before, the whole idea of John addressing the beloved.

We've mentioned a number of times that this has to do with believers. He's still talking to the same group of people that he has been, and while that may seem obvious, he continues to be repetitious in addressing them this way. Why do we keep talking about it? Because he does. He says, Beloved, such and such. Beloved, such and such. And so, Beloved, be careful, test the spirits, be careful of false doctrine. Now, it's Beloved, let's talk about love.

And so, the idea there within the term Beloved, it's written in such a way, especially in the original language, that he's saying, listen very closely, you divinely loved ones. And it's neat because in learning to better study the word, Vern has explained to me that a lot of times it's easier to explain the text with more words than what is there in the English translation. So while we see Beloved, And from the Greek perspective, there's this whole idea of listen very closely, divine loved ones. And that just doesn't come out in the word beloved, does it? And so we have to throw a bunch more words out there just to get across the idea that's there.

And so in the translations that some of the best Bible students work through, you have these very wordy, exhaustive kinds of renditions of the the words, and I find that to be really helpful because that's what they were hearing. That's how they were experiencing what John was saying. And so, it's almost like saying, hey, listen, you very special loved brothers, listen to what I'm about to tell you. And he did that a number of times.

And he jumps right in, he says, let us love one another. So, what's going on there? Why is he jumping from the false doctrine concept to love within the body? Why do you think that this transition is happening? I think you already blew your cover on that one, because there we go again. Love and truth go together. Yeah. It's right.

You know, John 15, 12, his gospel, He quotes Jesus as saying this very thing. Let us love one another for love is of God. the Lord himself when he says this. And here we have this command. I mean, literally, it's a command to love one another and that love, when it's obeyed and when the brethren are finding that love being experienced, they're finding that source is from God.

And so what he's identifying is that our behavior, the things that we're all about, is love. If someone were to walk right in the middle of our time together, one of the things that they should walk away with is there's something different about the love that these folks have with one another. I don't know what it is, and frankly you probably wouldn't after having been here just for a little while. But there is something that is unique that John is pointing out about those that are brethren, the beloved.

And it's because of the object of their love. It's not because of them. Notice where it's from. What does the verse say? It's from God. Is it their own love? Are we capable of producing a love that is like God's love? I'm going to talk about that. What's that?

You're going to go ahead. I'll not step into your pathway. No, it's no problem. It's good. We kind of come at it from different angles and that's important. But this idea of expressing love, if we were to come at it and run at it with human terms, what do we come up with? What's our best effort at love? Just human base. It's human-based. What can I get from it? Okay, I think that's a really important point. What can I get from it? Love, in a human sense, is very self-seeking.

So if a visitor were to come in to the midst of a fellowship of Christians, they would be looking at it from the perspective of Well, there must be something that these folks are getting from one another, because that's what love is and that's how I understand it. I wonder what it is. They must be needy. They must need one another in such a way that they're satisfying each other's needs.

And so what they would do is they would go on to explain the experience of love that they might see or witness, but they would explain it from a very self-seeking, selfish point of view, because that's all we can do. See, love, when it's left on its own, without the Lord, when it's not sourced in God, ultimately it serves itself. That's all it can do. And it can look very similar to us, can't it? A lot of that love can look the same.

I've used examples of how there are more religious people out there than the body of Christ at times. Why? Well, because of the law base, the legalism that a person puts himself through, we can seem and be apparent as being one thing, but yet our foundation and our source is something different. It just so happens that you can fake it really well, can't you?

Question. I wondered if somebody had an inner living... She would tell us the Greek word for love there. I think there's two forms of it. That's right. I can remember the agape, but what's the other one? Phileo. This is agape love. Yeah. This is a unique love from God, where you have the kind of tenderness that you get from a phileo type of love. This agape love is a very sacrificial, not self-seeking kind of love. And the only way you get it is from the Father. That's right. This kind of love doesn't exist outside of the Scripture and outside of the Word Himself.

So I'm careful to also say that while we can look at 1 Corinthians 13 and get a beautiful picture of love, we can also look at the Word Himself. and see a beautiful picture of love. And so it's a combination. John is very clear on the fact that it's not just the scripture itself, it's the source behind the scripture that is what tells us about our doctrine. And so he calls, what does he call the Lord in the book of John, the gospel, right at the beginning? The Word. The Word was with God in the beginning. And so without the Word, without the picture of Jesus, we don't understand agape love.

So you're exactly right. This is different. And even the Word itself is something that's unique to the Scripture. It's unique to God. And we're going to dive into that a little bit more. But you mentioned that a human love here is based on feelings. It's based on getting something. But this type of love is different. And we're camping out on that concept a little bit because it's really the theme.

He mentions it a number of times. The repetition of the word in these four verses means pay attention. This is what I want you to get from this right now. Be careful of false doctrine. Now I need you to focus on love. Why? Because God is love. This is where it's from. And so we look at this idea of love from a human perspective, and again, it goes back to what can I get from it? And it's a feeling-based kind of love. If we think about love from the perspective of the scripture, it's a little different. Instead of saying, what can I do to please myself, it puts the needs of others ahead of itself. Are there those in the world that perform deeds of what seem to be love where they put others in front of themselves?

Yeah, what do we call it? Philanthropy. Philanthropy. Humanitarianism. Is that a big thing? It's a big industry. Yeah, philanthropy and humanitarianism is a big deal. And I think that a person, an unbeliever, or one that does not know the God of the Bible, if they spend some time honestly seeking what will fulfill them, ultimately the unbeliever comes to this conclusion that if I just feed myself all the time, It doesn't feel so good, so I'm going to now take a little bit of my time and start to feed someone else, or something else, or do something else. But the tricky thing is, is that while they think that they're giving to someone else, it's really satisfying a need in their own life. Right? Okay, you can think about organizations, and there's nothing wrong with those humanitarian organizations. They're needed. But that's the point, is that someone sees a need and they identify that need with their own need. And they say, I can serve this way because this would make me feel good about doing this.

And it's a kind of sacrificial love that still lends itself to a false expression of what true agape love is. Why is that? I think that if, and just to kind of summarize and not go jumping around and really trying to nail this theme down too far, but the idea of biblical love, it starts with faith. And without faith, an expression of the will, you're not going to have it. And here's why.

Does God bring needs into your life that you need? We say, you need what you need. You need your needs. You need the things that are frustrating to you. You brought in baggage this morning that you've been dealing with this week. Something's going on. someone is not performing the way you want them to perform, or some event is not functioning the way that you want it to. You've got people and you've got circumstances, and they're flying at you. You come in this morning with them, and you say, I don't feel good. My health is not what I want it to be. This person is not being who I want them to be. It's just frustrating.

And I can see in your eyes right now, you're like, yeah, you've got that person in your mind. And the interesting thing about that is that those people or those circumstances or those events in your life are the very tools that are teaching you about what John is teaching us here this morning. It's teaching you about a faith-based love. Why? You need them. It's the very idea that loving a person or loving the Lord regardless of the circumstances that you find yourself in is the very thing that differentiates agape love from a worldly type of love. Why?

Because you don't get anything from it. You don't do something in order to receive something back. You don't love a person in order to receive their love back. You don't embrace an event in your life because you expect that it's going to render something that is good for you.

See, we're told all throughout the scripture in the New Testament, expect the trials, expect the difficulties, and yet here we are, we're still supposed to love one another and still love the Lord, regardless of what we're going through? How does that work? Because the love that is sourced out of God is different. It's not based on the way things seem or the way they feel. Does this make sense? It's a decision. And so true love begins as an act of the will, irregardless of what you're going to get from that. So you have someone in your life and they're frustrating, they're not doing what you want them to do. Because that's what causes us to get frustrated. We have plans for a person and they don't do it, right?

Yeah, question. Is there a difference or how can we differentiate when we're faced with a situation between true agape love for what we do or say or whatever versus what would Jesus do? Okay, this is a good question. What was the question? So, Gail asks, what's the difference between choosing to love with agape love or simply mimicking the Lord's actions with the whole concept of what would Jesus do? Which is still alive and kicking as a concept, right? I mean, I think it's pretty easy to get into that.

We see the Lord do something, we're like, well, let's do the same thing. He fed the hungry, let's feed the hungry. He heals the sick, let's find a way to heal the sick. Let's do the things that Jesus did. Let's be all about that. The difference is that, and we spent a whole last semester on this subject, and so I point us all to what is God doing in the Life of the Believer course that Vern just got through teaching. The difference with what would Jesus do and loving as Jesus is the source is that He does the loving through us rather than us mimicking His love.

We can fake it. I mean, I use this term a little bit flippantly and often because I find myself confronted with the reality of I can fake something pretty well. I mean, we can walk into church and feel like we are doing a pretty good job of being a believer.

I mean, hey, how you doing? What's going on? How's your week been? And I'm not sliding the fact that we want to know how people are doing, but you can get carried away with just the niceties of church and forget the fact that walking into church and greeting the brethren is a decision of faith. It's not a decision of how well you can behave and how well you can be perceived by your fellow Christians. What do you do when you get to church? You walk by faith. You're sourced in the love that God does the living through you, even in church. It's different. It's just not the same as going to church and learning what to do and how to act so that the next week you look a little bit better, more like Jesus, and your bracelet stands out a little bit more that week. You know? It's different.

When you're sourced out of the love of God, it comes naturally. And it takes time. It's not something that a person just all of a sudden, hey, you went to this class this morning and now you got it. It takes intimacy with the Lord in order to love like he loves. It takes time beholding him through his word in order to love like he loves. Agape love does not happen overnight.

But it is what John expects, as we're about to see. So hopefully that answers your question a little bit. Rather than mimicking the Lord, we're to let Him do the loving through us. And what does that mean? You get out of the way. How do you get out of the way? By faith. By trusting that He has a better plan for you than you do. Because you can sure act it out well.

The whole idea of biblical loving finds itself with a decision of faith to love those that are unlovable. to embrace circumstances of the Lord, from the Lord, for your good, even though you don't understand it. And also, agape love is based on giving, not getting. We give ourselves for the sake of the other person. We're concerned not about what we can get from this person, but what we can give to the person.

I can't do that by myself. And I don't think you can either. It's not in our human nature to think that way. Even if you say it and walk that path, ultimately if you're still in the flesh in that, you're going to be looking to get something out of it. Guarantee it.

And that's why I'm constantly reminding myself that true love is not something that looks good or feels right. It is something that came out of a decision of faith and it was based on a relationship with the Lord. It was not something that I was able to mimic or do on my own. And if you're honest with yourself, in the way that John is kind of presenting this black and white concept of love, I think that we all still have a lot to learn in this way. Because we can sure act one way and find ourselves doing the things that look right. but they're not truly sourced out of a walk of faith with Him. It's sacrificial, and it's not based on what we get from it, like I mentioned. But there is a cost that's involved in this kind of agape love. But everyone who loves is born of God.

So what does that mean? What are we talking about there? Born of God. Who is that? Believers. What does it mean to be born of God? Jesus is our source. It means that you've been recreated. Not that you've been born again physically, but you've been born again spiritually. You have a new source now, where once you were born of Adam, Now you are born of God, where once you were an Adam, now you are no longer an Adam, never able to go back to that source, you are completely 100% continually sourced in Christ. You can't escape that source.

You can live in spiritual hallucination. I think Mike calls it spiritual insanity. Craig and I and Vern have been working through this concept. You can live in that hallucination of, I'll kind of entertain the old man, but you're never able to go back to that.

That's something that was crucified at the cross. It's a one-way entry. You can't go back. The door doesn't hinge that way. The old man is there on the cross and he's never going to have any victory or life in you again, although you can live schizophrenically, so to speak. You can entertain the idea, but it's not available to you as a source.

Go ahead. Trying to do this in flesh is kind of like Captain Binghamton trying to deal with McHale Yeah, no, that's right. It's exactly right. The whole Operation Bootstrap, as we've called it. Pull the boots up and just plow on through. Get ready, get going. And the pep talks. Let's get together on Sunday morning and pep one another up and try to walk as diligently as we can through the week in love.

It's just not going to work. The best thing that we can do is bring the Word to light to you and cause you to behold Christ in the Word on your own, because that's where your source is. And this new man that you are in Christ, the regenerate born of God that John's talking about here, is literally life in Christ. And without life in Christ, without being born of God, there is no true love. There's no love that you can give to your brethren, there's no love that you can experience with your Creator.

2 Corinthians 5.17 talks about literally the very life of Christ living through us. And just to reiterate, it's not us doing what Christ did, it's Christ doing the living through us.

Ephesians 4.15 talks about the very thing we mentioned at the beginning. Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ.

How is that love expressed consistently to others? See, unbelievers do not have a worldview that allows them to love in truth. Truthing in love is how Verne refers to this verse. We truth in love with one another. We speak the truth in love. That is the fullness of how love works within the body of Christ. It has to do with content, not just the way a person treats another person. It has to do with what we say to one another. If you're caught in a sin, if you're caught in something that's habitually entangling you, How does a believer love you? Do they just pat you on the back and say, I'm here for you when you need me?

No. See, and for an unbeliever, they may offer what they believe is the truth. What would that be? What are some examples of a way an unbeliever might try to help a person entangle in something that's defeating? I know a good psychiatrist you could go to. That's right. So what would they offer? They would offer this whole perspective on how to put self at the center, and treat self as the number one need. Let's talk about you. Let's talk about what's going on with you. And they would offer truth in love, but the problem is that they don't have the truth. They have a counterfeit.

So that's why it gets back to agape love has its whole source in the very Word, in the very truth of God. So if we have a fellow believer who's entangled in something, we're able to bring to them the Word of God that would help them find clarity, help them understand, and if that doesn't work, then we're able to bring other believers with us. And it's both an expression of fellowship and love, but it's also a bringing about that truth in love.

Can you think about examples in your own life where that's been really, really helpful to you? To kind of get past the point where you felt like you were just having spiritual hang-ups. And this whole idea of spiritual growth, it doesn't happen without someone speaking the truth and love to you. It just doesn't work. We're literally designed to function with one another in an environment of speaking the truth in love. Does this make sense? I still think that verse 7 is a classical example of the explicit manner in which the truth has been revealed to us from the Lord himself. And I just get back to what that says. It says, for love is of God, nobody else. And everyone that loveth is born of, from God. And those are the, there's no other source. That's right. In verse 8, go ahead and read verse 8 for us. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is light.

So John started off his book with God is light. And what does that mean? I wasn't here when you guys were studying that, but what attribute is that statement that John made in the first chapter, what is that telling us? God is light. What does light do? And I'm going to get back to what you're saying, because you've got a really good point. I'm just trying to bring us back to the context of John. John says God is light. In other words, God is revelatory. He reveals truth. He's not in the dark. He's not hiding away. He's not existing as the omnipotent, omnipresent, all-powerful God in a closet. He's all that he is, and he's in the light.

And he reveals himself to us. So God is revelatory. His revelation is open to us. That's what John said in the beginning. God is truth. Now he's saying God is love. This is the second example, or the second use of God's attributes by John in this book. First he said God is light, now he's saying God is love. It's interesting that those are the two that he camps out on in his book. So, is God love and not other things? I think it's kind of sometimes hard to understand this idea that God is love. What we're actually saying, or what's being said here is that it is God's nature of love that we're talking about. He's not more love than he is omnipresent. He's not more love than He is everywhere at the same time. He's not more love than He is holy. We don't have these attributes that somehow get weighed out in God and are greater than the other. He is equally all that He is at the same time, continually.

And one of the aspects of God is His love. Now, we really like that, and John's bringing that to our attention right now, but we could go into the book of you know, Leviticus, and spend time on the idea that God is holy. Okay? He's righteous. And we could look at other books of the Bible and see very clear attributes of God that are extremely important that we can't dismiss. But love seems to kind of hit us where we're at more often than others, but it's not at the expense of his other attributes.

In other words, God doesn't say, Because I love more than I care about the truth, I want you to just, you know, just get along, just be, you know, be around the fellow believers and keep the peace and love at the expense of what's being said and spoken about. He says, no, I care equally as much about what's being said as about the expressions of love between you.

And that has to do with the whole truthing in love. And so I think that for myself, as I've worked through this, it's been very important for me to see that this source, this idea of love coming from God, is the same source of where our truth comes from. And the same source that all power and all revelation of the Word itself comes from. This is God, and God is love, meaning God is, in His very nature, a loving God. Any thoughts before we move on to that? Well, but I almost think it goes further than you can express in words.

I bet you're right. These are magnificent verses. They really are. Magnificent verses. Yeah, it's hard to do justice to the way John packs so much into simpler statements. And we kind of grab them and run with it in our fast food society, and we don't spend enough time letting it soak in. But I think you're right. These are extremely powerful.

And for us to really get the fullness of what John's talking about here, You know it would We could spend a lot more time like he said on this whole idea of love But here God is saying that I'm sorry John Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God we haven't talked about the knows God part and then in verse 8 He goes he goes on and gives us the other side of it, but the one who does not love does not know God for God is love and So who is the one that does not know God? I'm going to go out on a limb and say unbelievers. Oh, out on a limb. So is the one who does not know God an unbeliever? Yeah, I'd say so.

Because he's not born of God. Yeah, I think you're right. In fact, it's been a little bit of a confusing verse for some to say that, well, knowing God is equivalent to being in fellowship, and born again means you're saved, so you can be born again and not know God. But that's not how John thinks.

Even though that's how Paul might break down details and say, okay, you've been born again. You're a new creation. However, oh, what a wretched man I am. And going to the Romans 6, 7, 8 progress of life, John just says, hey, You're born again, you know God you love. That's what you do.

He kind of speaks plainly to us, the black and white here. Bob mentioned that last week. This is a very black and white kind of guy. He doesn't spend too much time walking around the garden and explaining every single detail that he sees. He just says, pssh, that's a rose. A rose does what a rose does. You're a believer, you do what a believer does. And that's what he talks about.

And so here, the idea of knowing God, what we needed to do in order to understand if that has to do with a believer who's out of fellowship or an unbeliever, is just look at how that term, know God, is being used elsewhere by John. And in John 17, 25, He says, O righteous Father, although the world has not known you, yet I have known you. And these have known that you sent me. And that's, John's quoting Jesus literally there. But the idea is that they didn't know me. And the same thing in John 16, 3. These things they do because they have not known the Father or me.

And so I looked up this known, knowing, gnoskos, and John talks about knowing things more than any other author in the New Testament. In fact, John is the place where knowledge is talked about more than anywhere else in the scripture, the gospel of John, and then third to that is 1 John. But if you add John and 1 John together, you have clearly a guy who's in many ways obsessed with the idea of knowing God and what it means to not know God. But for him, it's black and white.

If you know God, you're born again. If you don't know God, you don't listen to Him, you don't obey His commands, you don't do the things that people that don't know God do. Or rather, you do those things that people that don't know Him do. Tongue twister.

Hebrews 3.10 says the same thing, therefore I was angry with this generation and said they always go astray in their heart and they did not know my ways. So not knowing God, I think, in just sticking with the context of what John's saying, is you don't know. You don't know the Lord. You're not a believer.

Yes, are there degrees of which we can each know the Lord more intimately? Yes, but John's speaking black and white, matter of fact. If you're a believer, you know Him. How do you know Him? If you've placed your faith in the Savior for salvation, what do you know at least?

That God loves you. You know what He's about to tell you in the next verses. You know that His sin has only begotten Son, John 3, 16. You know the concept of God's love being expressed sacrificially by giving His own Son. You know about that kind of love if you're a believer. So you know God and His love and His agape kind of love. If you're a believer, you know that. You may not be able to express it, but you know it.

You understand, verse 9, by this love of God was manifested in us that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. So here, he's giving the evidence that God is love. He said God is love, now I'm going to tell you why God is love.

I think that's really cool. It's not this abstract concept. It's not kind of this, oh, go find a quiet corner and experience God because he's love. Go meditate. And what you said, there's a lot going on in these verses, and here's one of the things that really comes to light is that God is love, and here's why. Because of what he did.

Agape love has its source in giving in such a way that you don't receive. And when he gave his only son, he gave in a way that none of us can ever give. I was thinking about this whole idea of God sending his son into the world and the idea of begotten. Is he talking about Christ being the son of Mary and being present in the world for 33 some odd years, being a carpenter and being a good son, and it just so happened that he was also the son of God during that time?

What's going on here? How big is what he's saying? Is it eternal? I think he's talking about the eternal fellowship that they had with each other. I think you're right, and I think it goes beyond fellowship, and it goes to the relationship too, which is, I mean, just part and parcel of what you're saying. The father-son relationship is an eternal relationship that always existed.

We got to experience, maybe not personally experience, but we got to witness it through the eyes of the apostles, through the scripture, and we'll get to witness more. There's more to come about the Son of God. We'll see more of what He has to reveal about the Father. But when He came and walked those 33 years and was witnessed by those men and women during that time and written of in the Scripture, He was showing something that was eternally the case, that He was the Son of God. How many times does He point back to my Father throughout the Gospels? Many. He's sourced in God. And he explains that father-son relationship.

I kind of was thinking about this and it's really cool because when we fall in love with our spouse, That is a decision that happens and it kind of grows over time. At first, it's just an attraction. We might say a lust. We have an interest in this person and we want them, but it's only after we get to know them and understand them that we say we fall in love. love at first sight, it's probably never that. It's more like lust at first sight.

But it doesn't matter. That's the way God designed us, and that's a good thing. However, the closest thing that we have to how God loved his son is literally how we love our children. If you think about the moment a child is born, you don't need to know anything about that child to be madly and deeply in love with that child.

It's pretty amazing. Why? Because it's a product of your own life. And there's something that's unique. I'm not saying that our love for our spouses is not important and not amazing. I'm just saying that there's something very special about that instantaneous love for a newborn baby who you know nothing about. You fall in love at first sight and you love in such a way that somewhat relates to how God loves His Son.

It's just different. And I bring that up not to get us confused, but just to say that there's something neat about the father-son relationship and how much it affected the father to send his son. That was a big decision for him. We kind of flippantly roll through John 3.16 and roll through 1 John 4.9 and think, oh yeah, he sent his son. I mean, that was what was important. That wasn't easy for him. And that's what he's saying, is that I did something that was extremely important to me. I gave in a way that the closest thing you can relate to is giving of your own child.

That's the kind of self-sacrificial agape love that's going on here. And so, just to kind of pack a punch like what you're saying, that there's so much here in this verse, there's so much in the fact that God sent His Son, and us thinking that through, and spending time in that area, that brings a whole other level to understanding how God loves us.

One comment. Sure. The fact that he sent his son was the result of the covenant made between the father and the son before the foundation of the world that if he would come and give his life for sinners that he would be their redeemer. It boggles your mind to say from before the foundation of the world. That's right.

Look at the last part of that verse there. It says, He sent His only begotten Son in order that what? This is the paradoxical nature of the Lord. I mean, He uses the weak instead of the strong. Here He's giving us life through death. Someone has to die so that we can have life. And you think about that. Substitution, death for life, is a huge theme in the Scripture.

It's how God was able to punish sin without punishing the sinner. And I'm working on teaching my kids about how God has a holy, you could say hatred. He has a just attitude towards sin in such a way that it needs to be punished. He cannot allow sin to go unpunished. He can't sweep it under the carpet. doesn't go anywhere. It has to be dealt with. How does God do it?

And so just looking through the Old Testament and seeing how God did that, I realized that we have additional revelation in the New Testament about substitution, but the Old Testament is a beautiful picture of what God does in the New Testament. So the Lamb of God that title of Christ is sourced out of the substitutionary relationship that the sinful Israelite had with a sacrificial lamb that he would bring to the altar. And so explaining the idea of how a lamb is dying in the place of man and how in order for sin to be punished and the man not be punished, his sin needed to, in a visual sense, be transferred to this lamb so the lamb could then die and pay for the sin of the believer. And, you know, I've got a three and four, almost five year old, but they're slowly starting to get this idea that the lamb didn't do anything. But it was a substitute, and it went in the place of man and died.

And so, coming to the idea of Christ, the only begotten Son, who came into the world and died so that we may have life, again brings back all the things that the Jewish believer here that John's speaking to, they already had this in mind. Substitution drilled in every single day of their life. They could look out in the field and see the lambs that they were raising, in order to make the sacrifice each time that they had that opportunity. And so it was a very visual thing for them. We lose that concept. We lose the idea of life. coming from death.

One area in the world that we have something similar to that is literally when we eat beef, when we eat chicken, when we eat animal, that is something that didn't exist originally. It happened after the flood. Before that we were eating, we were all vegetarians. But after the flood, God gave way for man to have death occur in an animal so that he could live. And so even eating of an animal is a visual picture. of something dying so that you live.

And it's hard to think that way because we just go to the grocery store. We don't have to actually take the life of that animal. But if you've lived on a farm and have spent any time butchering or having to take the life of an animal, you start thinking a little bit about what goes into dying so that you can live.

But so much more happened when God sent His only begotten Son in love in order that we might live through Him. And so I just bring up some of those things because that idea of substitution is there. And John would have, you know, had he taught this and said it real succinctly, maybe at supper that night they could have gone into all the pictures in the Old Testament that they all knew so well and grew up in, explaining what it meant to have life through death. But that's literally the underpinning of the Christian message, the gospel.

Life comes through death. Why? Sin has to be paid for. There's no way around it. And that's love. That's what's different. God didn't only express love, he did what was required in order for it to be made possible. He put himself on the line, and it's just a totally different concept. Verse 10, let's wrap this up. In this is love, not that we love God, but he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Do we love God initially? Why do we love? Because He loves us first.

I think that's an important thing to think about. The next time you find yourself thinking about love towards a spouse, or towards a child, or towards a fellow believer, is that my love for them is because of how God loved me first. It's not because I'm going to muster up something that's really great and this person is going to experience my love for them. No, the idea is that they experience Christ because of your love. Because that's where it's sourced from. So more and more, as we grow in spiritual growth as a body together, we will grow with this idea that we love not because we first loved him, but because he loved us. And that should begin to come out as we truth and love with one another.

Propitiation. Just real quick, big theological term. What's going on there? Substitution. Why did God need satisfaction? He's just. He can't go without sin being punished. It had to be punished. It had to be dealt with. God does not sweep things under the rug like Allah does.

You can't pay Him off. Allah can be paid off. You can do enough stuff to get by. There's a lot of God in religion that can be paid off. God can't be paid off. It's interesting, the world wants to put God in their own mold. They want God to act like they think he should. Well sure, exactly. He's much easier to deal with if I can keep him in my shoe box next to me. He should have stopped the Twin Towers. Yeah, I agree.

When God is placed in a box and brought down to a human created type of love, creature love, we're not seeing him as he's revealed himself. He's not the light, as John talks about at the beginning of the book, and he's not love, like he's talking about here, when we bring him down and look at it from our perspective. We have to get out of our own experience and get into the revelation of what he did and the eternal relationship he had with his son and how he self-sacrificed that relationship and lost that relationship for a time. He literally lost his relationship with his son for a moment. for a time in order that sin might be paid for. There was extreme anguish in that for him as the father, and there was extreme anguish in that with the son.

And it's because of that that we have satisfaction before God. Why is God satisfied with us? Because of that relationship that he put on the line for us. And through belief, we have a God who is satisfied with us because of our substitute, because of our Savior. That sets us at ease.

You could talk about Christian rest. You can't rest if you haven't satisfied God. Try living the rest of your life thinking you've got to satisfy Him. That's what propitiation has in mind here. Satisfaction. John says it's done, it's dealt with, go talk to Paul about the effects of it. I'm just telling you what's the case. That's how John goes. That's where WWJD stems from, I think.

You have to do something to satisfy God. But Christ and God dealt with that between themselves. That's right. Trying to satisfy God is a lifelong journey that will never be satisfied. No pun intended. You'll never find yourself coming to the end of it. But John says that's not what the point is. Love doesn't come from trying to satisfy God. It comes from me satisfying the sin problem through my son, and you knowing that. John uses the term, knowing God. Do you know God? Are you born again? Because if you are, then before the Lord, He is satisfied with you.

When you understand that truth, that's when real love, self-sacrificial love, can start to grow because you're not doing it for brownie points with God. You're not loving one another for brownie points anymore. It doesn't work. You don't get brownie points. You know, it doesn't happen that way.

Any final thoughts? Well, there's a song, and I don't remember the song, but I know that one of the lines says that God gave the best that he had. I think it's really important. I think this verse and others like it call to mind the sacrifice of God Himself and the sacrifice of the Son. There was a lot going on there. And as we see that kind of... I mean, it was experiential for the Lord to go to the cross. It hurt. I mean, He was in anguish about this. And the father literally had to turn away from his only son. You've got children. Think about that in the smallest of ways. You can't even fathom it. You're like, I just don't get it. I don't understand it. And that's the point. You don't.

You will never understand the fullness of how God gave his very best. And we'll spend eternity understanding what he actually did and how much of an impact that had. We can glean a little bit on this side of heaven, but there's so much more about that one decision in that relationship that was put on the line for us that we'll spend the rest of eternity learning about. And I'm glad that we have that knowledge now so that we can live in the light and know that God is love and have love with one another.

Let's pray. Father, we're just so thankful for the decision that you made out of your own will to not leave us in the predicament that we found ourselves in sin, but to be a satisfaction for sin for us because you have to pay. Sin has to be paid for and you're just and it was required and we thank you that you didn't choose otherwise but yet you sought us and you did everything You did everything and you gave the very best that you had and that your son went to the cross, your only son, and died for our sins so that we might have life through him. And I pray that that alone as a truth would motivate our love for one another, for our families, for our friendships, for the unbelievers that we come in contact with, and for Just the fellowship that we have as a body. Pray that we would love each other in the truth. And that we would find ourselves beholding you more. In your name we pray. Amen.