“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.”

The Standard of Love

There is a necessity when reading Scripture, when considering the natures of God and man, and who we are in Christ, to always remember who we are without Christ. One of the most constant dangers woven into the nature of our sin is that we shift to worshiping the creation over the Creator. Romans 1:24–25 says of those who are estranged from God,

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

We can see this in Eden, when Adam and Eve are tempted, and prize what the fruit might bring them over the commandments of God. We can see it in Babel, as humanity reveres their own innovation and seeks to build their authority and dominion all the way to heaven. It is seen with the Jews in the wilderness during the Exodus, longing to return to the material comforts of their slavery in Egypt rather than be sustained by God and delivered into the promised land. This is what the religious leaders had done by Jesus’ time on earth, and what He rebukes them for in Matthew 23:2–8,

“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.”

The pitfall of forsaking God to honor the things He has made, and the blessings He has given us has been present since the fall, and it endures to this day. Yes, it may be most prevalent in the material things of the world – Jesus teaches in Matthew 6:24,

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

And money is ultimately the key to all that is material. New house, new car, new set of golf clubs, new hunting rifle, a lavish vacation, an extravagant meal – it’s not that you can’t have any of these things as a Christian, but the moment they begin to take the highest point in your heart and mind, they begin to become not just enjoyable things or experiences, but idols. But if you become disconnected from the Foundation of Christ, you can twist anything into an idol, including your worship, your tithe, and the Bible itself. John was extremely straightforward in giving the purpose behind the writing of his gospel account, saying in John 20:30–31,

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

While the tone and angle of approach may have shifted between John’s gospel and the letter of 1 John, his purpose has not changed, because his foundation remains the same. As we continue in this epistle, we see again and again a sort of spiraling forward progression – the teaching moves along, but always circling back to include, rehash, and develop upon what has been shared before. We speak of Light, and Life, and Truth, and Love, and the Spirit that carries and delivers these things, and the way this is all contrasted against what is antichrist in darkness, death, lies and sin. The constant return to foundational elements, these principle qualities of God’s nature safeguards against us becoming conceited and missing the mark as we grow in Christ. We cannot look upon God, see who we are in God, and not remember who we were without Him. If we lose sight of the fact that we were not born, but reborn as children of God, then we neglect to honor the sacrifice of Jesus, and that we ourselves were not righteous, but were transformed through the overwhelming and abundant righteousness of God. As we continue through 1 John and see further development of his teaching we encounter a statement, a declaration, and a clarification that grants a divine perspective on a dark and twisted world – the reality that God is Love.

1. God is the Standard

John begins today’s passage again addressing the reader as “beloved.” As I learned recently, the word “beloved” here is the Greek “agapetos.” It calls the reader the recipient of the all-encompassing love of Christ. John then immediately draws us back to who we are in being called this – we are children of God, and we give as we’ve received. As we read in 1 John 3:16–17,

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?”

Our love and tenderheartedness, for the world, but firstly for our brothers and sisters who are joined to us as family through the blood of Christ, testifies to the fact that the Love of God is present within us. John then continues,

“… for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”

We know what Love is from the simple and highly quoted explanation of John 3:16,

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

God sending His Son, the One of His own essence, the Most High taking on flesh and coming to live alongside His creation, in the same form as His creation, to pay the price for our sin is the greatest act of Love ever. So Love is from God, and when this is acted out in us it testifies that we are not as we once were, but have been born again. Earlier in the same passage, Jesus and Nicodemus speak on this very point, saying in John 3:3–6

“Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

Love acting in our lives testifies to the death of darkness, the crucifixion and demise of our flesh that is buried with Christ, and the resurrection and rebirth of we who now live in our glorified Savior. John, always giving us the touchstones at both ends of the spectrum continues in today’s passage.

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

We’ve talked before as we looked at 1 John 3:16 that the world simply does not know how to define love. Music, cinema, theatre, visual art, written word – they all seek to build a structure without the Foundation, we try to communicate the vastness and grandeur of God Himself while ignoring God. Sometimes we take pieces of the whole and call it the whole. The family for example – a husband and wife, and, if they are so blessed, the children they bear, is a divinely ordered union and structure. Stepping over the fact that the world is vying in more ways than one to alter and reinvent what the family actually is, to some, family simply equals love, rather than seeing and acknowledging that family is a gift and blessing from God who is Love. Still others deny Love outright, claiming falsehoods that are ultimately blasphemous. Love is equated with delusion, with naivety, with pain, or jealousy, or blindness. Understanding that God is Love gives us perspective to see, not just that these things are wrong, but just how insanely wrong they are. God is One, He is singular, but possessing of multiple attributes. Above all else, God is holy – so much so that it merits repeating. Isaiah 6:1–3 tells us,

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!’”

So God is holy, He’s glorious – we also know that He’s preexistent, eternal beyond our comprehension from the dialog between God and Moses when the Lord speaks to him from the burning bush in Exodus 3:13–14,

“Then Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: “I AM has sent me to you.”’”

Before there was time, before there was space, before there was creation and life and reality as we know it, there was God. This, as with the trinity, defies our human understanding – the idea that God, who is One, is also three distinct persons, yet still very much One just doesn’t compute in the human mind. Likewise, we who are anchored in time and governed so intently by the reality and space we occupy, can’t really grasp the weight and depth of God’s timelessness. We understand this in the way Paul wrote of in 1 Corinthians 13:12,

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

Incidentally, what Paul was writing of here was knowing and fully comprehending Love. In addition to these things that we’ve discussed, Scripture tells us that God is a “jealous” God, in Exodus 34:12–16, where He says,

“Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.”

And we also see that God is wrathful from passages like Romans 1:18,

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”

2 Peter 3:7,

“But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.”

Revelation 14:19–20,

“So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia.”

As well as Revelation 16, which goes on to describe the seven bowls of God’s wrath that are poured out in judgement upon the earth. But this takes Spiritual wisdom and insight to even comprehend in part, for though we share certain attributes with God, apart from Him, we lack His holiness, and so they don’t mean the same things. God isn’t holy sometimes, just other times, wrathful when the mood strikes, and jealous in between. He doesn’t wake up and decide that today feels like a, “Light of the World” type day, and maybe tomorrow He’ll go the “Bread of Life” route. Hebrews 13:8–9 tells us,

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.”

And James helps us understand this vast difference between God’s perfect actions, and our acts in the flesh, saying in James 1:19–20,

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

So when John writes, “God is Love,” we have to understand that this exceeds our limited, human abilities. God is all of His attributes, all of the time. Which means that in His holiness, righteousness, justice, jealousy, and wrath, there is Love, because He is Love. We can gain a greater understanding of what Love truly is through God’s Word. Jesus teaches in Matthew 5:43–48

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Jesus begins this with, “you have heard it said…” which tells us that He’s correcting the misaligned teaching of the day. God told His people in Leviticus 19:18,

“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

What the religious rulers had done by Jesus’ time was to heap hundreds, if not thousands of additional rules onto what God had given His people in the Law, and so “love your neighbor,” had been expanded to also include, “and hate your enemy,” which Jesus sets write from the Law itself. Paul speaks of the nature of God’s Love in Romans 5:7–10, saying,

“For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

This is not “love” as we comprehend it in our flesh, grasping at the edges of what is holy and divine, but is a calling to the highest possible point. God is Love, and yet God is unknowable in full, He is vast, and mysterious, and great beyond measure. To know that God is Love and also that we are called to love one another is intimidating – just as intimidating as knowing that we are told to be holy as He is holy, and perfect as He is perfect, because these commandments teach the same thing. God has given us the standard, and it is Him. It is an aim and a calling that is infinitely out of our reach. But in this too, the Love of God is revealed, in that He didn’t leave us to perish in the darkness of our sin, nor did He lower His righteous and perfect standard – rather He brought the standard to us, and raised us to Himself.

2. God Gives the Standard

“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.”

And so we see that God is the standard, and we fall impossibly short. Romans 3:10-12, 21–24 makes this abundantly clear, saying,

Romans 3:10–12,

“… as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”… “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…”

We did not have Love in our flesh because we were estranged from the One who is Love – if we couldn’t know God then we couldn’t know, or see, or embrace all that He is. We were dead branches on a dead vine, destined for the fire, only good to be burned up. John 19:30 records Jesus saying from the cross, “It is finished,” before bowing His head, and giving up His spirit. We could not defeat sin, we could not rise to the immeasurably high standard of the God that is Love, and so God paid our price, defeated sin and the death that comes with it, and opened a path to Him. Romans 6:3–4 tells us,

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

And Paul wrote in Galatians 2:19–20,

“For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Christ died, His perfect life paying the full price for our sin, and when we receive Him, our sinful flesh dies and we live new, renewed in the resurrection of Jesus. There’s a reciprocal element that comes into play, as Jesus said in John 14:23–24,

“… If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”

We witness Love, true Love, God’s Love, and we realize our lack, or desperate need. When we receive the Love of God we’re indwelled by it, and it in turn pours out from us.

“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.”

“Propitiation” is one of those words that, despite reading it numerous times, I regularly need to go back and look up the definition to make sure I’m grasping it properly. What this means is that Jesus both satisfied the wrath of God against sin, and in doing so reconciled us to Him. To jump ahead just a bit, John goes on to write in 1 John 4:19, the simple statement,

“We love because he first loved us.”

We did not invent, conceive, or even begin to imagine our path to God – but God took Himself, His perfection, His Love, and through the greatest sacrifice ever, gave it to us. The standard that is so excellent we can’t properly understand it, so holy we can’t touch it, so perfect we can’t look upon it, was given to us, so that we might not remain separated from the One who made us, but enter into a right relationship with Him – and in doing so, also know a right relationship with one another.

3. God’s Children Share the Standard

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

This again is a reminder as we work forward in circles, that we have Love because God has given us Himself, and if we do not shine, if we do not share this with the world, but especially with those who are our coheirs in Christ, then how can God’s Love be dwelling within us? 2 Corinthians 5:17 says,

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

How can we claim to be a new creation if we remain this same? This is no act of works, but of genuine faith that leads us to and through a life ending, and restoring encounter with Love – you cannot encounter God and remain the same. This again calls us back to what John wrote previously – that if we do not love our brothers and sisters, then the Love of God does not abide in us. Jesus is the True Vine – we cannot be grafted to Him and not produce the righteous fruit of the Spirit, the first of which listed is Love.

“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.”

Here John echoes what he wrote at the beginning of his gospel, saying in John 1:18,

“No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

No one has looked upon the whole glory of the Father, the Lord of Hosts, the Ancient of Days who is seated on the throne. And yet, we may know Him in the person of the Son, Jesus Christ, the Love of God who is reflected in the Love we share as believers. Colossians 1:15 says of Jesus,

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

It is by the person of the Son that we come to a greater understanding and knowledge of our Creator, who we cannot fully know in this life. Jesus taught during the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:14–16,

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

But John’s gospel states in John 1:9–13,

“The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

And Jesus directly says in John 8:12,

“… I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Understand that apart from God we have no Light, or Life, or Love, because God is Light, and Life, and Love. Jesus said in the Matthew passage above,

“… let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

If God is not your Father, if His Spirit is not within you, then you bring forth no good works, you have no Light to Shine. We can see and testify that God has sent His Son into the world because we know Love, we shine with the Light of the world, we Love our brothers and sisters, and even the world that hates us. We are changed, we are different, and this is only possible because of the outside influence, which becomes the internal influence of the Holy Spirit. We live and breath testimony to the coming of Jesus Christ because in that we are new creations. The holy standard of God, which He gave to the world is then shared between His children, for we are changed as His children, we regard one another as family, and we love in a way that the world cannot understand or imitate, because the Truth, and Light, and Love of the God who is Lord above all has made us new and shines from within us in all things.

Pastor Chris’ sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6DVI5CDuxM