Sunday, January 19, 2014. God Is, Part Two: God Is Love

Scripture: 1 John 4:7-21

        26 years ago in the town Stepanavan, Armenia lived a young woman the townspeople called "Palasan's wife." Of course, this woman had her own name, but the townspeople called her by her husband's name to show her honor.

        When the devastating earthquake of 1988 hit, it was nearly noon and Palasan was at work. He rushed to the elementary school where his son was a student. The outside surface of the building was already crumbling, but he went inside anyway, pushing the children outside through an open window to safety. After helping 28 children escape the ruined building, an aftershock hit, collapsing the remaining school building and killing Palasan.

        Townspeople of Stepanavan honor his memory and his widow by calling her Palasan's wife.

- Just like Palasan's wife, Christians wear the name of Christ as a badge of honor.

- The apostle John strongly contended that God is love and divine love passionately sacrifices self for the sake of others.

- Love is the greatest attribute of God, which is why John writes about love at length and Paul names it as the fruit of the Holy Spirit and so eloquently describes love in 1 Corinthians 13.

- The love which John describes in our Scripture lesson is self giving, rather than greedy or materialistic.

- The love which would describe the culture in which we live is more of a worldly possessive love.

- John tells his readers that God is not like that.

- God is love.

- It is a mistake to suggest that love is God, as if love were the object of our worship.

- And it is equally limiting to merely suggest that God is loving when he is so much more, he is love.

- Love is at the very core of who God is. Love isn't just one characteristic among many but the overriding characteristic which surrounds and fills everything God says and does.

- The late FF Bruce wrote that the love of God described in the New Testament is "a consuming passion for the well-being of others" (Bruce, 107).

- If we love God, John reasoned, then we will be possessed by that same consuming passion for the well-being of others, which ultimately led Jesus to the cross.

- It is in that act of sacrificing the only begotten son on a cross that the love of God is made painfully clear.

- In fact, without the cross it's impossible to understand the love of God.

- To affirm the love of God, one must first affirm Christ's suffering and death on a cross.

- Jesus' sacrifice on a cross for our sins is the great proof of God's love and the motive for our love.

- Having affirmed the self-sacrificing nature of God's love, the Christian must allow him/herself to be consumed by that same passion.

- On our own, we are not free to love like God loves so God took the initiative so that his love might live within us.

- Because God has loved us with the self-sacrificing love of Jesus that, John tells his readers, is how we are to love one another.

- God is love and divine love passionately sacrifices self for the sake of others.

- "Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us and his love is brought to full expression in us." (11-12)

- Business executive Lee Iacocca once asked legendary football coach Vince Lombardi what it took to make a winning team. The book Iacocca records Lombardi's answer:

        There are a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the fundamentals and have plenty of discipline but still don't win the game. Then you come to the third ingredient: if you're going to play together as a team, you've got to care for one. You've got to love each other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself: if I don't block that man, Paul is going to get his legs broken. I have to do my job well in order that he can do his.

        "The difference between mediocrity and greatness," Lombardi said that night, "is the feeling these guys have for each other."

- The Christian must learn to surrender to the love of God. God is love and divine love passionately sacrifices self or the sake of others.

- God's love supplies the driving power for his children to love one another.

- We must be loving because he is loving and it's not compulsion as if God were forcing us to love, but it's because God's love is poured into our hearts through the person of his Holy Spirit.

- Because of the Holy Spirit's presence in our lives, people around us are witnesses to God's love.

- Therefore, God is made known to others through our faith in his son, as we love one another.

- God's love in us is the strongest defense for faith in Jesus Christ.

- It is the person of the Holy Spirit who enables this loving witness and empowers God's love in us.

- God is love and divine love passionately sacrifices self for the sake of others.

- The thing about God's love is that it doesn't matter if you are shy, reserved, introverted, and it doesn't matter if you are talkative, outgoing, extroverted.

- God is not concerned with how many people you love, but how much you love.

- Palasan's love for his son moved him to rescue 28 children and give his life.

- By his love, he sent his Spirit so that we will testify that God sent his Son to be the Savior of the world, verse 14.

- John wrote, if we love one another, God lives in us and now in verse 15, John tells us that God lives in all who confess that Jesus is the Son of God.

- In John's mind, Christian truth and Christian love stand as one.

- Indeed, this is the teaching of the entire New Testament. Word and deed; truth and love always go hand-in-hand not to be separated.

- So great is God's love that not only did he choose the great risk of Christ's cross, he chooses continually the great risk of dwelling within us by his Holy Spirit.

- He gives himself to us with a great vision that we will return that sacrificial love, not only to him but also to others.

- Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two Commandments.

- God's aim is that we would put our trust in his love and learn to live our whole lives in, by, and for his love.

- John wrote, "And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love." (17-18)

- Love is made perfect, whole, or complete as God's children love one another. That John has already said.

- However, perfect love is shown especially by the confidence with which the Christian faces the Day of Judgment.

- As we mature in the faith, our confidence and love grow while our shame and fear shrink, replaced with an ever deepening sense of awe.

- Such a sense of awe causes us to stand before our heavenly Father and say to one another, "see what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called the children of God." (1John 3:1)

- Those that have such confidence in the love of God have no need to fear.

- They have learned the secret of the ages. "And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory." (Colossians 1:27)

- Such is the love of God. Not only must our understanding and acceptance of God's love for us blossom into a sense of awe but so also must our love for others.

- "We love each other because he first loved us." (19)

- By taking the initiative to love sacrificially, God shows us how to live and plants within us the desire and the power to follow his example.

- "If someone says, I love God, but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don't love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? And he has given us this command: those who love God must also love their Christian brothers and sisters." (20-21)

- Jesus made it clear that love for God and love for others are two sides of the same coin.

- Mutual Christian love characterizes God's true children because God is love. Therefore, hatred for a fellow believer proves fake faith.

- We can only love the unseen one by loving those already seen.

- The joy that comes from knowing that we are loved deeply, passionately, and sacrificially by God is the only thing that can move us to love others like God loves.

- Before we can love others, we must know that we are loved by God.

- The day of the earthquake 26 years ago, Palasan loved his son, and the children of the elementary school in Stepanavan that he gave his life rescuing 28 children from the crumbling building.

- For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

- What am I prepared to sacrifice to show others God's love in me?

- God is love and divine love passionately sacrifices self for the sake of others.