Sermon: The Family Virtue

Did you take a copy of God's word this morning? We'll turn open to the book of First John as we continue our way through that book. If you wanna use a Pew Bible, which is right in front of you, you can turn right to page 10 23 in the Pew Bible 10 23

This morning. We're looking at first John chapter four, verse seven through 21 this morning, John chapter four, verse seven through 21.

And let's pray before we open God's word together.

Father, we come before you this morning and we ask for your help. We're thankful that you have promised to give it as the word is read and as it is proclaimed, we're thankful that you and the sons and the spirit into the world to

press and impress this word upon our hearts and our minds and our souls. And we pray even this morning that there would be a stirring of your spirit in our midst and in our very persons, and that you would receive the glory and the honor and the praise and we pray all us and the strong name of Jesus. Amen. This morning, first John chapter four, verses seven through 21. This is the holy er, sufficient word of God. 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 and to the world so that we might live through him. And 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. 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 and us because he has given us of his spirit and we have seen and testify that the Father is sent a son to be the Savior of the world, whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and He and God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

God is love and to whoever abides in love, abides in God and God abides in him by this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as he is, so also are we in this world? There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not been perfected in love, we love because he first loved us. If anyone says I love God

and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen in this commandment we have from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. So the grass withers and the flower fades, the word of God is forever. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hobby, this is a longer passage and there is an awful lot that is in this passage and we are not going to cover all of it today. I'm actually going to do something that's a a little different from what is normative, uh, as a preacher on Sunday mornings. I simply want to provide a a little bit of the, the theological overview of this passage and pull out the doctrine that John is walking us through here and the main doctrinal emphasis

that he is bringing to bear upon us as we read this passage. This is a great passage. It's one of those texts that you would do well to read often and to think through often and uh, search your own heart often with and meditate upon and even maybe even memorize this passage. But the thesis of this passage is in the opening exhortation and it's that where he says, let us love one another. And then there's a kind of bookend to this passage,

the very last verse in verse 21, whoever loves God must also love his brother. Now this is not a foreign idea In the book of First John, as we've been going through it, you've seen him already talk about this. But now as he gets here to the middle of chapter four, he's zeroing in on this and he's going to make this his infinite, his emphasis in this text. But I want you to note how he begins. He includes himself. It's easy to point at others

and say, oh, I wish that they were more loving to me, to others, not how John begins. No, the onus is on self. He says, let us ex love one another. The first question you have to ask is, who are the others? The one another? Well, they are fellow Christians. He begins our passage by calling them the beloved. This is a name for the covenant people of God. He's speaking of the beloved, those who claim the name of Christ because they possess the person of Christ,

the love of Christ Christians brothers. And that's made all the more clear as we go through the rest of this passage. He gives the cause for why they should quote love one another. He says verse seven, for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. And then in verse eight, he gives a negation the negative. Anyone who does not love conclusion, if you don't love that person does not know God,

how does he get to that conclusion? Well, verse eight and again, verse 16, because God is love. There are two different types of people. Those who love. The brothers know God. Those who do not love. The brothers and sisters do not know God. Why? Because love is from God. Because God is love.

The greatest evidence of your faith in Christ is your love for the people of Christ.

So let's try and make sense of this. Let's start at the beginning of John's thought process three points this morning. First, know that God is love. Know that God is love. Second because God is love, love is from God. And then third, because God is love

and we are of God we love,

it's my way of trying to summarize the, the whole passage. So first, know that God is love. Now, this is something that you and I may start to take for granted. The even this idea that you and I can know God, but this isn't something that you are to take for granted. It shouldn't be lost on you that you have the ability to know God. Martin Luther, the great reformer, used to always talk about the hidden God. He's the hidden God and he gets that biblically.

So an example would be Isaiah Chapter 45. Truly you are a God who hides himself, oh God of Israel, the Savior. God is hidden in that He is not fully knowable. Mystery always remains when we consider and when you and I speak about God, why? Because we are finite and he is infinite and we cannot in and of ourselves grasp what he is and who he is completely. He's transcendent. His glory is beyond.

There's a gulf between the creator and the creation and and that depth of his, his majesty and his and his otherness. It can't be reached by mere human creatures, by mere human thought. If you and I could somehow capture the infinite with our finite minds, then he's controllable. He's manageable. Its God declares Isaiah 55 for my thoughts or not your thoughts. Neither are your ways. My ways declares the Lord for as the heavens are higher than the earth.

So my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. But there's an even greater fundamental barrier than our finitude. There's true inability to know him, and that's due to our fallenness. We can't know him. But it's not just that we can't know him, we, we don't want to know him in and of ourselves, return from him and our sin. All we like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned his own way. As one theologian said, God's absence is not a matter

of distance, intellectual or otherwise, but a matter of re relational estrangement. The problem is not epistemological. That is knowledge based but ethical or soteriological that is morally salvation wise.

We haven't fallen out of remembrance so much as we have fallen out of favor. That there's a cloud, there's a darkness that there's a shroud.

The hidden God, Martin Luther. What Austin talk about is, is also amazingly the God who reveals himself hidden God is the revealed God.

He takes initiative and he makes himself known and he makes himself known as John says, as the one who is loved. God is love.

So let's explore that. God is love. What? What does that mean? That means that God is marked by the attribute of love. But but even when we say that, it can be very confusing because we think, oh, that you know that you have God. And then he takes these different attributes, whether it's his love or holiness or goodness or righteousness, and he kind of puts them on as garments on on his person, if you will. But it's not that God is love,

he he, he's indistinguishable from his attributes. And theologians will say that he is a simple being, not simplistic but simple in that he is one. And so you could speak about the fact that his holiness, if we took that as an attribute, you and I trying to wrap our minds around that, that he's holy. Well, it's true. He's holy. But that holiness is always a loving holiness. It's always a good holiness. It's also always a just holiness and his love.

It's always holy and it's always good, and it's always just God is love. He he, he is his attributes as much as the attributes are him. And John says that He is love.

He's love. And maybe the way to speak about it best is that in the Trinity, this, this one Godhead, there's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these three persons, and the father has always loved the son, and the son has always loved the Father.

He's love, which leads to our second point.

God is love. So love John says is from God. He, he moves towards us in love. Love is from God. That's what he says. Verse seven, what does that mean? Well, John gives us the answer in verse nine. I'm following, the love of God was made manifest among us. Love comes from God. It's not caused by us, it's not cajoled by us. It's not s solicited by us. It's the overflow. It's the, it's the, the outward extending the springing forth of that love

that already exists between the persons of the Godhead but aimed at us.

So when John says in his gospel, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son this, this is the flow of his goodness to his creatures, what we call love.

But it is as Calvin once commented, the love that you and I receive, the love which is received by us is that which is due to the only begotten son. It's the overflow of that love.

So when we begin to look at the love of God and you say, well, God is love here, what does that, what does that mean? That that that God is love? Well, it's tied up with, with his very essence, with his very being. And you and I become the recipients of that love as it overflows and as his, his goodness is pointed at us and there's a lot of confusion. I think when we see that God loves in the scriptures, what does that mean?

That he loves, and and I don't tend to do this with you, but I want to give you some theological categories, big words because I think it's incredibly helpful when we get to this doctrine here with love. So there's a, a threefold division of understanding historically God's love or his goodness that he shows to his people. First, there is the love of God for his creation, what we call the, the love of benevolence. That is his, his goodwill towards the creatures

that he has created. He has a general kindness, a general kind will towards his creation, a general compassion towards creation. There's no malice in him. There's no maliciousness.

He desires that none should perish. That's that's benevolence or God so loved the world. That's a love of benevolence

speaks of his goodwill. Second, there is the love that God demonstrates generally for his people, his love of what we call beneficence and, and whereas the love of benevolence is his general will, his his aptitude to good, to kindness, to to compassion the willing of it. This, this, this love of beneficence is his actual demonstration of it. It's his action to do the good. For example, God makes it to reign upon the just and the unjust.

That's love. The fact that he will give food to our daily bread, to both those who are his people and those who are not his people. That's beneficence. It's universal. We talk about these two loves benevolence, his goodwill towards creatures and creation and his beneficence, his his demonstration of that. We, we could speak about that in a universal sense. It is true of all mankind. So in a very real sense, you can say,

if you ask the question, does God love everyone? The answer is yes. He loves everybody in the sense of love of benevolence and love of beneficence. But the third is what John has in mind in our passage, and it is what we call God's love of complacency. That's a little confusing because when you and I hear complacent today, we think of somebody that's lazy or we think of someone that's slothful and but the old meaning of that word was, was

that there was delight, there was contentment as someone said when they walked out, the first service said, oh, that helps me so much. When the father says of the son when he was baptized, uh, and um, uh, this is my son and whom I take good pleasure, he said, that always confused me. That that makes sense. Yeah, that there's a delight. Delight, a love of complacency. It is that love that he has for his son and it's that love that becomes ours in the sun

and it is only those who are in Christ to enjoy this love of complacency, his, his delight and that he delights to see them grow in Christ, to mature in Christ and be conformed to the image of Christ and be heirs with Christ.

This is why you get to like Romans nine and Paul will quote from the Old Testament scriptures and why you can have a passage, sisters, Jacob, I love to be the Esau I hated. He said, what? How can you hate Esau? He he's created in your image. Well, we're talking about the love of complacency. Jacob, I love Esau. I hated are these different levels of love? No, not in one sense because his love doesn't increase and it doesn't diminish.

He he is love as John says, but the effect of that love as Turin hopefully summarizes is unequal because some effects of love are greater than others. There are thus degrees of his love. He is love and that love his goodness towards his creation is poured out, but the effects of that are different.

John here is focused upon the love of complacency that flows from God through the sun to us. So he says in verse nine, it that love was made manifest among us in that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him in this is love. How do you know this love of God? This love of complacency? How do you know love? Well, he manifested it. John says he, he showed it how in the most demonstrable possible way God

sent God. God the Father who is always loved God the son, God the Son who is always loved the Father. The Father sends the son into the world. He adorns himself with flesh so that he suffers along mankind. He lives a perfectly righteous life so that then he suffers upon the cross and he dies burying the very wrath of his father who has always loved him so that he might be buried and raised on the third day so that we might receive that love of the Father in him.

How do you know this love of God? That God is love. It's the most demonstrative possible way that he could show us to those who did not know him and didn't even want to know him. He shows us love

verse 10, in, 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 of God so loved us, but we could not do what we did not even want.

He tell us an overflow of his love.

I think, um, I know he is the most demonstrative love because of who was sent and what was given, but you, you think of who it was given for. You and I are rebels, we're sinners. We, we have done everything we can to to hate God. We're born into this world that very way, and then we just live in such a manner and we have all the weight of our sin upon us and all the weight of that guilt of our sin upon us and the very anger of God is aimed at us

and the very wrath of God is aimed at us

and he comes, the sun comes sent by the father of love

so that you don't bear that sin or that guilt, so you don't bear that judgment. Couldn't be more demonstrable though

at verse 10, he, he makes it clear that he loved us and sent a son to not only be an expiation for our sins, we often talk about that, but also I think it's right here to translate that as a propitiation for sin. This exp expiration just removes the sin, it covers it over. But it wasn't just that, that you needed you, you have to understand that the anger of God was aimed at you and that anger had to be propitiated. It had to be satisfied.

And so the very anger of God by the death of the Son of God propitiate, it satisfies the anger of God.

He did this in love. It was again, Christ didn't die to make God love us. God is love and he sent his son in love and in love. He perpetuates his own right. Holy wrath filled anger at sin by shutting the blood and taking the life of his very son. And the son willingly bears that wrath in love and the Father and the Son sin the spirit, that agent of love into the world. As John goes on and this pastor speak about to take up residence in us to apply the very love

of the Father through the son to us

as a God of love.

It's a son of love. I love how Thomas Goodwin will speak about at the, he said, if there were infinite worlds made up of infinite creatures with infinite love, it would not match the love that was in the heart of that one man, Christ Jesus,

God is love, which takes us to our third point and back to the beginning thesis. Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God, therefore because God is love

and we are of God we love, it's the family virtue. It's what's de mark you. As one New Testament scholar said, A person cannot come into a relationship with a loving God, without being transformed into a loving person. And in John's mind, the love of God has been poured out upon us and God the Son, and applied by the Holy Spirit so that we are so welled up by this love that we are transformed by this love and then it splashes over the borders

of our lives into the lives of those around us. If you've been loved, you can't help but love.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love. That's what he says. It's interesting where he goes, at least to me. I think if I was going to finish that sentence, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love and I would say, well, we also ought to love God. That's not where John goes, he, he goes, if we are so loved, then we are to love one another. Well, why John? Well, he gives us the reason in verse 20.

If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has not or has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen, what he is saying is this, your brothers and sisters in Christ are before your face. It's awfully easy to say, well, I love God. That's easy. It's quite another to love those that are right before your face because it takes action.

It takes demonstration like that, that love of beneficence, and we are to demonstrate it by delighting in those around us. You know God, who is love. So love your brothers and sisters in God

told you this before, but it's I think worth repeating. Uh, when I went to college, I was a devout atheist and some Christians invited me to a fellowship and I went to their fellowship one night and uh, and walking into that fellowship of a hundred or so college students, I remember three distinct thoughts looked around the room, and one, I was surprised by how many people my age were happy to be at church. That that blows every category in my mind, this many people,

one, two, that they're happy to be here. It's strange. The third though is what bowled me over, and that was going around the room and I was putting people in categories. There's some geeks, there's some jocks, some outcasts there, and I was just watching them mix with each other and talk with each other. It was a palpable love that was in the room. And I thought, those people are weird and I'm curious why they're so weird.

And I had to keep going back to find out why they were so weird.

Jesus said, they will know you

by your love for one another

to closing thoughts on this family virtue. First, let love be what marks you as an individual. Let love be what marks you as an individual love.

It's the family virtue. Now, this is what I wonder. I wonder, do you think about love as a discipline

that it's something you are to pursue, that it's something you're to grow in, that you're to labor at, that you're seeking to be more mature in takes effort. John Newton once commented, rightfully, he said, obedience is the best test of sincerity. Feelings are various transient and often deceitful, and that's true, true love for others will be demonstrated. You will show it. You will give your lives in service of one another.

You will seek to humbly and quietly serve one another. You'll refrain from gossip and slander and ridicule and hatred, and you will replace it with encouragement and hope and refreshing the souls of the saints, as Paul said about Philemon, not insisting upon your own way, but living in patience and living in goodness and living in grace and living in gratitude and living in kindness. Those are not easily counterfeited

and they're not easily faked, or at least not for a long period of time.

It's not easy, especially in the midst of the body of Christ. It's tried, tried, it gets tested. Always easy to love the brothers and sisters. Uh, John Newton was thinking upon this and thinking about his own pursuit of loving others and his minister to me well over 20 years now through his letters, along lines like this, and I want to give you a quote of what he talked about, his own pursuit of love. He said, I well know that the little measure

of knowledge I have obtained in the things of God has not been owing to my own wisdom and docility to his goodness, nor did I get it all at once. He's been pleased to exercise much patience and long suffering towards me for about 27 years passed since he first gave me a desire of learning from himself. He has graciously accommodated himself to my weakness, born with my mistakes, and help me through innumerable prejudices, which,

but for his mercy would've been inseparable, hindrances. And then he says this, I have therefore no right to be angry, impatient, or censorious, especially as I have still much to learn and am so poorly influenced by what I seem to know.

That's a good mindset. That's a good way to think. I am what I am, only by grace of Christ, the love and goodness of God poured out upon me in Christ.

If there's anything good is grace. And he is so very patient with me, so very long suffering with me. So very kind with me. I am recipient of that love

and even what I know, I don't always live as I even know what I know. He continues to love me

and that shapes your mind towards others.

I can be patient with him. I can be kind towards her. I can be gracious with him.

Let love be what marks you as an individual. Second, let love be what marks us as a whole as a congregation.

I've said this to you probably for the past number of years, probably since, uh, COVID days. Uh, but I truly think the great apologetic of our age is going to be love and is love.

It used to be people would walk into a church and they came with questions and they wanted their, their, their, their thoughts. They, they wanted answers to their questions. They, they wanted rational arguments and, and that would somehow open the door. There. There are other generations that they would come through the doors of a church because they wanted to train their, their children, their children in morality, and they wanted them in a context

where they felt like morals were being taught. But you realize that's not, that's not why people will walk in these doors. Now. They don't think you're moral. In fact, they think you're bigots your haters.

But when they walk in those doors or we invite them in those doors or we reach out to our neighbors or they come over when we're having other people in the church over and we invite some of our neighbors over to introduce them, what we want them to encounter is this very strange thing that happens in this and only this.

It's a love unlike any other in a world that is so disparate and that is in constant contention with each other. You walk in these doors and you realize as you walk into this room, there are people from different socioeconomic classes, from different ethnicities, speaking different languages with different backgrounds, different stages of life, different political views, different philosophical views, and they're all together

and they seem to love one another because they have Christ the most important thing in common.

We want when they walk through those doors to find that they can't leave these doors without saying Those are weird people.

They love like nothing I've seen before.

We love because he first loved dos. We've come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. And this is love that we have loved God, but that he loved us and his son to be a propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God's so loved dos, we also ought to love one another.

Pray.

Father, we are thankful that this

love has been poured out upon us, and that is the love that keeps us into the very end, that you are love and that we are a people transformed by your love. And we pray that more and more it would be manifest in our persons and manifest in our relationships with one another that we would truly love one another even as we have been loved and we pray all of this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.