First John 4:7-10 Let Us Love One Another

We're about paralleling that. Of course, we have 10, 12 people in the field, so this is all good. So I'm going to begin reading from the beginning of 1 John 4, because I think the whole text here relates to not just verses 7 through 10, which I'm covering today, but through the entire first part of the chapter. So, as ultimately listed, Love for God and One Another is the title of this chapter and our title of the lesson today is Let Us Love One Another.

So, beginning with the first one, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus Christ having come into the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. You are of God, little children, have overcome them because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

They are of the world, therefore they speak as of the world and the world hears them. We are of God, and he who knows God hears us. He who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Beginning with the verse 7, verses 7 through 10, which we'll cover today.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. And he who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this, the love of God was manifested towards us that God has sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we love God, but he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. All right, let's take a closer look here at what we have today. So we're going to begin.

Can everyone see the screen OK? Yes. OK, thanks. Needed one answer from the field here. All right. So summarizing. I did this. So what what are some summaries of last week's lesson? I'm going to summarize them with three bullet points. The first is a verse.

Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. It's pretty substantial. First of all, that begins with positional truth. and then our condition hopefully gets transformed and conformed to that position or truth. Secondly, this world system or cosmos embraces its godless governments, conflicts, armaments, jealousies, its education, culture, religions or morality, and pride. So ultimately, they embrace these things of the world system. And Andrew, I think I've pulled that right out of your hand. And the third point is, and we know the spirit of truth and error. That's in effect what we know scripturally. We know the spirit of truth and that of error.

As we grow in grace, that becomes even more apparent, doesn't it? As we learn of God's word and how it relates to growth in grace that we all experience. All right, this week's verses. 1 John 4, 7. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

And it seems pretty straightforward, and I think we can tickle this a little bit and realize it's a little bit more complicated than simply is said. First of all, beloved in the Greek means divinely loved ones. I mean, that really sets us up, doesn't it? Divinely loved ones, which up front indicates a very special relationship.

God has with us, and the know here is Gnosko. And as we know, Gnosko is an experiential love. It's not one that's factual. It's not head knowledge, but in fact it's experiential knowledge, knowing our Lord and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 John 2.29 reminds if you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him. And that's God's righteousness, not the government's righteousness.

How do we love one another as God loves us? By the way, this love is habitual and never ceases. I mean, the idea here of this love is not simply something you put on for five seconds or five minutes or even five hours. It's a continuous experience of the new nature we have in Christ Jesus. And the other question we might ask and discuss, is this possible without the support of God? What does everybody think? Jim's shaking his head. Jim, what do you think?

Make sure you're on there. Okay, go ahead. It has to be because of the love within us. Okay, just a second, Jim. Somebody needs to mute out there. We're getting some background noise. Thank you. Go ahead, Tim, say that again, please. It's because of the love within us, the love of God that is in us, that we can love another. But wouldn't you say that you've been with many, many people in the world system who love one another as spouses or love one another without being spouses? I mean, we hear it all the time. Margaret? No, I mean, there's no way we can love like that without being in the Lord. I mean, there's just no way in Him being in us. We're just not capable of that kind of love.

Okay, just one second, Jim. Somebody's still giving us background noise. Mike, is it you, maybe? Mike, can you mute your... Mike? Yeah, I'm sorry, guys. Okay, we're good now. So, Margaret, say that again. I'm going to turn to Jim then. Go ahead. Well, what I said was there's just no way we are capable.

I mean, we don't have the capability of loving that way unless we're in Christ. That's what it says for love. Everyone who loves is born of God and the way God looks at love. People in the world can love, but it's a conditional love. It's not an unconditional love. All right. And this unconditional nature is, in fact, God giving his own begotten son. We're going to get to that. And ultimately being a man and ultimately carrying out his task before us. Right. OK.

Any other thoughts about these two questions? How do we love one another? Is God loves us? I'm not sure we've addressed that yet, but we're going to get back to it because this whole section is about that. Give me a second, I need a little more insulin than I have on board here. Okay. All right, let's go ahead then. Verse 8, he who does not love does not know God, for God is love. So this is not kind of relating to what Jim says is conditional. This is not a warm fuzzies type of love. This goes much deeper than that, doesn't it?

Agape is a strong term, which is an unconditional love. That means no matter what someone would do to us, ultimately that love extends through that circumstance. Now, I guess the question is, does that mean we need to be a bunch of doormats? Get walked all over, et cetera?

What's going to change our behavior that relates to God's love for us that is different than the world's love, which is more conditional? Not a lot of answers here. OK, but some in the world know God, don't they? And that know is the idea that you talk to people who know, yes, there is a God. But the idea that the God man, the Lord Jesus Christ, in fact, what's the backbone and the source of Christianity is denied. and he was a great teacher, or I don't know that he ever lived, history is not totally accurate here, but I think there's a God out there. I mean, that's a head, what they have is a head knowledge that there's a God someplace, and we're going to come back to that in a few minutes too. They know about God, but they don't know Him.

About, not Him personally. Right. Yeah, but in some cases, it's not the God we know, it's some other God. I mean, you know, God is kind of a broad term, It could be, you know, any god. Or many gods. I mean, Greek system. Yeah, there are a lot of religions that claim there's a god.

But what is, I mean, it's not the god of the universe. Ultimately, it's denying the Lord Jesus Christ and who he was and who he is. All right? So they believe in a God, but it's not a Gnoshka, is it? It's not this experiential knowledge personally of who God is and what He's done on our behalf. But they don't know Gnoshka and keep on not knowing. The verb tense implies that they keep on not knowing. This world system or acknowledgement of God is one that keeps on not knowing God. as far as the nature of God being loving.

So this is something that I think is an ongoing activity in those who, in fact, are Antichrist-directed. Remember, false prophets was the beginning of this. We've been told that the Antichrist is already out there. So he's manifesting himself in many ways, and we've had lessons related to that previously.

How do we know we're loving as God loved us? Well, again, not a lot of answers out there today and I think this is a tough question. Now the warm fuzzies we all experience as humans, don't we? We experience the warm fuzzies of love and what that means.

But ultimately this agape love is a different kind of love that ultimately is spirit directed. And ultimately, this is a love that we may not be accountable to in ourselves as we see it. But ultimately, God is the judge of that life being lived out in us. Let's look at a couple of biblical scholars and their thoughts about this. First of all, Darby. He begins with the fact that love is of God. It is his nature. He is its source. Therefore, he who loves is born of God, is a partaker of his nature. Also, he knows God, for he knows what love is, and God is its fullness. And I put this in bold. This is the doctrine which makes everything depend on our participation in the divine nature.

So that's the new life lived out, which we may not be taking credit for by gold ribbons day in and day out. This is a life lived out that reflects our new nature in Jesus Christ. Another biblical scholar, Schaeffer, God's love seeks no compensation and is as holy in its character as the one from whom it flows.

What imperfect human elements may be fused into it, it would not be easy to define. I think he's really put the nail in the wall and hit it with a hammer. But in itself, it comes forth from the heart, uncomplicated and infinitely worthy. I mean, you know, these two guys have pretty well done justice to this. They haven't described perfectly what it looks like, but it's a doctrine which makes everyone depend on our own participation in the divine nature. And secondly, the imperfect human elements which we all have in us may be fused into it. And the difference between the two would not be so easy to define.

And I think what follows this. So are we being assessed for how well we're doing here? What are your thoughts? No, no, I don't think so. No. Jim says no. That would be to that would be work salvation. OK. I'm doing well here, I did this nice thing today. I had a bad thought but I dismissed that initially. Boy, I'm really doing better here. The new nature lives out in our life which is spirit led in a way that only he can do. We don't try to do this, we learn of the Lord Jesus Christ, be transformed and conformed to his image. And it always goes back to, for me, what Hal Malloy said, that we may be the only Bible that anyone ever reads.

And it's how we interact with other people at work, in our workplace, or when we're out in the world, and things don't always go Right. I mean, you know, sometimes we're offended, right? We're offended. But it's how we react to that. And I think that's the Christ-like spirit and life in us is how we interact with other people and how that comes across. Right, and this is something we try to do, this is something who we are. Yes, we don't... This is our life.

Because a lot of times, you know, when something happens, it's a reaction. And if you react the way the world reacts, we're no different. But, you know, when we are confronted with something, when we interact differently with other people, They recognize that and they go, wow, what's that about? That's different than what I expected, you know. Well, this can have world system applications but almost translate this into Christian behavior in that we are not reactionary, we are responsive. And to respond is not an immediate earthly based, you know, quality of life that the world wants us to feel. In other words, we need to be reactionary. That's where we get trapped into the human nature. So, being responsive is having a life that's lived out of this, it's spirit-led, and it's consistent with God's love. Hey, Bob? Yes, Roy? Just kind of... Just a second, Jim. Roy's going to say something. Go ahead, Roy.

Yeah, the thought that you just mentioned is here in his love that God loved us and he sent his son. He was responsive to the human condition. He expressed his love with a solution. Isn't that wonderful? Yes. Puts us at rest, doesn't it, Roy? Yeah, and you're going to get to it, but the very nature of God is love. That's who he is. In fact, that's a nice... Jim, you want to say something? Yeah, just kind of backtracking. I like what Hodges says.

He brings out the fact that, you know, in verse 7, it says, For love is God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. And he says in verse 8, About verse 8, it would have been both natural and easy to say, he who does not love is not born of God and does not know God, in direct antithesis to the statement of this verse. But this is precisely what cannot be said. Already John has talked about a person who hates his brother, which is a feat quite impossible for a non-Christian, since a Christian is not his brother. So, you know, we can't say that we are not of God if we don't love our brother. He doesn't say that. But that love is a non-natural love for the human spirit, is it not?

Absolutely, yeah. You know, Vincent, I think, has some interesting things to say about the Lord Jesus Christ and God Almighty. See, God is light, 1 John 1.5, and truth, 1 John 1.6, also.

God is spirit, John 4.24, and spirit and light are expressions of God's essential nature. Love is the expression of his personality, corresponding to his nature.

So on love of God, 1 John 2.5, truth and love stand related to each other.

Loving is the condition of knowing. I kind of like that. I should have bolded that last sentence. Love is condition of knowing and that's knowing our new creation in and spirit-led Christ Jesus. That's good. Yes. The one thing I think that I see in that when lovingness is the condition of knowing, we know how God loves unbelievers or believers, loves all of us.

Therefore, if we see a person, we can't love a person in and of ourselves like God does, but if we see how God loves that person, But then I think that's kind of, and we submit to that, I think that's loving that other person when we see that God loves that other person. Anyway, I don't know if I explained that very well. No, ma'am, you did. I think as we walk down the street, we're passed by many, many people, which we are, of all races, ethnicity, sexes, genders, if you will, in terms of today's age.

We look at them as God looked at them. There are sinners who need to be saved by grace, and some may already be. But ultimately, if we look at ourselves, we have to look at each and every one of ourselves as the grazed among sinners saved by God's grace. That opens up our door to understanding how he sees the entire world that's before him.

We may not even like the person, but we need to love them. You know, I've said this once, got criticized highly for it in an old Bible study that one member is no longer part of. That doesn't mean I'm right and he's wrong. But I said, I don't know that we have to like everybody. We just have to love them. We do. And that's true. It really is true, isn't it? Yeah. And you know, it's interesting.

We were just at a meeting where we were with a lot of Jewish people. And some of my best friends in my career, past and I think continues in many ways, are Jewish people. And they know where we stand. In fact, we openly shared the Lord with them again, and we discussed this.

But yet, they're good friends, and we like them, but in fact, We love them even more. But there can be people in our world system that we come across that we don't choose to be with, aren't there? And we don't particularly like them. But our love for them is not our responsibility. It's the new life that lives out through us. That makes it easier. All right, let's go ahead to verse 9.

In this, the love of God was manifested towards us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. In this, the love of God was manifested towards us. Let's begin to drill down on this. Notice that this love of God was manifested toward us. That means in our case, this is eros passive indicative, eros done once with potentially continuing action, passive indicative. How should we interpret the factual nature of this passive verb tense? The love of God was manifest towards us.

Well, when we became believers, it's automatic. I mean, that love is totally passive. So the passive... It has nothing to do with it other than belief. So it's manifested towards us. God was active in that, wasn't he? Yeah. But why is it passive hence? Because the focus is on us, isn't it? Yeah.

We have been the recipient. of the love of God by being set aside as part of the church. And in that, we have experienced all that we need to love one another. I mean, we all fall short of this, but yet we have received this, if you will, active gift of God. for our benefit and for His glory.

Go ahead. Isn't it passive because we didn't do anything to deserve it? Yeah, that's what I was getting ready to say, Jim. It's totally passive because all we did was believe. And once we believed, that love was manifested toward us. Alright, so what responsibility do we have then if we have this passive gift of God's love? Just believe it. Believe it. Yeah. Faith. Everything is based on our faith. And reckon it to be done. Reckoning it's done and now we need to live it out. Live it for all, it's done. Okay. That's right.

And I was sending his only monogenies, the God and Son, enough that we might live for him. First of all, sending Apostero is to send on a commission as an envoy. Isn't that neat? Christ came with a purpose as an envoy, in fact, to work out that purpose. And that's a neat way to think about this. I think we all often think of how wonderful God gave his gift of a son to be crucified, etc. But he had a commission.

This is something he and the Lord Almighty agreed upon. eons ago, we can't, eternity has no beginning and no end, right? Alright. Myogenes only applies to the Lord Jesus Christ alone, that's the only use of this term in the Greek text. And, it'll come.

John 1.14, just as one of many verses that exemplifies this truth, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of the Father. full of grace and truth. There are no other sons. It's not like he sent one son, he kept the other one up there, or there are no sisters here. It's one son, only begotten son.

And boy, when people question, I mean, Christ, and who Christ was, is criticized left and right by the world system. Well, he may have lived, he may have been a teacher, or I'm not sure he ever lived, But, and I think there are many who are maybe not of the faith, some could be, that see him only crucified for the payment of sins, but there's no life beyond that because the resurrection's not what they focus on. And I've said this before, but if you don't believe in the resurrection, you're not saved. The resurrection is the source of our new life and acceptance after he crucified for us and our sins.

Might live through is aorist active subjunctive. So how do we interpret that? Aorist tense again, done once, that we might live, given to us once. Active, that means we have a role here. Subjunctive, what's that mean? Might live through. Well, might or we might not. That's an appropriate interpretation here.

And we wish we might live through this more, don't we? rather than might not live through this, but I think the text is so perfect when we look sometimes at the verb tense, we don't have to do it all the time, but here this explains that the human nature still exists. You know, reckon ourselves indeed to be dead unto sin, but yet sometimes we don't reckon or consider it actually completed. And through is best translated by the means of, might live by the means of the truth here. Just as a reminder, I mean, I kind of alluded to this in Romans 6, 11, but Romans 6, 11, Therefore we're buried with him through baptism unto death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should also walk in newness of life.

And isn't that related to the love we have for one another? The newness of life is the only way we can have love for another as God loved us. All right, let's move on. Coming to the last verse here. 1 John 4, 10. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Okay, this verse is so very important and why? Why is this verse so very important? And if you will, it could almost be the doxology for the whole epistle. Somebody, please.

It puts the love of God more important than our love. Jim, you said it well. Well, and the fact that we didn't do anything. You know, we were, we're not responsible for what God did. God did all of that for us. He didn't look at me and say, wow, this is a good person. I'm going to do this. No, that's not what it was about. Well, I think the neat thing about the verse is, in this is love, that he loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins. But that left out not that we love God. We didn't love God. Our old nature doesn't love God.

No, no, no. This all begins with him. And it ends with him. And it's all his work. So our position is in him. And our condition is hopefully increasingly being transformed and conformed in his image. Yeah, it's all his work. He took the initiative to start it. In this is love, not that we love God, but he loved us. Boy, the great take home message. In fact, Bob, Yes, Andrew.

It says we were enemies, right? Before he, we were once enemies brought near by the love of God. That's right, and this is not a human type of love, is it? That ultimately the enemy has a different type of love than the acape love that God has for us, that we're to live out in our lives. Enemies, yes. This is such a big, big subject that we're talking about today.

The propitiation, the satisfaction, the perfect sacrifice, the complete sacrifice. That's who is the one who is correct. He is righteous. He is perfect. Wow. So Roy, be patient. My last slide, which will be probably in several minutes, will get at that important term, propitiation. So thank you for bringing that up. By the way, I had trouble copying everybody's names and sending us again. Margaret thinks it's been an update to our Outlook program that prevents this. But anyway, we'll get this solved and figure it out. Never mind. You don't need to know the details. The handout will be forthcoming.

Let's first address the differences between our love and God's love. So what is human man's and woman's love based on? So I went to Google and I came up with love pedagogy. Human love is a reflection, and reflection is overly emphasized, of life, the world, time, light, God with a small G. Okay.

People, Earth, and mind. So what do you think of that? It's all conditional. Okay, Jim says it's all conditional. Other thoughts about a reflection of? It's subjective. Very subjective. Very subjective. I was going to say, if it's a reflection of life, you know, Everything doesn't go well every day for anybody.

I mean, if it's a reflection of life and the world, how about how's the world doing, you know, right now? I mean, what, you know? How about time? We live in 2022, almost 23. Think of us growing up in 1960 or whenever. Time, how that's changed, isn't it? It's something that's conditional. Light. Well, what kind of light are we talking about there? I didn't drill down on that. God. What God? The God of self?

People. People relates to the condition. Who we're with and what we think about. Liking is not loving as we talked about before in terms of the way God loves them. Earth. Cosmos. I mean, Andrew talked a lot about cosmos last week. And also how about, you know, all this stuff about climate change. Like we're... totally responsible for everything going on in the earth and we're made to feel guilty that we're not doing things correctly or, you know, anyway.

Well, the only conclusion we can make in this kind of love is entirely world system based. It's subjective, it's conditional, and everything else. So, you know, by the way, that's just one Google site. I just picked one that seemed reasonable, but they're reasonable to the human mind. That is not to the godly mind.

Nevertheless, I think, you know, people all over the book about what true love is all about. Nobody really describes anything close to what's God's love. Interesting enough on Google, there are a lot of references to God's love. that are on there, too. So, I mean, it's possible somebody can look up God on Google and get put into Scripture. So, I thought that was encouraging. But I tried to avoid Scripture since we're studying it today anyway.

The love of the world is all conditional. If you love me, I love you. Exactly. It's dependent on all these subjective variables, isn't it? Yeah. One of the things that our love focuses on is ourselves. Very self-centered, right? Absolutely. Well said. But that he loved us. Marilyn said it's all about feelings. Feelings, emotions. We all have those, don't we? But that's the basis of human love.

But that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. So what is propitiation? And Roy started to address this issue and I can address it more thoroughly. I went to Schaefer on this and Schaefer said the best description of propitiation in a condensed form, and I'm putting that in as a modifier, is what Schofield says in his notes. Remember, I said the last time I pulled something out of, I'm not sure where we pulled it out, but I tried to make all the references in scripture black, and they're black on my printout, but they're not black on the screen. Anyway, I'm going to read Schofield here, so bear with me.

Literally, a propitionary sacrifice through faith, by his blood, Greek, helisterion, place of propitiation. The word occurs in those, I think that's John 2, etc., that's first John 2, as the translation of Helasmos, that which propitiates. A propitiatory sacrifice, Helasterion, is used by the Septuagint, and that's a quote in Hebrews, for mercy seed. By the way, propitiation takes us back to Old Testament times.

So the mercy seat was sprinkled with atoning blood in the day of atonement. References in Leviticus. In token that the righteous sentence of the law had been typically carried out so that what must else have been a judgment seat could righteously be a mercy seat. That's again Hebrew's text. A place of communion. In fulfillment of the type, Christ is himself the hellesmos, that which propitiates, and the helesteron, the place of propitiation.

The mercy seat sprinkled with his own blood, he token that he in our stead He so honored the law by enduring its righteous sentence that God, whoever foresaw the cross, is vindicated in having passed over sins from Adam to Moses. And that Moses text is in Romans.

And the sins of believers under the old covenant. And then there's some references there that I'm not sure I can see that clearly. And just and justifying sinners under the covenant. There is no thought in propitiation of placating a vengeful God but of doing right by his holy law and so making it possible for him righteously to show mercy. So the term has depths in that it's referenced early and law related in the Old Testament in terms of the sacrifices on behalf of the sins of Israel. And so this is a strong term that relates to the ultimate accomplishment of propitiation as applied in the Old Testament to the Lord Jesus Christ and his death and crucifixion.

Roy, do you want to add more to this? Well, that was my wife sneezing. I'm sorry. One of the things that we have, though, in this verse is that God has made Jesus Christ the fulfillment of that mercy seat that was in the Old Testament. It covered sins, but he is the satisfaction for sins. Isn't that something?

Taking on all sin for all time, for all men, all women, once and for all, the ultimate propitiation. that was really hinted at at the mercy seat, but never accomplished. And I like where it says in Schofield's notes that ultimately this was known by God, the cross was known by God from the beginning of time. But yet in the Old Testament, the law ultimately was given where the mercy seat is a delay or an atonement, if you will, but a delay in the ultimate accomplishment at the cross. but yet we have a person, not an animal, that ultimately paid the ultimate price.

So it's a strong term. There's a lot written about propitiation. I just tried to pull, you know, according to Schaefer, he's got pages and pages and pages, but he thought that Schofield's description was as succinct and to the point as could be, and that's why I pulled that from this.

That last sentence there, you know, there is no thought in propitiation of placating a vengeful God but of doing right by his holy law and so making it possible for him to righteously, for him righteously to show mercy. I always thought propitiation was, you know, payment, you know, placating God. But it's not. It's just, it's just doing right by his holy law. That's something we cannot do. No matter how hard you try.

Well, and you know, it's interesting to go to Galatians and what's reflected there and that the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. And, you know, that's the platform of grace we all walk on as believers. We have a rest that everything's been accomplished, has been done. Now live by faith that that new life can be lived out. The law no longer has any bearing over us.

The law, if we put it before us, really is something we can try at, but ultimately will fail. It's only His life, and it's Spirit-led and scripturally based, that changes how we behave. The law is God's righteousness, and it's designed to show our sinfulness, something we cannot obey, you know, it's just in our flesh.

But so often we forget this, but it begins positionally. And then our condition is transformed. One of the things that has helped me to understand this is that God deals in word pictures with real things. And the Ark of the Covenant was a real thing that was carried by men to show the relationship of God to us in the Old Testament.

And here is Christ now in 1 Corinthians 1.30, it says, God has made him the wisdom of God, the wise, the putting into reality what is true, that's wisdom. And he has made him to be righteousness, righteous, absolute perfection to us, you and me. And it's God's work that does that.

Man, when we look at the propitiation, the satisfaction, the covering of that in the ark was over the law. It hid the law from God so that he could be merciful. Now, that covering is gone and we have his righteousness. His righteousness. We share his nature. Wow. If he had made him who knew no sin, to be made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. It's all about Jesus Christ.

All right, let's close in prayer. Jim, would you close us please? Father, we thank you for your display of righteousness and that it was accomplished at the cross so we could be made righteous. We thank you for everything you've worked for We ask that you would help us to understand this in a better way, in a more complete way. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you.