As we begin our journey through the month of February, we begin in the book of 1 John. This letter from John, I wished we had more time to work through. John speaks about the subject of love and how to love one another. As we study today’s scripture, we are going to include verses within John’s other letters to get an understanding of where love comes from.
John makes three appeals through out 1 John.
Appeal #1
9 The one who says he is in the light but hates his brother or sister is in the darkness until now. 10 The one who loves his brother or sister remains in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. 11 But the one who hates his brother or sister is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and doesn’t know where he’s going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
2 John 2:9-11
If we want to walk in His light, we must love one another. IN order to love, we need the light of God to illuminate our hearts. A dark heart is a heart hat hates, but God pours His light into our hearts, so that through His love, we are motivated to do loving actions to others.
Appeal #2
10 This is how God’s children and the devil’s children become obvious. Whoever does not do what is right is not of God, especially the one who does not love his brother or sister.
1 John 3:10
Love is attached to our nature. If we are truly born again, we will love others. A hallmark of the Christian life is how well we love EVERYONE. This is not just how well you love your spouse, children, or family and friends. This is the measure of how you treat those who have wronged you. It is a measure of how you treat your enemies. Love is not just reserved for a select few because God loves everyone equally.
Appeal #3
16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
1 John 4:16
God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
Love is from God.
Love is God.
If we want to know His love, we have to know Him. Without a relationship with God, a person cannot know how to love. God is love means every action of God is filtered through love. God CANNOT do anything unloving. Love IS HIs nature.
Love is not just one of God’s activity, it IS His activity.
Read that again a few times. Love IS who He IS. He defines the substance of love. Those who are born of God and know God will know Him and His character, not just know of Him. They will have an experiential – experience or observation – relationship with Him.
People who do not love, do not know God. They are either out of an experiential fellowship with Him. They know of God but have never experienced Him personally or they have never been born again in the first place.
The believer who loves has been born of and has known God.
A peek in all our closets and I bet many of us have a variety of t-shirts that we got or bought while attending an event. We buy or receive that t-shirt to as a way of saying I was there. Christians who have an experiential relationship with God wear the t-shirt of God’s love. It is in their nature, because the nature of God dwells within them.
God is Love, Love comes from God.
9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1 John 4:9-10
Love Moved God!
John told us that God is Love and love comes from God. John fills in the details. God’s love motivated and move Him to send His only Son into the world. Love is a motion, a movement, a motivation.
The incarnation is an expression of God’s love and enabled by God’s love. By becoming one of us, God is able to effectively love us! Jesus is God in the flesh. Without incarnation, Christianity would just be a religion. If Jesus was not God who became flesh, then He is just a man who did good things to get to God. Jesus did not come to experience humanity, He came to die.
Propitiation is a fancy word that means: a means of appeasing.
Jesus died for our sins satisfying the righteousness of God on our behalf. We were once enemies with God but through propitiation, Jesus makes us a friend to God and adopted into the family of God.
John shows us what God’s love for us drove Him to do. The cross is the natural flow out of God’s love, holiness, and justice. When God’s love and holiness intermixed, the cross was the result. At the cross, His love and justice were satisfied.
God is love and there is nothing like God!
We must receive it by accepting the cross and what Jesus did for us out of the same love that sent Him to the cross.
If we want love to run wild, we must believe in Jesus!
11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:11-12
John’s conclusion is if God loves us, we aught to love others. If we have experienced and have been impacted by His love, we WILL love others.
No one has seen God. Our earthly bodies cannot handle the fullness of God’s holiness and glory. His majesty is too much for us on this side of eternity, but there is one amazing way for people to see God: if we love one another.
When we love one another, His love is perfected in us. The circuit of God’s love is completed when we release His love to others.
It Starts Small 
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