Sermon Tone Analysis

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/7 //Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 //Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

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.

11 //Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

12 //No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us./

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It is not difficult to know what John’s aim is in this passage.

Three times in these verses he says the words “love one another” (vv.

7, 11, 12).

This is also the third time he has brought up the subject of the believer’s love for others in this letter (2:7-11; 3:11-18).

Between John’s Gospel and this letter, the word “love” appears about 100 times.

It is a major theme in the writings of John, who is known as the Beloved Disciple.

John thinks it is very significant that believers demonstrate love for one another, so he urges his readers to love each other.

In order to do this, he wants us to know and meditate on why we should be compelled to love.

This basis for the believer’s love for each other is what John is writing about in this passage.

He doesn’t just command us to love; he believes that love should flow naturally.

He wants believers’ love for one another to be as natural as the love between a husband and a wife.

But John still finds it important to command us to love, just as the Apostle Paul needed to command husbands to love their wives (Eph 5:25).

It was necessary to command this, not because love is unnatural, but because love can grow cold.

And because we have not truly loved until we love the way that God loves.

Paul wanted husbands to love their wives, “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” John likewise wants us to love each other as God has loved us.

So in Christianity we find that love is not merely a trait we should exhibit for the betterment of society; love is a trait we should exhibit for the glory of God.

That’s why the title of this message is “God Manifests Himself in Love.”

The title is purposely ambiguous.

It can be taken to demonstrate the manner in which God reveals himself, that is, when God reveals himself he does so in loving ways.

But it also can indicate the means by which God reveals himself, namely, God is seen when love is displayed.

In other words, we cannot truly comprehend love without God being at the center of our discussion.

This is what John wants us to see.

This is the reason why Christians, of all people, should be the most loving.

This is why John commands us to love.

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WE ARE COMMANDED TO LOVE

It is John’s command to love that is the main sentence of the passage.

But it is not what John spends most of his time with.

Rather, he gives us the /reasons why/ we should love.

He assumes that he will be far more effective in getting his readers to love if he can show them why they should do so.

Specifically, in verses 7-8, he gives us two reasons.

!! Love comes from God

The first reason why Christians should love one another is because “love is from God.”

In other words, John says that love has a divine source.

John is saying that whenever we see love, we can know that God is behind it.

Now that means that much of what we call “love” is really no love at all.

It means that when the world uses the word “love,” they are defining love in ways different than how God defines it.

This becomes even more explicit at the end of verse 8.

There John says flatly, “God is love.”

What does this mean?

First, it cannot be a convertible proposition.

That is, it does not mean that “love is God,” that love and God are one in the same.

We must not make a God out of love.

Instead, it must mean that God has the /quality/ or /attribute/ of love.

But this does not mean simply that God has the ability to love.

You and I have the ability to love, but I cannot say, “Ben Janssen /is/ love.”

The difference is that when we speak of something as being an attribute of God, we mean that it is a characteristic of God that is true /all the time/.

So we can say that God is patient and just and true and holy.

All of these are characteristics of God that are always true of him at all times.

That means that when God demonstrates his holiness and his justice and his wrath, he is just as loving as when he demonstrates his patience and mercy and goodness.

God does not put his attribute of love on hold when he demonstrates his wrath.

God is not somehow unloving because he condemns some people to hell.

This is a simple truth but it is so often misunderstood by people, both Christian and non-Christian alike.

Already, then, if we will accept this truth, we can begin to see that the kind of love with which God loves and expects of his followers is not the same kind of love we usually see in this world.

As Wayne Grudem says,

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We have an /idea/ of love from human experience.

That helps us to understand what Scripture means when it says that God is love, but our understanding of the meaning of “love” when applied to God is not identical with our experience of love in human relationships.

So we must learn from observing how God acts in all of Scripture and from the other attributes of God that are given in Scripture, as well as from our own real-life experiences of God’s love, if we are to refine our idea of God’s love in an appropriate way and avoid misunderstanding.[1]

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This also means that we must not “exalt the love of God as his supreme feature just because it is more congenial to our thinking.”[2]

In other words, we must not define love by our own experiences and then force that definition upon God and thereby not present his other attributes properly.

Already in 1 John we have been told that God is "light" (1 Jn 1:5), an analogy that refers to God’s perfection and holiness.

So God is love at all times but in such a way that his holiness is never compromised either.

Similarly, God is also “spirit” (John 4:24) and “fire” (Heb 12:29).

If we are going to think of God properly we must think of him wholly with all his attributes and not elevate one of them to the diminishing of any of the others.

!! We come from God

There is a second reason why we who are followers of Jesus are commanded to love.

The first reason is because “love is from God.”

The second reason is because “whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (v. 7).

John says the reason why we should love is not only because /love/ comes from God but also because /we Christians/ come from God.

These two reasons for why Christians should love go together as verse 8 makes clear: “Anyone who does not love does not know God” (that’s reason 2) “because God is love” (that’s reason 1).

We have to see this connection in order to understand how John hopes his command to love will be obeyed.

He doesn’t emphasize our /experience/ of love in hopes of motivating us to love in return, though he is not opposed to it (see 3:1).

But here he focuses on our genetic disposition as those who have been “born of God” and says that love is what comes out of such a person.

In other words, the reason why we should love is because this is what those who are born of God do.

Those who are born of God have a share in his nature and so become lovers just like God.

The lack of love, then, is an indication that one has not been regenerated by God.

So what does it mean to be “born” of God?

Besides the obvious reference to procreation, the word /beget/ in the New Testament also means to exercise the role of a parental figure, as in 1 Corinthians 4:15 and Philemon 10.

By Jesus’ day, conversion to Judaism was commonly referred to as a “birth” and the one who led him to convert was often considered his father.[3]

For John, the phrase “born of God” is primarily used to emphasize the ethical consequences that come from it such as “doing righteousness” in 2:29 and not sinning in 3:7.

But there is more to the Bible’s use of the word “regeneration” than conversion.

One reason the Bible uses the concept of new birth is to emphasize the fact that we play no active role in it whatsoever.

John 1:13 makes this clear.

We were born, “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Just as we had no choice in our physical birth, the Bible indicates that the new birth is not something we choose but something that happens to us.[4]

The exact nature of the new birth is still somewhat of a mystery to us.

Nevertheless, the /fact/ that it has happened to us is evidenced by the believer’s conversion and by the believer’s character that begins to resemble the character of God.

Just as a child shares the physical traits of his biological father, we who have been born of God begin to resemble the spiritual traits of our Heavenly Father.

And since one of those traits is love, John can say that “whoever loves has been born of God.”

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WE ARE TO LOVE LIKE GOD LOVES

But again we should note that it is not mere love that indicates one has been born of God; it is God-like love.

So John is not just interested that his readers love; he wants them to love like God loves.

!! Love must manifest itself

We do not have to guess what it means to love as God loves.

John begins verse 9, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us.”

Because God is love, he acts out of love.

In verses 9 and 10, the Apostle reminds us what the love of God looks like.

Both verses begin with the words “in this” and give us a clear picture of love.