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Not That We Loved God, But That He Loved Us 1 John 4:9-10 June 8, 2003
As we come to the ninth verse of this fourth chapter, it is important that we remember that the Apostle John is now appealing to us as Christians that we love one another. In 4:7 the Apostle began this section by writing, Beloved, let us love one another. That is his argument and his appeal, I believe, to 5:5. It is essential that we remember this point – all that John has to say here is to motivate and stimulate us to love one another within the church. In 3:10-24 the Apostle has shown us the necessity and benefits of loving one another within the church, and now, it seems, that he was not content leaving his exhortation where it was at the end of chapter 3, so he continues his theme here. This theme is really the last main section of the letter, with 5:6-21 being more of a concluding section. So here we are, then, being exhorted by the Apostle John to love one another as he prepares to end his letter and bring to a conclusion all that he has said. The Apostle, then, states at the outset his appeal, that we are to love one another, and then he gives the theological reasons for it. This is somewhat different than how we are used to seeing things, especially in the letters of the Apostle Paul, who invariably begins with his theological explanations and then we find the word, therefore, and he explains all of the implications of the doctrine he has just put forward. John does things in a different manner here, as he begins where Paul usually ends, and as we will see in the upcoming weeks, he comes full circle back to his initial statement. So what are the theological reasons for this appeal to love one another that the Apostle gives us? What is the doctrine that should cause us to live this type of life motivated by love? His first reason was found in verse 7, where he stated, for love is from God. We ought to love one another because love ultimately comes from God, and it is our demonstration of our fellowship with Him. If we love, we know that the only way we have loved is because God has supplied us with this love, and so we know that we know Him and are born of Him. The second reason he gave was in verse 8, where he stated that God is love. We are to love one another because of God’s very nature and character. He is a God of love, and His very nature is love. He is love in and of Himself. Having given us these two reasons, the Apostle goes on to give us a third reason why we as Christians should be loving one another, and I believe that it is here, in verses 9 and 10, that the Apostle reaches the climax of his argument. He started in verse 7 with the fact that love is from God. And then he proceeded to move higher with the statement, God is love. This statement is wondrous in and of itself. That God is love should cause us to fall on our faces to worship Him and reverence Him and fear Him for this very attribute of His. Yet it still is not the climax. The climax is here in verses 9 and 10, where we are told that God has manifested His love. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, explaining the significance of this truth, said, “[God] is love, but mercifully for us He has ‘manifested’ that love.” It is not that God simply is love within Himself, but His love has spilled over like a fountain, and He has declared it and manifested it. This is one of the most important doctrines in the Bible. Commenting on the importance of this manifest love of God, Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “The more I study the New Testament and live the Christian life, the more convinced I am that our fundamental difficulty, our fundamental lack, is the lack of seeing the love of God.” Lloyd-Jones argued that the most basic, fundamental problem that we as Christians have is our lack of vision regarding the love of God. We know about it in our heads, perhaps, and we could explain it all, but yet we have not been affected by it because we have not truly comprehended the wonder of it. We have this lack as Christians because the love of God has been watered down to mere sentiment, and so we have trouble truly comprehending it in its fullness. And yet it is this love that ought to transform us and cause us to display Christ in this world. To truly understand and see this love of God, we must understand certain doctrines. It is at this point where many people fail to adequately understand and apply the love of God. Doctrine and theology can become an exercise in academics if we are not careful, and because of this there are those who would separate the love of God from doctrine. They would distinguish what they would consider “academic” from what is “real” or “practical.” Yet this is impossible if we are truly to comprehend the love of God. The love of God must be understood within the framework of theology. A person cannot say, “We are not interested in doctrine and theology. We simply want to love one another.” That is an utter impossibility, for it is the very doctrine that teaches us what love is. Without the doctrine, we cannot love one another because we will not understand the biblical meaning of love. Therefore, we cannot simply say, God is love, and then move on and enjoy the abstract quality of the statement, allowing it to mean whatever we want it to mean. Here in verses 9-10 the Apostle moves from the somewhat abstract statement, God is love, to the more concrete statement, the love of God was manifested. It is not just that God is love, but that God has shown us His love and the meaning of it. And He has done so in a certain manner. It is the truths presented here that make the love of God so incredibly incomprehensible and so unlike anything in our world. So in these two verses John tells us that God has manifested His love, and He has done it in a certain way, and we must understand these truths to truly comprehend the love of God.
The Meaning of Manifest (v. 9)
First of all, what does it mean that the love of God was manifest? What does the Apostle mean by that statement? This word, manifest, basically means this: to reveal something that previously was hidden. Or we could say it like this: to make clear something that was previously not understood. So when John says the love of God was made manifest, his meaning is that God at a point in history made His love clear and known in a way that it had not previously been understood. Before the coming of Christ we did not know the full meaning of God’s love. We had types and shadows of it in the Old Testament. We had prophecies about it. 1 Peter 1:10-11 tells us that the prophets of the Old Testament, wanting to understand this love of God and His grace and mercy, made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. The prophets were told about God’s plan of salvation and His grace that would be given to His people, but they could not fully understand it. They could not grasp it. So they made searches and inquiries, they longed to know more about this love of God, but until Christ the love of God was not clearly understood. It was still, to one degree or another, a mystery. So the Apostle in 1 John 4:9 is saying to us that now the love has been manifested. Now it is no longer a mystery, concealed, hidden, or unclear. God’s love is absolutely clear and evident. So the question is: How is it manifest? How is it clearly understood now? In what manner did God manifest this infinite love?
The Manner of Its Manifestation (v. 9)
Notice in verse 9 that John says, By this the love of God was manifested in us. This phrase, in us, has the idea that God manifested His great love in our presence. He manifested it in our world, where we live. He did not manifest it some place far away where we would be unable to observe it or understand it. No, He made His love known among us where we can observe it. A parallel usage of this phrase is found in John 1:14, where the Apostle writes, And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory. It is the same phrase translated in us in 1 John 4:9, and it has the idea of being in the presence, being with certain people and in their sphere of living. So John is simply saying that God Himself has manifested His love in our sphere, in our world, where it is observable to us. God did not demonstrate His love in heaven only, and then merely tell us about it. To the contrary, God made His love known among us. How did He make His love known among us? By sending His only begotten Son into the world. John writes in verse 9, By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world. This phrase is so rich and wonderful we can barely comprehend the magnitude of it. God sent His Son. The Son was in heaven with the Father from all eternity, but then God sent Him. The Son was not born into this world as we are; He was sent into this world. He existed before He came into this world, and He left the glories of heaven, and was sent from that glorious place to the world in which we live. But not only did God send His Son, it was God’s only begotten Son. This means that God sent His unique, one-of-a-kind, beloved Son. The word translated only begotten is a word that comes from two Greek words that mean “only” and “kind” or “type.” The word was used of an only-child that was very precious and dear to his or her parents. When applied to Jesus it carries the idea that there was no other like Him. He was unique. There is no one to whom we could compare Him. There is a special relationship between Jesus and the Father, and in this relationship Jesus is beloved of the Father in a special and unique way. We delved into this in more detail last week as we saw the intense and eternal love that exists between God the Father and God the Son. There is this unity, this love, this relationship that the Father and Son have that makes Jesus the unique, one-of-a-kind, Son of God. As Christians we all become children of God, but Jesus is the Son of God in a unique way which we will never be. He is precious to the Father, and the Father loves Christ with a deep, infinite love. This is truly beyond us. We cannot understand this love that exists within the Trinity, yet we know that it is here in the Trinity that God’s love begins. The very idea that this love would be manifest among us implies that it exists and always has existed somewhere outside of our realm, and that place is in heaven within the Triune God. The fact that God sent His one and only Son into the world only serves to magnify the love of God. Not only this, but God sent His only Son into the world! The world is not a kind place, and we all know that. It is unthinkable that the eternal God should send His one and only, dearly beloved, precious Son into such a world as ours. What kind of love is this that would move God to such incredible action? God sent His Son from holy, glorious, perfect heaven to sinful, cursed, wicked earth. He sent Him to a place where death awaited. To send your child, especially your only child, into a place you knew was extremely dangerous and hostile is surely unimaginable. If you asked someone for advice as to whether or not you should send your child to a wicked place where your only child would be hated, mistreated, mocked, scorned, spit upon, and ultimately butchered and crucified on the cross, would anyone tell you to do it? No, this action of God demonstrates the magnitude of His love toward us. He sent His Son into the world. And why did He do it? The Apostle says that it was so that we might live through Him. He did it for us! He did it so that we might have life! He did it because He wanted to give us something, He wanted to give us life. From this I can only conclude that we must be dead before we receive Christ. If we need Christ so that we might live, that can only mean that we are dead before Christ comes in. And you will find that this is the testimony of Scripture. Perhaps the most explicit statement of this is in Ephesians 2:1. Paul says to these Ephesian believers, You were dead in your trespasses and sins. “You were dead,” says Paul. “You had no life in you. You were spiritually dead, unable to understand the things of God, unable to please God. You were born spiritually dead, living in trespasses and sins.” But what happened. Paul says in verse 4, But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. There we were, in a pitiful state, dead in our own transgressions. We had violated the Law of God and were spiritually dead, unable to respond to the Gospel message of salvation, so God made us alive! He gave us life. He sent Christ, His one and only Son into the world so that we might no longer be dead in our transgressions, but so that we might live through Him. Jesus came to deliver us from the domain of death to the kingdom of life. He came so that we might live. God loved us to such a great extent that He sent His Son so that we might no longer be spiritually dead, but so that we might live through Him. So here is God’s love manifest to us. God has sent His only, His unique, beloved Son into this sin-filled, cursed world. And He did not send Him to bring vengeance on the world or to curse and condemn it, but so that we might live through Him. What amazing love! What profound grace! What measureless mercy! What more can you say? What more is there? Where can the Apostle go from here? How can he improve on this statement? Well, I don’t think he can, but I don’t think he has finished explaining and marveling at the love of God. He gets to the end of verse 9, and doesn’t want to end there, so what does he do? He says it again, this time in a different way. What more can you say? You can’t say much more than he said in verse 9, but for those hearing or reading the letter that missed it the first time, he says it again in verse 10, only this time in a different way.
Our sinful condition (v. 10)
Look at verse 10. He starts off with the phrase, In this is love. In the original it literally reads, “In this is the love.” “Here is the love which I have just been describing,” John says. It’s as if he is nearly out of words. He wants to expand on verse 9 but he can’t quite get his arms around it, so he just starts over. “Here it is,” he says, “let me now try to say it like this, so you can hear it again in a new, fresh way. Here is the love I have been talking about.” So he endeavors to put it to us in a different way so that we might more fully apprehend the infinite, inconceivable nature of God’s love toward us. He starts with the negative this time. He says, In this is love, not that we loved God. This is an emphatic statement by the Apostle. He wants us to understand that we, being what we are – sinners, haters of God, full of wickedness, dead in our transgressions – we did not love God. The verb here has the idea of having done something in the past that has produced some continual result. We never did anything in the past that would have resulted in God loving us. We did not and could not originate within ourselves love for God. That is to say, there is nothing in us that would stimulate and motivate God to love us. The Apostle Paul put it like this in Romans 3:10-18, There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one. Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. This is the biblical description of man apart from God. People are not righteous; they do not seek for God. There is a very popular style of ministry today called “seeker-friendly” ministry, in which the premise is that there are millions of people out there in the world seeking God, and what we have to do is try to get them to come to church so they can find Him. But the Bible tells us that no one seeks God. There are no God-seekers out there. The only one who is seeking is God Himself, as Jesus made clear in John 4:23. It is a tragic theological error to believe that mankind is seeking after God. Mankind is rebellious against God, hating God, and doing everything it can to remove God from this world. Unbelievers are not seeking God. Paul tells us that there is no fear of God before their eyes. They are not afraid of His majesty and power and justice and wrath. They do not tremble at His Word. They live in arrogance against Almighty God. This was the condition of all of us! None of us sought God. If we are saved it is only because God sought us. John Calvin put it like this, “All the passions of our flesh carry on continual war with His righteousness.” People don’t seek God. They carry on war with God’s righteousness. Their lusts drive them to madness and ruin. This is the condition of mankind as described in Scripture. We can never think too poorly of ourselves. For just when we feel we have thought low enough of how we really are, we ought to sink a thousand times lower! We are sinners, deserving of wrath. God is not indebted to us in any way. Do you realize this? We broke God’s commandments. We broke His Law. We deserve hell forever for high treason against Almighty God. And what are we in God’s sight? We are but a vapor that is here today and gone tomorrow. We are like grass that springs up in the morning and withers at evening. We are dust and will return to dust. Do you realize the difference, the gap, that exists between you and Almighty God? Do you realize that He is not indebted to you for one single thing, but that you owe Him everything, including the very breath you are taking now? And do you yet still realize that you have sinned against Him in the most heinous way by trading His glory for your own lusts and desires? You have profaned the glory of God for that which is not glory; you have rejected the presence of God for the pleasures of sin. You have spurned Him countless times. If He should mark your iniquities this very moment, you would be incinerated to ashes. We ought to have loved Him. We have erred greatly by not loving Him, for He is of all beings most lovely and most infinitely lovable. We have acted like beasts and madmen for not cherishing His infinite holiness and glory and love, and we have done nothing but provoke Him to holy and just wrath against us. Our passions have waged continual war with His holiness and righteousness. We, by our continual sinning, have declared ourselves enemies of God.
The Magnitude of God’s Love (v. 10)
Yet what is the statement of Scripture? The Apostle says, not that we loved God, but that He loved us. We have not loved God, dear friends. We have not held Him in the highest esteem in our affections, but He has loved us. He has loved us in spite of what we are. He has loved us despite the fact that we have sinned against Him, that we have exchanged His glory for the pleasures of sin. He has given us this great love when all we deserve is wrath and condemnation. When the doctrine of election comes up, inevitably the question is raised, “How or why does God not choose everyone to be saved?” Oh, that is the wrong question, and if you ask the wrong question you will never arrive at the right answer. The proper question is, “Why does God choose anyone to be saved?” Why should God love us this way? Why should God love us like this? There is no human explanation for it. There is nothing in us that can explain the love of God. We did not deserve it. We did not do anything to earn it. And this, you see, is why it is so important that we reject that system of teaching that says that God chose us based on what He knew that we would do. God did not choose us on anything in and of ourselves, for it is not that we loved God, but that He loved us. If our love for God logically preceded His choice of us, then the Apostle could not make this wonderful, marvelous statement. The love of God would not be manifested in this astounding way if God loved us because we first loved Him. No, God knew that none of us would love Him, so He, based on His own mercy and wisdom and purpose, chose us in Christ, and He loved us. Do not ever see the sweet sovereignty of God as something that is opposed to His love. His love is not rightly understood unless we realize that we have nothing in ourselves that makes us lovable. We did not love God. We did not choose Him. He chose us. He loved us before we loved Him. Paul says this very thing in Romans 5:8. He wrote, But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still enemies of God in our minds, Christ died for us. God demonstrated His love toward us in the sacrifice of His one and only Son. Why did Christ die for us? Why did God love us this way? This is absolutely marvelous and thrilling doctrine. Look at the end of verse 10. The Apostle John writes that God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. What does that mean? It means this: We, as people dead in our own transgressions, dead in sin, had the wrath of God abiding on us. We were separated from God by our sin, and the only way we could be reconciled to God is if His justice and wrath were satisfied. Although God is love, God is also light, and we must always remember that. The love of God demands that He be just and righteous, and His justice and righteousness demands that sin be judged. It demands satisfaction. But being what we are, we are incapable of satisfying God’s just demands; we could never satisfy His justice for our own sins. So God sent His Son to satisfy His justice and wrath against us. That is what it means to be a propitiation. It is to be an offering that satisfies the demands of God’s justice and wrath. It is to be a sacrifice that appeases the wrath of God against sin. God loved us to such an extent that He sent His one and only Son to be the offering that would receive His wrath. He sent His one and only Son so that we could receive forgiveness. 1 Peter 2:24 describes this concept like this: He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. He took our sins on Himself, and He bore them in His own body, so that we would not have to bear them ourselves! He was the propitiation, the satisfaction, for our sins. He took them away. He carried them away. And why would God do this? Why would God send His Son to bear our sins on the cross in His own body? Peter goes on in 1 Peter 3:18, saying, For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God. That is the reason. God sent His Son so that the separation that kept us from Him could be removed. He sent His Son because He loved us so much that He wanted to bring us to Himself. God had such great love for us that He willingly sent His own Son to be butchered on the cross just so that we, His enemies, those who rejected Him and His glory, could be brought close to Him. God loved us and wanted us to be brought to Himself. But there was only one way to do it, and that was for Christ to die, the just for the unjust. Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, died for us, we who were sinners and enemies of God. He is the propitiation – the sacrifice that removes the barrier of wrath and just condemnation – for our sins. God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, not because we deserved it, not because we were lovable, not because we first loved Him, not because of anything we would choose, but because He Himself loved us out of His own benevolent nature that is love. Does it not move your heart this morning to realize that the eternal, Almighty, sovereign God of the universe has loved you and sent His Son so that you might live through Him? Are you not humbled at this wondrous love of God that has moved His heart of mercy and compassion to the point of sending His own Son to be killed by those He would save? Jesus is God’s one and only, dearly beloved Son, and God sent Him into this cursed, wicked world on our behalf, so that we might live, so that our sins might be forgiven. Oh what kind of love is this? What kind of hearts must we have not to tremble before the love of God and fall on our faces and worship Him in reverence and fear? I plead with you, spend some time thinking about this love. Realize how wicked and sinful you are. Realize the depths of your own depravity. Realize how deserving you are of eternal judgment and torment in everlasting hell. Realize the hatred that was in your heart for this God of love and mercy and grace and glory. Spend time until your heart breaks as it realizes that you did not love this holy God of love. And then meditate on His love for you. Think upon His wondrous love that would desire to save someone like you. Think about His kindness and pity and compassion to forgive your wickedness and transgressions. Think about His love that wanted you, even you who rejected and scorned Him, to be in His presence for all eternity, to see His glory! He has loved you in such a marvelous way! Will you think on it? Will you be moved by it? Will you be broken by it, and like Moses fall to the ground and worship? Will you realize how undeserving you are, and how rich in mercy God is, and love Him for it. Love Him for it. Give Him your all. Realize the depths of His love. “Amazing love, how can it be, that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” Let’s pray. [Home page] [ ]
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