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Paul Lee Tan tells the story of a man who arrived in heaven telling Peter how grateful he was to be in such a wondrous place and asking Peter to give him a glimpse of hell so he might appreciate the goodness of heaven even more, which Peter obliged.
In hell the man saw a long table extending as far as the eye could see weighed down with the most delicious of every type of food you could imagine. But everyone seated at the table was thin, gaunt, and malnourished; starving to death. The man asked Peter for an explanation to which Peter replied, "Everyone is required to take food from the table with chopsticks which are 4 feet long. They are so long that no one can reach the food from the table to his mouth, and therefore each one is dying of starvation."
Upon their immediate return to heaven, what should meet the man's eyes but the same scene of a table stretching as far as the eye can see filled with every imaginable food, however, everyone at this table appeared happy and well fed. So the man turned to Peter and said, "With what do they take food from the table?" To which Peter answered, "Only with chopsticks which are 4 feet long." So the man replied, "How is it that everyone in hell is starving to death while all the people in heaven are well fed and happy?" To which Peter replied, "In heaven we feed one another." (Tan, 7700 Illustrations)
- This story encapsulates the truth of our passage this morning: The evidence of true love for God is true love for one another.
- John testifies that our love for God is the source of our love for one another. 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
- The love of God is not a possessive love which seeks to have, to get, the object of love for itself. The love of God is a compassionate, consuming love that is concerned for the well-being of others.
- It is a giving love rather than a getting love.
-Those who are God's children will express this kind of love because it is God's nature.
- When we know the God who is love, it will be our deepest desire to express the love we experience in him.
- Love is not God, but God is love. Love summarizes the character of God. We read in John's Gospel, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life"(John 3:16). The death of Jesus Christ on a cross is the ultimate expression of God's love.
- The good news of Jesus crucified, buried, and risen, shows the consuming passion which the God of love has for a lost, broken, and sinful humanity. It shows the lengths to which God was willing to go to give away his love to those who desperately needed it.
- God is the source of our love for one another.
- 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
- By sending Jesus to die, God took the responsibility for giving us the opportunity for new life upon himself. Without God's initiative, we are incapable of initiating a loving relationship with God.
-Romans 5: 8 tells us, "while we were still sinners Christ died for us." And John puts it in a nutshell in verse 19, "We love because he first loved us."
- This is the wonder of God's love, the mystery of his mercy, and the glory of his grace, that he loved us while we were still dead in our sins.
- God is the source of our love for one another.
- God's love is the motivating power in our love for one another.
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
- If God's children must be holy since he is only, merciful because he is merciful, just because he is just, then it stands to reason that his children must love because he is love. Not because we must but because we may, and we can through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
- Because Jesus has returned to the Father, God shows himself to the world through the love of his children for one another. The strongest witness that God has in the world are Christians who love one another.
- It is the same kind of love which Jesus exercised in the cross bearing suffering in his body on our behalf that Christians must bear for one another on behalf of the world. The witness of love in the suffering is evidence that we are indeed disciples of Jesus Christ.
- The evidence of true love for God is true love for one another.
- God is the source of our love for one another.
- 13 We know that we live 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 Saviour of the world.
- John reminds his readers that not only have they received God's love through the Holy Spirit but God's truth as well. The loving Holy Spirit is also the spirit of truth.
- It is the Holy Spirit who persuades people to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and it is the Holy Spirit which empowers believer's to witness to this truth.
- As John writes in verse 15, 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. According to John, there is no tension between Christian truth and Christian love.
- God's love is demonstrated in the suffering, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, however, if Jesus is not God's Son or if this message is not true, then both Christian love and truth fall because they are false.
- Truth and love are inseparable. Confession of faith in Jesus Christ and love for one another together represent the work of the Holy Spirit and the power of the gospel in the life of a believer.
- 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
- It is through our experience of faith in Jesus Christ and our relationship with him that we come to more fully understand that God is love and rely on him as a loving God. We also find here in this verse again an expression of God as the source of our love for one another. If you live a life that is filled with love it is because you live your life in God and God is living in you.
- It is this experience of God and his love in our lives and in our relationships with one another that enables us to have confidence about our eternal hope on the day of judgment.
- As John writes, 17 In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
- Assured of our relationship with God and with one another because of his love within us we need not fear. In fact, not only is there no reason to fear, but fear ought to be something completely foreign to us because of the confidence which love gives.
- 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
- Throughout the Gospels Jesus laid down the priority of the greatest Commandments, which is to love God and to love our neighbour. This same command, John reviews over, and over again.
- He tells us the best way to express our love for God who is unseen is to love people whom we can see. John highlights the utter hypocrisy which exists in us when we talk about our love for the Lord and then in the next breath express tremendously un-Christian attitudes toward our fellow believers.
- It is only when we treat our brothers and sisters in Christ with the same love and respect with which we treat ourselves and God that we prove our faith is real.
- The evidence of true love for God is true love for one another
- - The story is told of an American journalist who while visiting China observed a Catholic nun cleaning the wounds of hospitalized soldiers which were infected with gangrene. "I wouldn't do that for $1 million!" remarked the reporter. To which the quiet nun immediately responded without interrupting her work, "Neither would I."
- Only the love of God in the heart of the believer can move us to do what we otherwise would never do out of love for others.
- We show we love God as we love one another.
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