1 John 4:7-11 “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” Today's episode talks about how much God loves us and how He is calling us to love one another. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
God is Love!
1 John 4:7-11 “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”
It’s funny how the Holy Spirit works sometimes. I put a verse into google this morning because often times I will use the verse God gives us during prayer group. I put in the verse that I had starred in my notes and I clicked on the first result on the webpage. I read the verses and then decided to read the whole chapter to get more of a context. Then I found the verse above and I knew I wanted that verse because it contains the single most important thing we need to know about God. Well, in my opinion it is the most important because if we can’t believe that then we probably won’t believe the rest of it. After I choose this verse I noticed it was not at all the verse I put into the search bar. I was looking for John 14:12-13 and somehow the search pulled up 1 John 4:12-13, which lead me to 1 John 4:7-11. I take this a confirmation they Holy Spirit was leading me to this verse, and I know this message is for someone specific. Is that person you?
The reason I said I think this verse contains the single most important thing we need to know is because is says, “God is love.” I really feel if everyone knew this, if everyone could believe this one thing, we would all be believers. The enemy wouldn’t have any of us in his camp because everyone wants to be loved. Instead of believing this, or even really talking about this, we talk about all the rules that God has and we talk about religion and who believes what and who does what within their religion. I was going to say the apostles had it easy because they didn’t have all these different religions, but they did have a lot of different religions. There was only one Christian religion but there were lots of other religions and lots of other false Gods they were competing with. Actually I remember hearing Jeff Cavins, the author of several Bible studies, say one time that love is what brought a lot of the pagans into our religion. They were astonished by the fact God didn’t need anything from us. He loves us just as we are not for what we could do for Him. This was different from all the other Gods.
Let’s take a look at what this verse says. It starts out by sayings, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” I love that this verse starts with “let us love one another.” This is so important and yet I think it is something we are lacking in the world today. I feel there is more hate and more division in the world. People seem to see all of our differences instead of all the ways we are similar. Yet, this verse says, to love one another because love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. This is nice because if we love God we know God. There are many that haven’t known love. Some people were born into families where the parents didn’t know how to love. Or maybe they did at one point but then they got addicted to something else, drugs, alcohol, or whatever it was and that was the only thing they could love. Some people were brought up with a perverted sense of love. They were taught that love meant keeping quiet while they were being abused. None of that is the kind of love that comes from God. God’s love is a pure and unconditional love. God’s love is given freely and with no strings attached.
The next part of this verse says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” This is perhaps one of my favorite lines. Whoever does not love does not know God. This is something I don’t think a lot of people understand. Even people who attend church regularly. They go to church and sit there and judge all the other people in church. They judge the people they see on the street and those that are different from them. They think they are doing it because of their love for God. They think they are looking at others through God’s eyes because God tells us to do certain things and these people certainly aren’t doing it correctly. Do you ever do this, be honest. Have you ever looked at someone and thought they weren’t doing it right? They shouldn’t be living with that person before marriage or they shouldn’t be doing that thing. We all do this, whether we want to admit it or not. It is human nature. However, why are we doing it? Are we doing it out of concern because we love that person and we are concerned for their soul, or are we doing it because we think we are perfect and they are not?
I love how this verse says, “God is love.” I feel like that right there could be a mic drop moment and nothing else really needs to be said. “God is love.” Full stop, end of sentence. I think too often we think of God as the Judge, Jury and Executioner. We think He is sitting up there in heaven judging our every move and just waiting to rain down judgement on us like He did for Sodom and Gomorrah. When in all actuality, He is up there watching us, helping us, and weeping for us when we go astray. He is not mad at us because we went astray, or turned away from Him, He is sad. He is sad because He wants each and every one of us to get to spend eternity with Him. Yet, if we turn away from Him, or reject Him and don’t turn back, then we will be separated from Him for all eternity. He loves us too much to sit back and watch us do that.
The ending of this verse show us just how much God loves us. God made the perfect world and then Adam & Eve went against what God had commanded them to do. This meant our closeness with God was removed. We lost the right to be in God’s presence. However, even though God is a just God and He needed to kick Adam and Eve out of the garden, He didn’t want to live without in His presence forever, so He came up with a plan to redeem us. This is what the ending of this verse is about. It says, “ God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”
Can you think of a way that shows us more fully how deep and immense the Lord’s love for us is? He sent His only son to Earth, to walk among us and then to die a horrible death for our sins. That is a pretty extraordinary way to reveal His love to us. You know what is even more remarkable? He sent His son to die on a cross while we were still sinners. It’s not as if we had all cleaned up our acts, we had it all together and then God said, ok, my son will atone for your sins now that you are no longer sinning. He came and forgave us while we were still sinning. It is truly remarkable when you think about how much love God must have for us.
I also love how the verse ends just how it started. We must love one another. The emphasis doesn’t seem to be on how much God loves us or that God is Love. Although this verse does a great job showing us both these things are true. The emphasis is on how we need to love one another as God loves us. The verse is saying God is love and God loves you so you should love others. It is also saying if we don’t know love, we don’t know God. We don’t want to be left out from knowing God. If you are someone that struggles with loving others, get to know God more. When you do, you will know how to love more. Let’s all try to love others a little more this week. Try to think of some way you can show someone else you love them this week. Not a loved one, but someone you meet out in public, or someone you work with. You don’t have to say “I love you,” to a complete stranger, but is there a way you can show them love? One way that is anonymous is to buy a couple scratch tickets and put them on random strangers car windshields. Or there are many other random acts of kindness you can do. Pay for the car behind you’s coffee. Put easy to grab snacks in your car for when you see a homeless person asking for money at a light. Whatever you think you want to do, just try to do something to show others a little bit of God’s love this week.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to know you and your love, please help us. Lord, help us to love others as you love others. Help us to not judge others and to just love them. Judging is your job, not ours, help us to remember this. Helps us to spread your love around like confetti. You started and ended this verse with the command to love one, show us how. Convict our hearts of where in the world you want us to show your love. Help us not to get overwhelmed with all the various ways we can love others. Help us to just start and take one step and then another. We love you Lord and we are so very grateful you love us so much! We can’t believe how amazing you are and how much you sacrificed in order to save us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!