1 John 4:7-21 Always Choose The Real Thing

1 John 4:7-21 Always Choose The Real Thing

The same energy that set Cain against Abel makes brothers and sisters quarrel, for the same reason that corporations quarrel , and fellow workers cause each other pain– they seek power over one another.

Our schools and our institutions are conditioned and shaped by our obsession with power; displaying an epistemology of control and subjugation. When knowledge is itself substantively defined by the preoccupation with power, the obsession with power and control which motivates it propagates a culture of selfishness.  The price we pay for this measure of control is alienation, dehumanisation, depersonalization. Within our culture there is a preoccupation of the idea that knowledge is power over others, and all that counts is self promotion for selfish power.  And these days this culture of power and subjugation is much more overt. It is seen in a culture that wants to control how we think about divisive social issues. If you don't vote the same as me on an issue you are automatically a bad person.  That is a form of power and an attempt at subjugation. 

John was already dealing with these issues in the culture of domination that was the Greek and then the Roman culture.  Daniel had to deal with it when he and his three friends were faced with a fiery furnace if they would not bow down and worship the image of the King before them.

Sometimes this subtle and or not so subtle subjugation of others is inbuilt into the culture in the education system itself.  John wants us to experience and understand the real thing so we don't drink the Kool Aid laden with cyanide that is prevalent in our world systems.  He is going to tell us that the alternative to Power and subjugation is servant sacrificial love.

The World's Kool-Aid Is Education, Power And Control

John and Gnosticism   -secret knowledge that gives you power!

Μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον μηδὲ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ.

Pride: the pride of life (1John 2:16) ἡ ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου,  Power, Possessions, Privilege, Position

There were three words used for love in the greek language :Eros  Philie  Sterge

Christians are counter cultural. Not just because we are pains in the neck, but because we have found something much greater, a motive that produces a whole different standard and formula for success: LOVE!

Agape  John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." 

The word "love" appears more than forty times in John's three epistles, and the phrase "love one another" occurs six times. Numerous admonitions to love one's brother also occur. The "disciple whom Jesus loved" (John 20:20) makes love a focus of all his writings.  See the relationship between God's love for us, our love for God, and our love for one another. These relationships reveal the logical flow of God's love from himself to and through us to others.

Why Is Love Greater Than Knowledge?
love comes from God (7)      you know God        God is love (8)

Gerald Bray wrote "The Bible is the record of a relationship between God and man. It explains how God loves what he has made and wants us to enjoy the fruits of his creative acts in fellowship with him. But it also tells us how some of the highest creatures rebelled against him and rejected his love, and that the leader of that rebellion seduced the human race into following him. Out of this tragedy has come the message that God has not abandoned us but instead has revealed an even deeper love by sending his only Son to live our life, to die in our place, and to rise again from the dead so that we might dwell with him in eternity." "God Is Love" .That God is love seems to me to be the most fundamental principle of Scripture. This is the gospel message, so it should be our theology too.      This is what the world is crying out for. Love is on everyone's mind in a way that something like divine sovereignty (or even grace) isn't, and we have to reach out to people where they are, not where we might want them to be.

God is love.  Everything we know about him teaches us that, and every encounter we have with him expresses it. God's love for us is deep and all-embracing, but it is not the warm-hearted sentimentality that often goes by the name of love today.

The word love (Gk agape) dominates 1 John 4:7–5:3. It appears over 30 times.

John Stott "In Tyndale's words, 'John singeth his old song again.' For it is the third time in the letter that he takes up and applies the supreme test of love. (See also 2:7–11 and 3:11–18.) Each time the test is more searching. In this third treatment John is concerned to relate the love which should be in us not to the true light which is already shining (2:8, 10), nor to the eternal life of which it is the evidence (3:14–15) but to God's very nature of love and to his loving activity in Christ and in us. 'Here the epistle rises to the summit of all revelation' (Law).

The refrain of the paragraph is the reflexive love one another. It occurs three times—as an exhortation (7, 'let us love one another'), as a statement of duty (11, 'we also ought to love one another'; cf. 2:6; 3:16), and as a hypothesis (12, 'if we love each other …'). What John is at pains to demonstrate is the ground of this imperative obligation. Why is reciprocal love the plain duty of Christians? It is, as he began to say in 3:16, that God has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ as self-sacrificial love. God is love in himself (8, 16); God has loved us in Christ (10–11); and God continues to love in and through us (12–13); these are the reasons why we must love each other.

WE LOVE BECAUSE GOD'S NATURE IS LOVE
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. 4:7,8.

First, for love comes from God (7) and secondly, because God is love (8). Since God is the source and origin (ek) of love and all true love derives from him, it stands to reason that everyone who loves, that is, loves either God or neighbour with that selfless devotion which alone is true love according to John's teaching, has been born of God and knows God (7). Not only is God the source of all true love; he is love in his inmost being. There are three other statements in the New Testament concerning what God is in substance and nature: he is 'spirit' (John 4:24), 'light' (1 John 1:5) and 'a consuming fire' (Heb. 12:29 from Deut. 4:24)."

Can only Christians love truly? John is saying only the followers of Jesus can truly love others. This love comes from God, and only those who are born again can have that love in their hearts to love others.

Other people can experience and convey affection and passion and attraction and physical intimacy. There can be altruism from non Christians. I once asked a philosophy professor why should we be altruistic? He replied because it feels good to do it. I asked then how can it be truly altruistic, if there is something you get back from it, for real love is completely altruistic, without personal reward.   The selfless agape love that John speaks so much about characterises God Himself and can only be conveyed by those who know Him. 

John Piper puts it well:   "Love is from God the way heat is from fire, or the way light is from the sun. Love belongs to God's nature. It's woven into what he is. It's part of what it means to be God. The sun gives light because it is light. And fire gives heat because it is heat. So John's point is that in the new birth, this aspect of the divine nature becomes part of who you are. The new birth is the imparting to you of divine life, and an indispensable part of that life is love. God's nature is love, and in the new birth that nature becomes part of who you are. . . . When you are born again, God himself is imparted to you. He dwells in you and sheds abroad in your heart his love. And his aim is that this love be perfected in you. Notice the phrase "his love" in verse 12. The love that you have as a born again person is no mere imitation of the divine love. It is an experience of the divine love and an extension of that love to others. (Piper, "The New Birth Produces Love")

It is God's nature to love (to give and sacrifice). The truth that "God is love" complements other beautiful statements made about God's nature in the Bible. God is Spirit (John 4:24). God is a consuming fire (Heb 12:29). God is light (1 John 1:5). God is true (1 John 5:20). God's children have His nature and will love like He does.

WE LOVE BECAUSE GOD DEMONSTRATED HIS LOVE AT THE CROSS.       
9 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. 10 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.

John grounds his first argument for mutual love on God's eternal nature, he bases his second (9–11) on his historical gift. The God who is love (8) 'loved us' (10) and expressed his love by sending his Son to earth. While the origin of love is in the being of God, the manifestation of love is in the coming of Christ. And, John writes, 'since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another' (11). This time the duty of reciprocal love is enforced not merely by the abstract truth that God is love, but by the concrete fact that he 'showed his love among us' by sending 'his one and only Son into the world' for us (9). It should be added that the concept of God 'sending' his Son (9–10, 14)

The historical manifestation of God's love in Christ not only assures us of his love for us, but lays upon us the obligation to love one another. No-one who has been to the cross and seen God's immeasurable and unmerited love displayed there can go back to a life of selfishness.

But Jesus Christ was more than just God's Son-He is a savior. God sent His Son so He could save us from our sins:

1John 4:14: "sent the Son as Savior of the world."  1 John 3:1.6:"He laid down His life for us."

1 John 4:9: "that we might live through Him."  1 John 3:5: "He was manifested to take away our sins."

1 John 4:10: " Son to be the propitiation for out sins."

1 John 1:7:"the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin."

1 John 2:2: "He himself is the propitiation for our sins."

WE LOVE BECAUSE HE DWELLS IN US.

12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.

John's third argument for reciprocal love is based on God's present and continuous activity of love. Reciprocal Christian love means not only that God lives in us but also that his love is made complete in us. God's love, which originates in himself (7–8) and was manifested in his Son (9–10), is made complete in his people (12). It is 'brought to perfection within us' (NEB). God's love for us is perfected only when it is reproduced in us or (as it may mean) 'among us' in the Christian fellowship. It is these three truths about the love of God which John uses as inducements to brotherly love. We are to love each other, first because God is love (8–9), secondly because God loved us (10–11), and thirdly because, if we do love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us (12).

God's indwelling is mentioned three times in this paragraph, and what in verse 12 was single ('God lives in us') is now each time reciprocal (13, we live in him and he in us; 15, 'God lives in him and he in God'; 16, 'Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him'). Moreover, each time the reciprocal indwelling is described, evidence of it is supplied as follows: verse 13, because he has given us of his Spirit; verse 15, 'if anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God'; verse 16, 'whoever lives in love'.

Of these three tests of the indwelling of God, the last two are developments of the first. It is by the Spirit that we come to acknowledge the incarnation of the Son (cf. 4:1–3 and 1 Cor. 12:3), and by the same Spirit that we are enabled to love (12–13; cf. 3:23–24). In our fallen and unredeemed state we are both blind (unable to believe) and selfish (unable to love). It is only by the grace of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth and whose first-fruit is love (Gal. 5:22), that we ever come to believe in Christ and to love others. Emphasis on the Holy Spirit is, in fact, 'the predominant idea of this section' (Ebrard). This, then, is the sequence of thought: we know that we live in God and God in us 'because he has given us of his Spirit' (13), and we know he has given us of his Spirit because we have come to 'acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God' (15), and to live 'in love' (16).

We Are to Love Unconditionally

16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

God did not demand that we clean up our act before He was willing to say, "I love you." Instead, He loved us just as we are. That is the nature of unconditional love. It loves "in spite of" the reasons not to love. "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).That is the clearest biblical statement of unconditional love I know of. God loved us in spite of the fact that we were sinners-actually, His enemies (Romans5:10).

God loved us when there was absolutely nothing lovable about us. We ignored His presence, broke His commands, profaned His name, rejected His grace, blamed Him for what wasn't His fault-what human reasons were there for God to love us? Yet He did. And we are to love one another in the same way. We are never more like God than when we love like God loves.  If we love only those in whom we find some glimpse of "lovability," how are we any different from the world? We become different from the world and more like God when we love unconditionally.

We Are to Love Sacrificially  Without a thought of self or sacrifice.

May the love of Jesus fill me As the waters fill the sea Him exalting, self abasing  This is victory.

We Love Confidently

17 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. 18 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

FEAR is the first-born of sin. "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself" (Genesis 3.9-14). "1 was afraid." Ever since that sad evening, fear has flung its frightful shadow over the sons of men. Yes, fear came in Eden, with sin, and then followed the cry 'I was afraid."

Love came in Bethlehem, with the Saviour, and then followed the cry: "Fear not; it is I"

John would have us "fearless on the day of judgment," and so points us in a profound passage to "perfect love" as the defeater of fear.  "It is God's love to us that is the theme," wrote Dr. An­drew Bonar. "Now this love of God to us is made perfect .. it has fully achieved its task. Herein has God's love to us reached its perfection. The ocean has been filled with love: it is an ocean we may call ours. And so complete is this display of God's love to us, that at the judgment day we shall have no fear! And even at present, in spite of indwelling sin, we are as really righteous as our Surety."

When that Love has gained the throne of our hearts it drives out fear; it hurls fear from the throne;

"Bold I approach the eternal throne, And claim the crown, through Christ, my own."

We Are to Love Personally

1John 4:20-21: "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this  commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also."

The body of Christ is made up of individuals. If someone says, "That's such a loving church," it is only because that church is made up of loving individuals. Churches can't love; only people can love. Therefore, love has to be expressed one-Person a time. That's how God loved us, and that is how we are to love others.

Without God there is a gnawing hunger for love in your heart. If you don't know the Lord Jesus you are hungry for true love.
19 We love because he first loved us.

Believe in Him today.  Confess Him today.     See Him, Believe in Him, Confess Him

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.