The Love of God - Part 2

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Well, you remember that last time, we began by looking at the fact that Paul urges us to pray, and he prays that as saints, we could come to grasp the fullness of the love of God – and I want us to continue to do that tonight.  Let me just briefly review with you and remind you of where we were, and for those of you who weren't here, sort of give you an update – we’re talking about this great characteristic or attribute of God's love. We defined love several ways; we said it's a reasoned love, it's based on a certain – and the word agape is based on the Old Testament word, the Hebrew word ahab – it's a reasoned love; it's not based on emotion, but it's not void of emotion.  It loves regardless of the worth of the object that's being loved, the person being loved, and regardless of the response of the person being loved.  It's self-sacrificial and self-giving – and this is my little definition, when we talk about God's love, we're talking about the unselfish, self-sacrificing desire to meet the needs of the cherished person regardless of their worthiness of it or their response to it.  That is God's love.  We looked at definitions of His attributes – my favorite is the final one there, His self-giving affection for His image-bearing creatures and His unselfish concern for their well-being that leads Him to act on their behalf and for their happiness and welfare; that is the love of God.

Now, let me remind you that we're talking about the big picture of God's goodness.  God's goodness is the fount out of which the attributes we've been looking at the last few weeks come – attributes like mercy, compassion, and love; they flow from the well of the goodness of God.  We talked about the character of God's love being sovereign; that is, it's unaffected by anything we do.  God chooses to set His love where He chooses to set His love; we saw that with Old Testament Israel back in the Book of Deuteronomy and we saw it with us as New Testament believers as well.  We saw God's love is infinite; that is, it is absolutely beyond measure, it can't be plumbed, the depths can never be reached of God's love.  It's eternal – it spans from eternity past into eternity future, and it will never change; God's love is an eternal love.  We looked at that Hebrew word chesed, unfailing love – it never fails.  You heard it sung about this morning; it is God's enduring love; it endures forever.  We also went to 1 Corinthians 13, and we said just as agape love for us toward other individuals includes those qualities listed there in 1 Corinthians 13, those unselfish qualities of looking out for others, in the same way, God's love for us meets those qualifications, has those characteristics – so, we looked at that in detail last time.  Then we began to look at the objects of God's love – who is it that God loves?  And we started and ended here last week – God loves Himself; God loves the other members of the Trinity.  We looked at the interrelationships and how the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father – and while the Spirit isn't mentioned in that list, certainly that's true as well; the individual members and the persons of the Trinity exercise love toward one another.

That's where we left off last time; I want to continue to look at the objects of God's love, and the next is every human being universally – God loves every human being universally.  Now, some, especially younger believers who have just come to embrace and understand that God is sovereign in salvation, insist sometimes that God cannot love those who never believe; they say, you can never say God loves someone who doesn't believe, or in other words, you can't say that God loves the non-elect.  Well, it is true – the Bible does teach that God hates the sinner; there are so many references to that, we've looked at some of those in the past.  Some try to escape that statement that God hates the sinner by saying that God loves the sinner but hates the sin.  Well, there are a couple of problems with that; one is, that's not what the text says; secondly, if God loves the sinner but hates the sin, why does God condemn the sinner to hell and not just the sin?  The truth is – and this is where you need to understand – the truth is, God loves and hates the sinner at the same time.  You see, love and hate are not mutually exclusive – I love the illustration that a great American theologian by the name of R.L. Dabney gives; he uses the example of George Washington.  George Washington had a wonderful friend; they had known each other for many years, but in the Revolutionary War, his friend became a traitor. You know his name; in fact, his name has become synonymous with being a traitor – it's Benedict Arnold.  George Washington loved Benedict Arnold deeply, and he never stopped loving Benedict Arnold as a friend – but when he found out of his treason, that he was a traitor to the cause, he commanded that he be executed, and he says that he hated him for his treason, but he loved him as a brother.  Hate and love are not mutually exclusive, and the scripture teaches both are true about God's perspective toward the sinner.  Scripture is absolutely clear that, just as God hates the sinner, God loves the unregenerate as well.

Let me show you a couple of passages to make this clear – first of all, Matthew 5:43.  "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,'" Jesus says, "'but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven'" – in other words, act like your Father, love your enemies – "'for He,'" that is, God, "'causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?  Do not even the tax collectors do the same?'" He's saying, listen – it is a very low level of love unbecoming of God and unbecoming of us as believers to only love those who love us.  No, true love, even at a human level, is to love those who are your enemies – and God is the supreme example of that, even as you've already seen it illustrated there. And He ends in verse 48, "'Therefore, you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'"  And the context, the idea is certainly perfection in the full sense, but the emphasis is perfection in your love – absolutely clear that God's love is as universal as the rain and the sun.  You see that?  God's love is as universal as where He makes the sun shine and where He makes the rain fall.

Look at Mark 10 – you see this also in a very interesting story – Mark 10, and notice verse 17.  "As He was setting out on a journey, a man came and ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked, 'Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?'  And Jesus said to him, 'Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.'" He wasn't saying He wasn't God, He was saying, you don't acknowledge Me to be God – and if you don't acknowledge Me to be God, why are you calling Me good?  Verse 19, "'You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'"  Now, is Jesus saying that it's possible for someone to be saved by keeping those? No, not at all – the law, remember, was supposed to do what?  It was supposed to serve as a tutor to teach us our utter need of Christ; that's what He's doing with this young man, He's saying, okay, you think you can earn your way to eternal life?  Here's what you do – you love your fellow man perfectly; notice He chooses all the commandments that have to do with fellow men.  And his response in verse 20 is, "'Teacher, I have kept all these from my youth up.'"  Very confused – has he kept them?  No, he hasn't kept them; he hasn't kept the true intention that Christ has taught on, even on the Sermon on the Mount; he's kept them externally.  You see, to believe that you've kept the law of God, you have to redefine it to pure externals, and that's what he's done.  Verse 21 says, "Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, 'One thing you lack; go and sell all you possess, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come and follow Me.'"  The issue here is not that everybody coming to Christ has to sell what he has; the issue is, Jesus put His finger on what this man loved more than he loved Christ, more than he was willing to leave.  This was the test, if you will, of his willingness to follow Christ – and he fails the test.  "At these words," verse 22, "he was saddened, he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property."  As far as we know, this young man never comes to faith in Jesus Christ; there's no indication anywhere in the gospels – and yet, we're told in verse 21, "Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him."  The love of God reaches even those who are, and remain, His enemies.

Of course, the famous verse is John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son."  You know, because of this statement, and because of these verses we've looked at, scripture often refers to Jesus as the Savior of the world – that's not because everyone will be saved; I mean, we understand that, right?  It's not universalism; not everybody in the world is going to be saved – and yet we're still pointed to Jesus as the Savior of the world, because God's love for the world is what motivated Christ to come, and it's what motivated the Father to send Him.  So, you see verses like this one and John 4:42, "This One is indeed the Savior of the world."  1 Timothy 4:10, "We have fixed our hope on the living God who is the Savior of all men, and especially of believers."  Titus 3:4, "When the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared." And finally, in 1 John 4:14, "We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world."  Listen, folks – God loves every human being universally.

Some people refuse to say to someone they're witnessing to, someone who is lost, God loves you – they argue that God loves only the elect, and it's impossible to know if any sinner is elect, so don't ever say that to anyone.  Men that I respect, men like A.W. Pink, whom I've quoted many times, does, frankly, verbal gymnastics around John 3:16, where it says God so loves the world.  He says world there only describes the world of believers – go figure.  But you can believe in divine election and the sovereignty of God in salvation and still believe that God loves the entire world – did you hear that?  The two are not mutually exclusive; you can believe in God's sovereignty in salvation, which we as a church embrace – I and the leadership of our church embrace the sovereignty of God in salvation from unconditional election in eternity past all the way up to awakening a dead heart.  You can believe that and still believe God loves the entire world.  No one would accuse John Calvin of being soft on election – but listen to what John Calvin says on John 3:16; he says, "Two points are distinctly stated to us – namely, that faith in Christ brings life, and that Christ brought life because the Father loves the human race and wishes that they should not perish."  He continues, "The Apostle John has employed the universal term whosoever, both to invite all indiscriminately to partake of life, and to cut off every excuse from unbelievers.  Let us remember, on the other hand, that while life is promised universally to all who believe in Christ, still, faith is not common to all, but the elect only are they whose eyes God opens, that they may seek Him by faith."  There is the balance of those two ideas – God loves the world, He offers salvation freely to anyone who will come, but only those can come whom the Father draws.

That brings us, then, to the final object of God's love – not only Himself, the person of the Trinity, not only every person universally, but especially those whom He has chosen, those whom He has chosen for Himself.  You see it in a number of texts – but look at 1 John 3:1, "See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the children of God."  Now, obviously, this is a special love – this is not the same kind of love we've been looking at, because not everyone in the world is called the children of God, is adopted into the family of God.  You see it again in John 13:1 – Jesus, on the night of the Last Supper, "before the feast of Passover, knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of the world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world" – His own – "He loved them to the end."  It's an interesting expression, to the end – it's a Greek word that could mean completely, comprehensively, perfectly.  It means that Christ's love for His own was unconditional, it was perfect, and it was eternal.  "He loved them to the end" – that's us.  What a wonderful reminder.  John 16:27, "The Father Himself loves you because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father."  Here is a special group that are especially loved because they have loved Christ and have believed that He came from the Father. And, of course, why do we love Christ? We love because He first loved us – it's a response to His love.  John 17:23, "'I in them and You in Me,'" still in His high priestly prayer here, "'that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me,'" and you, Father, "'loved them, even as You have loved Me.'"  You know, that is a profound thought, isn't it? Jesus is praying, and He says, Father, You loved them just as You have loved Me.  2 Thessalonians 2:16, "Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us" – and who are us – "and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace."  There again is a special group who know a special kind of love, a different kind of love.  1 John 4:16, "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."  God's love here is identified for a special group who continue to abide in Him and continue to remain faithful.  So, God loves the Person of the Trinity, He loves Himself; God loves all men universally; but then, He loves His own with a special love, a love that transcends His love for all men universally, a love that brings us into a relationship with Him, that adopts us as His own, special children.

Now, those are the objects of God's love – so, what are the expressions of God's love; how does that love manifest itself?  And let me just say that all of these are made possible by the cross; every expression of God's goodness and His love was purchased at the cross.  If Christ had not died, God would not be expressing love to unregenerate sinners, He wouldn't be causing His rain to fall on the just and the unjust – instead, His justice would demand that the moment they sin, they die.  So, every demonstration of God's love and goodness was bought by the death of Jesus Christ – even temporal expressions.  First of all, to all men – and I'm not going to spend a lot of time here, because we're going to talk about this more in detail when we get to the doctrine of salvation – but let me just give them to you.  First of all, it expresses itself in common grace to all men; compassion or mercy, warnings about coming judgments – God warns sinners in His word – and a universal free offer of salvation to whomsoever will believe in Christ. Those are the expressions of God's love to all men.

But let's move on to talk about the expression of God's love to His own, to us – how does God's love express itself to each of us?  God loves all, but that does not mean that He loves all in the same way and with the same intensity.  Let me show you this – turn to 1 Corinthians 16.  We just saw that God loves every man – and yet, look at what He says through the pen of Paul in 1 Corinthians 16:22.  As he finishes the book to the Corinthians, he says this, "If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed," anathema, damned.  Obviously, the love of God for mankind universally is not the same as His love for His own.  So, how does He manifest His love for us?  Well, first and foremost, in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ – God's love for us is almost always connected to the cross.  Let me show you this, it's really quite interesting – Romans 5:8, "God demonstrates His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."  Galatians 2:20, "I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me."  There's the demonstration of God's love – He gave Himself up.  Ephesians 5:2, "Walk in love," we're told, "just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us."  Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her."  The greatest demonstration of God's love was the substitutionary death of Christ; we celebrate it this morning with the Lord's Table.  As we partook of those elements, we were picturing the reality that God's love reached down to save us by punishing Christ. You see it even in heaven – Revelation 1:5, "To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood."  The substitutionary sacrifice of Christ is the primary way God demonstrates His love to His own.

He also demonstrates it in election – Romans 9 makes that point; "Though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, it was said to her, 'The older will serve the younger,' just as it is written, 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I have hated.'"[SR1]   God's love determined to choose Jacob, even though the boys hadn't been born, hadn't done anything wrong or right – God's love was what laid back of His electing choice of Jacob, and it's true of you as well; it's true of me.  Ephesians 1 puts it this way, "He chose us," that is, God chose us "in Christ before the foundation of the world" – there is that election – "that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us to adoption as sons."[SR2]   It was God's love that motivated Him to choose you in eternity past, and in time, to interrupt your life with Himself and to draw you to Himself.

God's love also expresses itself to us in salvation proper – you remember Ephesians 2, God is "rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)."[SR3]   Adoption – 1 John, we looked at this verse before, the great love God has shown in making us His own, in making us His own children.[SR4] 

Now, the next one is one that – honestly, you've loved the rest of these; the next one, you probably wish God just had left off the list – but another demonstration of God's love to us is chastening, just as a demonstration of our love as human parents to our children is not to let them grow up as wild banshees, you know?  Our love says we're too concerned about them and their future to allow that to happen; we want to discipline them, to bring them to a point where they're obedient, for their good – even so does God; His love demonstrates itself in this way.  Hebrews 12:6, "Those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives."  Revelation 3:19 says, "Those whom I love," Christ does, "I reprove and discipline; therefore, be zealous and repent."  God's love demonstrates itself in concern for you. You know, we often think of love as sort of a sickly-sweet sentimental thing – and there is certainly an emotional side to the love of God; His heart is attached to us by His own choice – but it's also a love that loves too much to allow us to name His name and to continue to sin.  There's a warning here, even in the love of God, to make sure that you understand that, if you are a son, if you are a daughter, then God is not going to allow you, because of His love, to continue to live in a pattern of unrepentant sin.

Now, that brings us to the core of our discussions each week, the part that – I love all of it, but here's where it really gets down to the application of the attribute of God for each of us – so, how do we respond to so great a love?  You know, according to Romans 5 – in fact, let's turn there; I want you to see this – in Romans 5, Paul is dealing with the results of justification.  He begins, "Therefore, having been justified by faith,"[SR5]  and what follows down through verse 11 are a series of results that come about because we've been declared righteous before God by His grace alone.  One of those is quite interesting – in verse 5, we're told that one of these results is "the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us."  The expression here doesn't mean so much that I now love as much as it means that I, by the work of the Holy Spirit, have come to grasp, to some degree, God's love for me – I've come to understand, to some extent, by the work of the Spirit, God's love.  God has poured out the knowledge of His love for you into your heart – if you're a believer, as I talk about the love of God, your heart just draws out to this, you understand this, and you find something inside of you answering to these passages and saying yes, I sense that, I know of the Father's love for me, at least to some measure.

So, with that being true and having looked at the love of God, how should we respond to that love? Well, there are several very straightforward biblical admonitions – let's look at them together.  First is to return that love – love God with every fiber of your being.  Turn to 1 John 4:15 – John begins this discussion of God's love, and he says, "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God."  In other words, if you're confessing – this is back to Romans; if you believe in your heart, if you're confessing with your mouth that Jesus is who He claimed to be, and you are following Him – then God abides in him, and he abides in God. "We have come to know" – now, watch this, verse 16, here's John's way of putting what we just saw in Romans 5 – "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."[SR6]   He's talking about this developing confidence in God's love.  Verse 18, "There is no fear in love" – we talked about this last week – "but perfect love casts out fear."  As we come to truly understand that God loves us, then, as I quoted last week, "all fear goes out of the universe,"[SR7]  when you really come to believe that God loves you and that He means only your good, then that knowledge, that knowledge of God's perfect love for us, casts out fear – "because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."  That brings us to verse 19 – "We love, because He first loved us."  In other words, because we have a knowledge of God's love – back up in verse 16, "because we have come to know and believe the love which God has for us" – then we turn around and in return, we love God.

You remember Matthew 22 – in fact, let's turn back to Matthew because I want you to see this – Matthew 22:34.  "When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees" – you remember, now, this is the last week of our Lord's life; He's taken control of the temple mount, it's probably Tuesday of the passion week, and He's taking all comers; they're coming to trip him up, to ask Him questions, and the Sadducees have had their shot, and they failed; as He always did, He brilliantly answered them, so they had no way to accuse Him, so now the Pharisees are going to take their turn.  When they "heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together.  One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, 'Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?'"  Now, you have to remember that there had been a longstanding argument among the leaders of Israel as to what the greatest commandment was – obviously, the Old Testament is filled with commands, so how do you sort out what is the great commandment? And so, they had had a lot of discussion about it – there was an understanding that there were six hundred and some odd commands in the Old Testament, all corresponding to the number of Hebrew letters in the Ten Commandments, and there was a lot of discussion about which of those might be the greatest, and so that's where the question comes from.  Verse 37, He said to them, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,'" from, of course, Deuteronomy 6.  "'This is the great and foremost commandment.  The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" And then He says something very interesting in verse 40, "'On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets.'"  In other words, these two commandments are summaries of God's entire requirement of mankind – love God perfectly, with all of your being, every minute of your life, and love your neighbor perfectly, as you love yourself, every moment of your life. If you do those two things, then you have perfectly kept God's law.  Well, obviously, that's impossible – not a single one of us here would even have the chutzpah to say that we have done that – but what I want you to see is that, when Christ said I'm going to boil it down for you, everything that's contained in the Old Testament, I'm going to give it to you in two very simple commands, here it is – this is number one, love God with your entire being. Folks, that is both our duty and our delight – we love Him because He first loved us.

Let me ask you a question – do you really love God?  Is there a deep, burning desire to please Him, to obey Him?  John goes on – and we'll get there in a moment – John goes on to test us in several ways about our true love for God, primarily in two ways; do we obey God, and do we love people?  You want to know if you love God?  You obey, and you love people – it's that simple.  When we don't love, I think often, when we don't love as much as we should, I think it comes down to we really don't understand God's love for us – it all starts there.  Our love flows out of our knowledge of God's love; that's why Paul in Ephesians says I want to pray for you, that you'll really come to understand the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of God[SR8] , because it's only as you do understand God's love for you that your love for God grows in response.  A.W. Pink writes, "How little real love there is for God – one chief reason for this is because our hearts are so little occupied with His wondrous love for His people."  Did you hear that?  The reason we don't love the way we ought to love is because our hearts are so little occupied with God's wondrous love for us.  "The better we are acquainted with His love – its character, its fullness, its blessedness – the more our hearts will be drawn out in love to Him."

If you have to be honest with yourself tonight and say either you've left your first love or your heart is cold to some degree, it's not passionate to love God with every fiber of your being, there are several possibilities.  One may be that you don't love God at all; that, in fact, you only love yourself, and that you haven't come to truly know God's love because you're not, in fact, a follower of Jesus Christ.  Another option is that you've allowed your own sin to become more important to you than your allegiance and loyalty and love for God.  And another possibility is that you are very shallow in your understanding of God's love for you.  I think the remedies in each case are pretty obvious.

Secondly, we are to love others – we've already seen that there in Matthew 22, we saw it in 1 John. Let's turn back to 1 John, I want you to see it again, because I left off before the verse that makes this point. "We love because He first loved us."[SR9]   Verse 20 – again, this is 1 John 4 – "We love because He first loved us.  If someone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar."  Wow, that's pretty direct.  "For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."  See, here's the test of whether you love God, but here's also a way to show our love to respond, if you will, to the love of God, and that is to love others around us. First of all, we are to love all people – you remember Matthew 5, we looked at that before; we won't turn there again – in Matthew 5, where Christ uses the Father's example of loving His enemies to tell us to love not just those who are our friends, not just those who treat us well, but even our enemies.  The idea is, we are to love everyone.  It's interesting – Matthew 22 says that, you remember, we are to love our neighbor as ourself; you remember in Luke, someone seeking to justify himself says, well, Lord, who is my neighbor?  Who is my neighbor?  And the Lord tells the story of the good Samaritan – and, of course, there were these Jewish people who passed, who didn't help the one who had fallen among thieves, and the Samaritan comes along, and he helps him – and He asked, so who do you think was a neighbor to the man who had fallen among thieves? And the obvious answer is the Samaritan, the one who helped him.  He says go and do the same – His point is this:  Your neighbor is anybody that God providentially brings across your path – starting at home, starting with your family, and spreading out from there to anyone whom your life touches, you and I have a responsibility to love – and God does that.

But we're also to love especially other believers – let's turn to a couple of these passages; turn to John 13.  This is the night of the Last Supper – those famous words in verse 34 and following, where He says, "'A new commandment I give you'" – it's not really a new commandment – "'that you love one another, even as I have loved you, and that you also love one another.  By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.'"  Listen – you want to respond properly to God's love for you, and the way He has expressed that in saving you and adopting you into His family and ensuring your eternal joy in His presence?  Then love people!  Love especially those who belong to Christ.  In John – we'll look at it, well, let's go ahead and turn there, let's turn to 1 John 3. You say, well, what does that look like to love the people around me, to love the brethren?  Notice verse 13 of 1 John 3.  "Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.  We know that we have passed out of death into life" – here's the test; you want to know whether or not you're a Christian? "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.  He who does not love abides in death."  This isn't hard.

You say, well, how do I know if I love?  Well, he goes on, verse 15, "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer." If you harbor feelings of hate in your heart for other people, and particularly for fellow believers, you're a murderer. "And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.  We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."  Now, here's where the rubber meets the road – you want to know whether or not you're loving other believers?  "Whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?  Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth."  And if we will love that way, he says our hearts will be assured before God.  Love other believers, and love practically – reach out to them, encourage them, if they have needs, seek to meet those needs – again, starting in your own home and spreading out from there – love others. Look at 1 John 4:9, "By this the law of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him."  This is how God showed His love.  "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the" satisfaction of His wrath "for our sins" – that's what the word propitiation means.  "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.  No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us."  The response to the love of God shown toward us is to love other believers, to love other people.

The next is to keep God's commands – while you're there in 1 John, just flip back a chapter to chapter 2, verse 5.  "Whoever keeps His word" – well, let's back up to verse 3; I want to get the flow here.  Verse 3, "By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments."  There again, John is just so black-and-white; if you have a desire and a heart, and it's your practice to move toward obedience, if you have an increasing pattern of obedience in your life, and a decreasing pattern of sin, then he says you're in Christ, you've come to know Him.  Verse 4, "The one who says, 'I have come to know Him,' and does not keep His commandments," – in other words, it's not the pattern of his life to keep His commandments – "he is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has been perfected.  By this we know that we are in Him; the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk;" that is, the habits of his life ought to be the same as Christ.  There it is – you want to love God?  You want to respond to the love of God?  Then love others and keep His commands.

There's another interesting reference – we'll move along here; the next one is in 1 John 2. John is really driving home this issue of love, and he says, you want to respond properly to God's love, then stop loving something else; this is an exclusive love that you should have for God. Verse 15, stop loving the world, literally, and the things that are in the world, because if anyone, as a pattern of life, is loving the world – that is, we're not talking about people here, we're talking about the system of values that make up the world in which we live – "the love of the Father is not in him."  Now, here, he defines – he says, "For all that is in the world" – he's going to tell us what he means by the world – it's "the lust," or craving; when we see the word lust, we think sexual, and it's not always sexual; the word simply means to crave.  He says it's "the [craving] of the flesh, the [craving] of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life" – those are "not from the Father but are from the world."  He says, listen, here's a check – it's not about, you know, whether or not you wear black leather; it's not about something external – here's whether or not you love the world.  Are you characterized in your heart by a craving for what your flesh desires?  Are you characterized in your heart by a craving of the eyes that speaks of a desire to possess, to gain, to get?  And are you characterized by a boastful pride of life – in other words, do you find yourself boasting in who you are and what you've achieved and that's what matters to you?  That's of the world – stop loving those things.  Verse 17, "The world is passing away, and also its [cravings], but the one who does the will of God lives forever."  You want to respond properly to the love of God? Stop loving the world, stop loving those who encourage you and direct you toward the cravings of your flesh, the cravings to own and possess, and the boastful pride of life – that's what the world's system looks like, and that's all around us – stop loving it, he says.

A couple of other ways we're supposed to respond; first of all, learn that spiritual blessings – the key word is spiritual blessings – are the primary expression of divine love. You see, Christians get in the midst of troubles and difficulties – now, let's just be honest with ourselves; all right? Trouble comes, difficulty comes – and we're immediately tempted to do what?  Doubt God's love.  Wow, I mean, this doesn't look like love to me!  Really, what you have bought into if you think like that is what theologians call retribution theology; that is, that you can look at how a person is treated here, and if they're treated badly, if they're going through trouble and difficulty, then that must mean God is displeased with them; and if there is someone who is enjoying physical and material prosperity and blessing and a trouble-free life, then God must be pleased with them.  That is absolutely not true – you want an example of that, look at Christ. Was Christ loved by the Father? Absolutely – and yet He says in Matthew 8:20, "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."  Again, A.W. Pink writes, "Christ was beloved of the Father, yet He was not exempted from poverty, disgrace, and persecution – He hungered, and He thirsted.  Thus, it was not incompatible with God's love for Christ when He permitted men to spit upon Him and smite Him.  Then let no Christian call into question God's love when he is brought under painful afflictions and trials."  Understand that God's love is expressed primarily in the spiritual blessings we enjoy, including the hope of eternal joy in His presence.  Pink adds, "Whenever you're tempted to doubt the love of God, there's only one place to go – go back to Calvary; there is where God's love was demonstrated."

Husbands, imitate God's love for you toward your wife – Ephesians 5 makes this point; let's look at it together.  Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her."  Love your wives just as Christ loved the church – in other words, imitate the love that Christ showed for the church in the way you love your wife. You want to respond properly to God's love, men?  Here's where it begins – I've said throughout my message tonight that it begins at home; it really begins at home, because the best way you can respond to God's love for you is to take that love and, as it were, be a reflector toward your wife. Look at the kind of love that's described here – I'm not going to spend too much time here, because I was talking to the elders; when I finish Philippians, and I know you don't think I'm going to finish Philippians, but I really am, I'm looking at probably no later than the early week or two of January, finishing up Philippians.  We're going to do a couple of other things – and starting, I think, the second week in March, we're going to start a six-to-eight-week study – and I'm going to do my best to keep it there – on marriage and family.  So, we're going to come to this text in some detail then – but let me just show you the kind of love that we're to have.  "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church" – first of all, it's a sacrificial love; He "gave Himself up for her." You want to mirror the love of Christ? Then sacrifice yourself and what you want to do, what your preferences are, to serve and minister to your wife. "So that He might sanctify her" – it's a sanctifying love.  Part of your role, husband, is to be encouraging the holiness and sanctification of your wife; don't expose your wife to things that are sinful, don't have her watching things that she shouldn't be watching with you – you shouldn't be watching them.  But you should be encouraging her sanctification; you should be directing her toward her Lord.  It goes on to say, verse 28, "So husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it."  The word nourish comes from a word ultimately that means to feed, to take care of.  "And cherish, just as Christ does also the church" – it's a nourishing [SR10] love and a cherishing love – that's how Christ loves His church, and that's how you and I are to love, and that is the only right response to the love God has shown us.  And if you're not showing that kind of love to your wife, then it may well be that either A, you have not come to enjoy and understand the love of God; to experience, I should say, the love of God, in a saving sense; or B, you really are very inadequate in your understanding of God's love and it's not being reflected toward others.

Let the knowledge of God's love strengthen your assurance.  I love those last few verses – let's turn there; in fact, we'll finish here. There's one more; I'll just mention it now, before we turn to Romans.  Basically, we've seen this in several of these attributes – we're to pray that others will receive and come to understand God's love.  This is where, in a number of places, Paul is saying, I'm asking God to show you His love, to manifest His love to you, and so forth.  But let's go back to the previous point – let the knowledge of God's love strengthen your assurance.  Turn to Romans 8.  I'll never forget when Sheila and I were – we had just met, and we both came across a little study guide that John MacArthur had written on Romans 8; it's called Security in the Spirit, and it was one of the most profound, illuminating experiences I'd ever had as a Christian.  The Lord just opened my eyes to see the beauty of this passage.  In Romans 8, Paul, of course, lays out, beginning in verse 28, "that God causes all things to work together for good," we know that verse, "to those who love God."  Listen – if you're in God's love, then you can be confident that providentially He directs everything for your good.  "For those whom He foreknew" – so, we're springing off of the love of God here – "For those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; those whom He predestined, He called, and those whom He called, He justified, and those whom He justified, He glorified." There's the whole process, from beginning to end, of God drawing us to Himself and ultimately glorifying us.

Verse 31, "What shall we say to these things?  If God is for us, who is against us?"  If He didn't "spare His own Son," but had such a great love for us that He "delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?"  And he just begins to go through this litany of experiences that we have as a result of God's love – nobody can "bring a charge against God's elect" because "God is the one who justifies," God is the one who has declared us righteous – who can bring a charge when God says you're righteous?  "Who is the one who condemns?  Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised," and guess what?  He is now "interceding for us."  Who can condemn us when Christ, the one who died for us, is in the presence of the Father, pleading our case with a friendly judge?  And then he comes back to the love – "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?" Verse 37, "In all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, … nor height, nor depth, nor any created thing" – you get the picture? Absolutely nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Let the knowledge of God's love sink deep into your heart and become the bedrock on which you build your Christian life and experience, because nothing – nothing in heaven or hell, nothing in your heart, nothing in your future – can separate you from the love that God has shown you in Christ.  We sang that hymn before I began tonight – I love that last verse.

Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry,

Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.

Let's pray together.

Father, we are overwhelmed – with Paul, we say, what can we say to these things?  If You are for us, who can be against us?  Lord, we're so grateful for the love You have shown us in Christ – and yet, Lord, we confess to You that we feel like we understand it so little; we feel like our knowledge of Your love is so shallow.  Father, open up our hearts, dig deep and implant the knowledge of Your love in us.  Help us to grasp the height and the depth, the length and the breadth of Your love, and may it change us, even in the ways we have seen.  Lord, help us to learn how to love You with every fiber of our being; help us to learn how to love others.  Lord, help us to learn how to obey.  Lord, I just pray that in all these things that we've gone through tonight, that You would enrich our understanding, You would deepen our love, deepen our knowledge of Your love, even as Paul prayed.  I pray for me, and I pray for all of the people of our church, Father, that You would help us to grasp something of the depth of your love – and when we do, may we be able to say we love You because You first loved us. We pray it in the name of Christ. Amen.

 [SR1]Romans 9:11-13.

 [SR2]Ephesians 1:4-5a.

 [SR3]Ephesians 2:4-5.

 [SR4]A paraphrasing of 1 John 3:1.

 [SR5]Romans 5:1a.

 [SR6]1 John 4:17a.

 [SR7]Quote from A.W. Tozer.

 [SR8]Based on Ephesians 3:18.

 [SR9]1 John 4:19.

 [SR10]Tom first says “nurturing” but then corrects himself.