…Because God Is Love

1 John 4:8

June 1, 2003

 

            In Exodus 34:6-9 we are given the account of God passing before Moses and revealing some of His glory to him. It reads, Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” When God undertook to explain Himself and reveal Himself to Moses, His self-description was one of love, mercy, forgiveness, truth, grace, justice, and wrath. The passage, however, overwhelmingly seems to focus on the love and kindness of God. When God revealed Himself this way to Moses, He started by explaining that He is patient, loving, and forgiving. But in case someone should presume upon God’s love and grace, God explained that He also was just and would not let sin go unpunished.

As we think about the love of God, that God is love, what is your reaction? How do you respond to the love of God? Look at verse 8 of Exodus 34. Here is Moses’ response: Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship. Moses made haste. He did not take his time. Seeing the beauty and glory of God, and hearing this sovereign, omnipotent voice, Moses was struck by the majesty and wonder and power of God, and he made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship. Do you sense that Moses took the love of God lightly, or that he took the graciousness of God for granted? Look at verse 9. Here’s Moses verbal response: He said, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your own possession. What kind of response is this? It is one of brokenness, of a recognition of sinfulness and a heart full of iniquity. Moses recognized his and the people’s need for the forgiveness of God and the mercy of God when He saw God as God really is.

What is so striking to me about this account in Exodus 34 is the contrast between Moses’ reaction and the typical reaction of someone today to the love of God. Do we react like Moses to the love of God? Is our reaction one of desperate pleading and begging with God to take us as His own possession despite the fact that we are undeserving of anything but hell? Do we fall down on our faces before Almighty God and confess how wicked we are in spite of all of His love and goodness to us, and then plead with Him that we may somehow find favor in His sight and thus be in fellowship with Him as His children? I fear far too many people are not affected by the love of God this way. Yet this should be our reaction.

When we see these attributes of God, such as His love, they should cause us to do two things. First, they should cause us to bow down low, very low, and worship, humbling ourselves before the awesome, Almighty God. They should cause a type of fearful, reverential worship. When we see this grace and mercy and love of God, we should fall on our faces in reverence and fear, and worship Him for all of His awesome majesty. Secondly, these perfections, these attributes of God, should cause us to desire Him above all else. They should cause us to cling to God, to plead with Him to take us as His own. If you think of God’s love, and either of these two reactions is missing, you have not truly understood God. You have not understood who God is and His infinite, matchless love.

I say all of that because I want you to realize the importance and infinite weight this subject carries. I plead with you this morning not to let this go by you without deep reflection, meditation, prayer, and a heart that bows low to worship Almighty God. It is my prayer that all of us will fall on our faces in worship when we begin to see the love of God, and that we will see Him as more desirable than anything that exists in all of creation.

In 1 John 4:7 and following, John is discussing love. As I said last week, this is John’s longest and, I believe, most in-depth discussion of love. He began verse 7 with an appeal that Christians love one another, and he built it upon the love of God. He stated that: love is from God. God is the source of our love, and when we receive love from Him, we have fellowship with Him and with one another. And then finally John ended the verse with a proposition, an axiom, that whoever loves with this Christlike love has been born of God and knows God. The one who loves is a Christian and has personal, ongoing fellowship with God.

In verse 8 John is continuing his thought from verse 7. He is still dealing with this appeal to love one another within the church. In verse 8 he gives a second proposition, and then he goes on to show the proof of his proposition. Remember, the first proposition is simply this: those who live a life characterized by love are born of God and know God.

 

The Proposition

 

            Now then, what is the proposition in verse 8? John writes, The one who does not love does not know God. That is his proposition. Those who do not love do not know God. As we look at this proposition we can divide it up into two parts: who it describes, and what is true about this person.

            The first part is the “who” of the proposition. To whom is John referring? He refers to the one who does not love. This verb, love, is in the present tense. In verse 7 we also saw the present tense here. And in verse 7 the idea was that everyone who lives a life characterized by love was born of God and knows God. In verse 8 it is the exact opposite. The person who does not live a life characterized by love is now the subject. This person to whom John now refers is someone who lives a life where love, love that comes from God, is absent. This supernatural love is not present as a continuing, habitual characteristic of this person’s life.

            In verses 7 and 8 perhaps you noticed that the verb love does not have a direct object. John says in verse 7, everyone who loves, and then in verse 8, the one who does not love, but he does not say who is being loved. This, I believe, is very intentional on the Apostle’s part. In verse 7 John began with an appeal that we love each other as Christians. He exhorted us and pleaded with us to love one another. You must bear that in mind. It is essential, because it governs John’s entire argument. He is now persuading us to love one another. That is the particular statement. To prove that we should listen to him, he gives these general statements about love. He wants us to realize that as Christians our whole lives should be characterized by love. Everything we do should have love in it, driving it, motivating it. If this is true of us as Christians in general, then this particular appeal to love one another seems obvious and natural to us. If our whole lives are centered around love in general, to unbelievers and believers alike, it will only seem right and proper to love one another within our own fellowship. The general course of love that governs everything we do should naturally lead us to love one another in the way John has already described in 3:16-18 – sacrificially, unselfishly, laying down our lives if necessary for the sake of other believers. In verse 8, then, John is describing a person whose life is not governed by love. He is dealing with the person who lives a life where love is not the motivating factor; love is not this person’s driving force, both love to God and love to our neighbors. Here is a person in verse 8 who does not have this love that comes from God. This person is devoid of real, Christlike love.

            What about this person? What can we know about such a loveless person? John tells us that the one who does not love does not know God. Now immediately as we come to this point we encounter a problem with our translation. In verse 7 John wrote, everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. And then here our translators have rendered this verse, The one who does not love does not know God. The immediate understanding is that verse 8 is present tense like verse 7, speaking of ongoing, continual fellowship with God. But verse 8 in the Greek is not present tense. It is a different tense, namely the aorist tense, which signifies completed action, usually in the past. So when John wrote this verse he did not at all mean to convey any idea of our English present tense. The idea is this: The person who does not love has never come to know God. He has never even met Him. This person in verse 8 has never personally met God or had fellowship with Him. Donald Burdick, commenting on this verse, said that this person “has never known anything but estrangement from His Maker.” That is the idea. The person who does not love, who lives a life not directed and governed by love, has never known anything but alienation from God. He is estranged from God and always has been. No matter his claim or his knowledge or his education or his charisma or his profession of faith or anything else, if he does not live a life of love, he has never known God at all.

            This is not to say that this person does not know about God. That is not the same as knowing God Himself. This person may very well know about God, perhaps even more about God than many others. Yet we can be sure that this person does not know God and never has if he lives this sort of quality of life.

            This, then, is John’s proposition. The person who does not live a life of love has never had any real, personal fellowship with God. In other words, he is not a Christian. No matter his claims, no matter his knowledge or intellect, no matter his charm and charisma, the person who is not motivated and driven by love in his actions does not now know God nor ever has. But why? Why is it that someone without love has never known God? What is the proof?

 

The Proof

 

            The proof is this: The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God is love is John’s proof of his proposition. It is because God is love that John can claim that a person who does not love does not know God. In verse 7 we saw the phrase, for love is from God, and the word for in that verse was a Greek word that explained the ground or reason for the previous statement. Here again in verse 8 we see the exact same structure and word used. So John is saying, “Anyone who does not love, who does not demonstrate 1 Corinthians 13 in his or her life as a regular practice, has never known God in a personal, real way. And my reason for saying this is that God is love.”

            In this letter John has already made it clear that what characterizes God (light and love) must also characterize those who are born of God and know God. John put it like this in 3:9: No one who abides in Him practices sin, because His seed abides in him. What did he mean by that statement? He meant that the believer has Christ, God’s seed, the Son of God, abiding in him, and since Christ abides in the believer, the believer must therefore manifest the character of Jesus Christ. Because of this continual abiding of Christ in the Christian, the Christian must of necessity walk in the light. But not only that, since God literally abides in the believer, as John explained in 3:24, the believer must also live a life of love because God is love. The conclusion that follows, then, is that anyone who does not love does not know God. To know God is to be in this intimate relationship with Him, to have Him abiding in you. But if you do not practice love, then God must not abide in you, because God is love. This statement, God is love, is the proof that the person who does not love does not know God.

            We must now face the question: What does it mean that God is love? How are we to understand this? It is one thing to say it, but it is another to comprehend the length and width and depth and height of God’s love. What does it mean that God is love? How should we think about this thrilling doctrine? There have been many ways people over the centuries have interpreted this statement.

            One way that people have taken this statement is to see in it universal salvation for everyone. The statement God is love is taken to mean that God does not send anyone to hell. He does not allow anyone to endure eternal torment. In the end, according to this view, everyone ends up in the eternal presence of God, full of joy and happiness, living in perfection forever. This view clearly contradicts Scripture everywhere, as God’s Word makes it abundantly clear from start to finish that there will be people who are eternally condemned for their sin. I won’t spend much time refuting this view, as it is clearly a violation of the plain teaching of Scripture.

            A second view that people have taken when trying to understand the love of God is a view that denies the omniscience of God. This view teaches that God does not know the future decisions of His creatures, and that God is, more or less, watching the universe unfold to see what will happen, intervening from time to time. Why would anyone hold this view? This teaching is sometimes held because people don’t want to believe that God would create a universe in which He knew a vast majority of people would end up in hell. How could God be love if He knowingly created a universe where so many of His creatures would end up in eternal torment? The only solution for these people is that God simply did not realize that this is how things would turn out, but now He is trying to make the best of it. Again, we won’t spend much time on this view, as it clearly violates God’s Word. Isaiah 46:9-10 says, I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.’ Clearly the Bible teaches that God is omniscient and knows all things, and He has declared what the end would be from the beginning of time.

            Thidly, then, we come to a teaching that says that, while God knows what will happen in the future, and knows all things at all times, He only chose those people for salvation whom He knew would choose Him. In this view, God is love because He did not choose or reject anyone. In a sense, God merely went along with each individual person’s decision to either accept or reject the Gospel. God merely watched history, as it were, from start to finish, and knowing what would happen, He went along with it. This view is taken because it is argued that if God is truly love, then He would not choose one person over another for salvation. If God is love, then He must love everyone the same, and any unconditional election of certain sinners and not others would mean that God loves certain people more than others, and this would violate God’s love toward all men. So from this statement some conclude that God is passive in man’s individual salvation. He does not elect anyone unconditionally. Man is elected to salvation because he first chooses the Gospel, and then God chooses him. There are variations and differences among those who hold this view, but this is the main idea: man is ultimately responsible for his salvation and sovereign over his own choices and decisions. God may help men out to one degree or another, and He gives the same help to everyone, but ultimately a man’s salvation is based on his own free will.

            This view seems to be, in one form or another, the most popular view in the church today. Most churches would hold this view, and the fact that God is love is one of the most basic arguments for it. In fact, I have heard many people hold this view using this very concept, saying things like, “God is love; therefore, He would not send anyone to hell. He would not choose one person over another. That is incompatible with God being love.” And I suppose on the surface this view could be very appealing. What do we say to this view of God’s love?

            I think we must admit that it is clearly unscriptural. However we feel about this teaching, whether it appeals to us or not, we must confess that the Bible does not know the god of this system of doctrine. Romans 9:13 states, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. In the context of Romans 9, Paul is clearly using this to reference these two individual people, Jacob and Esau, and it is clear that one was chosen and the other rejected. Romans 9:18 continues the argument, saying, So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. The implication is that God has mercy on some, but He hardens others. The Bible is clear that God alone is sovereign in the matter of salvation. And the Bible is also clear that God is love, even though He chooses to reject some and harden their hearts against Him. And to be honest, this is very difficult to reconcile. How can we reconcile the fact that God is love with the fact that God hated Esau and hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he would not let the people go?

            Some people feel that it cannot be reconciled, and this brings us to the fourth view, which states that God is not love. While the third view would reject the sovereignty of God, this view rejects the love of God. These people would teach that since there is so much suffering and death and sin, and so many people who will perish eternally in hell, God cannot be love. And so they reject the love of God because they cannot reconcile it with the power and sovereignty of God. We would also reject this view as unscriptural just on the basis of our text this morning, which states as clearly as possible, God is love.

            So what is the solution? First, did you notice that in all of these views human beings are the center, the focus? Whether or not God is love is based on what happens, ultimately, to people. How we define God’s love is by what happens to people. And this is always our tendency, to start with ourselves. We are self-centered, and we fall into difficulty in understanding God and His Word for this very reason – we think it is all about us. Christianity, salvation, Christ, and everything is, we so often believe, primarily about our well-being and our position and how we feel. We see ourselves as the end for which God created the world, and so often we see ourselves as the goal of all that happens. But this is not how we should think. We must always begin with God. We must start with Him, not with ourselves. And the flaw in each of these four views is that they all begin with mankind and focus on man. They exalt man as the center of things, rather than putting the emphasis and focus where it should be – on God and His glory. To understand the love of God, then, we must start with God, not with man.

            The primary thing to understand in this is that God loves God most of all. God loves Himself more than He loves anything and anyone else. God has no gods before God. If God loved someone or something more than He loved Himself, then He would cease to be righteous, and we would have no hope. God’s love for Himself is not unloving for us, for if God did not love Himself most of all, we would not have a righteous, just, holy God. God is fully devoted to one thing, and that is Himself and His glory. And that is for our good.

            This love of God for Himself is most clearly seen, I believe, within the Trinity. The fact that God is love becomes evident to us when we see the love that exists within the Trinity. Augustine and other early church writers and pastors saw within this statement, that God is love, proof of the Trinity, for if God is love, then He must always have loved someone or something, and the someone that God has always loved has been the members of the Trinity, and I would submit to you that His highest and original and chief love is for Himself within the Trinity.

            Jesus often talked about the love of the Father and the Son. This is not mere philosophical speculation. Scripture backs up this idea with astounding clarity. In John 5:20 Jesus said, The Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing. God the Father loves God the Son and shows Him everything that He is doing. There is an intimate and eternal relationship of love that existed from the Father to the Son. And this love is reciprocal. The Son also loves the Father. In John 14:31 Jesus said, So that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Here is Jesus’ plain and clear declaration that He loves the Father. God the Son loves God the Father. And God the Father loves God the Son. How long has this love existed? Jesus tells us that it was from before the foundation of the world. In John 17:24 He said, Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. In eternity past God the Father loved God the Son and gave Him glory. The glory of God belongs to the Father, and He gave it to the Son, so that they both have the full glory of God, and this all happened in eternity past. There is within the Trinity this eternal, infinite, measureless love. The Holy Spirit, while not explicitly mentioned in this love relationship, certainly must also participate, for He is fully God as well. He abides in us to glorify the Son, and thereby to glorify the Father. So there we have this eternal, infinite love of God shared between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is this incredible, indescribable love. When you think of God as love, you must begin with God. You must realize that before the world ever existed, God was love. God did not become love at creation. God eternally has loved Himself within the Trinity in this most glorious way. The Father has given the Son glory, and the Son seeks to honor the Father, and the Spirit seeks to honor and glorify the Father and the Son, and there is this perfect harmony of love within the Trinity. You must begin with this to properly understand the love of God. If you start by thinking first and foremost of God’s love in relation to humans, to His creation, you will miss this essential point, and you will inevitably find yourself believing something unscriptural about God.

            Secondly, you must understand that God has a special love for the elect. This flows out of God’s love for Himself, especially the love the Father has for the Son. The picture of our redemption is an astonishingly beautiful picture of the love between the Father, the Son, and His bride, the church. God the Father has chosen in Christ certain individuals for salvation, and He has done this for several reasons, one of which is because He loves the Son, and He is seeking to give a gift of love to the Son. In John 6:37 Jesus put it like this: All that the Father gives Me will come to Me. Now what is the point of that statement? The point is that the Father has chosen a people to give to His Son, and we know that this people, this kingdom, if you will, is a bride for the Son. Why has the Father done this? There is only one possible reason: He loves the Son and wants to glorify Him. He wants to bestow glory on His Son, so He is creating a bride for Him that will honor Him, glorify Him, enjoy His glory, and be eternally with Him forever. That is seen in Jesus’ prayer in John 17:24, which we read a moment ago. So the Father gives the Son a gift because He loves the Son, and what is the Son’s response? Jesus continues, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. Who is the one who comes to Jesus? The one the Father gives Jesus. And Jesus’ response is that He will accept the love gift from the Father. He will not spurn the gift His Father is giving Him. The ones that come to Him His Father is giving to Him, and Jesus will not cast us out because He would never dishonor the Father in that way. The Father and Son seek to honor and glorify one another. They love one another. So they work in harmony together for their own glory, which is the glory of God. This is high doctrine. This is mysterious and difficult for us even to conceive. But it is what Scripture teaches. The Father is giving His Son a bride, and that bride is the church. And the Son loves the bride. The Son loves the church, His bride. He says just that in John 15:9, saying, Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you. Do you comprehend what Jesus is saying here? Just as the Father has loved the Son, the Son has loved His bride! And then in John 16:27 Jesus said that not only does the Son love the church, but so does the Father Himself because the church loves the Son. Listen to it: For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father. Could there be a more magnificent statement in the whole of Scripture? The Father Himself loves His children. He loves His Son, Jesus, and He loves the bride of Christ, the church because the church loves His Son. And when someone loves the Son, the Father loves that person. Have you considered that the Father Himself loves you right this very moment if you love the Son?

            You must understand the love of God in this way. You must realize that God is love, and it starts with God the Father loving God the Son, and God the Son loving God the Father, and there is this gift of the bride to the Son from the Father, a gift of love. The Son loves His bride so much, that He Himself paid the price of His own life to make her a worthy bride. He bought the bride with His own precious blood, and demonstrated His love for the Father and for us. Our salvation is glorious for us. Oh yes, there is nothing in the world more wonderful than being in Christ and being His bride, but our salvation is not as much about us as it is about this glorious, infinite, eternal love between the Father and the Son. Is it any wonder, knowing these wonderful truths about the love of God, that John would say, God is love? When John saw the love of God played out in Jesus’ life and His obedience to the Father, and he saw the Father’s love for Jesus, he could only say, God is love! And if you noticed, all of these passages we read about the love of God the Father and God the Son come from the Gospel of John. John must have been awestruck at this infinite love that existed between the Father and the Son.

            But, I believe, we must also take this one step further, because if we stop here we limit God’s love where He has not limited it. God has not only eternally loved Himself, and He does not only love the elect, but He also loves all of humanity. He loves the world. It is true that God declared that He hated Esau. And the Psalmist clearly says in Psalm 11:5, The one who loves violence His soul hates, meaning that God in some sense hates the sinner who does not repent and ask for forgiveness. Let us be clear about that. There is a righteous hatred God has not only for sin, but also for the sinner. The Scripture is clear. But at the same time, it must also be said that God loves humanity. He is favorably disposed to His creatures, sinful and wretched as they are. God demonstrates this love in two ways.

            First, He shows His love through providence. Matthew 5:45 says that the Father causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. The evil and the unrighteous are not deserving of such blessings. They are only deserving of incineration in hell for all eternity. Yet because God does indeed love His enemies and those who hate Him, He shows them love through such gifts of nature and providence.

            Secondly, God loves the world through His own self-disclosure and self-revelation. God has not hidden Himself from mankind, and this demonstration of His character and divine attributes is a clear indication that He loves everyone. In Romans 1 we read that God has revealed Himself through what has been made. He has clearly displayed His divinity, power, and majesty through creation so that no one has an excuse for their lack of love and thanksgiving to Him. Mankind, all of mankind, knows about the majesty of God through creation, because God has revealed Himself as a mighty God through His creative work. But also God has disclosed Himself to mankind through His Son. John wrote the verse we see at every sporting event in America it seems, For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son. God loved the world, all of mankind, so much so that He gave His Son. He revealed Himself to the world through His Son. John 1:18 puts it like this: No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. Jesus explained God to us. He revealed God to us. He made God known to us. God demonstrated His love for humanity by explaining Himself through Christ. It is only by willful ignorance and by hard-hearted sinfulness that people do not understand God and do not love God, for He has been explained in the person of His Son, Jesus.

            God is love. For this reason, because of the magnitude of love we see in God, we can confidently say that anyone who does not love does not know God. When we see the love that exists in the Trinity, and when we see God’s love for His elect, and when we see His love to even disclose Himself to all men so that no one would have an excuse and be left out of this wonderful knowledge of God, what more can we say than God is love? God’s love is not lessened by His sovereignty, His holiness, and His justice. No, His love is magnified by it. We see His love, His infinite love, as we see the love story of redemption between the Father and the Son, and the Son and His bride. And we see God’s love to mankind, disclosing Himself through His goodness in providence and His grace in the giving of His Son. What more could God do to show Himself as a God of love?

Like Moses, may we see this magnificent display of God’s love and fall on our faces in worship. May we long to experience this love of God, and for Him to take us as His own possession. May we humbly confess our sin, iniquity, and transgression, and, by the blood of Christ, enter into His presence as His children. May the love of God not move us to exalt ourselves as supreme, but to humble ourselves, and see Him as the most lovely, most desirable, most awesome Treasure. And seeing His love, let us love one another. Let’s pray.

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