Christians Love like God Loves

Well, if you have not already, turn in your Bible to the book of 1 John, the first epistle to John. And I will be preaching 2 John and 3 John too. I'm going to just preach them successively once we're done here.

Finish this sentence for me. "I think the world would be a better place if people thought more like..."

Me. A few honest people said, "Me." A few of you super-duper spiritual people said, "Jesus."

I'm asking that because this text will get to the heart of your true answer to that question.

Now, we are in the book of 1 John. Those of you who are joining us for the first time or haven't been here for the duration, I'm preaching expository through the whole book. We're in chapter 4 and 5 today. We've handled it verse by verse, though it's a little bit more of a survey.

I do want to remind you if you didn't know that the meaning or the purpose of the whole book of 1 John is what true or genuine Christianity and Christians are. So you could think of the book of 1 John as the test of genuine Christianity or genuine Christians. The book of 1 John is like a meter. It's like a thermometer. It's like a diagnostic tool that if you're wondering if someone's a Christian, what you should do is take this book and put the probes on them and ask, "Are they what this book says a Christian is?" And it will tell you.

I'm shocked by it. I'm always shocked when I start preaching a book. Like I've known and read the book of 1 John my whole Christian life, but I've never had to preach it or never preached it verse by verse before. And I'm always shocked at how much stronger passages are when you preach them expository, meaning the understanding and use of the passage—Explicatory. Amplifies when you see it big picture in its context.

And 1 John is one of those books, to the point where I can almost guarantee you today—I'm not promising, but I can almost guarantee you I will have tears today because I have had tears at every step of this message because of how clear what it says is and how painful it is for this pastor when it's not done right.

Clue—so clear what God wants for his people, so clear how we're supposed to interact. So obvious what love is from this passage. I'm amazed over these years, so many years of watching people redefine love or have their own view of love or try to push or force their understanding of love on God and His people. And it isn't just unbelievers, it's believers too. Unbelievers, of course, don't know what love is, but believers are supposed to and they still have trouble. They still fault find. Um-hmm. They still backbite, they still criticize, they still divide, they still undermine, they still resent, and none of those things are allowed for a Christian.

It's safe to say that if you do any of those things with a fellow believer, you're probably not qualified to call yourself a Christian. So I'm already starting out by the theme of this passage. You'll see when we get into it, this isn't just the Baptist preacher, Johnny, saying these things. You're going to see John says them maybe stronger than what I'm saying.

Mm-hmm. That we are supposed to love people and not people who are just like us and not people who think what we think, not people who think the way we think they should think, not people who have to conform or align with what I think the world is.

I don't know if you know this or not. This might surprise you to find out, but no one in the world thinks like you do. No one. Nobody does. Zero people in the world think like you do. 0% of 8 billion human beings think what you do. And no, the world would not be better if all 8 billion did think like you.

We have the mind of Christ, Paul says, the Bible says. We are supposed to all have Jesus' mind and none of us have our own mind. We are zero. Supposed to be trusting our opinions and thoughts unless they're his thoughts. How do you know if you have the mind of Christ? You speak in Bible. You speak in Paul. You speak in Mark. You speak in Isaiah. You speak in Jesus. That's how you know if you have the mind of Christ. You say what Christ says. And Christ was the Word incarnate.

So this text will hammer it home. Love may be unconditional, but it is not ineffectual. No one who God has loved does not love. And no one who loves God can say they love God without loving their brothers and sisters in Christ.

I wonder sometimes, I really do think that often we operate under the idea that love, the subject of love, the stuff of love and the action of loving, I honestly truly believe, like we talked about, I brag about my daughter very much, Pearl, with her perfect pitch that she doesn't just know everything she just did, and she could tell you the names of those chords. I could hum a note and she could say, "That's that note." She has perfect pitch and music theory, and she's my music teacher, and it's humiliating—I mean, humbling. I'm supposed to say it better that way. It's hard to be a musician for 40-something years and have my daughter be better at it than me.

With all of that said, regardless of all of those things and her abilities, you might think that that's how love is, that love is just like what Pearl has in talent and ability. Mm-hmm. She was born with that. Now, she developed it, right? She developed that gift. But she was born with the ability to have perfect pitch. And you might think that's how love works. You know how some people are just musical, and some people are just mechanical, and some people are just academic, and some people are just funny, and some people are just annoying? Well, some people are loving, right?

Wrong. Love is not a talent. It is a command and a choice. And if you're not loving, it isn't because people aren't lovely. It's because you're not doing what God does for unlovely people. We are all unlovely. If you only love lovely people, you're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. And you're not doing it like God does it.

You'll see in this text. It's so clear in this text how we're supposed to love. It's so clear. I—verse 11 is going to make me cry. Mm-hmm. I'm ready. I'm ready to cry. I'm buckling up. I should probably check and see if there's—yeah, there's Kleenex up here. I'm ready. Let's pray and dig in together.

Father, we need help in these areas. It's a constant refrain in your word to love one another. It's a constant refrain in the counseling room for this pastor to love one another. It is a constant refrain for us in our homes to love one another. Over and over, you bang this drum in your word. Amen. It's repetitive. You say it a lot. You say it in similar ways and in different ways.

Over and over you tell us that in order to say we're your children, we have to love each other and love you. This text is as clear as it gets, and I'm asking, Father, that none of us leave here the same, myself included. Please teach us from your word. Lead us by your spirit so that this text is not just a difficult command to keep, but a joy. Thank you. That we would love the way you love, that we would be like you in how we love each other. Thank you for the help you give us in advance because you offer it and promise it. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.

1 John 4:7, these are—the love of God is evident. If you didn't see the love of God, he's gonna show it to you clear as day on these—on the pages of scripture in chapter 4, verse 7. Starts with, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves God is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

And this is the part where I say, you might say, well, I think I'm loving. I have the sense that I'm loving. We're going to get to what it looks like in a minute, the actual degree and the amount and the quality as well as quantity of what we are supposed to be doing in terms of love.

But for the first point, it's hortatory. It might surprise you to find out there's not a command here. There isn't a let us in the imperative, but it is hortatory. It's exhortation to do it. He talks to beloved. Those are Christians. Those are not the outside world. He's also talking to Christians about Christians. So this isn't us in generally being loving people out in the world. No, directed at the beloved. You people who call yourselves Christians, love one another.

Why? Because love is of God. And everyone who loves God is born of God and knows God.

So we've already talked about whoever is born of God does not sin in chapter 3, verse 9, right? Does not make sin their life's practice. Now we see that whoever loves God or says they know God, they love one another and they love Him.

And know, I'll remind you again, know, K-N-O-W here. The word know or knowledge in this context, not every context, but in this one is ginosko that has the idea of intimate familial knowledge, the way Abraham knew his wife and she had a child. Knowing is not just knowing about. It's not just head knowing, academic knowing, knowledge, awareness of. That's not what know here means.

When it says who loves God and knows God, it means knows Him intimately as their Father. They're in a relationship with Him. That's what it means. So when you see that word in this context today, every time the word "know" is used, it means knows Him like friends and family. Okay? So we're clear.

Because He's going to say it multiple times. "He who does not love God," or, "He who does not love does not know God, for God is love."

Now, I might forget to say it later, so I might as well say it now. The word order is really important here. In English, we say, "God is love," because that's the way English works. That is not the word order in the original. The original is, "For God love is." Okay?

Now, that's not crucial because word order works differently in Greek, just like it does in Spanish and in the other declinable languages. The word order is not crucial in the sense of it could be in a different order and still have the same meaning.

The reason I'm bringing it up here is because we, in English, can make the terrible mistake of thinking it goes both directions, that if you could say, "God is," is equals, "love," that might mean love equals is God, and you cannot do that. So love is not God, but God is love. Got it? So be careful because I think some people deify love, and they think that the point of this text is to see love instead of God. Okay? That's important.

It's important because that's what John is saying. How do you know if you're the real thing? Love. It isn't that you're really gooey, ooey Valentine's kind of love. It's that you're like the God of love. You're reflecting His love qualitatively, what it's like, quantitatively, how much of it you give. That's what's being said here. You can't say you know Him if you don't love.

It's really clear. And if you want to know what it looks like, the evidence of God's love, if you want to know—okay, if somebody were coming from Mars, let's say there was a Martian and they came here. There might be. You guys been following all that stuff in the news?

By the way, I have thoughts on those things philosophically, that those aren't humans. That is not the world Jesus went to and died for. We could talk about those things in the future.

But let's just say hypothetically a knowledgeable, willful being came to our planet from another place and they didn't understand the concept of love. And you were to say to them, there is a God and he is a God of love and he expects us to do it. They might say, what does that look like? Give me an example of love. And God doesn't just give us an example, a example, he gives us the example. The example in verse 9.

Look at it with me. And in this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

I want to handle the doctrinal word first, the propitiation word first. First, we already handled that back in chapter 2, but I want to say it again. Propitiation is not equivalent to atonement. Sometimes you'll see the word atonement, and it can be part of atonement, but the specific understanding of propitiation is that God is angry with sinners. He's angry with sin and He's angry with sinners.

And in order for Him to get to pour out His wrath, to get to be satisfied in that anger, somebody has to take the punishment. Mm-hmm. So that when Jesus stands before us and God, Jesus says, "Pour it out on me, not on Johnny." So Jesus is my propitiation. He is satisfying God's wrath for me so that God doesn't have to pour his wrath out on me. He pours it out on his Son.

But God gets to pour out his wrath. He's satisfied because sin has been dealt with. Sin has been punished. It was punished at the cross. That's what propitiation means. God is angry and he says, "I have to punish somebody." Mm-hmm.

In order to be satisfied because I'm just. Who will take the punishment? An unbeliever says, "I will." A believer says, "Put it on Jesus, please. Punish Him instead of me."

All right, so I want to make sure we're clear that that is the doctrinal part of this. Propitiation is Jesus standing in the gap between me and the Lord, and instead of me taking the wrath, He takes the wrath.

But I want to go back now. When it says, "In this the love of God was manifested," it was shown, it was made known, it was obvious to anybody looking. How do you know He loves? That He sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. In this is the love, and this is love not that we loved God, but that He loved us.

By the way, if you're looking for our doctrine, our sovereign grace doctrine, who did He send the Son in the world for? Us. Who is the love? We, our sins. Do you see it? It's for believers. It's for the elect. Okay, but that's not the—I don't want that to be the main thrust here.

The main thrust is, how do you know God loves? He sent His Son. So first of all, how big is that love? What is more important to the Father than His own Son? What does God love in the universe more than His own Son? Nothing. So He sent the most He can send. The biggest He can send is sending His Son.

But now what is it like qualitatively? What were the recipients of that love like when he was sent. Were they loving God? Does it say that they loved God? It literally says, "Not that we loved him." We weren't loving him.

So if you are going to love like God—and you're gonna see in one verse that that's what we're called to do—you need to know what it looks like. And I'm telling you, my fellow Adamites, my fellow people born into this world in Adam and in sin, I'm telling you that to us We love people who love us. Jesus came because God loves people that hated him.

He did not wait for them to be lovely. He did not wait for them to agree with him. He did not wait for them to be like him. He did not wait for them to be in alignment with what he thought should happen in the world. He saw people that hated his son and said, I will send my son to those hateful people that deserve my wrath.

So when you are going to talk about the love of Christ, Christian love, you are not talking about loving people like you, unless by you, you mean dirty, rotten, filthy, worthy of wrath, hellbound sinners who hated God. Now, if you say God says people like me and then use that as your definition, then he does. He loves people like you. But if you say he needs—I will love people who think like I do, who agree with me, who would vote the same way on things. That would be the kind of person I love. Then you're not loving like he loves.

Verse 11, look at it with me. Beloved—again, Christians—if God so loved us—how did he so love us? John 3:16, same author says. What did he do? I already showed you. He sent his Son.

What kind of people did he die for? Good people? Happy people? When he's dying on the cross, are those people that nailed him there the kind of good people that you want to hang around? You might not want to hang around them, but Jesus said, "Father, forgive them."

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another. Nothing could be clearer in the New Testament. I don't know that there is a clearer doctrine, a clearer statement, a clearer requirement. I don't think God could have made it clearer. It doesn't need even to be preached.

Beloved Christian, if God so loved us by sending His Son to us who didn't deserve it, who hated Him and who were going to crucify His Son and took the wrath for us, we also ought to love one another. Nothing is so clear and nothing has brought more pain to the pastor talking to you right now.

Do you know how much of my work for 22 years has been trying to convince Christians to love each other when they weren't? Yes, it's a lot of trying to convince unbelievers to love God. I'm amazed at the charity that people will give to the guy strung out on drugs under the bridge that they won't give to the person sitting next to them in church who actually tries to serve God.

It is so painful to be in a room, especially like with couples, Or families, people who would under normal circumstances die for each other. One of the most favorite things—Pastor doesn't even know he taught me this, but he did teach me this. One of my most favorite things I saw with my own two eyes, it changed my life.

I was sitting in a room with people who were older than me, and Pastor was in that room and counseling them, and their marriage was in big trouble. And we all sit down in that room, in that room in there together. Hi. And they're sitting together but apart, you know what I mean? There's some distance in between them.

And I'm sitting at the desk and Pastor's sitting on the side of the room. First thing Pastor says is he says, "Grab her hand." He made that husband hold his wife's hand. And you could see they didn't want to do that. You could see it. You could feel it. You could feel it in the room. The last thing that guy wanted to do was grab his wife's hand.

I don't believe in magic. I'm not charismatic. I'm not a mystic. I don't believe in any of that stuff. But I'm telling you that room changed when they held hands. There's someone in this room, or maybe not in this room right now, that if they were sitting next to you right now, I would say, stop everything you're doing and put your arms around that person.

And if you don't feel love for them, so what? Love them anyway. I don't care about your feelings. Your feelings lie to you. Your feelings were what? Behind every bad decision you ever made.

Mm-hmm. He says if you're going to call yourself a Christian, you must love like He loves. And He loves the unlovely. And He doesn't wait for them to get in line before He loves them. And it isn't just the person under the bridge. It might be your in-laws. It might be your wife. It might be your parents. It might be your kids who are wayward. It might mean your Christian boss who's doing the best he can, but you don't see what's going on behind the scenes. Mm-hmm. It could be your pastor.

Beloved, John is saying, "I love you, little children. You're my people. I love you. I'm talking to you right now." If God so loved us that when we hated Him and we were enemies and we had broken His commandments and there was no good in us and we were never going to come toward Him, we were never going to be good to Him if He didn't do something first, He so loved us, we ought to love one another.

Amen. The rest of this is essentially John expounding on that idea and saying various versions of it.

I'll ask you to do me a favor today because you owe the Scripture this. You don't owe Pastor Joni this, but you owe the Scripture this. Put 1 John 4:11 somewhere on your person, on your refrigerator, on your phone home screen. I don't care where you put it. Put it somewhere and read this verse by yourself. This inspired verse of Scripture. Yes. This verse that comes directly from the Holy Spirit of God that says you're supposed to love Christians like God loves sinners.

And ask yourself, do a checkup. How are you doing? How are you doing? And by the way, if you really want to make it hard, especially you members of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church, open the church directory. Go name by name. How am I doing? How am I doing? There's that person. How am I doing? I'm doing good. How am I doing with that kind of love? How am I doing?

Like I said, if I could do what Pastor did in that counseling room, I would do it. And by the way, I've done it since then and it works every time. Every time I've done it. I've done it multiple times. You guys need to hold hands before we start. That's my new requirement. I got it from Heinrich. You're doing it too. And it's worked every time, man. I wish you could see it. Ah.

And then by the end of it, there's tears, there's love. There's tenderness.

Verse 12, "No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love has been perfected in us." That might be confusing to you that John would turn here to the invisibility of God. It will make sense in a minute.

For the first part, you're gonna see that the reason he's bringing it up is because you're supposed to love what you can see. But he's starting with the idea that we don't see God, but there's love anyway. Right? That's the idea.

We don't see him. No one has seen God because you can't see God and live. Jesus—Amen. Has seen Him, right? Jesus says that in John 1:18, that no one has seen Him except the one that He sent. So Jesus has seen Him, but the idea is that God is invisible. He's invisible. No one has seen Him at any time.

And if we love one another, that invisible God abides in us, and His love has been tetelestai. Who knows what tetelestai means? Who knows another place where that word gets used in the Bible? I don't. It's used twice in our context. It is what Jesus says from the cross.

The word T-E-L, the letters T-E-L on tetelestai, those are the same letters in telephone, in television, in telegram, in teleprompter. That tele just means that a thing has reached its desired purpose or goal. Okay? So a telephone—phone means sound. That means the phone, the sound, has reached its intended purpose. It has terminated. It has ended where it's supposed to be.

A television brings things that you—Vision. Provision, see, to their ended purpose. So when Jesus from the cross says, "Tetelestai," He is saying, "I have completed my end purpose, my goal in dying for these people and the work of salvation is finished."

Well, John is saying the same word here, that His love is perfected, completed, finished in us if these things are true in this text. Love has its ultimate meaning. That's the idea. It is finished. Love is finished when we get this right, meaning it reaches its desired end.

He's invisible. We can't see Him. And we know if we understand these things that He's talking about, that He abides in us. His love has been completed in us.

Verse 13, "By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit." I love this text, by the way. This is one of the most Trinitarian texts in the New Testament because you have the Son already mentioned. Now you have the Father who's being mentioned, who we are abiding in and loving. And now we have the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit being given as a down payment, as a guarantee of your future, the Holy Spirit coming to indwell us, the Holy Spirit as a person.

I emphasized that last time when I talked about the Holy Spirit as a person, not a force or an energy. He's a person. And so the first person of the Godhead sends the Son. The second person of the Godhead, the Son, is sent and dies for us. And the third person of the Godhead comes to indwell us, the whole Trinity at work in harmony so that we would be able to—Hallelujah. Walk with the Lord.

So when you're abiding in Him, He's essentially saying, you know you abide in Him because He gave you His Spirit. It's a promise. It's a guarantee. It's a—God has given you His Spirit. He didn't just give you His Son so that you would know you were taken care of and He was propitiated. He also gave you His Spirit so you know you abide in Him.

By this we know that we abide in Him. We remain in Him. We're in the sphere and the safety of being in the Lord because the Holy Spirit was given to us.

Now, this is where testimony comes in because whenever you see the phrases like testimony in the New Testament, especially in a context where a Jewish guy like John is writing, it is never just the way we use testify, especially like our Pentecostal friends say testify and say hallelujah or glory, right? That's not what it means.

Testimony in the Scripture is legal language. It's forensic language. It pertains to the idea of how truth is presented. You would never say you're testifying of a thing in front of God and not have it be true because you would be expecting wrath or judgment if you didn't keep your testimony, if your testimony wasn't accurate.

Lying under oath in the Old Testament would have been an absolutely terrifying idea because your testimony is saying before God, this is true.

So look at verse 14. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.

So we know we abide in Him because He's given us His Spirit, and now He's saying we. And when John says "we," he means John and the church planters. He's not saying "we" the reader, you and me. He's saying "we," himself and those who testified.

If you go back to the very beginning of the letter, he says, "That which we have seen and declared to you." John is giving testimony. John is saying, "We have seen the things we're telling you about right now, and God is invisible. You can't see Him, but we have seen Jesus."

Okay? It is true that God is invisible and His love abides in us, but we don't just see—John is saying "we." John is saying, "We're not only having faith in the invisible, we have seen the visible." Do you remember when Jesus rose from the dead and Thomas fell down at His feet and said, "My Lord and my God"? What is Jesus' next comment to him?

"Blessed are you because you have seen and believed." But what does He say about us? Because we get to be mentioned there too. "Blessed are those who don't see and still believe." That's you and me.

So John is saying, God is invisible. That's absolutely true. It's absolutely true He's invisible and you can't see Him. And there's a guarantee, a promise that we abide in Him because His Spirit lives in us. But now John is saying, "But we give testimony to you that the Father has sent His Son, the Savior, into the world."

Do you all know the Christian fish symbol you see on cars? Do you all know what that means? Do you know why it's a fish? That's my Christian gang sign right there, if you ever want to use that with your friends. Do you get it? Because it's a gang sign. Well, that fish is a fish on purpose.

Now, there are stories about persecuted Christians. The story goes like this. I don't know that we have any actual historical record, but the story, the legend, the lore is that a Christian was persecuted in Rome at the time. So they wouldn't talk about their faith out loud. But they might, if they were among people that they didn't know whether they were a Christian or not, they might put their foot in the dirt and draw an arch like that in the dirt.

And then if there was a fellow Christian and the Christian knew that symbol, the fish, they would walk up and finish the arch underneath and make a fish, and then they would know they were Christians. It was a secret code. That's a wonderful sentiment. I don't know if it's true. I've never been able to find any actual historical record that that happened. But it is the symbol of the fish.

Why the fish? Because the Greek word for fish is ichthus. If you're an ichthyologist, you study fish. I don't just mean you fish a lot. I mean you're a scientist, a fish scientist, okay? So ichthus is an acronym. And the letters in ichthus, if you ever see the Greek letters in the fish, they all stand for a title of Jesus.

So Jesus is his name. The chi in that is Christo. The theta in that is God. The u or the y or the u or the upsilon in that is Son, Huios. And the last one is Soter, Savior. So every one of those is a Greek letter that speaks to his title. Jesus the Christ, God the Son, or God, Son, Savior.

Now why is that important? Because John essentially just gave us the ichthus right here. And He calls Him Son and Savior. Now, why would He do that? I don't know. I don't want to speculate. I don't want to say too much here.

What I could say to you is how much does Jesus—how much does God love His Son? And I've already said to you, all of it. Like, as much love as there ever could be, God loves His Son that much, okay? The biggest amount, the most much. I don't know, I don't have superlatives. The biggest much there could be is how much God loves His Son. Amen.

But he's saying now he gave that Son as Savior. God gave his very best to us. He gave his most valuable thing to us, and it shows his love.

And then it says in verse 15, "Whoever confesses"—that Greek word for confesses is homologeo. It means to say the same thing. That's literally the meaning of confession. I know you and I think of confession as pouring out our heart or apologizing or showing remorse for sin. It is true that that is connected to Christian confession, but the literary dictionary definition of the word homologeo is to confess.

Homo, which is same. Logeo, word or say. To say the same thing. And when you confess, you are agreeing with God and saying you believe what God believes. That's what it means in this context.

So God is saying, "My Son is the Savior, and I'm sending Him into the world to save sinners." And now we say, John says to us, "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God abides in Him." So that's essentially when God the Father from heaven, when Jesus' earthly ministry starts, says, "This is My beloved Son." When He says that, "I love My Son," confession says, "Me too. I love Him too. I agree with You, God. Your Son is awesome."

Yeah. That's what a confession is. But it's also confession that He's Savior, meaning, "Lord, I also agree with You that I need Him to save me. I agree with that also. I agree that He's awesome as Your Son and I love Him, but I also agree that I'm in big trouble if I don't listen right now to Him being my Savior."

And in our context, it's also showing love to the brethren too. So whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, he's already talked about Jesus coming in the flesh. If you don't believe that, you're antichrist.

In other words, if you don't agree with what God says about His Son and where He says it, in this case is Scripture, is defined in Scripture, if you don't agree with God, then you do not have Him abiding in you. You have to agree with Him for Him to abide in you and by the Holy Spirit living in you.

And it's—you have to agree with Him about His Son and confess that His Son is indeed your Savior in order for you to abide in Him. John is absolutely consistent. John's theology is consistent throughout everything he writes. Here, the gospel revelation, John is always consistent.

I could just ask you point-blank, "Is Jesus your Savior? Do you believe He's the Son of God?" This is why we say what we do when we baptize somebody. When we're about to baptize somebody, the question we ask is, "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and God the Son?" The Son of God part is that He's the Son of God. The God the Son part is that He came in the flesh, that God came in the flesh. Do you believe that? Because you have to believe that to be saved. Do you believe it? You're not a Christian if you don't. So I'm not going to baptize you and say you come up out of the water a Christian if you're not. Got it? So that confession is you agreeing and publicly saying to people when you're baptized, that's what you're saying.

Christianity is not what we think it is. I don't know if you've noticed, but there's not a Yelp review at the end of your Bible for you to go fill out. No. There's no comment box. There's no customer service survey. The Bible doesn't need your opinion. And if you'll let me say it— I mean, I wouldn't be a good Baptist if you weren't at least a little uncomfortable— I am so glad what I just said is true. I'm so glad God isn't dependent on our opinion. I'm so thankful. Yours or mine. I'm so glad I'm not God's counselor. I don't even know what I want for dinner most days. And I'm going to tell God the way his people should act? I'm going to tell God the way his church should be run? I'm going to tell God what he should be doing in my country? I'm going to say, "Why, God?" Like I know the better way to do it? Ugh. We need to be careful.

We should confess that he is the Son of God and God the Son and know that he abides in us and we abide in him. It says that too. Mm-hmm. I got to hurry. I got a lot to cover here.

Verse 16, "And we have known and believed the love that God has for us." God is love. We already said that before. And remember that that is technically— it's the same construction here. It says, "God love is." No, you Star Wars people, He doesn't speak like Yoda. Oh. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. He essentially just said that already. You know, he's already said whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. So he's kind of repeating that again. And we have known and believed that the love God has for us— God is love, and he who abides in his love abides in God, and God in him.

So there's this idea of unity, unity with God. This is saying that if you're locked in correctly with love, you're locked in, you're tight, you're in his hand. You're in the sphere of God. You're protected by God. You're close to God. That will all come into play in a little bit when we start talking about judgment. So I want you to ask, what could a sinful, rotten, commandment-breaking, wrath-deserving, hell-directed sinner ever do to have any sort of assurance that God is not angry at them? Well, we have it all here. He sent His Son, and His Son is my Savior. And I'm going to confess that His Son is my Savior and that He saved me from my sin. And He's going to give me the Spirit living in me to testify that the Holy Spirit living in this person with the Holy Word will make me a holy person.

So I'm now building this idea that, man, I'm locked in. I'm locked into the love of God. I abide in the Lord. I always say the safest neighborhood to live in is the will of God. This is kind of like that. It doesn't matter where you're at in the world. You can be in God. I mean, you might be in Ukraine, or you might be in Riverbank, But you can be in the Lord wherever you're at. So you're abiding in Him, you're remaining in Him, you are safe in Him, you're locked in there. And remember, love is not God. This is not about earthly love. It's not about feeling love. It's about God's kind of love, sacrificial, unconditional, consequential love, love that has an effect.

So love, we're locked in. He's saying, "Love, love, love." He's saying it over and over again. How many times in one verse does he say it? 3 times. 1, 2, 3. 3 times in 1 verse. It must be important. All right?

Now, verse 17. I'm going to do something with verse 17 and verse 18 that might be new to you, but I'm not trying to be novel. I'm not trying to be clever. So hang with me, okay?

Verse 17, "Love has been perfected." There's our word again, "tetelestai." In the previous one, it was a perfect passive participle. This one is actually the perfect passive verb in almost identical form as from the cross. Love has been completed. Love has been finished. Love has been accomplished. The goal of love has been met. The target of love has been acquired. All of those things. "Love has been perfected among us in this way, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, so are we in the world."

Now, what I want to do is give you the coach talk right now, the pep talk. Like, isn't that awesome? Isn't that awesome that His love is perfected in us? Isn't that awesome that we have all that? PJ is telling us today that we have all this assurance that we're locked in, that we abide in Him, and the Spirit's in us, and we know, we know He's our Savior and all that. But don't forget this is in a context that we just came out of in verse 11, that there is no love or locked in or being assured or having confidence if you don't love each other too. They're not separate. This is all one context to love God and your neighbor.

Now, I'm saying that to you because verse 17 says, says if you don't have that kind of love, the Christ-sending kind of love, the sacrificial unconditional kind of love, the love that loves people who are not like you, the people who might even hate you, if you don't have that kind of love, you should expect judgment. Do you see it? The only way to avoid judgment, to have boldness in judgment, is to have the kind of love that God has. Mm-hmm. I don't know how we miss stuff like that in our Bible. We're just looking for the pep talk, the high five. "Tell me how good I'm doing, Lord. Tell me how much you love me and how cute I am. Tell me how much you love me and how awesome I am at what I do and how fortunate my family is to have me. Lord, I want you to just tell me how great I am."

This text is saying, after everything he just said, if you don't love like God does, you should be afraid of judgment. And you should only have confidence and assurance in judgment when you stand before the Lord. You should be able to walk up to the Lord and have a confidence and an assurance that says this: Jesus, you know I loved those people down there like you did. And stand tall before the Lord. The idea of confidence in the Lord, assurance in the Lord, no fear of judgment. How could I be afraid of judgment? I love just like Jesus loves. The Lord knows my heart. He sees me sacrifice. He sees people mistreat me and I still love them. Not love them by putting up with them, Not love them by biting my tongue behind their back. Not love them by just wishing they would go away quietly. That's not love. Love always moves toward.

If you love like He does, going toward the unlovely, trying to, the way Paul says, endeavor in the spirit of unity, trying to draw us all together, to abide together. I'm not just concerned with my abiding in the Lord. I want my brother there with me abiding in the Lord. I want to strengthen my brother in the Lord. Amen. And you say, well, you only mean the ones that are like you. No, I mean the ones that aren't like me. I want to help people glorify the Lord. I don't want to be separate from them and not help them. I want to be a teammate and help them glorify the Lord.

And the love of God is perfected in us in the Son of God coming to die for us, showing that perfect, ultimate, biggest, much sacrifice for us. He's done that for us. He says we ought to love each other like that. And he's now saying that you know it's complete, it's reached its goal, It's big. It's gotten to its desired end. And when it does, and it's complete, you can stand with total confidence before the Lord.

Now, obviously, the most important thing this is saying is you can stand before the Lord confidently because of Christ. That's what it's really saying, right? The idea is that you're not afraid of judgment because Jesus died for you. But the thing I'm trying to hammer home today is that you should never feel confident about your place before the Lord if you don't pursue love of the brethren. You should always— I have a lot of conversations with people who doubt their own salvation. You know what's most common? You probably know this because most of you men in this church understand what I'm about to say, is battling lust. Men battle lust, man. They struggle with it, pornography, internet, all those things. They battle it. There's a lot of battles going on in our church and all churches, right? And men tell me sometimes when they're in the thick of that battle or they're discouraged, "I don't even know if I'm Christian sometimes, man." Yeah. I don't even know. I don't even have confidence I'm saved anymore. I've heard that so many times, it's sad over the years.

But you know what I've never heard anybody say? You know, I've been bitter with that person at church. I don't even know if I'm saved anymore. No one's ever said that to me, not once. Everybody has always justified their resentment to other Christians. Well, I'm telling you, you shouldn't be confident before the Lord if you don't have love for the brethren. And love means sacrificial love, and it means all of the brethren. Yes. The ones that don't think like you included.

Love has been perfected. I like how it says here, look at this last phrase, "Because as he is, so are we in the world." I don't even know what it means, but I like it. What I mean by I don't know what it means is I don't know its fullest understanding because it could be saying something like, "As his Father loved his Son in the earth, so we are loved by the Father." It could be saying something like that. It could be saying, "As he in the earth loved others, and sacrificed for others, so we are in the world. I'm not exactly sure what it's saying, but I do know what it's saying. Be like the Lord. I know it's saying that. I know it's saying emulate the Lord. I know it's like, be holy as he is holy, or be perfect as he is perfect. This text is saying, be loving like he's loving. And just as he displayed that love while he was on earth, I think in Jesus, for us, or the Father displayed his love for his Son, we're supposed to emulate that kind of love.

Now here's the part where I'm going to do the crazy thing that's not crazy. It's actually correct. Which is verse 18, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love."

Now, this text is— I've only ever heard this text used by Christians out of its context. This text is only ever used to not have fear as Christians in life. It's a general fear of things in life. Don't be afraid. Hang in there. Don't be afraid of what this world can do to you. Hang in there, buddy. I can do all things, buddy. Is that what this text is saying? No. It's saying if you don't love, you should be afraid. Why? Because he just said the only assurance you have that love has been perfected in you is that the love of God is in you and that you have it for others. That's what gives you assurance. And if you don't do that, you should be afraid. This text is a warning, not a promise. It's a promise too. But the warning is the only way you cannot be afraid is to have God's kind of love for him and his people. Amen. That's what the text is.

The context of verse 18 is loving God and loving His people. The context is not general fearlessness in the world and bravery and overcoming. It's not that. You can use it for that, but that's not its meaning. So there is no fear in love like there would be if you didn't have love. You should be afraid of judgment. There's no fear if you have love because the love has been perfected in you and you have the Spirit and the Son has come for you, the Savior. But he who fears— And what does the fear here mean? Who fears God because he's not being loving. Who fears God because he has not demonstrated the love of God. He's the opposite of what I said. He can't go stand before the Lord and say, "Here I am, Lord. I loved like you loved." He's gonna say, "No, I had that problem with my wife. I had that problem with my kids. I had that problem with my boss, who's a Christian." He's gonna say, "I had trouble with other Christians because they didn't think like I thought. I wanted them to be more like me, and they bugged me, and they rubbed me the wrong way, and they offended me." And he should be afraid if you think that.

So the fear is when you don't love correctly. You should expect God to be frustrated or angry with that. But perfect love, the kind that's been perfected in us, a complete love that's like Christ's love for us, casts out all fear. What can I be afraid of? If God loves me and I love like he loves, how— who can hurt me? That's the idea. If I have his love and I give his love like he tells me to, I relay His love the way He tells me to. I have all the confidence in the Lord. Lord, you know my heart. Can you imagine somebody trying to tell Jesus, "I don't think you loved enough, Jesus. I don't think you were loving enough in your ministry. You know, when you were kicking over those tables, that didn't look like love to me. You know, when you were condemning those religious leaders, I didn't think that was loving enough." Can you imagine saying that to Jesus? Well, you want to get to the point where no one can imagine saying it about you either.

The one thing I know about that person is they were loving. In fact, I know they loved because I wronged them 42 times and they loved me 43. I know they're loving because they kept trying to love me even when I was off base. I can tell you they're loving because I received their love. And I can go the other way and say, "Lord, before you, and you know my heart, you know that I love those people. You know I do. I don't just love them in my heart, I showed them love." Amen.

Verse 19, "We love him because he first loved us." Oh, man, I want to talk about the textual thing. You ESV-ers don't have "him" there, and your ESV is broken. Ask me about it later. And you might say, "Well, no, it goes back to the previous text about us loving and him being loving. It goes back to love in general." No, it doesn't, because the very next word says, "He who says, 'I love God.'" So I think the "him" belongs there. And I not only think it because I'm a Majority Text guy, I think it makes the most sense of the context. So your Bibles that are missing "him," and that they just say, "We love because he first loved us," argh. People will say all the time textual things don't affect doctrines in the Bible. This one does. It's not major. You don't lose the Bible because the doctrine's taught in other places. But this one actually does. It's saying that we are unable to love without him first loving us. That's a doctrine. Yeah. Okay? And it is saying that. We love Him because He first loved us.

Verse 20, "If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a—" what? Liar. You know, I've heard people with my own ears try to justify that God loved Esau and that the word "hate" for Esau doesn't mean hate, it just means to love less, while very much loving their Christian brother less. In other words, almost trying to talk Esau into heaven. But their Christian brother out of heaven? Like the charity they'll give to Esau they don't give to other members of their church? It's wild to me. It's wild. Especially spouses. When I'm sitting in a room with married people who promised to love each other like Christ loved the church, and they're in my office like they're bitter enemies, like they hate each other, like Montagues and Capulets, or I don't know, somehow they're in my office. How'd that happen? I don't know. These people that once adored each other are now 10 years into their marriage and they hate each other. You changed and became a monster. It's wild.

I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen— now listen carefully— how can he love God whom he has not seen? Remember before when it said God is invisible? This is why it was saying that before. God is invisible, but your brother isn't. And this commandment we have from Him, that he who loves God must love his brother also. How you doing? How you doing? Go through the list in your head of professing Christians you know. How are you doing?

Hate doesn't mean murder in the sense of physical murder. What does Jesus say about murder? Thou shalt not kill means what? Have you ever called someone stupid? 'Cause it's actually in the text, isn't it? Call someone a fool is equated with murder. What a moron. How come they can't see? Why don't they think like me? Why don't they think differently? Why aren't they different? I don't know what else to say, but that's hate. That's not love. It doesn't mean you have to think like them, by the way. I'm not saying you should think like other people. I'm saying we both should change what we think to what Christ thinks. That's what I'm saying.

Whoever says, "I love God," but does not love his brother— because that's what hate means. It means does not love. 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? In other words, you have the easy one to love in front of you because you see them. Now, I know they're not easy in terms of being lovable, but what I'm saying is practicing love is really easy when you can physically love somebody in their presence, when you can show love to them, when you can sacrifice for them, when you can serve them, when you can when you can pray for them, when you can help them in ministry, when you can help them glorify the love— the Lord, they're right in front of you. So God is saying, "I've essentially put the opportunity for love right in front of you, these people. You have every opportunity to love Me." And that's what John is saying. How can you say you love God who's invisible when He's given you present physical people to love in front of you? Love them. It's a commandment.

This is the commandment we have from Him, that he who loves God must also love his brother. So take verse 11 with you and verse 21. That's how we prove we have His love. That's how we know we can have confidence. It's not a talent to love. You might not be able to sing in key, but you can still sing. You know that, right? People say all the time, "I can't do it. I'm not musical. I'm tone deaf." That doesn't mean you can't do music. It just might mean you're not good at it. I can't play the piano. But like most people and like most things, if you practice, you can get good at it. So maybe it is true that naturally you're not prone to love people, especially if they're really annoying. But it is a skill. Love is a skill and you can learn it. You can practice it. And if you have lacking love in your life, you can get rid of that too. That's a thing to purge.

Verse 5— chapter 5, verse 1, "Whoever believes that Jesus is—" Jesus is Lord. Is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves him who begot also loves him who was begotten of him. This is a doctrinal issue here. So he's already emphasized that God has loved us. The evidence, he sent his Son that he loves most. He sacrificed for you the most important thing to him, the most loving thing, the most deserving thing of love for the most undeserving thing of love, you and me, right? So God is showing, I've loved you when you didn't deserve love. I want you to love like I love. I want you to love your brethren like I love you. I definitely want you to love your brethren like I love your brethren. That's what God is saying, right? I love Johnny, and I sent my Son to die for him. You better love him. That's what— that's Johnny's interpretation, right?

We have to love each other, not just because God loved us, but because I have to recognize his love in you, right? So that's what we're saying here. I recognize the Spirit has been given to me. I now know I abide in him. I'm in the sphere of God, and he abides in me, and his Spirit lives in me. So all these realities are coming, and he is saying, we must love God also— I mean, we must love our neighbor also. And it's really important to see now that when you do these things correctly, there are doctrinal implications. We'll talk about that more this afternoon. But for now, the idea is you cannot say you love the Father if you don't love the Son. And you cannot say you love the Son if you don't love the Father. There's a lot of Jesus-centric stuff that sort of denies the Trinity. You've got to watch out for that. But whoever believes that Jesus is the Messiah born of God,— that person who actually believes he came in the flesh, believes the right things about him, he is their Savior. And everyone who loves him begot also loves him who is begotten of him. So you love Father and Son. Right? That's the idea.

Now, why would that be important? Because some people might not love the Son but think they can love the Father. And other people might think they can love the Son without loving the Father. And you can't divide the Godhead like that. So it's really important to see that. And verse 2, by this we know that we love the children of God, when we love and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome.

When you hear a phrase like, "Be holy as He is holy," what happens to you internally? Or today, when I tell you that the Christians in your life, whether they deserve it or not, you owe them your love because God says so. God says to do it. You must do it. You ought to do it. That's what "owe" means. We ought to love one another. You owe them love. Not that they deserve it, but you owe it to them. So when you hear those things, what happens internally with you? I think about that a lot, by the way. I think, like, I'm not the best preacher. I may not even be a good preacher, but I know that I said that clearly, right? I know that I presented the text accurately and clearly. And I often wonder when I see things days, weeks, months later after I've preached a thing, knowing that I see your face in here, like, what happened when they left the sermon that day? Yeah. 'Cause it said what it said. I literally told them what to do. Go stick 4:11 on your forehead and meditate on it. And scroll the church directory and think about the people in your life that are Christians. Like, I gave them clear instruction from the Word. And I wonder what people do.

Because when I hear him say, "Keep commandments," when he says, "By this we know that we love the children of God," and you're supposed to love the children of God, and you're supposed to love the God of the children, and that's the evidence in your confidence so you're not gonna be judged and you have no fear, right? That's what he's saying. If you love like God loves, no fear. Right? He's already said that over and over again. And now he's saying, "If we love God and keep his commandments, for this is the love of God."

From now on, you never have to wonder what the love of God is, because John says, "This is the love of God." This is the definition. Not the dictionary, not Taylor Swift, or anybody else. Mm-hmm. "This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome." It doesn't say this is how you get the love of God, keep His commandments. It doesn't say that. You have the love. He already gave it to you in His Son. He already said that in this context. He sent His Son. That's the evidence of His love, that He sent His Son. And then anybody that confesses Him can have that confidence and assurance. You already know He loves you 'cause He sent His Son. So His love for you is already a settled issue. The question is your love for Him. How do you settle your love for Him? His for you is settled by the sending of His Son. Yours for Him is by keeping commandments. Mm-hmm.

You say, "He loved me, and I love Him. Watch this." That's what you do. And you go live the commandments. You say, "I'll have no other gods before Him because I love Him most." You'll say, "I would not dare cheat on my wife because God gave her to me, and I made a vow to her in front of Him. And my love for her displays my love for Him. I would never steal from somebody because God is the owner of all things, and if He gives it to somebody else, I can't be happy about stealing it from them. That would be wrong. I'd be actually stealing from God in that case." Mm-hmm. I would never ever hate anybody or kill anybody because God is the giver of life. How could I want somebody gone or dead or out of my presence? Why wouldn't I want what He wants for those people? I would never do those things. Why? You wanna know why? I love God. That's why I keep commandments. I don't keep commandments to gain His love. I don't keep commandments to get right with Him. I'm already right with Him in the Lord. I keep commandments because they tell me what He's like and what He wants. And they make Him happy. Amen. And they please him.

So I asked about holiness. What do you do when you hear, "Be holy"? What do you do now when he hears, "This is the love of God, to keep his commandments"? Is your next thought, "I have to keep his commandments," or now you're like, "Oh, commandments. Ugh, obedience. It's hard. It's hard, PJ. It's hard to be me. You're not married to who I'm married to." It's hard to be me. I'm getting old and things have not gone well for me and my health isn't good. It's hard for me because people are critical of me and they think differently of me. It's hard for me because my kids won't listen to me. It's hard for me because my husband doesn't love me right.

I don't know about you, but I can read. I can read English. I can read Greek. But I don't need Greek. I can just read it. It says if you love like He loves, and that means Him and His people, His commandments aren't burdensome. Doesn't it say that? Men, to not lust, is that a burden for you? Or is it an awesome freedom for you that you don't have to lust? That God has given you everything. His Spirit lives in you and you in Him. That you have everything at your disposal to honor God with your life. Amen. Do you see it as, "Ah, commandments, obedience, faithfulness, church attendance, all those things I have to do." You don't have to do it, you get to do it. Maybe the reason you haven't been doing it is because you have misunderstood his love for you. He did everything so you could obey him. Amen.

We're supposed to run to obey Him. Like right now, if I got what I wanted, if Pastor Jonny got what Pastor Jonny wanted, people in this room who have ill thoughts, resentful thoughts, bitter thoughts towards Christians in their life would be saying, "I am going to fix that. I am going to go to those people and look them in the eye and say, 'I was wrong for resenting you instead of loving you.' That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to endeavor for unity." Amen. Parents would look at their children and say, "I have been relaxed in my duties. I haven't shown you the love of God. I haven't displayed his love in your life. I've expected obedience, but I didn't give you love." Husbands, wives, church members all over the place, we would say, "Wait a second. What would my life look like if the love of God was the ultimate understanding of love for me? What would my life look like?" John just told us. Amen. Go home and read the verses. Go home and ask what God requires of you. And if you have any squirming or exceptions, or the commandments seem burdensome, listen to John. He's taking the burden off of us. He's literally taking the burden off of us. Don't be burdened. Be happy.

You who are out there struggling in the world, you who are battling for your families and battling for your faithfulness, don't think of it as a negative. Think of it as positive. You get to be holy. You get to pursue love. Yes. You get to love those dirtbag brothers sitting next to us in church. And that's what we all are—broken, messed up, sinful dirtbags, all of us. What does God think of those people? He loves them. I'll show you what I can do with dirt. I'll form dirt into something beautiful—a servant, a son or daughter of mine. I'll show you what I can do with something that's weak and broken and sinful and lost and lustful and Covetous and, "I'll show you what I can do. I'll send my Son and I'll send him to save them. Then I'll indwell them with my Holy Spirit and I'll give them my word and they'll start loving like I love and they'll walk tall. I'm in the Lord. What does he have for me today? What's his commandment today? Wonder what he's gonna tell me to do tomorrow. I can't wait to do it." That's so different than, "I gotta do what's right. It's really hard." Talk yourself into keeping commandments, not out of them. Okay?

Father, thank you for this clear text. I went long and I don't feel that sorry for it, but I do want, Father, to be concise. I very much want the point of your text to be what gets us in the heart, and I would ask that our church would be faithful in it. Not only now in the current situation, but that, Father, in our— this our 25th year, that we would gladly adopt this and then grow because of it. Grow internally and also even grow in numbers, that we would be a church that loves like you love. Please help us with that, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.