Sovereign Grace Baptist Church

Free Grace Media

Of Princeton, New Jersey

 

AuthorClay Curtis
TitleLove Is of God
Bible Text1 John 4:7-16
Synopsis John’s purpose in our text is the same throughout his epistle: he declares that it is God alone who makes his child believe on Christ and love our brethren and, likewise, it is God alone who makes us continue believing on Christ and loving our brethren. Listen
Date31-Jan-2019
Series 1 John 2018
Article Type Sermon Notes
PDF Format pdf
Word Format doc
Audio HI-FI Listen: Love Is of God (32 kbps)
Audio CD Quality Listen: Love Is of God (128 kbps)
Length 41 min.
 

Series: 1 John

Title: Love is of God

Text: 1 John 4: 7-16

Date: January 31,2019

Place: SGBC, NJ

 

Our text is written by a sinner saved by God to sinners saved by God. 

 

1 John 4: 7: Beloved, let us love one another: Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8: He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.  9: In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might [shall] live through him.  10: Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son, the propitiation for our sins.  

 

If we are truly God’s chosen, redeemed, born again child then we say, Amen! We did not love God.  Scripture says we hated God—but God loved us.  The cause was in God alone.  He send his only begotten Son into the world, so that all for whom he died, shall be given eternal life through Christ.  Christ is the Propitiation—the atonement, the expiation, the satisfaction—for our sins.

 

1 John 4: 11: Beloved, if God so [after this manner] loved us, we ought also to love one another.  12: No man hath seen God at any time.  If we love one another, [here is the cause and why we continue] God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.  13: Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.

 

There are two things the Spirit of God makes us do: one, he makes us believe in the new heart which God has given us, and from our new heart, we testify that Christ is the successful Savior of his people all over the world.  He successfully saved, not all the world, but all kinds of sinners—those from among the Jews who God regenerates to life and faith in Christ, as well as some from among the Gentiles who God regenerates to life and faith in Christ.  This is what John declares that the Spirit of God makes us do.

 

1 John 4: 14: And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son, the Saviour of the world. 15: Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, [what is the cause?] God dwelleth in him, and he in God.

 

The second thing the Spirit of God within us makes a believer do is to love our brethren who are also born of God.  We do so because God has made us to know and believe the love that God hath to us.  Therefore, constrained by God’s love for us, we love our brethren. That is the next thing John declares the Spirit of God makes us do.

 

1 John 4: 16: AND we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

 

Proposition: John’s purpose in our text is the same throughout his epistle: he declares that it is God alone who makes his child believe on Christ and love our brethren and, likewise, it is God alone who makes us continue believing on Christ and loving our brethren.

 

This is the “manifest” difference between the child of God and the child of the devil.  The child of the devil may confess Christ but he goes out from us, he denies Christ and/or he mistreats the brethren.  By this he manifests he never was born of God, he never believed on Christ and he never loved the brethren.  But God preserves his child so that we continue to the end believing on Christ and loving our brethren.

 

For context, let’s begin in 1 John 3.   The Spirit of God moved John to declare in 1 John 3: 23: And this is [God the Father’s] commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as [his Son Jesus Christ] gave us commandment. 24: And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in [God], and [God] in him.  And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.

 

The Spirit of God makes us keep God’s commandments—believing on Christ and loving our brethren—and the Spirit of God makes us continue believing on Christ and loving our brethren.   By the Spirit making us do so, we know that God abideth in us. 

 

So, first, in 1 John 4: 1-6, John told us to try the spirits by whether or not they believe and confess Christ in truth.

 

Now, he exhort us to love one another—1 John 4: 7: Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God.  We may test preachers by love as well as by what they preach concerning Christ.  This is not something we can discern over the internet. But if a preacher preaches for selfish gain at the expense of brethren, the love of God is not in him.  But we will focus on God’s grace making believers love one another

 

LOVE IS OF GOD

 

1 John 4:7: Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God.

 

Understand, the love spoken of here is not of our sinful flesh but is of God.  This is a spiritual love which is produced in a believer of God, the same as faith is of God.

 

Galatians 5:22: The fruit OF the Spirit is LOVE, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, FAITH, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

 

John is speaking of faith and love.  Not only is faith of God but also love to brethren.  Both are OF God.  Both are fruit produced in God’s child OF God the Holy Spirit.  

 

Notice, in Galatians 5, Paul listed many fruits but he called it the “fruit” of the Spirit.  It is like the doctrines of God which are called the “doctrine” of God.  They are all one with the other so they are spoken of as singular.  For example, in 1 Corinthians 13, the Holy Spirit says through Paul that faith without love is nothing.  But faith which is of God includes love which is of God and love which is of God includes faith which is of God.  As long as we are in this body, faith and love are inseparable; we cannot do one without doing the other.

 

But this love is not of our sinful flesh.  Love that comes from our sin-nature is marred by sin.  God created man in his own image.  In that state, Adam had love which is of God.  But when Adam disobeyed God, the image of God was marred in Adam by sin.  Before the fall, he loved Eve with love which is of God.  After the fall, he blamed Eve for his fall.  We are all born of Adam’s corrupt seed, conceived in Adam’s corrupt image.  Therefore, love from our sin-nature is selfish, full of lust, pride, envy, jealously and all sin.  Sin mars our love.

 

Compared to “love which is OF God” the truest, deepest, sincerest love produced of us is so marred by sin that it is not worthy of being called love.  Take the love of a mother for her newborn baby.  That is the truest love our flesh produces.  But sin is so mixed with it, that even that love is not worthy of the name when compared to love which is of God.  Some mothers do not even love their newborn child.

 

So be sure to get this point.  The love John speaks of is of God.  The love with which a believer loves God and loves our brethren is not of our sinful flesh.  Love is of God.

 

EVERYONE THAT LOVETH IS BORN OF GOD AND KNOWETH GOD

 

1 John 4: 7: Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8: He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

 

Love which is of God is produced in us by God making us to be born again of the Spirit of God and by God making us to know God in spirit and in truth.

 

Notice, this is so of “everyone” that loves with this love which is of God.  All who possess this love have it by being born of God, and knowing God; for God is love.  Therefore, a person that does not love, does not know God.  He has not been born of God.  Therefore, he knows not God in spirit and in truth.  Therefore, he does not possess the love which is of God.

 

The Lord Jesus declared that in order for a sinner to know and enter into spiritual things we must be born again of God the Holy Spirit.

 

John 3: 1: There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: 2: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

 

Christ is more than a teacher come from God.  Christ is salvation.  By this confession, Nicodemus manifest the spirit of error. He manifest that he did not believe nor love Christ because he had not been born again. Christ told him so.

 

1 John 3: 3: Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.  

 

The kingdom of God is not of this world but is spiritual.  Christ declares that except a man be born again, he cannot see, know, or believe anything spiritual.  That tells us this new birth is not of us.  God alone makes us to be born again.

 

1 John 3: 4: Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?

 

Again, Nicodemus proved Christ true: he did not understand spiritual things.

 

1 John 3: 5: Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

 

Except a man be born by the grace of God, of the Spirit of God, he cannot enter into spiritual things.

 

1 John 3: 6: That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

 

Every man is born the first time of flesh, of our earthly father.  Therefore, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”  But by God’s grace, the Spirit of God births some a second time, "and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Those born of God have a fleshly man and a spiritual man; an old man and a new man; we are partakers of Adam’s sinful nature and partakers of the divine nature.  Every believer has two natures.  To deny this is to deny this very word of Christ Jesus our Lord. 

 

1 John 3: 7: Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.  8: The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

 

The Spirit of God enters whom he wills and irresistibly births a sinner a second time.  The new birth is all of God. We had nothing to do with our first birth.  We have nothing to do with being born again.  Our first birth was of sinful parents so we were born in their image.  The second birth is of God so we are born in his image.  Our first birth was fleshly and made us carnal.  The second birth is spiritual and makes us spiritual. Our first birth gave us carnal minds which scripture says is enmity against God.  In the new birth, God gives us the mind of Christ and in that new nature, God gives us love for Christ and love for our brethren.  Therefore, as John declares in our text, “Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

 

GOD GIVES LOVE BY GIVING US KNOWLEDGE OF GOD’S LOVE IN CHRIST

 

1 John 7: 9: In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10: Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11: Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

 

When God gives his child life, God’s love is manifested to us, “because God sent his only begotten Son.”  God sent his only begotten Son, meaning, Christ is God of very God.  “Begotten” speaks of something inconceivable and inexpressible by us.  But it means Christ is the Son who is, of himself, one with the Father. 

 

God manifest his great love for his people by sending his Son “into the world”: this cursed, vile, place of sin and death.  He manifest his love for his people in that he sent his Son into the world to take a body, a human nature, like unto his brethren, to humble himself and take the form of a servant.  God manifest his love for his people by sending his Son into this world where he would be tempted and touched with the feeling of our infirmities, yet without sin.

 

God’s love is manifested toward us because God sent his only begotten Son into the world, “that we might live through him.”  It means God sent his Son to die in the place of God’s particular people so that God could give us life.   God sent Christ to manifest God’s righteousness by fulfilling God’s law and satisfying God’s justice, so that God could justly give life to each one for whom he died.  Christ bore the sin of his people so that God could justly pour out the wages of sin on him in place of his people so that God could justly pour out mercy on his people due to Christ taking our place.  Oh, what love!

 

“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  We did not love God.  Those for whom Christ died hated God.  We hated this free salvation that cost his Son his precious blood.  Yet God loved his people though we did not love him.

 

God’s Son is “the propitiation for our sins.”  Notice, the italicized words.  They were added by the translators.  Remove them and it says that Christ is the propitiation for our sins.   Christ is the atonement, the expiation, the satisfaction for our sins.  He made atonement for the sins of each person for whom he died and he is the atonement for our sins.  Before Christ died for his people, God’s justice demanded our death.  Since Christ died our death, now, God’s justice demands he give us life.

 

The application John gives by the Spirit of God is what all, who have the love of God in us, heed.  “Beloved, if God so”-- after this manner—"loved us, we ought also to love one another.” We ought to love and lay down our lives for those Christ loved and laid down his life for.  And by God’s grace, by the love God creates in his people, his people do!  We do not love as we want to love.  But by the constraint of his love for us we do love our brethren.

 

GOD’S LOVE PERFECTED IN US

 

1 John 4: 7: Everyone that that loveth is born of God and knoweth God…8:…for God is love…12: No man hath seen God at any time.  If we love one another, [the cause is] God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 

 

God is love.  By God, who is love, dwelling in us and making us behold his great love for us in Christ Jesus, God’s love is perfected in us.  God’s love brings us to the end in which it is intended.

 

With God who is love dwelling in us, by his love being perfected in us, in our new spirit in which is no guile, we love God with no guile, no dissimulation, that is, we love God with all our new heart even as God declared we would.

 

Deuteronomy 30:6: And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.

 

Likewise, from the new heart which is pure and in which is no guile, we love our brethren with no guile, that is, with unfeigned love.

 

1 Peter 1: 22: Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: 23: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever…25…And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

 

TWO THINGS LOVE DOES

 

The love which God produces in us constrains every believer to do two things by the Spirit of God.  One, we believe and testify (bear witness) of Christ’s love for us; two, we are constrained by Christ’s love toward us to love our brethren.

 

One, the Spirit of God makes us see and testify, confessing unashamedly from a believing heart, the gospel of God sending his Son who successful saved his people all over the world.  This is how we know that God dwells in us and we dwell in God.  It is because God has given us the Holy Spirit and this is what his Spirit makes us do.

 

1 John 4: 13: Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.  14: And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.  15: Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.

 

Two, the Spirit of God makes us know and believe the love that God has to us.  The love of God constrains us to love Christ and to love our brethren.  God is love.  Therefore, when God dwells in us and us in God, God makes his child dwell in love.  We never cease loving Christ and loving our brethren.

 

1 John 4: 16: And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us.  God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

 

Brethren, what does this love which is of God make us do?  When we believe and confess Christ, when we love God and our brethren, what does love make us do?

 

The love which is of God makes a believer cease loving the world.  His love makes us use the things of this world which God gives us for the cause of Christ and the good of our brethren rather than for our own lusts.  The man who loves the world does not have the love of God in him.

 

I John 2: 15:…If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16: For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

 

 

Also, constrained by Christ’s love for us, the Spirit of God makes us lay aside our old man with his guile and desire the word both for ourselves and for our brethren.  The love which God produces in us will not allow us to continue holding grudges and treating our brethren with guile.  After speaking of the unfeigned love for brethren that God produces in us when he rebirths us by the incorruptible seed of the Word through the preaching of the gospel, the Spirit of God declares through Peter what God’s constraining love makes us do,

 

1 Peter 2: 1: Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, 2: As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: 3: If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. 4: To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, 5: Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

 

This love which is of God will not allow a child of God to cease believing on Christ nor cease loving our brethren.  Therefore, it will not allow us to use this world for ourselves at the expense of the gospel and our brethren.  Now will the love of God allow us to sow discord among brethren.  It makes us lay aside all those things because we love Christ, we love his gospel and we love one another.  We desire, for ourselves and for our brethren, the sincere milk of the word with the desire of a newborn baby for his mother’s milk.  This work produces this fruit so surely that the Spirit of God moved John to write, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

 

Amen!