Responding to God’s Love

This sermon was preached on 4/12/2011 as part of a communion weekend

‘Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another’ (1 John 4:11)

The apostle John is known as the apostle of love. This description indicates he was a passionate man who loved God and his people. Sometimes we forget that John possessed very strong passions. We can do this by imagining that all he did was lie on the Saviour’s breast, which is a picture of passivity, of receiving love from Jesus. Yet we should also recall that Jesus called him, along with his brother, a son of thunder. John always had the potential for inner eruption that would pour out in great strength.

In what ways did John reveal his love? One obvious way was writing this letter, which was composed initially because of a false teaching that was penetrating the early church. We call that heresy Docetism because it taught that Jesus only seemed to be a real man (1 John 4:1-3). Other wrong doctrines were being taught as well (1 John 1:5-10). So we can see that John used his role in the church in defending God’s people from error and he did so in a loving way. Further, his love did not make him reticent, as we can observe from his resolve to deal with Diotrephes who was trying to impose his will on a local church (3 John).

No doubt there are several answers to the crisis that John faced and he mentions them throughout his letter. As far as the verse we are considering is concerned, his answer was twofold, as we can see in this verse: first, his readers were reminded that they should understand the love of God; second, they were reminded that they should practice brotherly love. We will consider each of these aspects briefly.

1. Understanding the love of the Father

The first point to note is that this divine love is personal. Although John uses the plural pronoun ‘us’, he does not mean that we should only think about this love in a detached manner by limiting our thinking about it to a corporate sense. Instead we are to recognise that the Father loved each of the ‘us’ personally. This is important to recall at all times, that God the Father loves his people individually. And it is the case that this love for each of them is beginningless. God has always loved the ‘us’. Long before he made the universe, God loved each of us. This aspect of his love is connected to his sovereign choice.

A second detail to observe about this love is that it is purposeful. Often human love is random regarding what it can do for the object of its love. I have no idea what I will buy for my wife in five years’ time. Hopefully I will be able to buy something suitable, but at present I don’t know how I will express my love on that future date. Such a random, uncertain description of love cannot be said about God. He has planned every expression of his love to each of his people. He already knows now what he will do throughout the endless future in which he will be continually expressing his love.

Thirdly, we can remind ourselves that the love of the Father is a pardoning love. Yet we know, as we contemplate this aspect, that his pardon is not merely his dismissing our sins from his mind as if they did not matter. The reality is that our sins were offensive to him because of their filthy, iniquitous nature; they were expressions of our rebellion against him and his law. So while his love for use was ongoing and would eventually show itself as a pardoning love, his love had to reveal itself in another way first. And that other way we can describe as a propitiating love because it involved him sending his Son to be the propitiation of our sins (1 John 2:1-2). The word ‘propitiation’ means that the Lord was angry with us because of our sins. As Paul says, Christians were the children of wrath, even as others (Eph. 2:3). So the Father showed his love for the ‘us’ by punishing his own Son instead of them, with the place of that punishment being the cross of Calvary. The cross is both an expression of God’s love and God’s anger.

Fourthly, the love of the Father is a paternal love. He has adopted the ‘us’ into his divine family. John says in 1 John 3:1-2 that this aspect of divine love is astonishing; he says, that we should observe what kind of love it is. Apparently one would use this type of description to ask what kind of country a previously unknown product came from. In other words, there was nothing in any earthly environment with which to compare it. It is unheard of that anyone would adopt outrageous offenders into his family, yet this is what God has done for the ‘us’. The biggest blessing is not merely family membership; in addition it includes always being in the presence of the Father. We can imagine a member of a family who is away from his father’s presence. But that cannot happen to a Christian. Even when he does wrong, he discovers that he is in the Father’s presence and undergoes his chastisement.

The fifth feature of the Father’s love that we should note is that it is a prospective love, a reminder that this family always has a future. In our holiday last week, we visited a ruined castle and outside it was a huge statue of a once-powerful king. At one time, that royal family was the one with a future; the king thought so much of himself that he erected a huge stature of himself (I was a midget standing beside it). Yet all his statue now says is that his family and domain did not have a real future. In contrast to all such human prospects, the family of God look forward to always enjoying the rich inheritance of Jesus. And there will not be any statues of Jesus there, only able to point to something notable in the past. Instead the living Jesus, far bigger than we can imagine, will be present, and in some sense we will be like him, and as we look at him we will see that he retains on his body the marks of his great triumph at Calvary. So wherever we will go in our Father’s endless kingdom, and whatever we will do within its limitless activities, we will always know that we are there because of the crucified Christ.

2. Loving the family of God

Often we ask ourselves how we can test if we are truly the children of God. John tells us one infallible mark in 1 John 3:14: ‘We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers.’ It is an infallible mark, not because it is perfect, but because it is genuine, and will show itself in all kinds of situations. John mentions the importance of practical expressions of brotherly love (1 John 3:16-17). And there are spiritual expressions as well, such as prayer, which is from one perspective, speaking to the Father about his children.

John then reminds his readers that they should love one another. He implies that the expected response to such a wonderful divine love is an appropriate human love. The church of Jesus Christ is where the love of the Father should be known and shown. How can we experience that kind of loving environment? Here are three suggestions.

First, just as God pardoned us, so we should forgive one another. As we sit at the Lord’s Table, we should not be conscious of any antagonism towards other persons here. Whatever they have done against us, we have to treat them as God has treated them. He has forgiven all their sins and does not list them. So we should look at one another and be able to say from our hearts, ‘I gladly forgive all of you for whatever wrong you have done against me, even if done on purpose.’ I know we have to confess our wrongs to one another when necessary; nevertheless we should reflect the attitude of the Father as we interact with his children here.

Secondly, we should rejoice in their presence. Here we are with those whom God loves and delights to be with. In a world where everyone is in a rush, we should use these moments to appreciate those whom we are with, God’s people, who are the excellent of the earth (Ps. 16:3). As we look at one another, we should see the evidences of God’s grace at work in our lives. If we have known one another for a while, we should be observing increasing conformity to Jesus in our brothers and sisters.

Thirdly, we should anticipate their future. After all, their future is our future. Where they will be, we will be. We are heading towards the eternal family gathering in the presence of the Father, of the Elder Brother, and of the Spirit of adoption. Our future is a family future. There were articles in last week’s newspapers about the sad demise in family life in our country. While the family of God in this world is often not what it should be, it always has a future. And we should think of it often.