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Seeing God in Love By Andrew Davies

 1 John 4, 12 to 21, you'll see what I mean.
If, for example, we pick out verse 12 for a moment, which is the introduction really to the verses that follow, I'll explain what I mean by that.
In 1 John 4, 12, John says, No one has seen God at any time.
If we love one another, God abides in us.
And his love has been perfected in us.
So he's saying two things there.
That if we love one another, God abides in us.
That's the first thing.
And the second thing is that his love has been perfected in us.
Now the first of those two things, God abides in us,
he develops and expands upon in verses 13 to 16.
The second of those two statements, his love has been perfected in us,
he develops and expands in verses 17 to 21.
And you will notice the word abiding occurring in verses 13 to 16,
and the word perfected or perfect is picked up and developed in verses 17 to 21.
So the passage has a very careful construction.
Let's read the passage and then I'll just say a few things about verses 12 to 16.
No one has seen God at any time.
If we love one another, God abides in us.
And his love has been perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit.
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.
And we have known and believed the love that God has for us.
God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him.
Love has been perfected among us in this.
That we may have boldness in the day of judgment.
Because as he is, so are we in this world.
There is no fear in love.
But perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment.
But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.
We love him because he first loved us.
If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.
For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
And this commandment we have from him that he who loves God must love his brother also.
If someone were to say to you tomorrow, I want to find God, can you help me?
What would you say to them? Where would you take them?
John is saying here that we would need to bring people who ask that question
into a loving company of God's people where there is mutual love for one another.
As he puts it in verse 12, no one has seen God at any time.
If we love one another, God abides in us.
So the best way of people coming to know God is to introduce them to people who really do love one another
and who love one another with the love that God has shown to them.
In other words, into a real company of true Christians where genuine love exists.
One of the great problems of course is whether we know that we are true Christians.
There are many people who are not sure about that. They have doubts as to whether they really are the children of God.
John is trying to answer that question here. He is trying to help people who are in some doubt as to whether they really are God's children.
And what he is saying is very important and very helpful.
He is really talking about assurance, how we may know that we are children of God.
And that in itself is important for our own sake because if we don't know and we are not assured,
we are going to find the Christian life very difficult. Indeed, life itself will be hard for us.
We are meant to know. We are meant to know that God loves us.
It would be inconceivable, wouldn't it, of God to love people without telling them that he loves them,
without them knowing that he loves them, just as it would be inconceivable for us in a happy home
not to love one another and not to tell each other that we love one another.
We need to be assured of each other's love. And God surely is much greater than we are and a greater father than we are,
so he wants to assure his children that he loves them so that they in turn may know his love and be able to share his love with other people.
So our assurance has an effect upon other people too because if we know the love of God in our own hearts
and are showing it to one another, then those who perhaps are not yet believers may be brought to know God
through the love that exists among God's people. So our assurance has an important effect upon the lives of other people too.
As the book of Daniel puts it, the people who know their God will be strong and do exploits.
Now if the Lord were to enable us to become strong like that, then our influence over other people would be, I think, a very vital and a very strategic one.
That's really the theme of this verse. If we love one another, says the apostle, God abides in us,
so we know his love and other people will come to know his love as well.
He also goes on to say that his love has been perfected in us, but we look at that next Sunday, God willing.
Let's think of the first of those two statements this evening. If we love one another, God abides in us.
And he develops that, as I said, in verses 13 to 16. You'll notice how he does it.
He says in verse 13, by this we know that we abide in him and he in us. It's the same word, because he has given us of his spirit.
So that the gift of the Holy Spirit enables us to know that we abide in God and God abides in us.
Because God has given his spirit to us, we know that he lives in us and we live in him. That's what John is saying.
And then, in verse 14, those who have received the spirit of God have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
So the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to draw people's attention to God's purpose in sending his Son to be the Savior of the world.
And they know that, and not only do they know it, but in verse 15 they confess openly that Jesus is the Son of God.
So, God abides in him, or in them, and he or they abide in God. It's this whole matter of abiding in God and God abiding in us that John is speaking about.
And in verse 16, he says, we have known and believed the love that God has for us, God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him.
That little word, abides, is the key to the section, and it's what John has said in verse 12. If we love one another, God abides in us.
Now this is what Christian love is all about, and perhaps we can think about it carefully for a moment or two.
As we said the other week, people often think of love as something romantic.
And of course, there is romantic love. When you fall in love with a person, then there is romance there.
And that kind of love is usually love that recedes. I know that it's a giving love too, but it's a love that recedes.
We are all glad when we know that somebody loves us in the romantic sense of the word.
It's not that kind of love that he's referring to here. It's a different kind and quality of love that he intends us to think about, or think about general human kindness.
There are many, many people who wouldn't even profess to be Christians, or who may be atheists, who are capable of great works of kindness.
And you have to acknowledge that to be so. But he's not talking about that kind of kindness here. It's a great quality in human lives, but he's not talking about it here.
So it's not romantic love, and it's not general human kindness that he has in mind.
Do you remember those wonderful words of Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 13? The passage about love, which is a glorious, glorious passage, but also a very challenging passage.
I remember it being read, for example, by the then Speaker of the House of Commons in England at the marriage of the Prince of Wales, whose marriage, unfortunately, as we know, has ended in disaster.
George Thomas, now Lord Tonopandy, he was actually a Welshman, he was the Speaker of the House of Commons at the time, he read this passage in that wedding.
It's a very searching passage. Remember Paul's words, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
And then he says this, though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Giving away all his goods to feed the poor, giving his body to be burned as a martyr, but not having love, he says, it profits me nothing.
And what he means by that is that Christian love is different from that kind of kindness or generosity or even commitment to a cause which might even lead a person to martyrdom.
Well then, how do we define this Christian love that the Apostle John is speaking about here?
Well, it's different in two ways from other kinds of love, and the two ways are explained to us in the passage.
If we go back, for instance, to verse 7, John says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, of God.
He who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
So this love is God, and God is this love. He's talking about the love that comes down from God, from above, so it's not natural.
It doesn't grow in our hearts naturally as human beings. God is the centre of it, God is the source of it, God is the nature of this love,
and he communicates that nature with us so that we begin to love in the way that he intends us to love.
Or, as he puts it in verse 13, by this, by this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his Spirit.
So it's the gift of the Holy Spirit of God coming to live within us that enables us to love like this.
So it's not natural love, it's not romantic love, which is natural, and it's not kindness, which is natural.
It's all to do with God, and God being at the centre of it, and God being the source of it.
So it's very distinctive in that way.
And the second way in which it is distinctive and different is that it focuses upon and centres around the Son of God.
Notice how verse 9 puts it.
In this the love of God was manifested toward 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 that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
So this Christian love has to do with Christ, the Son of God.
It's from God, who is its source, and its focus and its centre are in the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Saviour.
And in verses 14 to 16 that is made quite explicit.
We have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.
And we have known and believed the love that God has for us.
So this love that God has for us is centred upon and focused in Christ, his only begotten Son.
And that really is what our Lord was saying throughout his ministry and it is the great definition of the Christian Gospel that we find in John chapter 3 and verse 16.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
So God abides in people who love one another and that love comes from him and they love one another because of the person of Jesus Christ,
who unites them together in a family and in a communion of people who find their focus and their unity in the love of God in Jesus Christ.
So it's different from romantic love on the one hand or general human kindness on the other as I say.
It might be perfectly possible for people who don't believe in God at all to fall in love with one another and indeed to do great, great acts of human kindness
even to the extent that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13 of giving their body to be burned and giving away all their goods to feed the poor.
People could do that without any reference to God at all. Of course we acknowledge that to be so.
But the love that he's speaking about here is different from that because of these two things.
It comes from above and it is found in the person of Jesus Christ.
So what is it that binds Christians together? What is it that we're seeking to do when we want to share the love of God with our friends and our colleagues and our neighbours?
Where will people see God? Well, they will see God and know God in a loving Christian community where Christ is central and where his person and his work are glorified and exalted.
And isn't that the great significance of verse 14 which is a wonderful verse? We have seen and testified.
John is saying there are two things. I have seen something, I am a witness to something and I am testifying to something.
Now, in a court of law, if you are a witness, you can only be a witness if you've got evidence, if you've seen something.
The very word witness means that you've seen something. You can't be a witness unless you have seen something.
And John is saying that here we have seen and we testify, we witness. So we are not just advocates.
An advocate in a court of law can plead the cause of somebody but the advocate would not have been there when the incident or incidents occurred for which the person is on trial.
So an advocate can function perfectly well without being a witness.
Now a Christian is not just an advocate, advocating a cause, talking about Christian doctrines. Indeed, you can advocate Christian doctrines without being a Christian.
You can talk about Christianity as a philosophy of life without ever being a Christian.
I know professors of theology who don't claim to be Christians, who can tell you exactly what the Bible says about what it means to be a Christian but they are not Christians themselves.
They are not witnesses, they haven't seen, they cannot testify even though they can talk about the Christian faith.
John is saying here that a true Christian is somebody who has seen and who can therefore testify.
Something has happened to you, you've experienced something, you know something to be true so you can talk about it.
You're a witness, not just an advocate. And what is it that we have seen and therefore testified to?
Well, the first thing that he says here is that we have seen and testified to God's initiative.
We have seen and testified that the Father, the Father, the whole initiative in this matter of Christian salvation comes from God the Father.
So it isn't that you or I decided that we would formulate a philosophy of life, a religion, and that we would follow that religion.
The Father, the Father, the initiative here comes from above, not from below.
The Father took the initiative, that's where it all began and that's ultimately where it will all end.
And that is how we are to view the coming of Christ. The Father planned it, the Father purposed it.
The Father saw people as ruined temples in which God had once dwelt. He saw the foolish pride and rebellion and willfulness of his children.
And in seeing that he determined that he would deal with the situation and come to their rescue.
He took the initiative, he stepped in to the human predicament. So all the initiative in the Christian gospel comes from God's side.
The Father. That's where it all begins. In the great eternal counsels of God before time began. The Father.
So our salvation in the end goes right back into eternity where the great God who is our Father purposed and planned to do this great thing that John is here talking about.
And we know that to be true, we have seen that to be true from experience so we have seen and testify that to be the case.
Now you see, romantic love and natural kindness existing as I say among atheists will not even perhaps recognize the initiative of God.
There are people who will not even believe in God the Father. And yet romantic love and human kindness will exist among them.
That's not this kind of love that John is speaking about. He's talking about the love that from the Father initiates this glorious plan of redemption.
The second thing that we have seen and testified to is the intervention of God. We have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son.
Sent him. So the initiative is with God and the intervention was with God. He sent the Son.
So that the Son of God didn't come from below. He wasn't created by the historical process. He isn't an advanced stage in the religious history of human beings.
He isn't a kind of theological Beethoven who was a musical genius but Jesus was a religious genius.
Beethoven was a human being gifted enormously but he came from below. Jesus did not come from below. He isn't as it were another genius like Shakespeare or Beethoven or Mozart or Leonardo da Vinci.
He's not from below. He's not a man who has been born somehow uniquely and specially from below. He was sent.
He came from outside the historical process so that he is unique and distinctive. Here God intervened into history and into the human situation by sending his Son.
We are not sent in the same way. We are born into the world but Christ was sent into the world.
So we are talking here about divine intervention and the great thing about the gospel is that God in Christ has intervened.
Christ was sent so that he is a unique and special person and he was willing to come.
There's a great story about one of the famous Welsh preachers. I think it was Daniel Rowland who was once preaching on the willingness of the Son of God to come into the world.
And Rowland was describing the councils of eternity before time had ever begun and the Father and the Son consulting together about the coming of Christ the Son into the world.
And the Father was saying to the Son, well my Son, are you willing to be born in an obscure little manger in Bethlehem? Yes Father, I am willing.
And are you willing to be part of a very humble and ordinary little family and to live in a tiny little place called Nazareth? Yes Father, I am willing.
Are you willing to be an apprentice in a workshop as a carpenter and to work with your hands manually and to be rough and hardened by your manual labour? Yes Father, I am willing.
And are you willing to become the leader of a group of men who will disappoint you and distress you and who will give you great difficulties as you try to lead them? Yes Father, I am willing.
And are you willing to be exposed to the outrageous attacks of the enemy of all mankind, the devil? Yes Father, I am willing.
And are you willing to be weary and exhausted and tired and thirsty and hungry? Yes I am willing.
And are you willing for men to despise you and reject you and with wicked hands to take you and to crucify you so that you die a horrible death upon a Roman cross? Yes Father, I am willing.
And are you willing that the sins of my people and the weight of my wrath against human sin should be laid upon your shoulders so that you should be separated from my love and exposed to my anger as you die? Yes Father, said the Son, I am willing.
And evidently I am told at that point in the sermon, the entire congregation broke down in tears and wept at two things, the fact that the Son of God should have gone through all that suffering for them and then with sheer joy and amazement that he should have done it that they might be released from their sins and brought to everlasting life.
Christ was willing to come into the world at the Father's command and will in order to do all of that for human beings.
So we're talking here about the intervention of God. The Father sent.
As I say, romantic love and natural kindness may exist among people who deny divine intervention.
They believe in a closed universe in which there is no such thing as divine intervention. They believe that all that exists is the universe and there is nothing beyond it and outside of it and we are locked into it.
That's what many people today believe. But the Christian has seen and can testify that the Father sent divine intervention, sent the Son into the world and not only that but the Christian knows and has seen that the Father sent the Son into the world so that it was the Son of God who came.
We know, we believe, we confess the incarnation. The God who took the initiative, the God who intervened, became incarnate.
The Father sent the Son, the Son, the Son of his love, the Son of his righteousness, the blessed second person of the Holy Trinity, the very Son of God.
God, God the Son himself came into the world. He became incarnate. He took human flesh and human nature with a human soul.
So here is the glory of the gospel, the incarnation of the word. Athanasius, one of the great theologians of the early church, wrote a magnificent book on the incarnation of the word.
It's worth studying, it's worth reading. In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, we're told, bodily.
So that Christ the Son of God became a man, a real man. He united human nature with his deity and so that there was one enfleshed nature of the incarnate word, one ensouled flesh of the incarnate word.
One being, one person, but two natures. So that Christ is the Son of God in the flesh, in real human flesh with a real human soul.
Now we don't fully understand that, but we have seen and do testify, says the apostle, that the Father sent the Son into the world.
Veiled in flesh, the Godhead, see, hail the incarnate deity, we sing in that great hymn of Charles Wesley.
Now, romantic love and human kindness may reject Christ as the Son of God altogether.
So that this kind of love is a different kind of love. Indeed John has just told us that there are false prophets who deny that Christ has come in the flesh.
He's spoken about them in the previous verses. And obviously people may have kindness in their heart toward one another and may fall in love with one another without this kind of God-centered love being in their heart.
So that he's talking here about Christian love in the sense that we acknowledge and see that Christ is the incarnate Son of God.
And we glory in that because it is the glory of God's love.
And as if that were not enough, John raises our attention even higher and he says, I want you to see and testify something else too.
That the God who took the initiative, the God who intervened, the God who became incarnate had a great intention, a great purpose.
The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. That's the divine intention. That's why the Son of God came.
He came to save people from their sins, from the disease of sin as well as its guilt, from the effects of sin in human nature, from the death of sin that brings into human life, from the judgment to come.
He came to save people that they might know righteousness before God, that they might know peace with God and harmony with God and holiness and ultimately all the integration which sin has disrupted in human life so that we are one body and one family and one in Christ and one in glory.
He came to be the Savior of the world. That's the intention of God. That's why Christ came.
So He is the complete Savior. He is the universal Savior. He is the only Savior because God has only one Son and He has given Him to be the Savior of the world.
And it's this that the Christian has come to see and to testify to. And this is the love that exists within a Christian community.
This is the love that John is talking about. So it's not romantic love and it's certainly not even human kindness. It's Christian love.
It's the love that acknowledges and confesses that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world and it's the love that we've been caught up into and come to experience in our hearts as a living reality which is all due to God's grace and not at all due to our cleverness.
So here is what Christianity is all about. This is what distinguishes it. This is what differentiates it from every other faith.
The Father taking the initiative, sent, intervened, the Son who is the incarnate Word to be the Savior of the world.
And we have seen, we have testified to it, it's not something that we arrived at ourselves, we didn't work it out, we would never have dreamt it up, we couldn't have imagined it.
It's not a human religion. It's all to do with God intervening, God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.
And this is what Christian people need to be sure about. And it's nothing to do with us as I say.
James Denny, the great theologian who wrote that magnificent book on the death of Christ, he once wrote to one of the students at his college and clearly the student needed the advice.
In your preaching, he said, try not to give the impression that you are clever but that Christ is wonderful.
I can't think of better advice to give to any Christian preacher or any Christian at all. Try not to give the impression that you are clever but rather that Christ is wonderful.
You see, it would be a very easy thing, wouldn't it, for us to give people the impression that we are very clever.
Well, we've read our catechisms, we've read our confessions of faith, we've got a few theological propositions under our intellectual belts and we can joy well hold our own with anybody who dares to oppose us theologically.
And we are so clever, too clever by heart. No wonder Aldous Huxley said, I object to Christians, they know too much about God.
I know exactly what he means. You know Christians, they know it all and they're full of their own skin and they can argue the toss about everything.
They're so clever. Now, says James Denny, that is not the way it is. We are all unworthy, helpless, sinful people and we have a wonderful safe.
And our task, our responsibility is to just share his love with people, to love people with that love and to hide ourselves from view so that people don't see us but they do see him.
We have seen and we testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world and when that happens we know that God abides in us and we in God.
And something of the love of Christ, which is heavenly love, humble love, self-forgetting love, self-giving love, sacrificial love, outgoing love, cowardly love, spills over to other people so that they are drawn not to us but to him.
And in the company of God's people they find the Saviour whom the Father sent to be the Saviour of the world.
Well, may the Lord enable us to see and to testify, to know and to speak about this great love that he has shown to us in Christ our Saviour and may it please him to draw others into the fold of his love as well.
Jesus' love, boundless love, it's a love that knows no measure, it's a grace that knows no end, it's the love of God that forever will be ours in heaven.
And oh what a great and glorious thing it is to know it in our hearts even this evening.
Oh may God fill us more and more with it so that our love for Christ grows deeper and our love for one another grows fuller.
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