In this episode Wes and Andy discuss how God is the Alpha and Omega of all love. He is love, he loves us, he gives us his Son, and he helps us love God and each other.
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study Podcast. This is Part 2 of Episode 7 in our 1, 2, 3 John Bible Study Podcast entitled The Spirit of Truth and the God of Love, where we’ll discuss 1 John 4:1-21. In Part 2, we’ll be looking specifically at verses 7-21. I’m Wes Treadway and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis. Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
Well, this is a vital passage of scripture in which we are told remarkably that God is love, and therefore we ought to love, we ought to be loving. And so, we’re going to see three key steps in this. First, as I just said a moment ago, God is love. God is the definition of love and the source of love, that love comes from God. Secondly, that God demonstrates love through Christ’s sacrificial atonement. His death on the cross is the greatest display of love there has ever been. And then third, the obligation that we have as a result of this to love one another. And then in the overall context of 1 John, this is somewhat of a test, and it already has been. In the book of 1 John, we saw it earlier that whether you love the brothers and sisters in Christ or not is a test of whether you’re a Christian or not. We cannot claim to be a Christian and not love. But let me say this, the big picture is I really believe we were created for this. We were made for the two great commandments. We were made to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. We were made to love other people. We’re made for this. And sin came in to interfere, and salvation is bringing us back into an eternity of love. And so, I’m excited to walk through this passage today.
Wes
Well, let me go ahead and read verses 7-21 in 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. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
In verse 7, John again circles back to this command to love one another. What does he mean that love comes from God? And how does abiding in Christ by the Spirit result in Christians loving one another?
Andy
It’s a great statement. So, first of all, we need to acknowledge the repetition shows how much we need to hear this. We do not naturally love. Think about the commandment, the two great commandments that I mentioned in the intro, the second great commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. And someone asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? And in reply, Jesus told the famous parable of the Good Samaritan. And in it we had the priest and Levite who just walked right by on the other side and show no love. Certainly, we have the highway robbers who definitely didn’t show love.
The innkeeper didn’t really show love, he was in it for the money. Only one individual and that’s the good Samaritan sacrificially gave himself for the man that was beaten up and laying by the side of the road. And so fundamentally, we’re not loving. We’re the other characters in that parable and we need to repent. And so therefore the repetition, the fact that we’ve already been over this and now John’s going back over it again, tells us something. And your question is what does it mean that God is love? And how do we understand that? “Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God.” Well, I think that’s the answer. If we’re not loving, how do we get remedied? How do we get healed from that? We go to God and say, God, I am not a loving man or a loving woman. I’m not who I should be. You are love. You are the source of love. Love comes from you. It flows from you. I want to be an open, not a blocked conduit of that. Would you please make me a loving person? And so, we’ve come to the right place. So fundamentally we have a problem: we are not loving. And this section of 1 John is here to help us with that. And the answer is, go to God. God is love and love comes from God.
Wes
Now the end of that verse says, “Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” How does abiding in Christ by the Spirit result in Christians then loving one another?
Andy
If you do not love, you have not been born of God because God is love and love comes from God.
Okay, so this is vital. So fundamentally the book is given as a way by which we can know that we’re Christians. How can I know? And you asked about being born again. How can I know that I’m born again? We don’t know that that’s happened. Nothing happens to us. We may feel something that afternoon but the next day we don’t feel those feelings. So how can we know if we’re born again? And 1 John is written as an assurance epistle, this is how we can know. And so, what it says, if you want to know whether you’re born again, then this is a very important test. This is a very important way of knowing. Look at your life. Are you characterized by love for others? Are you characterized by the love that comes from God? Are you by that love that comes from God loving your brothers and sisters in Christ? That’s the test. So, if you have been born of God, John is saying you will love. If you do not love, you have not been born of God because God is love and love comes from God. He will not leave you alone in this matter. By the Spirit he will transform you and make you a loving person.
Wes
And later we’ll have that language of perfected which has this sense of a process headed in a direction that will ultimately be brought about. But John also states the negative in verse 8. If anyone does not love, he does not know God. So, the very thing that you were just saying, why do you think this also needs to be said here? Not just the positive but the negative of that as well.
Andy
I think both are vital. And for me as a preacher, I have to say the truth and also what the falsehood is. I think, imagine a doctor who only knew health and didn’t know disease. Well, he’s not going to be much of a doctor because the people that are coming to him, Jesus said it’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. Now if he’s a good doctor, he needs to know what health is so he can get you to that health. He needs to know when they’ve arrived and say, look, you’re now healthy. I don’t need to do any more for you. But he needs to be an expert in diseases. And so also a preacher has to know the way by which people are corrupted in this world and are sinning and are damaged. And I think this negation or negative statement, “Whoever does not love, does not know God,” is important for us to realize. It’s like I need to look at this and I need to realize I’m living in a world of not love.
I’m living in a world of hate. And so, we’re surrounded by people who hate, they do not love. And then I have to realize I was part of that world system and so I am merging out of it, and I’ve not been perfected in love as you mentioned. We’re going to get to that later, the perfecting of love. But I need to know that those times in which I am not loving, I’m acting like I’m not born again. I’m acting like I’m lost. And so, I have to be jarred by this. Whoever does not love does not know God. But look at you. You do know God. So why are you acting like this? A sense of the insanity of sin.
Wes
What does it mean that God is love? And how does this relate to other God is statements in John’s writings like God is light in 1 John 1 or God is Spirit in John 4?
Andy
Yeah, vital, vital question. And it’s interesting because my son Calvin texted me this morning and asked me, does God love his own attributes? And I actually was thinking about this very passage that God is love and I thought it’s interesting. We can and should be loving, and this whole passage that we’re studying today is to help us be loving, but we will never be love. That would be incredibly arrogant for any human being to say, I am love.
Wes
Yikes.
Andy
Yeah. It’s like, no, you’re not. But yeah, these “God is” statements. And God is light; he is the essence of goodness. That’s what I think light means. There is moral virtue. I think there’s some other statements that are similar that you didn’t mention, but I think they’re related. Like Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). So, let’s take the word way aside and just say I am truth. Whoa. You’re claiming to not just teach truth. We should do that. We all, I’m a preacher, I want to preach truth, but I am not truth. Jesus is. And, “I am life.” Jesus is saying not just I’m alive or even that I give life, that’d be an amazing statement, but I am life itself. And so here we have the statement, God is love itself. And so, he is. I think a simple way to look at that is he’s the definition or standard of love. If you want to know what love in the universe is, you have to go to God. He is what love is. But it’s more than that. It’s like any love there is in the universe has come from God. He’s the source of all love. He’s characterized by love. That’s true. But he is love itself and that’s an incredible statement. Well, I’ll tell you this, it makes me really look forward to heaven.
God is an ocean of love. It will never end. We will never be done feeling the love of God and sensing it. It will never run out.
God is an ocean of love. It will never end. We will never be done feeling the love of God and sensing it. It will never run out. We actually do go in and out of love, don’t we? I mean we think about marriage, think about parenting. We don’t always love our spouses or our kids. Sometimes we don’t feel very loving to them at all. God’s not like that. He always loves. And so this is an incredible statement, this statement, God is love.
Wes
Now verse 9 speaks of the sending of the Son Jesus into the world. Why is the gift of Jesus such a lavish gift as described here?
Andy
Yeah, this is really important. And would you mind Wes reading verse 9 in your version? I have a little different version I’m using but I want to hear it from your version.
Wes
Yeah. Verse 9 here says, “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.”
Andy
So, this made manifest language. My translation says, “This is how God showed his love.” It reminds me of Romans 5:8, which says, “But God demonstrated his love for us in this while we’re still sinners,” demonstrates his love while we’re still sinners. So, this is display language, and I think that’s glory. Whenever I see display language tied to an attribute of God, I believe that that’s what glory is. The glory of God is the radiant display, the showing forth of his perfection. And so, this is display language, but it’s exactly what Romans 5:8 is teaching. God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we’re still sinners, Christ died for us. So, the cross of Christ, the propitiation, we’re going to talk about that in a moment. The sacrificial death of Christ on the cross is the greatest display of God’s love there has ever been or ever will be. So, God is radiantly shining his love for us in the cross. “He sent his Son.” Now here the language is incarnation. He sent his Son. So, through the Virgin Mary, just the mission of Jesus from heaven to earth is love. Just that he came at all. But we know that ultimately is that his death for us, as you’ll mention in the next verse.
Wes
Why does John say, not that we loved God but that he loved us? What does that teach us about basic human nature?
Andy
Yeah. Well, you’re not as great as you think you are. You’re not righteous. You think you’re righteous, but you’re not. Loving. You claim to be loving but you don’t. And so, this is very tragic because again, remember that I stated that we were created for love, we were created for the two great commandments. We were created to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. We were created to love each other, and we have to be corrected here and rebuked to some degree by this verse, “Not that we loved God, but that he loved us.” Alright? No, we didn’t love God. And Romans 3:10-12 makes it very, very plain, “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; no one who understands; no one who seeks for God. All have turned away.'” We turn away from God, we don’t want him. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness; we actually naturally hate God. So no, not that we loved God. That’s not it at all. We are sick because of our sins. No, the display is because God loved us and sent his Son into the world.
Wes
Now verse 10 says, “God sent Jesus to be a propitiation for our sins.” Now we’ve talked about this in 1 John 2:2, the word propitiation means the removing of God’s wrath by the payment of a sacrifice. Why is it vital to understand the wrath of God against sin? To understand how much love God and Christ both showed us at the cross.
Andy
Wow, how can we even plumb the depths here? God set this whole thing up by connecting the death penalty with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Do not eat from that tree. From the day you eat of it, you’ll surely die. And so, the wages of sin is death. God, knowing he was going to pay the death penalty by the giving of his Son, God set up the whole system. He set up the whole law and penalty and all of that so that he could display love ultimately. But fundamentally we understand the wages of sin is death. We deserve to die. And God has an aggressive wrath, an emotional reaction to evil, an emotional reaction to sin. He’s not placid about it. He’s not like the stoic thinking machine, that’s not God. He is emotional about this. Sin has ruined all of the good things he made on earth, and he hates it just like he hates death, he hates it. And so therefore there is a passionate wrath, a rage indeed in God, a righteous rage against all sin because it is so evil. And so that wrath is on us naturally. Apart from Christ, the wrath of God abides or remains or dwells on us as John 3:36 says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” We were by nature objects of wrath. We were attracting and accumulating wrath. We just hadn’t experienced it yet. It was going to be poured out on us on Judgment Day and in the hell beyond. So, the propitiation then is removal of that wrath and the penalty by the payment of a blood sacrifice. That’s what the language is in the Greek religion is, hilasterion. That’s what propitiation meant. This is the atoning sacrifice. And so, it is the greatest display of love there’s ever been. God had an aggressive, reasonable, and right wrath against sin, but he paid for it himself by the means of his blessed Son.
Wes
How should this lavish love of God demonstrated at the cross result in us loving each other?
Andy
Wow, we are in a very small way, an infinitesimally small way to imitate it. We can never reach the infinite heights of the atoning sacrifice because that is the Son of God dying under the wrath of God. But let’s take marriage for example. It’s pretty plain that husbands are to love their wives in a way similar to this. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, having cleansed her by the washing with water through the word” (Ephesians 5:25-26), et cetera. The gave himself up for her is clearly referring to Christ’s death for her on the cross, his death for the church. And so we are in a lower way to lay down our lives for our wives. But the very same thing is taught here. We ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters in Christ. This is what it said in chapter 3:16, “This is how we know what love is, that Jesus Christ lay down his life for us,” and we ought to do the same.
And so, there’s an imitation. And Jesus himself invited this when he said, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. And he said to James and John, if you want to sit at my right and my left, those places are for those for whom they have been chosen by the Father. But let me tell you how it works. Can you drink from my cup that I’m about to drink? There is that drinking of the cup of Christ. It’s a willingness to suffer even perhaps to die for others, to benefit others. That’s what it means to imitate Jesus and his laying down of his life for us.
Wes
Now, God is invisible, but John implies that God is in some beautiful and powerful way, made visible or maybe even to use that word manifest again that we used earlier, among us if we sacrificially love each other. How should we understand this manifestation of the character of God in us?
Andy
Right? So, because God is invisible, the only way we can see him is by faith. Faith is the eyesight of the soul. But it’s pretty clear that John wants us to live out our faith practically and physically in this world, and so, in that way make God manifest to one another and then to the unbelieving world. As Jesus said, “So let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify God in heaven” (Matthew 5:18). So, the idea is we are supposed to shine our light brightly. Jesus said no one lights a lamp and hides it under a bowl. Instead, he puts it up on its stand and gives light to everyone in the house. And the same way let your light shine before others. And so, the fundamental idea here is we are putting God on display. We want to glorify God. May God be glorified in me. What does that mean? I want people to see God in me. And the way that John says that that happens is if I sacrificially love my brothers and sisters, then my brothers and sisters will see God in that and then the lost world will see God in that physical manifestation. Also, it’s the consummation of us being created in the image and likeness of God. We are imitating and living out God in this world. We are to imitate God and to live like him in this loving way.
Wes
And ultimately God will bring that to completion in the perfection of this love. As it says, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us, will be certainly perfected in us in eternity.
Andy
Well, that’s process language, very important. It’s sanctification, it’s growth in grace and the knowledge of Christ. We’re called on to be more loving today than we were yesterday. We’re supposed to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ and this passage says we’re to grow in love. So, you’re supposed to love more and more and more. And that’s the challenge- is to be more and more sacrificial. I would also say that our hearts are more and more passionate in it. Our hearts are engaged in it. As we’ve said before, it’s that heart attraction, that deep connection with each other. My heart is going out for the person and my heart is enlarged toward the person and then I am practically serving this person and bringing them joy. That’s what love means. And there’s just, we know Wes, there is an infinite amount of growth we could do in this area. So, we need to be perfected in love.
Wes
In verses 13 and 14, how does the Spirit assure us that God lives in us? And what does John assert about his own witness in the world?
Andy
So, the Holy Spirit is given to work assurance in us. It is by the Spirit that we live. It is by the Spirit. We are born again to become Christians to begin with. And then it is by the Spirit that we are assured that that happened. We are assured that we are children of God. The Spirit testifies with our spirits that we are God’s children we’re told. And so that is the Spirit’s work to assure us and to give us a certain knowledge of our life in Christ. And so, this verse says, we know that we live in him, that is in God, and he in us because he has given us of his Spirit. So, the way that we know is that we see the activity of the Spirit within us. So how does that work? Well, I think it starts with the word of God.
The Spirit illuminates the word of God, makes it clear to us. We understand it, and then he presses it home into our hearts as it truly is the word of God, which at work in us who believe. It makes the word come alive in us. And then the Spirit testifies to us whether we have or have not kept it either way. He’s working in us where convicted and he would only do that for a child of God in that way. And we are also assured and comforted, and he gives us encouragement that we have kept it. And in all of this he’s a deposit guaranteeing our final inheritance. So, the Spirit works this assurance by means of his word and the things that are happening in our lives.
Yeah, in the second part, in verse 14, John is saying as he did from the very beginning of this epistle, we apostles have seen and testify that the Father sent a Son to be the savior of the world. Now we the second and third and fourth generation, and I don’t know what number generation we are now, we’re way down the line, but we having drunk in and benefited from the eyewitnesses that John and the other apostles were, that which we have seen, what we have handled with our hands, what we have interacted with concerning the word of life this we proclaimed to you. I think he’s going back to that in verse 14 saying, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” We’re telling you we are witnesses of that and now we’re testifying to you as well.
Wes
It’s amazing when we think about the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of the word of God, even the recording and capturing of this eyewitness testimony is overseen by the Spirit at work, which is a powerful just reiteration of the Spirit’s work to testify to who Jesus is.
Andy
I want to agree with that. And I want to say I don’t want to make too much of the uniqueness of the apostolic role or too little of it. I’ve already made the point so I’m not making too little of it. But the we in verse 14 could also be any Christian because at the end of the Bible in Revelation 22, it says the Spirit and the bride say come. And Jesus said the Spirit when he comes, he will testify, and you also must testify. And so fundamentally the apostles are all in heaven, they’re gone. It is given to us to testify that the Father sent his Son unto the world to be the Savior of the world.
Wes
Now, why is believing and asserting the deity of Christ vital to our salvation, and how does that result in intimate and close fellowship with God as we move into verse 15 here?
Andy
Well, this is the doctrinal test in 1 John. It’s one of the four main tests that we’ve seen in this book. The doctrinal test that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God in the flesh, that he’s come in the flesh. He has. So, Jesus is Jesus of Nazareth, the one born of Mary, the one who is a human being with a body that you could interact with. Jesus is God. That’s the incarnation. If you acknowledge that, if you believe that, then that has been worked in you by the Spirit. If you deny that, that’s the spirit of antichrist. To deny the incarnation is the spirit of antichrist. So, if anyone does acknowledge or believe or testify that Jesus is God in the flesh, then God lives in him. You’re born again, alright? And he and God. So that means you have an active spiritual union with God through Christ. But the key is the right doctrine, believing in your heart the right doctrine about Jesus.
Wes
What does verse 16 add to John’s argument and why does John keep repeating the same things in similar words?
Andy
Well, the second part of your question is because we’re hardheaded and hardhearted, and we need the repetition. And we don’t get it again and again. We are just not loving. And so, by this and it says in verse 16, and by this or so, we know by this whole process, and we rely on the love God has for us. So fundamentally here it’s we’re trusting that God loves us, not that we love God. Even now as Christians, I’m not trusting in my love for God because frankly I’ve found it to be fickle. I have my good days and bad days. We all do. We have some days in which we are moved and passionate in our worship and deeply melted within and we sing from the hearts with tears coming down our face. We have those days, other days don’t feel it at all, and we believe in an immutable God. So, what happened? What’s wrong with you? Well, our hearts are fickle, but we rely, and we know and rely on the love God has for us. And that’s not going anywhere. Christ has been crucified and has been raised from the dead. Nothing’s changing that. That’s the love God has for us. It’s not going to change, and I rely on it, meaning that’s my assurance.
Wes
And this is where we get the second of the God is love statements that we spoke of earlier. It says, “Whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.” I love this language of abiding. We see this elsewhere in John’s writing in the gospel as we think about resting, dwelling, abiding with God. Really what we long for, but this experience of it now as we delight in the love that God has for us.
Andy
God is love. He would have to deny his own being to stop loving us.
And I think fundamentally I mentioned how sadly fickle we are in our love for God. And if we’re fickle in our love for God, how much more we fickle are we in our love for each other because each other we’re sinners? And it’s not surprising that we can come in and out of love for a spouse or for a child or for a friend, but God, he’s never changing. And so how can we come in and out of love for God? But the fact is we’re not relying on our love for God, we’re relying on his love for us and God is love. He would have to deny his own being to stop loving us. That’s what John’s saying here. That’s how rock-solid our assurance should be. God would have to stop being who he is to stop loving who he loved. He’s not going to stop loving who he loved. He will love us forever. He’s never going to change his mind because God is love.
Wes
How does the perfection of Christian love in our lives result in greater assurance of our salvation on Judgment Day?
Andy
Yeah, the perfection of love, which I’ve linked earlier in this podcast to sanctification. As we see ourselves becoming more stable in our love, more God-like in our love the fact that the people we loved before we are going to still love them today, and we’re not coming in and out, we’re not going to be fickle. As we see that sanctification process in us, we can know that’s only happening by the work of the Spirit in us. It gives us greater and greater assurance. And so, God’s love is perfected in us, and therefore we have confidence about judgment on the day of judgment. And so, the idea is I think what he means is confidence leading up to the day of judgment. I think confidence on that day is not going to get us much because that day is going to come and go and that’ll be it. But he wants us to have assurance now because it actually very much affects how we live if we have confidence about the day of judgment that’s coming. And so, as we see love being perfected in us, that’s sanctification, and we have confidence about Judgment Day.
Wes
What does John mean by there is no fear in love? And how does verse 18 relate to heaven?
Andy
Alright, so I think the opposite of having confidence about the approaching day of judgment would be having fear about the day of judgment. So, he says perfect love because fear has to do with judgment, and we’ll get to that in a moment. But I think the fear that love drives out here is anti-assurance, the opposite of assurance. I’m not sure if I’m going to hell or not. I’m terrified I might be going to hell. Perfect love drives out that kind of fear, alright? There’s no fear in God’s love for us. It can’t coincide. So, if you are immersed in God’s love for you, fear goes away. It’s just gone. It gets driven out. So, I think this in this context, it has to do with fear of final condemnation on Judgment Day. That you’ll hear said about you, “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire,” that you’re afraid that’s going to be said about you. Well, perfect love dries out that kind of fear. Now fundamentally, it’s God’s love for you. You know and rely on the fact that God is love. But secondarily, we see God’s love made perfect in us, and we are being sanctified. And that as that process goes on, we lose fear about Judgment Day.
Wes
Talk a little bit more about the connection between this verse and heaven because I think this is important for us to understand if we’re going to grasp what this passage is getting at.
Andy
Right? Okay. So, one of the themes in my book on heaven, which is The Glory Now Revealed, I argue that we are going to be continually educated about our past lives, and not just ours but our brothers and sisters past lives. It’s not the only thing we’ll do in heaven, not by a long shot, but we will be constantly aware of and ever increasingly knowledgeable about 6,000 years of redemptive history including our own. Well, people are uncomfortable with that because they don’t want their sins to be recounted. They want their sins forgotten, completely covered. We’re not going to bring that up again. And they even point, reasonably, to verses that say that God forgives our wickedness and remembers our sins no more. Remembers them no more. And so, they’re like, how can you actually argue that we’re going to remember our sins in heaven, and indeed that we must remember our sins in heaven? And I argue that plainly because we can’t celebrate the grace of God in Christ and not remember that we were sinners saved by that grace. I also show that it’s not biblical to think that being completely convinced of full forgiveness and assurance means I have amnesia now about my sins, and I have no idea about them. Paul writing in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said, “I was a blasphemer or persecutor and a violent man.” So apparently the Holy Spirit reminded him of that, and he was forgiven for all of that.
So, it can’t mean a complete memory wipe in amnesia or that we have no idea. God isn’t that way. God’s omniscient. He knows exactly what we did. Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense with discipline for sin. We need to remember our sins and that we were disciplined for them, so we don’t do them again. So that’s a very kind of immature and shallow way of thinking about forgiveness, wickedness, and remember sins no more. And that I’m not bring that up again, but let’s go to eternity and perfection in heaven. We will have no fear in this matter at all because fear has to do with judgment and Judgment Day will be behind us. We’re not going to be afraid. It was like tell the story. And why will we not be afraid? Because we will know that is who we were, but it is not who we are.
And Paul says this in Romans 7, it is no longer I who do it, but its sin living in me. A decisive break has been made in my new creation self between me and my sin. And so yes, I know I did that. I’m not minimizing that, but I also know I’m not that person anymore. And so, when we get to heaven, there’ll be no fear in the retelling of our lives. Now, I don’t think we’re going to be immersed in our bad stuff the whole time, but it’s a necessary fact that this or that or the other happened. It’s necessary for us to know that David committed the sin with Uriah the Hittite and stole his wife Bathsheba. Why? Because that’s where Solomon came from. We don’t know how Solomon even came about without knowing that story.
In order to know why it was Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail and not Paul and Barnabas in the Philippian jail, you need to know about the argument that Paul and Barnabas had over John Mark. You need to know that story. That’s who we were. It is the truth. The Bible’s full of that kind of truth. We need to know how God restored Peter from denying Jesus three times before the rooster crowed and how amazingly he used that sinner saved by grace to preach the Pentecost sermon. That’s the story. For us we’re not going to have any fear. I don’t have any fear right now. It doesn’t mean I want everything told right now because we’re still in this present age. But in that future world, there’ll be no fear because perfect love has driven out all fear.
Wes
Yeah, we have just a few more questions before we reach the end of this passage. But verse 19 is so concise but so powerful. What’s the significance of the statement we love because he first loved us? And how is God’s initiative vital in every aspect of our salvation?
Andy
Alright, so stepping back and looking at this whole podcast in the section of scripture we’re looking at, first of all, God is love. Second of all, God is the source of all love. Third of all, God demonstrates his love for us in Christ’s death for us on the cross. And fourth of all, we ought to love one another. Fifth we will love, but only because he first loved us. So that’s the kind of logical ordering of this whole thing. So fundamentally, we have no independent source of love. The love comes from God. He is the source of it.
And when we start to love, we can’t get arrogant or boastful because we weren’t loving. We did, “Not that we love God, but we love now because he first loved us.” So, it’s causal. It’s a logical causal factor. If I love you as a Christian brother and I do, it’s because Christ first loved me. It’s because he worked love in me. And therefore, any love I show to Christ be the glory, to God be the glory, to the Spirit be the glory because he worked it in me. Now, let me tell you how important this verse is theologically for me, just about salvation. I mean, let’s be honest, we chose Christ because he first chose us. Alright? I did choose Christ. I did. I remember I am choosing him today, but it’s only because he first chose me, and he did that before the foundation of the world. So, everything I do that’s good is based on something he has prior done in me. That’s good. And so, every good work is because he worked a good work in me. So, he gets the glory for everything.
Wes
So rich for us to meditate on just those few brief words but packed with meaning for us and our salvation. Now verse 20, we get more repetition from John. He says, “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.” So, John, just clarifying again for us. If you have seen your brother, you’ve not seen God. You can’t say that you love God whom you’ve not seen, and then live in a way that’s antithetical to that in relation to those around you.
Andy
So, the primary audience for 1 John is genuine Christians who are asking, how can I know that I’m a genuine Christian? The secondary audience is people who are self-deceived and think they’re Christians, but they really aren’t. That they may, while there’s still time come to a genuine faith. And so, this is one of those many liar kind of passages here in 1 John. It’s meant to be like a cold slap in the face. If you say this and you’re living like this, you’re a liar. You’re not a Christian. So that’s what he’s getting at here.
Wes
Now John ends by saying that God has commanded us to love each other. How does this command from Almighty God serve as a test of whether we’re in right relationship with him? And what final thoughts do you have for us on 1 John 4?
Andy
Yeah, I mean, no matter what you think about all of this and all the logic and the persuasion I’ve been giving, bottom line is Christ has commanded you to love.
And so, you cannot call him Lord and not obey him. Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do what I say? So fundamentally, he’s given us this command, but we’re going to learn in the next chapter is commands are not burdensome. There’s nothing burdensome about this command. It’s a delightful command, and we’re glad to do it. So final words on this chapter. This is an incredible chapter. I mean, it’s just beautiful how we’re able to test the spirits in the first part of the section and know the Spirit that comes from God versus the deceiving demonic spirits in the world.
And then the second part is love. And we’ve walked through it. I just gave a summary of it even just a moment ago. God is love. He’s the source and standard of all love. He sent his Son in the world to die on the cross, this is the greatest display of love there could ever be. And therefore, because Christ laid down his life for us, we ought to love one another. And we will love one another by his Spirit and to God be the glory for all of that. That’s a summation of the entire love section in this chapter.
Wes
Well, this has been Part 2 of Episode 7 in our 1, 2, 3 John Bible Study Podcast. We want to invite you to join us next time for Episode 8 entitled, Faith in the Son of God Gives Eternal Life, where we’ll discuss 1 John 5:1-21. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys podcast. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study Podcast. This is Part 2 of Episode 7 in our 1, 2, 3 John Bible Study Podcast entitled The Spirit of Truth and the God of Love, where we’ll discuss 1 John 4:1-21. In Part 2, we’ll be looking specifically at verses 7-21. I’m Wes Treadway and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis. Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
Well, this is a vital passage of scripture in which we are told remarkably that God is love, and therefore we ought to love, we ought to be loving. And so, we’re going to see three key steps in this. First, as I just said a moment ago, God is love. God is the definition of love and the source of love, that love comes from God. Secondly, that God demonstrates love through Christ’s sacrificial atonement. His death on the cross is the greatest display of love there has ever been. And then third, the obligation that we have as a result of this to love one another. And then in the overall context of 1 John, this is somewhat of a test, and it already has been. In the book of 1 John, we saw it earlier that whether you love the brothers and sisters in Christ or not is a test of whether you’re a Christian or not. We cannot claim to be a Christian and not love. But let me say this, the big picture is I really believe we were created for this. We were made for the two great commandments. We were made to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. We were made to love other people. We’re made for this. And sin came in to interfere, and salvation is bringing us back into an eternity of love. And so, I’m excited to walk through this passage today.
Wes
Well, let me go ahead and read verses 7-21 in 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. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
In verse 7, John again circles back to this command to love one another. What does he mean that love comes from God? And how does abiding in Christ by the Spirit result in Christians loving one another?
Andy
It’s a great statement. So, first of all, we need to acknowledge the repetition shows how much we need to hear this. We do not naturally love. Think about the commandment, the two great commandments that I mentioned in the intro, the second great commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. And someone asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor? And in reply, Jesus told the famous parable of the Good Samaritan. And in it we had the priest and Levite who just walked right by on the other side and show no love. Certainly, we have the highway robbers who definitely didn’t show love.
The innkeeper didn’t really show love, he was in it for the money. Only one individual and that’s the good Samaritan sacrificially gave himself for the man that was beaten up and laying by the side of the road. And so fundamentally, we’re not loving. We’re the other characters in that parable and we need to repent. And so therefore the repetition, the fact that we’ve already been over this and now John’s going back over it again, tells us something. And your question is what does it mean that God is love? And how do we understand that? “Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God.” Well, I think that’s the answer. If we’re not loving, how do we get remedied? How do we get healed from that? We go to God and say, God, I am not a loving man or a loving woman. I’m not who I should be. You are love. You are the source of love. Love comes from you. It flows from you. I want to be an open, not a blocked conduit of that. Would you please make me a loving person? And so, we’ve come to the right place. So fundamentally we have a problem: we are not loving. And this section of 1 John is here to help us with that. And the answer is, go to God. God is love and love comes from God.
Wes
Now the end of that verse says, “Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” How does abiding in Christ by the Spirit result in Christians then loving one another?
Andy
If you do not love, you have not been born of God because God is love and love comes from God.
Okay, so this is vital. So fundamentally the book is given as a way by which we can know that we’re Christians. How can I know? And you asked about being born again. How can I know that I’m born again? We don’t know that that’s happened. Nothing happens to us. We may feel something that afternoon but the next day we don’t feel those feelings. So how can we know if we’re born again? And 1 John is written as an assurance epistle, this is how we can know. And so, what it says, if you want to know whether you’re born again, then this is a very important test. This is a very important way of knowing. Look at your life. Are you characterized by love for others? Are you characterized by the love that comes from God? Are you by that love that comes from God loving your brothers and sisters in Christ? That’s the test. So, if you have been born of God, John is saying you will love. If you do not love, you have not been born of God because God is love and love comes from God. He will not leave you alone in this matter. By the Spirit he will transform you and make you a loving person.
Wes
And later we’ll have that language of perfected which has this sense of a process headed in a direction that will ultimately be brought about. But John also states the negative in verse 8. If anyone does not love, he does not know God. So, the very thing that you were just saying, why do you think this also needs to be said here? Not just the positive but the negative of that as well.
Andy
I think both are vital. And for me as a preacher, I have to say the truth and also what the falsehood is. I think, imagine a doctor who only knew health and didn’t know disease. Well, he’s not going to be much of a doctor because the people that are coming to him, Jesus said it’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. Now if he’s a good doctor, he needs to know what health is so he can get you to that health. He needs to know when they’ve arrived and say, look, you’re now healthy. I don’t need to do any more for you. But he needs to be an expert in diseases. And so also a preacher has to know the way by which people are corrupted in this world and are sinning and are damaged. And I think this negation or negative statement, “Whoever does not love, does not know God,” is important for us to realize. It’s like I need to look at this and I need to realize I’m living in a world of not love.
I’m living in a world of hate. And so, we’re surrounded by people who hate, they do not love. And then I have to realize I was part of that world system and so I am merging out of it, and I’ve not been perfected in love as you mentioned. We’re going to get to that later, the perfecting of love. But I need to know that those times in which I am not loving, I’m acting like I’m not born again. I’m acting like I’m lost. And so, I have to be jarred by this. Whoever does not love does not know God. But look at you. You do know God. So why are you acting like this? A sense of the insanity of sin.
Wes
What does it mean that God is love? And how does this relate to other God is statements in John’s writings like God is light in 1 John 1 or God is Spirit in John 4?
Andy
Yeah, vital, vital question. And it’s interesting because my son Calvin texted me this morning and asked me, does God love his own attributes? And I actually was thinking about this very passage that God is love and I thought it’s interesting. We can and should be loving, and this whole passage that we’re studying today is to help us be loving, but we will never be love. That would be incredibly arrogant for any human being to say, I am love.
Wes
Yikes.
Andy
Yeah. It’s like, no, you’re not. But yeah, these “God is” statements. And God is light; he is the essence of goodness. That’s what I think light means. There is moral virtue. I think there’s some other statements that are similar that you didn’t mention, but I think they’re related. Like Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). So, let’s take the word way aside and just say I am truth. Whoa. You’re claiming to not just teach truth. We should do that. We all, I’m a preacher, I want to preach truth, but I am not truth. Jesus is. And, “I am life.” Jesus is saying not just I’m alive or even that I give life, that’d be an amazing statement, but I am life itself. And so here we have the statement, God is love itself. And so, he is. I think a simple way to look at that is he’s the definition or standard of love. If you want to know what love in the universe is, you have to go to God. He is what love is. But it’s more than that. It’s like any love there is in the universe has come from God. He’s the source of all love. He’s characterized by love. That’s true. But he is love itself and that’s an incredible statement. Well, I’ll tell you this, it makes me really look forward to heaven.
God is an ocean of love. It will never end. We will never be done feeling the love of God and sensing it. It will never run out.
God is an ocean of love. It will never end. We will never be done feeling the love of God and sensing it. It will never run out. We actually do go in and out of love, don’t we? I mean we think about marriage, think about parenting. We don’t always love our spouses or our kids. Sometimes we don’t feel very loving to them at all. God’s not like that. He always loves. And so this is an incredible statement, this statement, God is love.
Wes
Now verse 9 speaks of the sending of the Son Jesus into the world. Why is the gift of Jesus such a lavish gift as described here?
Andy
Yeah, this is really important. And would you mind Wes reading verse 9 in your version? I have a little different version I’m using but I want to hear it from your version.
Wes
Yeah. Verse 9 here says, “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.”
Andy
So, this made manifest language. My translation says, “This is how God showed his love.” It reminds me of Romans 5:8, which says, “But God demonstrated his love for us in this while we’re still sinners,” demonstrates his love while we’re still sinners. So, this is display language, and I think that’s glory. Whenever I see display language tied to an attribute of God, I believe that that’s what glory is. The glory of God is the radiant display, the showing forth of his perfection. And so, this is display language, but it’s exactly what Romans 5:8 is teaching. God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we’re still sinners, Christ died for us. So, the cross of Christ, the propitiation, we’re going to talk about that in a moment. The sacrificial death of Christ on the cross is the greatest display of God’s love there has ever been or ever will be. So, God is radiantly shining his love for us in the cross. “He sent his Son.” Now here the language is incarnation. He sent his Son. So, through the Virgin Mary, just the mission of Jesus from heaven to earth is love. Just that he came at all. But we know that ultimately is that his death for us, as you’ll mention in the next verse.
Wes
Why does John say, not that we loved God but that he loved us? What does that teach us about basic human nature?
Andy
Yeah. Well, you’re not as great as you think you are. You’re not righteous. You think you’re righteous, but you’re not. Loving. You claim to be loving but you don’t. And so, this is very tragic because again, remember that I stated that we were created for love, we were created for the two great commandments. We were created to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. We were created to love each other, and we have to be corrected here and rebuked to some degree by this verse, “Not that we loved God, but that he loved us.” Alright? No, we didn’t love God. And Romans 3:10-12 makes it very, very plain, “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; no one who understands; no one who seeks for God. All have turned away.'” We turn away from God, we don’t want him. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness; we actually naturally hate God. So no, not that we loved God. That’s not it at all. We are sick because of our sins. No, the display is because God loved us and sent his Son into the world.
Wes
Now verse 10 says, “God sent Jesus to be a propitiation for our sins.” Now we’ve talked about this in 1 John 2:2, the word propitiation means the removing of God’s wrath by the payment of a sacrifice. Why is it vital to understand the wrath of God against sin? To understand how much love God and Christ both showed us at the cross.
Andy
Wow, how can we even plumb the depths here? God set this whole thing up by connecting the death penalty with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Do not eat from that tree. From the day you eat of it, you’ll surely die. And so, the wages of sin is death. God, knowing he was going to pay the death penalty by the giving of his Son, God set up the whole system. He set up the whole law and penalty and all of that so that he could display love ultimately. But fundamentally we understand the wages of sin is death. We deserve to die. And God has an aggressive wrath, an emotional reaction to evil, an emotional reaction to sin. He’s not placid about it. He’s not like the stoic thinking machine, that’s not God. He is emotional about this. Sin has ruined all of the good things he made on earth, and he hates it just like he hates death, he hates it. And so therefore there is a passionate wrath, a rage indeed in God, a righteous rage against all sin because it is so evil. And so that wrath is on us naturally. Apart from Christ, the wrath of God abides or remains or dwells on us as John 3:36 says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” We were by nature objects of wrath. We were attracting and accumulating wrath. We just hadn’t experienced it yet. It was going to be poured out on us on Judgment Day and in the hell beyond. So, the propitiation then is removal of that wrath and the penalty by the payment of a blood sacrifice. That’s what the language is in the Greek religion is, hilasterion. That’s what propitiation meant. This is the atoning sacrifice. And so, it is the greatest display of love there’s ever been. God had an aggressive, reasonable, and right wrath against sin, but he paid for it himself by the means of his blessed Son.
Wes
How should this lavish love of God demonstrated at the cross result in us loving each other?
Andy
Wow, we are in a very small way, an infinitesimally small way to imitate it. We can never reach the infinite heights of the atoning sacrifice because that is the Son of God dying under the wrath of God. But let’s take marriage for example. It’s pretty plain that husbands are to love their wives in a way similar to this. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, having cleansed her by the washing with water through the word” (Ephesians 5:25-26), et cetera. The gave himself up for her is clearly referring to Christ’s death for her on the cross, his death for the church. And so we are in a lower way to lay down our lives for our wives. But the very same thing is taught here. We ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters in Christ. This is what it said in chapter 3:16, “This is how we know what love is, that Jesus Christ lay down his life for us,” and we ought to do the same.
And so, there’s an imitation. And Jesus himself invited this when he said, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. And he said to James and John, if you want to sit at my right and my left, those places are for those for whom they have been chosen by the Father. But let me tell you how it works. Can you drink from my cup that I’m about to drink? There is that drinking of the cup of Christ. It’s a willingness to suffer even perhaps to die for others, to benefit others. That’s what it means to imitate Jesus and his laying down of his life for us.
Wes
Now, God is invisible, but John implies that God is in some beautiful and powerful way, made visible or maybe even to use that word manifest again that we used earlier, among us if we sacrificially love each other. How should we understand this manifestation of the character of God in us?
Andy
Right? So, because God is invisible, the only way we can see him is by faith. Faith is the eyesight of the soul. But it’s pretty clear that John wants us to live out our faith practically and physically in this world, and so, in that way make God manifest to one another and then to the unbelieving world. As Jesus said, “So let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify God in heaven” (Matthew 5:18). So, the idea is we are supposed to shine our light brightly. Jesus said no one lights a lamp and hides it under a bowl. Instead, he puts it up on its stand and gives light to everyone in the house. And the same way let your light shine before others. And so, the fundamental idea here is we are putting God on display. We want to glorify God. May God be glorified in me. What does that mean? I want people to see God in me. And the way that John says that that happens is if I sacrificially love my brothers and sisters, then my brothers and sisters will see God in that and then the lost world will see God in that physical manifestation. Also, it’s the consummation of us being created in the image and likeness of God. We are imitating and living out God in this world. We are to imitate God and to live like him in this loving way.
Wes
And ultimately God will bring that to completion in the perfection of this love. As it says, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us, will be certainly perfected in us in eternity.
Andy
Well, that’s process language, very important. It’s sanctification, it’s growth in grace and the knowledge of Christ. We’re called on to be more loving today than we were yesterday. We’re supposed to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ and this passage says we’re to grow in love. So, you’re supposed to love more and more and more. And that’s the challenge- is to be more and more sacrificial. I would also say that our hearts are more and more passionate in it. Our hearts are engaged in it. As we’ve said before, it’s that heart attraction, that deep connection with each other. My heart is going out for the person and my heart is enlarged toward the person and then I am practically serving this person and bringing them joy. That’s what love means. And there’s just, we know Wes, there is an infinite amount of growth we could do in this area. So, we need to be perfected in love.
Wes
In verses 13 and 14, how does the Spirit assure us that God lives in us? And what does John assert about his own witness in the world?
Andy
So, the Holy Spirit is given to work assurance in us. It is by the Spirit that we live. It is by the Spirit. We are born again to become Christians to begin with. And then it is by the Spirit that we are assured that that happened. We are assured that we are children of God. The Spirit testifies with our spirits that we are God’s children we’re told. And so that is the Spirit’s work to assure us and to give us a certain knowledge of our life in Christ. And so, this verse says, we know that we live in him, that is in God, and he in us because he has given us of his Spirit. So, the way that we know is that we see the activity of the Spirit within us. So how does that work? Well, I think it starts with the word of God.
The Spirit illuminates the word of God, makes it clear to us. We understand it, and then he presses it home into our hearts as it truly is the word of God, which at work in us who believe. It makes the word come alive in us. And then the Spirit testifies to us whether we have or have not kept it either way. He’s working in us where convicted and he would only do that for a child of God in that way. And we are also assured and comforted, and he gives us encouragement that we have kept it. And in all of this he’s a deposit guaranteeing our final inheritance. So, the Spirit works this assurance by means of his word and the things that are happening in our lives.
Yeah, in the second part, in verse 14, John is saying as he did from the very beginning of this epistle, we apostles have seen and testify that the Father sent a Son to be the savior of the world. Now we the second and third and fourth generation, and I don’t know what number generation we are now, we’re way down the line, but we having drunk in and benefited from the eyewitnesses that John and the other apostles were, that which we have seen, what we have handled with our hands, what we have interacted with concerning the word of life this we proclaimed to you. I think he’s going back to that in verse 14 saying, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” We’re telling you we are witnesses of that and now we’re testifying to you as well.
Wes
It’s amazing when we think about the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of the word of God, even the recording and capturing of this eyewitness testimony is overseen by the Spirit at work, which is a powerful just reiteration of the Spirit’s work to testify to who Jesus is.
Andy
I want to agree with that. And I want to say I don’t want to make too much of the uniqueness of the apostolic role or too little of it. I’ve already made the point so I’m not making too little of it. But the we in verse 14 could also be any Christian because at the end of the Bible in Revelation 22, it says the Spirit and the bride say come. And Jesus said the Spirit when he comes, he will testify, and you also must testify. And so fundamentally the apostles are all in heaven, they’re gone. It is given to us to testify that the Father sent his Son unto the world to be the Savior of the world.
Wes
Now, why is believing and asserting the deity of Christ vital to our salvation, and how does that result in intimate and close fellowship with God as we move into verse 15 here?
Andy
Well, this is the doctrinal test in 1 John. It’s one of the four main tests that we’ve seen in this book. The doctrinal test that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God in the flesh, that he’s come in the flesh. He has. So, Jesus is Jesus of Nazareth, the one born of Mary, the one who is a human being with a body that you could interact with. Jesus is God. That’s the incarnation. If you acknowledge that, if you believe that, then that has been worked in you by the Spirit. If you deny that, that’s the spirit of antichrist. To deny the incarnation is the spirit of antichrist. So, if anyone does acknowledge or believe or testify that Jesus is God in the flesh, then God lives in him. You’re born again, alright? And he and God. So that means you have an active spiritual union with God through Christ. But the key is the right doctrine, believing in your heart the right doctrine about Jesus.
Wes
What does verse 16 add to John’s argument and why does John keep repeating the same things in similar words?
Andy
Well, the second part of your question is because we’re hardheaded and hardhearted, and we need the repetition. And we don’t get it again and again. We are just not loving. And so, by this and it says in verse 16, and by this or so, we know by this whole process, and we rely on the love God has for us. So fundamentally here it’s we’re trusting that God loves us, not that we love God. Even now as Christians, I’m not trusting in my love for God because frankly I’ve found it to be fickle. I have my good days and bad days. We all do. We have some days in which we are moved and passionate in our worship and deeply melted within and we sing from the hearts with tears coming down our face. We have those days, other days don’t feel it at all, and we believe in an immutable God. So, what happened? What’s wrong with you? Well, our hearts are fickle, but we rely, and we know and rely on the love God has for us. And that’s not going anywhere. Christ has been crucified and has been raised from the dead. Nothing’s changing that. That’s the love God has for us. It’s not going to change, and I rely on it, meaning that’s my assurance.
Wes
And this is where we get the second of the God is love statements that we spoke of earlier. It says, “Whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.” I love this language of abiding. We see this elsewhere in John’s writing in the gospel as we think about resting, dwelling, abiding with God. Really what we long for, but this experience of it now as we delight in the love that God has for us.
Andy
God is love. He would have to deny his own being to stop loving us.
And I think fundamentally I mentioned how sadly fickle we are in our love for God. And if we’re fickle in our love for God, how much more we fickle are we in our love for each other because each other we’re sinners? And it’s not surprising that we can come in and out of love for a spouse or for a child or for a friend, but God, he’s never changing. And so how can we come in and out of love for God? But the fact is we’re not relying on our love for God, we’re relying on his love for us and God is love. He would have to deny his own being to stop loving us. That’s what John’s saying here. That’s how rock-solid our assurance should be. God would have to stop being who he is to stop loving who he loved. He’s not going to stop loving who he loved. He will love us forever. He’s never going to change his mind because God is love.
Wes
How does the perfection of Christian love in our lives result in greater assurance of our salvation on Judgment Day?
Andy
Yeah, the perfection of love, which I’ve linked earlier in this podcast to sanctification. As we see ourselves becoming more stable in our love, more God-like in our love the fact that the people we loved before we are going to still love them today, and we’re not coming in and out, we’re not going to be fickle. As we see that sanctification process in us, we can know that’s only happening by the work of the Spirit in us. It gives us greater and greater assurance. And so, God’s love is perfected in us, and therefore we have confidence about judgment on the day of judgment. And so, the idea is I think what he means is confidence leading up to the day of judgment. I think confidence on that day is not going to get us much because that day is going to come and go and that’ll be it. But he wants us to have assurance now because it actually very much affects how we live if we have confidence about the day of judgment that’s coming. And so, as we see love being perfected in us, that’s sanctification, and we have confidence about Judgment Day.
Wes
What does John mean by there is no fear in love? And how does verse 18 relate to heaven?
Andy
Alright, so I think the opposite of having confidence about the approaching day of judgment would be having fear about the day of judgment. So, he says perfect love because fear has to do with judgment, and we’ll get to that in a moment. But I think the fear that love drives out here is anti-assurance, the opposite of assurance. I’m not sure if I’m going to hell or not. I’m terrified I might be going to hell. Perfect love drives out that kind of fear, alright? There’s no fear in God’s love for us. It can’t coincide. So, if you are immersed in God’s love for you, fear goes away. It’s just gone. It gets driven out. So, I think this in this context, it has to do with fear of final condemnation on Judgment Day. That you’ll hear said about you, “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire,” that you’re afraid that’s going to be said about you. Well, perfect love dries out that kind of fear. Now fundamentally, it’s God’s love for you. You know and rely on the fact that God is love. But secondarily, we see God’s love made perfect in us, and we are being sanctified. And that as that process goes on, we lose fear about Judgment Day.
Wes
Talk a little bit more about the connection between this verse and heaven because I think this is important for us to understand if we’re going to grasp what this passage is getting at.
Andy
Right? Okay. So, one of the themes in my book on heaven, which is The Glory Now Revealed, I argue that we are going to be continually educated about our past lives, and not just ours but our brothers and sisters past lives. It’s not the only thing we’ll do in heaven, not by a long shot, but we will be constantly aware of and ever increasingly knowledgeable about 6,000 years of redemptive history including our own. Well, people are uncomfortable with that because they don’t want their sins to be recounted. They want their sins forgotten, completely covered. We’re not going to bring that up again. And they even point, reasonably, to verses that say that God forgives our wickedness and remembers our sins no more. Remembers them no more. And so, they’re like, how can you actually argue that we’re going to remember our sins in heaven, and indeed that we must remember our sins in heaven? And I argue that plainly because we can’t celebrate the grace of God in Christ and not remember that we were sinners saved by that grace. I also show that it’s not biblical to think that being completely convinced of full forgiveness and assurance means I have amnesia now about my sins, and I have no idea about them. Paul writing in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said, “I was a blasphemer or persecutor and a violent man.” So apparently the Holy Spirit reminded him of that, and he was forgiven for all of that.
So, it can’t mean a complete memory wipe in amnesia or that we have no idea. God isn’t that way. God’s omniscient. He knows exactly what we did. Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense with discipline for sin. We need to remember our sins and that we were disciplined for them, so we don’t do them again. So that’s a very kind of immature and shallow way of thinking about forgiveness, wickedness, and remember sins no more. And that I’m not bring that up again, but let’s go to eternity and perfection in heaven. We will have no fear in this matter at all because fear has to do with judgment and Judgment Day will be behind us. We’re not going to be afraid. It was like tell the story. And why will we not be afraid? Because we will know that is who we were, but it is not who we are.
And Paul says this in Romans 7, it is no longer I who do it, but its sin living in me. A decisive break has been made in my new creation self between me and my sin. And so yes, I know I did that. I’m not minimizing that, but I also know I’m not that person anymore. And so, when we get to heaven, there’ll be no fear in the retelling of our lives. Now, I don’t think we’re going to be immersed in our bad stuff the whole time, but it’s a necessary fact that this or that or the other happened. It’s necessary for us to know that David committed the sin with Uriah the Hittite and stole his wife Bathsheba. Why? Because that’s where Solomon came from. We don’t know how Solomon even came about without knowing that story.
In order to know why it was Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail and not Paul and Barnabas in the Philippian jail, you need to know about the argument that Paul and Barnabas had over John Mark. You need to know that story. That’s who we were. It is the truth. The Bible’s full of that kind of truth. We need to know how God restored Peter from denying Jesus three times before the rooster crowed and how amazingly he used that sinner saved by grace to preach the Pentecost sermon. That’s the story. For us we’re not going to have any fear. I don’t have any fear right now. It doesn’t mean I want everything told right now because we’re still in this present age. But in that future world, there’ll be no fear because perfect love has driven out all fear.
Wes
Yeah, we have just a few more questions before we reach the end of this passage. But verse 19 is so concise but so powerful. What’s the significance of the statement we love because he first loved us? And how is God’s initiative vital in every aspect of our salvation?
Andy
Alright, so stepping back and looking at this whole podcast in the section of scripture we’re looking at, first of all, God is love. Second of all, God is the source of all love. Third of all, God demonstrates his love for us in Christ’s death for us on the cross. And fourth of all, we ought to love one another. Fifth we will love, but only because he first loved us. So that’s the kind of logical ordering of this whole thing. So fundamentally, we have no independent source of love. The love comes from God. He is the source of it.
And when we start to love, we can’t get arrogant or boastful because we weren’t loving. We did, “Not that we love God, but we love now because he first loved us.” So, it’s causal. It’s a logical causal factor. If I love you as a Christian brother and I do, it’s because Christ first loved me. It’s because he worked love in me. And therefore, any love I show to Christ be the glory, to God be the glory, to the Spirit be the glory because he worked it in me. Now, let me tell you how important this verse is theologically for me, just about salvation. I mean, let’s be honest, we chose Christ because he first chose us. Alright? I did choose Christ. I did. I remember I am choosing him today, but it’s only because he first chose me, and he did that before the foundation of the world. So, everything I do that’s good is based on something he has prior done in me. That’s good. And so, every good work is because he worked a good work in me. So, he gets the glory for everything.
Wes
So rich for us to meditate on just those few brief words but packed with meaning for us and our salvation. Now verse 20, we get more repetition from John. He says, “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.” So, John, just clarifying again for us. If you have seen your brother, you’ve not seen God. You can’t say that you love God whom you’ve not seen, and then live in a way that’s antithetical to that in relation to those around you.
Andy
So, the primary audience for 1 John is genuine Christians who are asking, how can I know that I’m a genuine Christian? The secondary audience is people who are self-deceived and think they’re Christians, but they really aren’t. That they may, while there’s still time come to a genuine faith. And so, this is one of those many liar kind of passages here in 1 John. It’s meant to be like a cold slap in the face. If you say this and you’re living like this, you’re a liar. You’re not a Christian. So that’s what he’s getting at here.
Wes
Now John ends by saying that God has commanded us to love each other. How does this command from Almighty God serve as a test of whether we’re in right relationship with him? And what final thoughts do you have for us on 1 John 4?
Andy
Yeah, I mean, no matter what you think about all of this and all the logic and the persuasion I’ve been giving, bottom line is Christ has commanded you to love.
And so, you cannot call him Lord and not obey him. Why do you call me Lord, Lord and do not do what I say? So fundamentally, he’s given us this command, but we’re going to learn in the next chapter is commands are not burdensome. There’s nothing burdensome about this command. It’s a delightful command, and we’re glad to do it. So final words on this chapter. This is an incredible chapter. I mean, it’s just beautiful how we’re able to test the spirits in the first part of the section and know the Spirit that comes from God versus the deceiving demonic spirits in the world.
And then the second part is love. And we’ve walked through it. I just gave a summary of it even just a moment ago. God is love. He’s the source and standard of all love. He sent his Son in the world to die on the cross, this is the greatest display of love there could ever be. And therefore, because Christ laid down his life for us, we ought to love one another. And we will love one another by his Spirit and to God be the glory for all of that. That’s a summation of the entire love section in this chapter.
Wes
Well, this has been Part 2 of Episode 7 in our 1, 2, 3 John Bible Study Podcast. We want to invite you to join us next time for Episode 8 entitled, Faith in the Son of God Gives Eternal Life, where we’ll discuss 1 John 5:1-21. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys podcast. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
