Born in Love (1 John 4:7-10)

WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.880 --> 00:00:05.719 Please remain standing as we turn again to first John, this time chapter four, 2 00:00:06.360 --> 00:00:11.230 first John, for let's hear God's Word now, from verses seven, 3 00:00:11.269 --> 00:00:17.510 versus seven through verse ten. Seven, eight, nine and ten. Beloved. 4 00:00:17.670 --> 00:00:21.899 Let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever 5 00:00:22.059 --> 00:00:27.059 loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love 6 00:00:27.420 --> 00:00:32.899 does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of 7 00:00:33.020 --> 00:00:37.570 God was made manifest among us. That God sent his only son into the 8 00:00:37.649 --> 00:00:43.210 world so that we might live through him. Into this is love, not 9 00:00:43.409 --> 00:00:48.369 that we have loved God, but that he loved US and sent his son 10 00:00:48.409 --> 00:00:54.759 to be the propitiation for our sins. Amen, you may be seated. 11 00:00:56.039 --> 00:01:00.119 As you may remember, in this letter John has been helping us to understand 12 00:01:00.840 --> 00:01:07.390 what a Christian is, what the marks of a Christian are, how will 13 00:01:07.430 --> 00:01:11.069 and comes to be a Christian, and that's true not just of us as 14 00:01:11.189 --> 00:01:18.069 individuals, but John is also helping us to understand who we are as a 15 00:01:18.430 --> 00:01:23.700 church, as a Christian church is a community. These marks, like love 16 00:01:23.859 --> 00:01:27.540 or practicing righteousness, are not just something that ought to be true of each 17 00:01:27.739 --> 00:01:34.769 person individually, but us together as the body of Christ. Right each member 18 00:01:34.969 --> 00:01:42.329 of that body, working together with Christ as our head. The body of 19 00:01:42.409 --> 00:01:48.519 Christ, even as the members of Christ, are ought to be marked by 20 00:01:49.599 --> 00:01:57.480 things like love, things like Light, truth, practicing righteousness. To help 21 00:01:57.519 --> 00:02:01.629 us understand that, John has also been showing us the opposite of those things. 22 00:02:02.109 --> 00:02:08.830 The church that he speaks to is experienced some division. People leaving the 23 00:02:08.949 --> 00:02:14.310 church who were from the church teaching things that were not in accord with the 24 00:02:14.469 --> 00:02:19.539 message that they had first received. They didn't line up with the doctrines that 25 00:02:19.620 --> 00:02:22.860 they had been taught, and indeed it wasn't just a doctrinal problem, it 26 00:02:23.020 --> 00:02:29.219 was an ethical one as well. At the beginning of Chapter Four, John 27 00:02:29.340 --> 00:02:34.129 tells us to not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, and he 28 00:02:34.210 --> 00:02:40.050 gives a theological test. How can we know who is speaking from God and 29 00:02:40.250 --> 00:02:46.120 who is not, he says of verse two. By this you know the 30 00:02:46.199 --> 00:02:53.039 spirit of God, every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, 31 00:02:53.439 --> 00:02:58.949 that spirit is from God. Well, this theological criteria to know what 32 00:02:59.150 --> 00:03:01.870 is from God and what is from not a continues in our verses here, 33 00:03:01.949 --> 00:03:07.389 in verses seven, eight, nine and ten. Here, though, it 34 00:03:07.629 --> 00:03:13.020 is a moral criteria and ethical criteria within other words, the things that we 35 00:03:13.539 --> 00:03:16.460 say matter, but of course also the things that we do, and John 36 00:03:16.539 --> 00:03:20.860 has said this. Remember, back in chapter three, little children, let 37 00:03:20.860 --> 00:03:23.740 us not in let us not love in word or talk. But indeed, 38 00:03:24.020 --> 00:03:29.930 and in truth, it doesn't mean we should not confess, that we should 39 00:03:30.009 --> 00:03:34.689 not say the things that are true about our savior, but it does mean 40 00:03:34.810 --> 00:03:38.650 that our lives and our words need to match up. They should match up. 41 00:03:38.689 --> 00:03:42.759 They would make sense for them to match up, and that's what John 42 00:03:42.879 --> 00:03:47.520 is talking about today. Now, whenever I sit down or stand up or 43 00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:52.400 walk around the neighborhood to write a sermon, whatever I'm doing, I will 44 00:03:52.479 --> 00:03:57.870 ask myself this question. I will try to think about what objections might come 45 00:03:57.949 --> 00:04:04.310 up. How my the sinful heart, want to doubt the text, twist 46 00:04:04.349 --> 00:04:09.069 it up or refuse it. And I did that, as I always do 47 00:04:09.229 --> 00:04:12.340 with this sermon as well. But when I read these words, when I 48 00:04:12.419 --> 00:04:15.180 read these these first words that we have beloved, let us love one another, 49 00:04:15.740 --> 00:04:20.420 my first thought was, how could anyone oppose that? Let us love 50 00:04:20.620 --> 00:04:28.009 one another right? Love is something that we all want. Love is something 51 00:04:28.089 --> 00:04:33.089 that we all demand and seek and we talk about it constantly. Right love 52 00:04:33.290 --> 00:04:39.839 one another. It doesn't sound very objectionable, right. Our movies, are 53 00:04:39.959 --> 00:04:45.759 songs, are poetry, it's all about love. Every month magazines come out 54 00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:48.000 and tell us how to get love, how to give love, how to 55 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:53.790 maintain love. If you go to the library, you will find a building 56 00:04:54.110 --> 00:05:00.149 full of songs and novels and and movies and all kinds of other things that 57 00:05:00.269 --> 00:05:05.750 really are all about love. Getting along, being patient, stories about Love, 58 00:05:06.029 --> 00:05:11.699 challenges to love, examples of love gone wrong, and so on and 59 00:05:12.180 --> 00:05:17.060 more and more and more. And even when we're not thinking about love directly, 60 00:05:18.100 --> 00:05:21.649 it's always just one turn away, right, it's just around the corner. 61 00:05:23.889 --> 00:05:28.569 Because, as Paul writes and famously and First Corinthians, love is manifested 62 00:05:28.730 --> 00:05:33.730 in a host of other ways. Then then maybe the simple ways we sometimes 63 00:05:33.769 --> 00:05:40.360 think about it. So he says. As in First Corinthians Thirteen, verse 64 00:05:40.399 --> 00:05:45.800 six, love is patient and kind. Love does not envy your boast. 65 00:05:46.680 --> 00:05:50.389 It is not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way, 66 00:05:51.829 --> 00:05:59.069 it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong doing, 67 00:05:59.709 --> 00:06:04.139 but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes, all 68 00:06:04.300 --> 00:06:09.779 things, hopes, all things, endures, all things beloved, you ought 69 00:06:09.779 --> 00:06:14.540 to love one another. Well, yeah, it sounds great, they're what 70 00:06:14.779 --> 00:06:18.649 objection could possibly be had to that? And then there's Jesus Right, who 71 00:06:18.689 --> 00:06:25.730 speaks in the gospels. When he's asked teacher what is the greatest commandment? 72 00:06:25.889 --> 00:06:29.649 In Matthew Twenty two, he says you shall love the Lord, your God 73 00:06:30.129 --> 00:06:32.480 with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, 74 00:06:32.600 --> 00:06:36.120 with all your strength, and the second is like it, you shall love 75 00:06:36.199 --> 00:06:43.040 your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, both which are about love, 76 00:06:43.600 --> 00:06:47.910 depend all the law and the prophets, in other words, everything that 77 00:06:48.029 --> 00:06:53.589 you could do, say, think, it all is grounded on this command 78 00:06:53.670 --> 00:06:59.509 to love in every action, everything that we think or do, our emotions 79 00:06:59.629 --> 00:07:03.579 are thoughts. They are either loving or they're not loving. You could think 80 00:07:03.620 --> 00:07:09.980 about it through the Ten Commandments, whether we are talking about our worship of 81 00:07:10.139 --> 00:07:15.009 God, sexual purity, telling the truth, being content, not stealing, 82 00:07:15.050 --> 00:07:20.410 any one of these. Ultimately, isn't it grounded in this command to love? 83 00:07:24.850 --> 00:07:27.009 So, as I say, when I first read let us love one 84 00:07:27.050 --> 00:07:31.000 another, my first thought, it didn't last very long of course, was 85 00:07:31.199 --> 00:07:35.079 who could object to that? But you all know that we do object to 86 00:07:35.120 --> 00:07:41.839 it and we object to it constantly. It's rarely denied as a maxim right 87 00:07:41.879 --> 00:07:45.750 or as a banner that you might hold up as a rally. Nobody's going 88 00:07:45.750 --> 00:07:48.550 to point to a sign that says you ought to love and say now that's 89 00:07:48.550 --> 00:07:53.670 not true, right. No one will say that in this sort of Broadway. 90 00:07:54.709 --> 00:07:59.740 But in all the particulars of our lives, aren't we constantly denying or 91 00:07:59.819 --> 00:08:03.500 at least sinning against this basic truth that we ought to love one another? 92 00:08:05.339 --> 00:08:09.939 Beloved, let us love one another. That sounds all nice and good until 93 00:08:09.980 --> 00:08:16.529 someone's mean to you kids. It's hard to love someone who's being mean, 94 00:08:18.490 --> 00:08:22.209 isn't it? The same is true for US adults. We have a hard 95 00:08:22.209 --> 00:08:28.079 time with it too. John tells us here that we ought to love one 96 00:08:28.120 --> 00:08:33.960 another, but this is hard when people at Church are weird. You're weird, 97 00:08:35.120 --> 00:08:39.519 I'm weird and we all know it, and we all know the experience 98 00:08:39.679 --> 00:08:43.190 of trying to talk to someone who's a little bit awkward, or maybe a 99 00:08:43.309 --> 00:08:52.710 lot awkward, or maybe rude or maybe it's hard to love people when they've 100 00:08:52.750 --> 00:08:56.340 heard us in the past and we think they might do it again. It's 101 00:08:56.379 --> 00:09:01.259 hard to love people when we think badly about them, or even when we 102 00:09:01.100 --> 00:09:05.820 know about their good things, it's hard to love them because of jealousy and 103 00:09:07.019 --> 00:09:11.929 bitterness. We say things in our minds like their families so perfect, she's 104 00:09:13.009 --> 00:09:16.929 so beautiful, he makes so much money. How can they have so much 105 00:09:16.929 --> 00:09:22.210 time? If we can't even love our brothers and sisters for the good things 106 00:09:22.289 --> 00:09:26.120 that they have and do, at least along the surface, how much harder 107 00:09:26.159 --> 00:09:30.759 it is to love them for the difficult things they are and the challenges they 108 00:09:30.840 --> 00:09:35.000 present to us? Brothers and sisters, you ought to love one another. 109 00:09:35.799 --> 00:09:43.590 Easy to say, hard to do, and I will even dare to remind 110 00:09:43.629 --> 00:09:48.029 us all of the fact that in other places, our savior goes even further 111 00:09:48.269 --> 00:09:56.419 and tells us we ought to love our enemies, people who do not deserve 112 00:09:56.500 --> 00:10:03.659 our love. Rotten people, cruel people, stealing, people murdering people, 113 00:10:03.700 --> 00:10:09.049 people who themselves are not loving, people who are angry and impatient, people 114 00:10:09.090 --> 00:10:16.169 who destroy relationships and communities, people who are fools and wasters of time and 115 00:10:16.610 --> 00:10:26.919 talent and money. Love your enemies. That's a hard one. So who's 116 00:10:26.960 --> 00:10:31.480 going to argue with let us love one another. I guess all of us, 117 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:37.190 me included, despite our knowledge of its importance, of its centrality, 118 00:10:37.350 --> 00:10:43.789 of its goodness, despite our wantful of it for ourselves, despite the ways 119 00:10:43.909 --> 00:10:48.230 that we demanded of others, something inside of us makes it very, very 120 00:10:48.549 --> 00:11:01.580 difficult to love one another. Why? Why is it so hard to do 121 00:11:01.940 --> 00:11:05.250 something good, to do something that we all know we want to do, 122 00:11:05.370 --> 00:11:11.570 and when we experience it right, it's a wonderful thing, it's a lovely 123 00:11:11.769 --> 00:11:16.809 thing, a beautiful thing. Well, there's lots of ways to answer this 124 00:11:16.929 --> 00:11:20.639 question, but I'm going to give you the simplest one. We're broken. 125 00:11:20.679 --> 00:11:28.360 If, this morning, your alarm clock didn't go off and you woke up 126 00:11:28.559 --> 00:11:33.350 somehow and you looked over at the clock and you see the hands, you're 127 00:11:33.389 --> 00:11:37.750 frozen. It ten, ten or something. What would you say? What 128 00:11:37.830 --> 00:11:41.549 would you do? Well, you would know that it's not working. It's 129 00:11:41.549 --> 00:11:43.870 a clock, all right. It was designed to be a clock. It 130 00:11:43.990 --> 00:11:48.740 was designed to wake you up. You set it properly. Let's say. 131 00:11:48.340 --> 00:11:56.500 Everything's there, has a dial and hands and but it's not working. It 132 00:11:56.700 --> 00:12:01.769 was designed to do a certain purpose, but it's broken. Maybe the switch 133 00:12:01.929 --> 00:12:05.289 is turned off, maybe the battery is dead, the gears are grinding, 134 00:12:05.649 --> 00:12:09.490 who knows? Something is wrong, something internal is not working, that has 135 00:12:09.570 --> 00:12:15.840 now manifested itself in this external way. It has not loved you by waking 136 00:12:15.879 --> 00:12:22.440 you up. Okay, the same thing is happening with us. Why don't 137 00:12:22.480 --> 00:12:26.399 I love? Why don't I do the things I know I ought to do? 138 00:12:26.720 --> 00:12:35.389 Because you're broken. We're all broken. Something's wrong inside, something inter 139 00:12:35.629 --> 00:12:41.830 internal is not right, like the alarm clock. When God made humanity, 140 00:12:41.870 --> 00:12:48.059 he designed it for a particular purpose. He made us humans good, even 141 00:12:48.299 --> 00:12:52.179 very good, it says in Genesis, intricately, wonderfully Beau, beautifully, 142 00:12:52.340 --> 00:13:01.009 perfectly designed for this task of loving him and loving others. He put US 143 00:13:01.090 --> 00:13:07.289 humanity that is, in this beautiful garden, a husband and a wife, 144 00:13:07.730 --> 00:13:15.200 meant to be together even as one flesh, this unity of love, and 145 00:13:15.399 --> 00:13:20.159 not only with themselves, but shining forth, bearing forth the image of God 146 00:13:20.360 --> 00:13:26.350 himself, a Union of love between the persons of the Trinity. You, 147 00:13:26.629 --> 00:13:31.470 having and now, having made this creature and these creatures in his image, 148 00:13:31.830 --> 00:13:39.190 he abides with them, he lives and dwells with them in this beautiful temple 149 00:13:39.389 --> 00:13:48.700 garden filled with love. But when our first parents fell into sin, when 150 00:13:48.820 --> 00:13:58.049 eve looked longingly and lovingly at the fruit that she was forbidden. She turned 151 00:13:58.250 --> 00:14:01.250 her love away from the thing where it ought, on the one on whom 152 00:14:01.330 --> 00:14:05.809 it ought had to have been placed, on God, to the thing that 153 00:14:05.929 --> 00:14:13.240 he had forbidden, and she failed to love in that way. When she 154 00:14:13.480 --> 00:14:18.240 turned her ear away from Theo, her lord and turned it towards the S 155 00:14:18.600 --> 00:14:22.639 Rpent, she failed to love as she ought and she loved in a sense, 156 00:14:22.759 --> 00:14:28.509 but loved sinfully, loved an evil thing. And when Adam failed to 157 00:14:28.629 --> 00:14:33.309 protect the garden, to protect his wife from this evil one, when he 158 00:14:33.389 --> 00:14:37.429 failed to warn her, when he failed to listen to the promise of the 159 00:14:37.549 --> 00:14:41.139 Lord, when he failed to obey the command of the Lord, He fell 160 00:14:41.340 --> 00:14:46.779 to he likewise did not love her, did not love the Lord. And 161 00:14:46.340 --> 00:14:52.139 both of them took the love that had been intended for one another and for 162 00:14:52.500 --> 00:15:00.049 their relationship with God and instead they destroyed it all. They took this love 163 00:15:00.409 --> 00:15:05.570 that had been given to them and they redirected it toward evil and the evil 164 00:15:05.649 --> 00:15:13.000 one and evil things and the lusts and desires of sin. The thing was 165 00:15:13.159 --> 00:15:16.639 is that this action that they took was not there as a lone. God 166 00:15:16.960 --> 00:15:22.629 made them, he made humanity in this way and that in which they were 167 00:15:24.110 --> 00:15:31.549 representatives for us, human beings, as one of God's creatures. They were 168 00:15:31.950 --> 00:15:35.980 put under a test. Humanity as a whole was put under a test and 169 00:15:37.379 --> 00:15:43.220 we failed. You could think about it this way. Our Great King and 170 00:15:43.419 --> 00:15:48.340 Queen, Adam and Eve, our mother and our father, lost the war 171 00:15:48.620 --> 00:15:54.450 with sin. And what happens when the king and Queen Lose The war? 172 00:15:54.889 --> 00:16:02.889 The whole country goes with them. It's similar. And the consequences that we 173 00:16:03.169 --> 00:16:07.440 all came under the slavery, in the bondage of sin. What broke in 174 00:16:07.600 --> 00:16:12.320 our mother and father has extended down the line and we are all born in 175 00:16:12.559 --> 00:16:22.350 this brokenness. In them we ascend. In them we fell, and now 176 00:16:22.509 --> 00:16:26.669 we have this brokenness, this perversion to love things that we ought not to 177 00:16:26.909 --> 00:16:32.899 love, to not love the things that we ought to love. On top 178 00:16:32.940 --> 00:16:37.059 of that, we have guilt love concerning all of this consequences the wrath of 179 00:16:37.179 --> 00:16:45.259 God. As sinners, undeserving of his love as people, as a people, 180 00:16:45.299 --> 00:16:49.009 as a part of his creation, we are broken. That's why we 181 00:16:49.129 --> 00:17:00.009 don't love, that's why it's hard. John here in our passage, however, 182 00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:07.960 tells us how it is that we are fixed. If we use a 183 00:17:08.039 --> 00:17:17.109 mechanical term, or healed and made whole, to use a more organic or 184 00:17:17.390 --> 00:17:26.829 biological term. We are restored, redeemed, forgiven. If we talk about 185 00:17:26.869 --> 00:17:33.660 it in terms of justice, John tells us how we can be fixed, 186 00:17:33.779 --> 00:17:38.500 how guilt can be removed, how judgment can be removed, how are broken 187 00:17:38.579 --> 00:17:45.690 human natures can be changed. And it happens this way when we are reborn, 188 00:17:48.210 --> 00:17:56.170 not from broken humanity, but from God. Notice what he says. 189 00:17:57.569 --> 00:18:00.759 He says, let us love one another, for love is from God. 190 00:18:02.039 --> 00:18:08.240 Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. You see, he's 191 00:18:08.279 --> 00:18:14.069 talking to Christians and he says the love that you have, this divine love 192 00:18:14.349 --> 00:18:18.750 that you are experiencing now, is has happened because of something prior to it, 193 00:18:19.869 --> 00:18:26.029 because you have been born of God. God doesn't cause us to be 194 00:18:26.109 --> 00:18:29.900 born again because we finally act in a loving way. And then he sort 195 00:18:29.940 --> 00:18:32.980 of says, okay, now I'll do this thing. No at is, 196 00:18:33.099 --> 00:18:37.619 it says we are first born of him. He does this work of grace, 197 00:18:37.819 --> 00:18:42.970 this miraculous thing in us, and then we are changed like the alarm 198 00:18:44.089 --> 00:18:49.170 clock. Now we work right because something internal has happened. Or if you 199 00:18:49.250 --> 00:18:55.130 continue down, this is confirmed yet again. When it says, when it 200 00:18:55.289 --> 00:18:59.839 says in this is love, not that we have loved God, but that 201 00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:07.160 he loved us. This is both the reason why we now love and the 202 00:19:07.559 --> 00:19:11.269 and the chief example of love. Here's how you know it, here's how 203 00:19:11.390 --> 00:19:21.589 it's defined, by God sacrificing himself to be the propitiation of our sins. 204 00:19:21.710 --> 00:19:26.579 To turn away his wrath, he gave up his own life. You want 205 00:19:26.579 --> 00:19:30.380 to know what love looks like? That's what love is. You want to 206 00:19:30.420 --> 00:19:36.460 know how you can love? That's how. You must be born of God, 207 00:19:37.740 --> 00:19:41.849 because to be born of the brokenness, to be sent to to to 208 00:19:41.009 --> 00:19:45.569 be a broken thing. Coming out of a broken thing will only result and 209 00:19:45.609 --> 00:19:51.049 more broken things. Something has to change at the beginning, something has to 210 00:19:52.049 --> 00:19:56.359 be different, and that's what he does. He causes us to be born 211 00:19:57.400 --> 00:20:04.039 of God. It's not that we love and God says, okay, good 212 00:20:04.119 --> 00:20:11.190 job, but he loves us. Now, before I move to wrap things 213 00:20:11.269 --> 00:20:15.109 up, I want to make sure that we understand these three words. God 214 00:20:15.470 --> 00:20:21.309 is love. God is love. What does this mean? You find it 215 00:20:21.390 --> 00:20:26.140 in verse eight. Anyone who does not know God, or sorry, anyone 216 00:20:26.180 --> 00:20:30.339 who does not love, does not know God, because God is love. 217 00:20:32.420 --> 00:20:36.130 These three little words are some of the most famous words and all the Bible 218 00:20:36.450 --> 00:20:40.970 and also some of the most famously misunderstood words in the Bible, and it's 219 00:20:41.049 --> 00:20:45.210 very important that you understand them because this is the reason that he's giving. 220 00:20:45.250 --> 00:20:52.559 He's grounding this exhortation to love and these doctrines about love and his loving actions 221 00:20:52.720 --> 00:20:57.599 in these words. God is love. So what do they mean? The 222 00:20:57.720 --> 00:21:04.910 first thing they we need to know is that it's it has to do with 223 00:21:06.910 --> 00:21:12.869 who God is in his Authority as God. This would be a better way 224 00:21:12.869 --> 00:21:18.940 to put it. We don't define what love is and then impute that to 225 00:21:18.099 --> 00:21:25.299 God. God defines what loves is, love is and then spreads that to 226 00:21:25.500 --> 00:21:30.299 us. Even the imputes it to us. Or think of it this way. 227 00:21:30.539 --> 00:21:33.930 Some people, when they think of love, they think that these this 228 00:21:33.049 --> 00:21:37.009 term God is love is like a blank check to allow them to do whatever 229 00:21:37.049 --> 00:21:41.609 they want. So, for example, they they are cruel to you and 230 00:21:41.690 --> 00:21:45.569 you say that's cruel and they say, hey, why aren't you loving? 231 00:21:47.160 --> 00:21:49.440 God is love. You're a Christian, you should know that. Right, 232 00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:53.440 I can do whatever I want. Why? Because God is love. Now, 233 00:21:53.720 --> 00:21:56.559 hopefully that sort of on the surface doesn't make any sense. To you, 234 00:21:57.400 --> 00:22:00.079 but we hear it a lot and nothing could be further from the truth. 235 00:22:00.279 --> 00:22:04.190 Love is not doing whatever you want. The fact that God is love 236 00:22:04.349 --> 00:22:11.190 does not give us license to do whatever we want. No, love is 237 00:22:11.309 --> 00:22:18.420 doing whatever God, whatever God, wants, and we've already heard some definitions 238 00:22:18.460 --> 00:22:19.819 of that. Love is patient, love is kind, and so on and 239 00:22:19.900 --> 00:22:25.900 so forth. Similarly, some people think that because it says God is love, 240 00:22:26.059 --> 00:22:33.130 that that means love is God. But no, as one commentator put 241 00:22:33.130 --> 00:22:37.690 it, that would to be quote, to replace a living and personal and 242 00:22:37.730 --> 00:22:45.359 active God with an intellectual, ethical, volitional or emotional abstraction. And this 243 00:22:45.400 --> 00:22:51.799 is the last thing the language of first John gives us, or the graphic 244 00:22:51.960 --> 00:22:57.160 portrayal of God incarn it in the Gospel's permits. The other words, love 245 00:22:57.519 --> 00:23:03.789 isn't God, any more than wisdom is God or beauty is God, or 246 00:23:03.829 --> 00:23:08.990 any more than hatred as the devil. Love defe is defined and shines forth 247 00:23:10.509 --> 00:23:17.900 from a living, personal and active God. This is very critical. This 248 00:23:18.099 --> 00:23:22.539 happens, for example, if your computer, or another mechanical example. Sorry, 249 00:23:22.779 --> 00:23:27.650 if your computer breaks, you don't take it to cleverness to have it 250 00:23:27.769 --> 00:23:36.250 fixed right. You don't take it to and a sort of abstract concept and 251 00:23:36.410 --> 00:23:41.089 say I don't know, I won't start up here. You Go, cleverness 252 00:23:41.400 --> 00:23:45.680 right. You take it to a clever repair man or woman. You say, 253 00:23:45.799 --> 00:23:52.720 are my computers broken? Will you, you active, thinking, knowledgeable 254 00:23:53.160 --> 00:23:59.509 person, please fix my computer. You can see why this makes a big 255 00:23:59.509 --> 00:24:03.829 difference. For the brokenness that's inside of us. We can't go to love 256 00:24:06.430 --> 00:24:14.019 as an abstract or emotional concept, or or even a feeling. We must 257 00:24:14.059 --> 00:24:18.779 go to God, who is love. God is Love, Love, love 258 00:24:18.980 --> 00:24:27.609 isn't God. To push love into an abstraction away from God denies you knowledge 259 00:24:27.690 --> 00:24:32.730 of God. It takes you away from being born of God, which John 260 00:24:32.849 --> 00:24:38.279 says is necessary in order to love as we ought to. If we push 261 00:24:38.559 --> 00:24:45.039 love into an abstraction away from God, it doesn't fix the problem. And 262 00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:48.720 you want to know how concrete this is, how physical this is, how 263 00:24:49.240 --> 00:24:56.269 personal this is, how living and active God is, all you have to 264 00:24:56.349 --> 00:25:03.710 do is read verse nine. In this the love of God was made manifest 265 00:25:03.750 --> 00:25:11.220 among us right we could see it. He showed it to us that God 266 00:25:12.420 --> 00:25:22.210 sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. 267 00:25:22.250 --> 00:25:29.289 Jesus, hanging there on a cross with blood coming down his head, from 268 00:25:29.289 --> 00:25:33.130 a crown of thorns that were there, a spear plunged into his side, 269 00:25:33.490 --> 00:25:38.839 all of it very very real, very very physical and very very loving. 270 00:25:41.480 --> 00:25:47.400 It's there, in taking on sinful flesh, taking on our sin and on 271 00:25:47.759 --> 00:25:55.430 and our unrighteousness, that God check. But God changed us. Just as 272 00:25:55.589 --> 00:26:00.950 we fell in Adam and eve, so we have been raised in Christ. 273 00:26:02.589 --> 00:26:10.380 Our King has one and he has won the battle in love. This is 274 00:26:10.460 --> 00:26:15.700 why, when Christians talk about love, we're always talking about Jesus. It's 275 00:26:15.819 --> 00:26:22.890 said that all you need is love, that love is life itself, and 276 00:26:23.089 --> 00:26:27.089 in a way this is true, as long as it's connected to him. 277 00:26:29.490 --> 00:26:33.160 Apart from the forgiveness of his sins, apart from a change that's made in 278 00:26:33.240 --> 00:26:41.079 us by his spirit, apart from these things, broken love, disconnected from 279 00:26:41.119 --> 00:26:47.950 Christ has no benefit to us. It only comes to us as yet another 280 00:26:48.109 --> 00:26:52.390 command that we can't fulfill, another thing that we don't want to do. 281 00:26:52.630 --> 00:26:56.390 But in Christ, when the change has happened, when we have been born 282 00:26:56.829 --> 00:27:03.660 again, born of God, brought forth in the love of God, something 283 00:27:03.819 --> 00:27:11.579 new happens, as he says that we might not just love in him, 284 00:27:11.460 --> 00:27:19.049 but live in him and through him. Apart from God's will and his loving 285 00:27:19.210 --> 00:27:23.490 action. In Jesus, love is a shell into which we sort of jam 286 00:27:23.690 --> 00:27:30.640 whatever we want, but in him it has the power to change us, 287 00:27:32.880 --> 00:27:42.119 to save us. You need to trust in Jesus if we want to be 288 00:27:42.400 --> 00:27:48.950 a church that loves one another, if you want to know God, who 289 00:27:48.190 --> 00:27:56.069 loves and is Love, if you want to be a person and the people 290 00:27:56.230 --> 00:28:00.859 that he has designed us to be. There's only one way, and it 291 00:28:02.019 --> 00:28:07.059 is through Jesus, who's given himself in love to make us that, to 292 00:28:07.339 --> 00:28:15.490 save us from ourselves and to bring us into, one day, a glorified 293 00:28:15.849 --> 00:28:22.609 community of love where love will be the easiest thing in the world. It 294 00:28:22.690 --> 00:28:27.200 won't be second nature, it will be your only nature and it will be 295 00:28:27.319 --> 00:28:33.240 forever. That's what we have in him, so trust in him. Let's 296 00:28:33.279 --> 00:28:34.240 pray in his name.