I John, 4:14-16
Bradley W. Maston · Apr 23, 2006
1 John, No. 29
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262349587148

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So, we're going to start reading all together. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

Okay. All right, so, moving on. Go back to the Greek. Here you are, sir. Yes, they are. Let's see if we can find the agapes. I'm going to need help from y'all. You can't read it either, huh? No, not very well, I'm afraid. Here's an agape. I can't make this thing do its deal. There's an agape. Agape. No fileos. It's fileo-free. 25% less fileos. Okay, so, moving right along.

Alright, so, holy deja vu, Batman! If we look closely at this verse, we may feel as if we're hearing something again. Zounds, Robin! Could it be that John is reiterating what he began the book with? To the Mac computer! Yes, indeed it is. Would someone like to read 1 John 1 through 3 for me? Was I the only one who watched that show growing up? I love that show. Okay. Does someone want to read this for us? Anyone?

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. All right, and then we'll come back to it, but those two Greek words for looked at and testify are actually words that we're going to be dealing with again today. Some theologians, and Josiah touched a little bit on this last week with the reiteration and all that business, but some theologians compared Paul to the systematizer, the planner or maybe the engineer of the New Testament.

Paul writes with these huge compound words, complex sentences. I mean, you know, the diagrams of the John sentences are a little bit simpler by comparison, maybe we could say. And his writing is logically perfect. You can tell that he's trying to write logically for the Greek mind to understand the perfection. He'll write about position, write about condition, as we've talked about before. Everything is separated in its proper place.

Whereas John is more like a musician, which is why I think I love him so much. He reiterates themes and weaves them together, so his work is like a tapestry. They come back and they come back in echoes or waves as if you've ever heard a great symphony. The major themes just keep coming back. It's not like he's going to take one paragraph and talk about God's love, and then never talk about it again in that letter, he's going to keep bringing it back. It's going to resurface. And he's going to show us how all of this letter, it all ties together. It's not as if he's just pulling random thoughts, but it all weaves together as opposed to being some sort of thesis or treaties that's really well organized in our Greek sense. So anyway, just so we get that going.

And, kai, is the word for and, and it's the most common conjunction in the Greek language. It can mean and, also, or even. However, we find that it's missing from this translation. However, it connects one verse to the verse before it, and other translations include it, and if it's good enough for Greek, it's good enough for me. So, this verse could read, as connected to 13, By this we know that we abide in him, and he in us. because He has given us His Spirit, and we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world." Okay, so now moving on to we. This is the typical third-person pronoun that is well translated, we.

It is not necessary in the Greek, just as in the verse last week, as Josiah pointed out, it's for extra added emphasis. Since the verb alone is enough, the conjugated verb alone is enough to infer the subject. And it's more common in Greek, it's very common in Korean, I'm sure, it's not as common in English. We don't skip over our subjects because, but even though we do conjugate our verbs, we could leave them off of a lot of our sentences we chose to. But it was common in Greek, it's not common in English.

So the question is, who is the we? The idea of having seen and testifying comes up, which reminds us of John 1, 3, which we just read. But we see again, and we talked about, as we read the first time, this is like a legal certification almost. I mean, it's, we saw it with our eyes, we touched with our hands, we heard with our ears. I mean, and he seemed to be very clearly referring to we as the apostles. as this specific group of apostles who actually walked with Jesus. who actually heard his voice and who actually shook his hand, reclined on him, all this business. As we talked about, it's an open defiance of what the Gnostics were teaching at the time. So anyway, there's this verse, which it's very similar to. So that might lead us to believe that the we is talking about John and the Apostles or maybe That larger group of apostles that includes Paul. Anyway, so that group. And then we look at the original, or the fuller context. Does someone want to read from 12 to 17 for me? Emory, would you be so kind?

No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. Thank you. So, what I'd like to draw your attention to is that Now, I know there's been some contention along the way, but I've felt, personally, like most of these we's, not all of them, but most of these we's, the stronger argument can be made for them being a more generic we. We as Christians. If we love one another, God abides in us.

That doesn't seem like a specific apostolic we. So, given that it's surrounded by so many we's, and of course this is a judgment you can make yourselves, given it's surround, oh, that's awkward, given the fact that it's surrounded by so many generic we's, I have a tendency to think that this clause would mean himself in the, I'm sorry, this we would be talking about all Christians. However, you could make a case that he's talking about just the apostolic group. He's just switched his definition of we for this small clause.

And truthfully, I'm not sure it makes a huge difference in the interpretation of the verse. I don't think it changes the meaning of the verse, whether it's the apostolic we or that. The reality is it's verifiable fact. Whether it's something that we as Christians verified, and we'll get into the meaning of the words that it talks about in a second, or it's just things that the apostles verified, the interpretation of the verse as something that has been verified and testified about is something that remains the same. So, by a show of hands, who thinks that this we is strictly appealing to the apostles? Who thinks it's a generic we? Ah, we win. Everyone else loses. Just kidding.

So anyway, I'd love to have a rousing discussion about that later. Okay, so, seen, theomai. This is the same word for see that we encountered in the first verse of this book. As we remember, meant to gaze intently upon or behold attentively. It has the idea of the image being burned in our brains and all the things in our lives the image will never leave us. And we can just go back and picture things exactly as they were on that day or that time or at that moment. And I think that's the image that's being given to us. Wyss also kind of gives an interesting rendering of this.

He takes the element of sight out of it and just says, that which we've contemplated, that which we've known and thought on and stood over, and decided that it's what it is, it's right, that the Father sent the Son. So, if you follow Weist's interpretation, that it's testified, then to me there's no problem that it's the generic We, because obviously we never physically saw Jesus with our eyes, but we have contemplated and considered whether the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world or not, and decided that it's so. So anyway, that's a possibility of nuance that I couldn't quite reconcile. So if you go with the scene thing, or the physical site idea, I think it supports the idea of the we referring to the Apostles. If you choose to, with Weiss, decide that he's more trying to emphasize the fact that it's something that we've internalized and considered and burned this mental picture of, then the generic we might hold a little bit more water.

And it's in the perfect tense, can you believe it? Wow, it's like my new favorite tense. Okay. Testify, martyrio. Okay, you know how Verne takes a Greek word and takes what it sounds like? So I was looking for pictures of Stephen the martyr, but they were all really bloody and gory, so I couldn't, like, oh, martyrio, it's funny. And then I found out that, then I found out that this word actually, our word martyr does come down from this word, to be killed for your testimony. or for what you testify, and it was the complete Word Study Dictionary that drew that connection, so I don't think it was Vines. So anyway, if you want to check that out, I think it's an interesting connection, but I don't think that it's really particularly applicable to today's passage. because obviously they're not really talking about martyrdom at all.

So, he's just talking about testimony or to testify, and it's the same one that we encountered in 1 John 1, chapter 2. The life that was manifested that we have seen and testify, and proclaimed you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us.

We also find this word here is in the present tense, active voice and indicative mood. So this is something that is actively being done presently. Not something in the perfect tense that was once done and kind of carries on into the present. And it's not something in the aorist tense where it's just something that was done in the past.

They didn't just testify once, they're still testifying. He's still testifying. And I think there's an indirect application to us that we're still testifying. We still need to be testifying each and every day, whether through word or action or whatever situations the Lord has us in throughout the day. It's just interesting how he uses the tenses to say that this is something seen, that's something we did, and it has effects into the present. Testifying, that's something we're still doing, that's still something we spend each day at.

So, sent, this is the father has sent the son, is apostolo, it's obviously the verb form of the word where we get the English word apostle. It's not the ordinary word for sent, rather it entails a special commission. in which the power and authority are given in order to complete the required task. So, an apostle, or someone who is apostolically sent, isn't just a messenger, isn't someone who just says, hear ye, hear ye, the king says, everybody should hop on one leg for two days. It's someone who actually can go through and cut off legs to make sure that everyone's hopping on one leg. Someone who has the authority to make sure that the commandment happens, or that the command happens. Which is kind of implicit in the nature of who Jesus was, but at the same time, this word entails that he's fully authorized. I also thought this was an interesting passage. It's the same word here, sent forth.

It says, Then Herod, this is Matthew 2.16, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry, and he sent forth, that's our word, and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem, and all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men. It's a really fascinating choice of words. Because he didn't just send out the soldiers to tell everybody, hey, we're going to be through about noon to kill all your children. He sent them out with the swords and actually able to do it.

So, this is the idea. You're the messenger and the executor of the plan. So, in this case, Christ was the messenger, he brought the good news, and the executor of the plan, with the authority. And yes, it's in the perfect tense. Savior. Soter. This word can be translated as Savior, Deliverer, or Preserver. This is the mission for which the father sent the son with authority and power to complete the task. This is Hadrian, if you haven't met him.

Historically speaking, when the Roman Emperor, this is just a little insight from history, when the Roman Emperor would go through the streets of a Roman city, the people had to line up and shout Salvatore, which is the Latin equivalent of the word, or we used to even say that in the Greek cities they'd shout in the Greek, This exact phrase, Savior of the world, Savior of the world, Savior of the world, shout to Caesar. So, to call Jesus the Savior, or the Savior of the world, would mean that Caesar was not. And they would have been fine to say a Savior, or maybe they might be okay with that, but this is one of the chief qualms that the Romans had with Christianity. is that they would not acknowledge anyone else as the Savior.

And I think, I mean, as you read your Christian history or Fox's Book of Martyrs, people died for this. Not, I mean, not just because someone was spitting on their shoes about the faith, but because they were forced to say, no, no, say that Caesar is the Savior of the world. And they chose to die over that.

And I think it's a It's a, I think it's an adequate challenge, at least to me, in my life. As we come up against things, we're going to, I mean, the new, our century is so drunk with tolerance and the idea of tolerance, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't be out in love, but To me, in my life, in my conscience, there's a vast difference meeting someone who says, oh, I'm a Buddhist, I believe in reincarnation. There's a vast difference to me in saying in love, oh, I don't agree with that, or saying, oh, that's great, that's okay, I'm glad that you found the thing. To me, there's a huge difference. To me, one is... and not to say it's denying Christ in a... well... To me, there's a huge difference that is to the magnitude of saying, okay, Caesar can be Savior and Jesus can be Savior.

No! So, I'm just... personally, I happen to be an apologetic Christian. It seems like everyone else can say, oh yeah, we disagree with Christianity. But Christians, we're not supposed to come out and say, you know what? That's just a load. That's just garbage. And here's the verses that say it, and you know what? If we disagree, and I still love you, and all that. But we don't have to sit around and happily approve other people's opinions adverse to our own. So, adverse.

Alright, thank you. Whoo! Getting all fired up here. Feel like a Baptist. The world, Cosmos! Now it's time to play our favorite game, what in the world does John mean by world? Here's our usual list. An apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government, ornament, decoration, adornment, i.e. the arrangement of the stars, the heavenly host as the ornament of the heavens, the world, the universe, the circle of the earth, the earth, the inhabitants of the earth, men, the human race, the ungodly multitude, the whole mass of men alienated from God and therefore hostile to the cause of Christ, world affairs, the aggregate things earthly, and the whole circle of earthly goods, endowments, riches, advantages, pleasures, etc., which allow hollow and frail and fleeting, stir desires, seduce God, are opposite...

I'm rushing through this one because it's not the right one. Which one? Does anybody have any feelings? We don't have any rocks, so if you're wrong... Five! You're all right. That's so cool. Way to go, guys. Honestly, I was kind of a toss-up to me between five and six. You can have my Bible. Let's see, where was I at? Oh, yeah. So, I was kind of a little bit torn between five and six because this ungodly multitude, correct me if I'm wrong, I think we were a part of it before we came to Christ.

I think five is the better guess, or the five is the better definition. Once again, not a huge interpretational difference in the context of the verse between the two, if you were to put one or the other, but even still. Any other questions, comments, or ideas regarding the world? Thank heaven for John's repetition. It certainly is. It certainly is.

It might be interesting to see the number of times, you know, my understanding of how they got that list is that they went to scripture and they said, How's it used here? And they went and they kind of tallied it all up. Well, it's interesting to see the number of times it's translated by five or six versus all those other possibility because it kind of your mind kind of gets all going different directions when it's a majority of the time. I think it's it's what, five or six.

So in my way of, you know, my mind, my encounter with scripture. Yeah, absolutely. You know, sometimes some of these unusual usage of the word are minority, not the majority. Just like agape is primarily used versus flail. I think it speaks volumes to the consistency of John.

Can anyone remember? I mean, I'm a little rusty and I haven't seen them all. Have we seen a single, besides 5 or 6, a single other definition of world used? It just strikes me that every time we come either to the ungodly multitude or to the inhabitants of the earth, man and human race.

So it does definitely speak to... For Paul, Greek was a fluent second language. It was something that he was educated in, something they knew inside and out. From what I've understood, for John it was more of a second language. It was a little bit more distant.

Anyone who speaks a second language can know you can be way, way more comfortable, way, way less comfortable. And as you're less comfortable with a language, or at least in my experience, you've got one word and the English cognate, or the same word in English. And you don't tend to have the longer definitions too, too often. You generally try to keep one word with one definition, because too many definitions just gets confusing.

So I think that's one of the reasons why we see in Greek, John's incredible consistency. Because this is the word for what I mean. Whereas Paul, who's so well-educated, can come up with ten synonyms and antonyms and do the whole thing, play the whole game with language. And I think John might not be just quite as secure in his Greek to do that.

Okay, confesses. Every time we see this word, I feel like I get it. It's unbelievable. Homo logeo. It's a compound word. Homo, meaning same, as in Homo sapien and so on. And the other word is logeo, or we get logos, or the word. So the idea is to say the same thing as someone else. And I'd say, I'd challenge you that it's more than just assent, more than just agreement. It's more than just, you know, the pastor stands up front and says, Jesus is sent by God to be the Savior of the world, and everyone goes, uh-huh. It's more agreeing, actually saying the words, because you're that much in agreement. Because we can be in assent with someone and not necessarily be wholeheartedly in agreement with them.

Like, I think my example often is Rush Limbaugh. Oftentimes when I listen to him, I'm in assent, like I agree with what he says, and yet, boy, I don't know if I'd stand up and say it with him sometimes, he seems a little bit mad, often. And I usually don't want to be that mad. I'm not cracking on Rush or on anyone else.

But I think we're looking for more than just that assent. We're looking for what this confesses is, whoever confesses, as someone who stands up on their own two feet at some level and says, I agree, I believe that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Alright?

And same one we encountered in 1 John 1, 9. And the reason I chose to brought this out is not so much it brings light on today's verse as it brings light on last time's verse. Or on 1 John 1, 9's verse, I'm sorry. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If you're like me, and if you're lucky you're not, confesses Confess is so rooted in this kind of Catholic imagery of, Oh Father, I confess for I have sinned. And when I read this verse, I can't peel my consciousness away from it. I taught on it, and I said it probably eight times that day, and still it's hard for me to peel my way. So when I stand these two verses side to side, whoever confesses that Jesus Christ Whoever, same words, and then here in verse John 1, 9, we're supposed to same word that our sins are sinful. We're not necessarily, oh, confess, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. This is about saying, Father, I know that that was a sinful act. I agree with you. I'm not standing in opposition to what your word or your guidance is. So anyway, just an interesting insight from that verse that, yeah. Abide, meno. This word can be translated, abide, tarry, remain, continue, dwells, etc. It's a word that we have encountered in 1 John 2, 6, 10, 14, 17, 19, 24, 27, 28, 3, 9, 14, 15, 17, 24, 4, 12, 3, 13, 15, 16.

I want to this week look up every verse, and actually I've got a program where I can look it up all, or if you've got a, what is it? The big one. Yeah, the big Strong's Concordance, right. You can find all the times that John uses that. What I kind of want to do this week, this is just my little tangent, you can do it if you like. I want to look up every time he uses the word abide, because it's such a key word.

And like I said, one, this kind of shows us the musical, poetic style of John, that he's going to keep kind of weaving this in, this idea of abiding. God abiding in us, we abiding in God. And I mean, I think, just as I pointed out, I believe it's like 76 or 78 times, and more than half of those are Johns. More than 40 of them are Johns.

So, what I'd love to do this week, if I can scrape out some time for something important in all the frivolity, is look up every time John uses this word and just see what it brings to light. And it also brings up, this is one of the major themes of the book, one of the things that we need to focus on.

It is also in the present active indicative tense, so as God is actively living in him right now, and he is actively living in God right now, or abiding in. So, it's not this kind of... it's not a passive thing. God is not passively interested in us. It's something that is active and present. It's something that's right here, right now.

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So, we see here that anyone that agrees with the testimony of the apostles regarding the doctrine of Christ that were laid down in the preceding verses is As a matter of present fact indwelt by God, and is also in God, there is nothing that can disrupt this abiding, nor is there a fear that the person in question will ever find him or herself out of God, or expulsed from being in God.

Alright, and this distinction, this is in distinction with the issue of fellowship that John has been writing about. So, once again, that kind of musician-ness, he's going to write about fellowship and then write about your position. But unlike Paul, who's going to section it all off, he's going to just sew them together. so that you can't, can hardly, or yeah, a bit more hard for us to decide where one starts and the other stops. Okay, verse 16, just to read the whole thing and keep us mindful of the whole.

We've come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. Okay. Come to know. Gnosko. Obviously, we've seen it a couple of times before. It's certainly a key word to the book.

It means, again, to know by experience, by way of seeing and receiving and understanding it as it unfolded, as a matter of experience. In this case, it's in the perfect tense, so he came to this experiential knowledge before, most probably when he came to an understanding of Christ at the cross and the sacrifice at the cross.

It has lasting and ongoing effects in this present. And this is where I'd love to bring a little discussion in, because I did, fortunately, leave enough time to do it. Every week we give the definition of the present tense, but let's talk about it a little bit.

What does it mean for this knowledge of God's love to have ongoing effects into the present? What does that practically mean to us? And I know that there's some element of it that's quite simple, but why is it in the present tense and not, say, in the aorist tense, in the simple past? There's a continuing aspect of it, yeah. I mean, it's something that doesn't just stop in the past tense.

How should this affect our day? How should this affect our day-to-day walk as we walk through the world, as we experience deaths and troubles and trials and drive by a car wreck, get in a car wreck? I mean, how is this coming to know? And this coming to know is referring to the love which God has for us. So this isn't just coming to know about our salvation, or coming to know about Jesus on the cross, or even coming to believe on Jesus on the cross, but coming to know about purely God's pure and amazing agape love for us.

Anybody have something very practical? I have a difficult boss that I deal with every day, and she's amazingly degrading. She's one of those people who just can belittle people with a Yeah, in just such a streamlined manner that she can get everybody in the office in probably 25 minutes. It's really amazing.

And this... Question. Yes. It's in the perfect tense, not in the present tense. Well, in this case, it's in the perfect tense. Oh, you're right. I'm sorry. I goofed. This should say perfect tense as well, shouldn't it then? I apologize. Yeah, because we really don't give the definition of the present tense. But we do give the definition of the perfect tense. And I've resisted the urge, I haven't said it once. Can anybody define perfect tense for me? So what does it mean? I'm sorry, that should be perfect tense and I apologize. What does it mean?

Well, Brad, what you're talking about is that we knew that in the past. We had to know that for salvation. And it continues on into the present, right? So we're, as scripture says, we're growing in grace in the knowledge of Him. So our knowledge is not just stagnant. I know Christ died on the cross for my sins. I come to understand that more and more as I walk with Him day by day. That knowledge just doesn't sit there from some time in the past.

It is active and ongoing and being As we read God's word, we come to say, wow, that's what he's talking about. That's me. Christ's life and me. And so anyway, that knowledge goes on and continues on. And we'll actually go on for all eternity if you think about it. We're going to continue to know it more and more as we go into eternity.

Hit the head on the nail. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. That's exactly what it is. I mean... What? The nail on the head? Oh, sorry. Um, yeah, no, I think that's exactly what, I mean, and I, I think the reason that I wanted to point this out is the fact that at least, at least in my life, at least in my experience, I can block that.

I can, I kind of want to use the word choose, but I can choose in a given day not to grow in the knowledge of God's love of me. It's an active choice that I make when I wake up in the morning. Wake up late, the alarm clock's going off, I'm 30 minutes late for work, and I'm just so angry at myself and the world, and oh gosh, no lunch, whatever the thing is, and I can physically choose or choose not to grow in the love of God.

Does God love me any less? No. God's love is not the thing that grows. It's not the thing that changes. So anyway, I just wanted to bring this kind of down to the earthly level that we walk out of here and we go through Monday and we go through Tuesday and we go through Wednesday and stuff, that this is something that's massively important.

Have Believed. I took this from Thayer's and you've got it so you can read it. No, we can read them all. Okay, to think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit, to place confidence in, of a thing believed, to credit, have confidence, in a moral or religious reference, used in the New Testament of the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain inner and higher prerogative and law of the soul. Would you explain that one? I'm not sure I can. I'm sorry, Ben. I don't think I can do that justice. Does anyone else want to take a crack at it?

I high-graded this right out of Thayer's. It's talking about being persuaded. Sometimes this duo can be persuaded. So that's a weird way, an elaborate way of saying to be persuaded. Way to go, Thayer. Confuse everybody. And the one that I kind of figured is almost implicit is to trust in Jesus is able to aid either in obtaining or in doing something, saving faith. I thought it was pretty clear. Does anybody want to? I mean, I think now that you bring light to that, that it's persuaded, I think that's a possibility as well. To me, that having believed in the love, it refers, at least somewhat, to saving faith. And we're happily moving forward.

And it's also in the perfect tense as opposed to the oris tense. What do you suppose the significance of that is? Because, good Lord, belief is a one-time thing, right? You could just believe once and that could be it. He could have used the oris tense, but for some reason he chose to use the perfect tense again.

I think this is going to kind of overlap with the last question, but I'd love to not be the one who says it. Yeah, continuing into the present in our days. Okay, we'll move ahead from there. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us.

The love which God has for us is described in the Greek in the present tense, active voice and indicative mood. It's interesting because he changes his tense. Yeah, changes his tense. Know and believe are in the perfect tense. But God's love is described as right now, actively and existing towards us. It's not just a love that God had for us, nor is it a love that God will have for us, though we can rely on those things also. God's love for us is right here, where we need it, right now, in our day, as we walk through our day. It's really interesting. Vern and I were talking about... Vern was telling me about how Jehovah, or Yahweh, is like a compressed form of I was, I am, and I am to come, I am to be. And as Jesus said to the Pharisees before Abraham was, I am.

I am who lives in the eternal present. where God is in the eternal present. CS Lewis called the present where eternity touches time. Eternity touches time in the present, at the present moment. This is where, right here, is where we're connected to eternity.

So, it's just interesting to me and powerful to me that God puts, or that John puts, or the Holy Spirit, I should say, tells us that that's where God's love is. It's right now. It's not in ten years when our financial situation becomes easy. It's not five years ago when we met the Lord, but not now. I think we all experience kind of undulation in our walk, oftentimes, where we feel like, oh, does God really love me? And then, of course, you're high in other ways. And the realization that you come to is that God's love for us is right here, right now, no matter what the circumstance, what the situation.

Yes, sir. How do you know it's in the perfect sense? How do I know? I have a computer program that tells me. You can you can approach it several ways. You can you can trust somebody else that they have. They have parts for the comparison. They go through every word in Greek language. They said now her. And I look at the endings and say, well, that's OK. So it's the Greek language. I told you. Tells you what it says. Right. That's what I thought. Yeah.

I mean, the verb in itself will tell you contain that. And you can do it. You can do it for yourself. You learn Greek or you can read it. You can trust it. You can trust somebody. And there are many reliable people out there that are parts that you can pretty well trust.

So it's in the it's in the Greek word. It's kind of cool. The perfect of the present or whatever. That's what I thought. Actually, it's really neat when you start to get into it. It's really incredible. I mean, everything's just packed into these, you know, peeling off. Look at that.

It's funny, you could easily believe, though, that at some point in history John Calvin went through and wrote, perfect, passed. Thanks, John. So anyway, we'll move forward. God is love. This is such a simple statement, and yet it is so easily twisted and turned around that we must pay careful attention to it. know clearly that John says, God is love, and he doesn't say that love is God. It's a really easy switch to make. And I remember early in my walk thinking, well, God is love, therefore, love is God.

And thinking that, really, love is what it's all about, and love is this, and you've got the whole hippie thing going on over here, and then you've got the world that wants to make it out to be that the loving thing to do is to accept everyone, and that's the God we worship. Accept, or whether it's to, and really, the Bible would tell us is that the loving thing to do is to tell people. The loving thing to do is to share this good word.

I was thinking about this ministry that used to go on in Korea. I was reaching out to foreigners who lived in Korea. And they'd go up and say, hey, we go to a foreigner on the street. Usually they'd be drinking beer, because you could drink beer on the street in Korea. and say, hey, you know, we want to help you find, meet new people, find, you know, we're from such and such a church, meet new people, find new things, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da. Just give them resources to kind of flourish in Korea and get them into community. And then the inevitable response from the foreigner would be, because they're usually from Canada, the United States, and they've experienced evangelism in any traditional fashion, would say, yeah, and you're probably going to try to convert me.

And, you know, the response that kind of was always on the tip of my tongue is, so I want to give you friends, and I want to give you a place to go where you can feel comfortable, and I want to give you all these good things, but I want to hold back the best thing in the world? I want to give you all these decent things that are nice and fully acceptable and not challenging or scary, and I'm going to hold back the very best. It just doesn't seem to be in keeping, logically. So anyway, yeah, I think this kind of love is God, God is love danger. I mean, I drive by the Universalist church every day and I shoot up a silent prayer for them. Just thinking, man, how, how, how, well, moving on.

What this verse does assure us of is the fact that everything that God does is done within the sphere of love. Not eros or erotic love, nor phileo, brotherly love, but agape, perfect divine love. This love is something that we may not always understand, but we can have faith. that everything that God is about exists within the sphere of love. God doesn't do unloving things. So, yeah, I think that Weiss actually renders it, everything in God's nature and character is in love or is love. So, it just tells us something about our God and about who he is and about what he is.

Yeah, I'd love for us to sit here quietly and just think about what the really far-reaching consequences of that are, but we'll move ahead. Abides in love. So does this mean that everyone who loves their dog, their house, their husband or their wife is saved? Because, you know, that's abiding in love. This is something that really irked me when I was younger, before I, you know, could read entire texts. You know, when you're a young Christian, you just read a verse, and a verse, and a verse. And this was always hard, because, okay, abides in love? That's, you know, someone can abide in love and not be a Christian, right? In some sense. Maybe it's not the pure sense that we know, but... So anyway, obviously, not... John is still talking about the aforementioned love. as the love in which we are to abide. This is not a requirement to keep, but rather something that has already been stated in the previous verse, which I'll bring up. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.

This emphasizes John's masterful ability to weave our position, our condition, into a tapestry that is more like real life, more like our actual day-to-day, than the scientific, well-ordered writings of Paul. So this is, I mean, as we've said so many times, John writes in such a rubber-meets-the-road style. It's just right here and right now. As my Presbyterian minister friend said, sometimes I feel like I'm just too academic to read John. because I just want to cut it up too much, I want to systematize it too much, and sometimes you just have to accept the fact that, you know, he's composing a beautiful symphony, and this sense of abiding, coming back, I think is part of that.

So, whoever abides in love abides in God, and as we talked about I would connect that back to this, confessing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, also abiding in God and God in him, that he's almost elaborating on that point. Yes, no, maybe so? Doing okay with that? Okay. So, we see that, and I think this is the summary, so that we see that we are to continue abiding in this love, that we are already promised abides in us.

This is not putting us under a new law where we have to worry and fret over whether or not we are abiding. For, as we will soon study, John tells us that perfect love casts out all fear. So, if we go back and re-read it, and if there's ever any moment that you think John's putting you under a law, Understand that you've misunderstood because John is telling that telling us perfect. Well, it's us went two weeks perfect. Love casts out all fear Okay, sorry, however, it doesn't let us off the off the hook just I kind of Mentioned this last week and and I kind of want to pound on it with a large hammer.

I John didn't write this letter to let people know that they can just sit back and take it easy, letting it all come to them, but encourage them to live out their position in their day-to-day lives. These truths are not written to stay stuck in our heads, but they're written to flow out of our hands and our feet and our words. Please understand, I'm not trying to put you under a law. I'm not trying to put you under any sort of requirement. I'm not trying to question your salvation.

I'm just asking, just reminding us, more so reminding myself, that if this isn't moving out of my everyday life, if I'm not breathing love out to my wretched boss, something is wrong with me. I see how that love flows. Yeah, it's moving out like a river. So, what I'd love for us to do is, we've got like just four more minutes. Does anyone have anything else to add? I know I didn't get everything, because it's the Word of God. There's always more. Does anyone else have anything to add, observations, questions, comments?

And I'm most interested in application, for me, because that's the part that's hardest for me, is moving from interpretation to application. It's easy enough to understand a lot of this stuff, but for me, deciding, finding what he means, where the rubber meets the road, how it's really going to change my life, that's the hard part, which is why I harp on it so much. Yeah, I'll ask a question. Maybe everybody else knows it, but I'll ask a question anyway.

God abides, He is in God. So what God? God the Father or the Christ? That's a good question. Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him, He in God. To start off the discussion, because I don't mean for this to be a final answer, because I would think that the Son of God would be insinuating God the Father. God abides in him and he in God. We know that we're indwelt by all three members of the Trinity. So I think it might be the Godhead in total, would be my understanding from the context. Does anyone else have any thoughts about it? I... I think it's a picture of the Trinity. Yeah.

It's just Christ saying what he'd like to say. It gives us confidence in the Holy Spirit. God abides in the Holy Spirit. Son of God, Father, we can see it perfectly. I agree. I think Paul gets more specific in his writings. He tells us that the Holy Spirit manifests Christ's life through us specifically. But here John doesn't seem to be. The Holy Spirit dwells within. Right.

God, God, God here. First John is God. I mean he's just plain God. How much of God are we? I'd say all of God. In the Gospels, Christ says, abide in me. You have the whole Godhead involved. In specific references, Christ is saying abide in me, and we see the Holy Spirit is abiding in me. So it's, we get all of God, we don't get part of Him. John 17, they and me and I and you, it's like, we're all together. And I think that's a great point.

And one just like, you know, you kind of talk about our Christian walk, you know, you kind of look at that, hey, we see these wonderful truths here, how that's lived out. Well, it's lived out, you know, we came to Him by faith, it's lived out by faith in knowing Him. I think it's a very compact statement you can make about, as we observe all of scripture, how do we take that and make that reality in our life. That's another exercise of faith. As we trusted him for our salvation, we trust him for day by day walk. I think you can make a compact statement about how we are to live these truths. any truths that we see in scripture. It's an exercise of faith. Do I believe what's being said? Do I trust God that... I'll close this in a word of prayer, if you will.

Heavenly Father, we praise you for your wonderful Word, Lord, and that we could just gaze upon your Son through this Word, through the Word of God, through the Word you've given us. Let us live our days in faith, Lord, in faith that you have saved us and in faith that you will sanctify us and in faith that you will redeem us as the purchased possession Lord, we praise you and pray that we could go upstairs and have a wonderful time of fellowship and teaching and learn more about what this thing is. In Jesus' name, Amen.