GROWING IN GOD’S LOVE
“Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.”
1 John 4:14-16 NLT
Round and round … John circles around this great theme of God’s love, shown so clearly to us in the gift of His Son.
Why is this so important to John? There may be many reasons, but if we look into John’s own life, the “before and after” of his association with Jesus, the unforgettable Pentecost experience and his life “after death”, is it any wonder that he should be so enamoured with God’s love for us and the effects of that love on us.
Let’s look at the progress of John’s life. As a young disciple, together with his brother, James, he was a hothead. He wanted to call down fire on the Samaritans for not receiving Jesus.
“He (Jesus) sent messengers ahead to a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival. But the people of the village did not welcome Jesus because he was on his way to Jerusalem. When James and John saw this, they said to Jesus, “Lord, should we call down fire from heaven to burn them up?”
Luke 9:52-54 NLT
Jesus rebuked them for their drastic solution. He nicknamed them “sons of thunder”!
During his three plus years with Jesus, John began to change. Unlike Peter, he seemed to listen more than talk. He was one of Jesus’ intimate three, with Peter and James, allowed privileges not given to the other nine.
What did Jesus see in these three young fishermen? They were rough diamonds but, after Pentecost, they each played a prominent role in the infant church. All three featured in the authorship of Scripture.
At the last Passover supper before the cross, it was John who occupied the privileged position beside Jesus, leaning against Him, which was apparently, perfectly acceptable behaviour then. He referred to himself more than once, not as Boanerges”, hothead, but as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”.
What changed him? Even before the Holy Spirit deluged the disciples at Pentecost, John could not be in the presence of such love without being changed. No doubt, Jesus’ love for him began to seep into his soul until all his doubts were removed. He was sure, as were his fellow disciples except Judas, that Jesus was the Son of God.
“Then Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked, “Are you also going to leave?” Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. We believe, and we know you are the Holy One of God.”
John 6:67-69 NLT
John was the one who stood resolutely by the cross, sheltering Mary, watching the tragic scene unfold. No other disciples were named with him. To him, Jesus entrusted the most precious person in His earthly life, His mother.
It was “the disciple whom Jesus loved” who recognised Him on the shore of Galilee. Even in the early dawn mist, he knew that voice, he recognised that vague figure on the beach. “It’s Jesus!” he called out. It was Peter who impetuously abandoned his colleagues and jumped into the lake. It was John who helped get the boat to shore.
So many little details, together, paint a word picture of a man transformed. He could write with great assurance to his fellow believers,
“All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.”
1 John 4:15-16 NLT
Like Paul, John could weave his own story into his encouragement of other believers. “We know” he said with confidence. This is the knowing he urges us, his 21st century believers, not just about, but the knowing of life and experience, that God’s love is real, powerful and enduring, and we can trust Him through thick and thin by paying it forward in the lives of others as He has faithfully loved us.
Category Archives: Christian Life
THE PROOF IS REAL
THE PROOF IS REAL
“Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.”
1 John 4:11-13 NLT
Once again, John comes back to one of his main themes, loving each other because God first loved us. Much of our assurance of salvation hangs on our response to God’s love. This response, in turn, has everything to do with the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. These three truths are indissolubly linked together.
1. God loved us while we were still sinners and while we were His enemies.
“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners…. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son.”
Romans 5:8, 10 NLT
2. We responded to His love by believing in His Son, a response that the Holy Spirit both activated and acted on by raising us from spiritual death to spiritual life.
“… Even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.”
Ephesians 2:5-6 NLT
3. The Holy Spirit now lives in us and fills our hearts with God’s love.
“And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”
Romans 5:5 NLT
When these three realities happen and coincide in our lives, God’s love in us will reach out in expressions of love to others which is a very real part of our new nature in Christ.
This love of God is in us in seed form but needs to be cultivated and encouraged to grow as we obey to Jesus’ commands and respond to the leading of the Holy Spirit in us.
SHOW ME HOW MUCH YOU LOVE HIM
SHOW ME HOW MUCH YOU LOVE HIM
“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
1 John 4:7-8 NLT
This expression of love is another of John’s repetitive themes and another way of recognising a true believer.
John began this letter by declaring, “God is light.” Now that’s a powerful statement! God is not a light, one among many, but light itself, the very source of light. There is no light brighter than God in both the literal and spiritual sense.
What does John mean by “light”? He recorded Jesus’ words in his gospel,
“Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”
John 8:12 NLT
The imagery of light and darkness is one of the great themes of the Bible. Light exposes and illuminates. Darkness conceals, allowing evil to flourish in secret.
Jesus diagnosed the reason for wickedness in the world.
“And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”
John 3:19-21 NLT
God is light, and there is no darkness in Him, implies that He has no sin in Him and He will have nothing to do with sin. He is holy, utterly separated from sin. God’s Word is often compared to a light, illuminating God’s nature and ways so that we can know what He requires of us, His children.
“Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.”
Psalms 119:105 NLT
So, since Jesus is God’s Word to us in human form, and since Jesus lived His life in obedience to God’s Word, we will learn to live our lives in obedience to God’s Word if we follow His example.
“God is love”, John’s second great declaration, is the other side of the coin. These two statements, God is light and God is love, perfectly sum up the nature of God. We can say the same thing in these two words, God is “holy-love”. These two qualities keep God’s nature in perfect balance.
Since we are God’s “tekna”, offspring, of the same nature as God through our new birth by the Spirit, we reveal that nature by loving one another as He loves us. Loving one another means that we do everything in our power to promote peace and harmony, to care for each other’s needs, and to build one another up in our faith.
Those who do not express God’s love in these ways, despite their claims, do not know God. It’s as simple as that.
THE POWER OF FELLOWSHIP
THE POWER OF FELLOWSHIP
“But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. Those people belong to this world, so they speak from the world’s viewpoint, and the world listens to them. But we belong to God, and those who know God listen to us. If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us. That is how we know if someone has the Spirit of truth or the spirit of deception.”
1 John 4:4-6 NLT
Fellowship is another of John’s recurring themes in this letter. Why does John consider fellowship to be so important?
So far, we have learned that fellowship with the Father, the Son, and one another is based on knowing and living by the truth.
“We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
1 John 1:3 NLT
John reassures his readers that they have the Holy Spirit who resides in them and teaches them the truth. All who have the Holy Spirit have fellowship with one another, and this fellowship enables them to experience the truth that binds them together. This fellowship creates a strong bond that protects believers from falling into error.
So, John writes, if people from outside the church refuse to listen to us, the reason is that they are not part of the fellowship of believers. If they were part of us, they would participate with us in our belief in and defence of the truth.
Fellowship, then, is another of the ways in which we can discern whether people we associate with are part of the fellowship or are of the world.
Since the Holy Spirit in us bears witness to our own hearts and to one another that we belong to God, He binds us together in fellowship. Our hearts quickly recognise a brother or sister in Christ even before we know them. We are bound together by the knowledge of the truth that underpins our faith. Therefore, we can trust that unseen bond that witnesses to our fellowship in the gospel.
On the other hand, since the world’s philosophies and way of life are the hallmark of those who subscribe to them, they will not accept the truth we speak. They do not belong to God, concludes John. They belong to this world which is in the devil’s control.
Fellowship is one way that creates a clear distinction between God’s children and the children of Satan.
NEW COVENANT COMMANDMENTS
NEW COVENANT COMMANDMENTS
“And this is his commandment: We must believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us. Those who obey God’s commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he with them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us.
1 John 3:23-24 NLT
Just imagine if we, as God’s children, were still obligated to obey all 613 commandments required in the Old Covenant! Why did God make life so complicated for His people?
When the Israelites left Egypt, they were like an unruly mob of undisciplined toddlers. They had lived in Egypt, under the influence of Egyptian paganism, for many generations. They had no strong spiritual leaders to guide them. They lived by their wits and mostly followed the way of life of their Egyptian overlords. A few still followed the faith of their ancestors, like Moses’ parents, for example, but the majority were lost in the wilderness of their own sinful natures.
So, God had to start at the beginning with them, treating them as parents would treat their very young ones. They had to learn who God was and how to honour and respect Him. They had to learn what offended Him and what to do about it. They had to learn to respect one another and to live together in harmony.
Just as parents guide little children with rules that protect them, so God set up a covenant with His people with rules which taught them what to in every situation. Tedious and detailed as they were, these rules were imperative to keep His unruly people in check and to protect them from their own self-destructive ways.
History reveals that God’s instructions did nothing to control His people. In fact, the opposite happened. They became more rebellious as the generations passed. Of course, this was part of God’s plan, to show them how impossible it was to be righteous in His sight by obeying laws.
God intended this process of learning and failing to prepare them to receive His marvellous solution. Through the Apostle John, He distilled His rules down to two simple instructions: believe in Jesus and love one another. By this time, Jesus had died on the cross and risen again. He had ascended to the Father and poured out the Holy Spirit on the church.
“Before the way of faith in Christ was available to us, we were placed under guard by the law. We were kept in protective custody, so to speak, until the way of faith was revealed. Let me put it another way. The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith.”
Galatians 3:23-24 NLT
The New Covenant which God established with Jesus through His obedience to death, brings us into union with Jesus through our belief in Him so that we share in everything He is and does in this covenant with the Father.
So, John says, Jesus fulfilled the entire Old Covenant with all its standards and instructions. God restored the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit to every believer to be Jesus’ personal representative in us. Now we no longer need rules, regulations, and rituals to live in obedience to the Father. We have a personal guide and the power to obey God’s will living inside us.
The entire package of salvation is given to us through faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Command number one in the New Covenant is, therefore, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ (and everything He accomplished is yours).
The fruit of that faith is a changed life.
“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT
Command number two is to love one another. Where this was once impossible in the Old Covenant which provided no power to obey, now we have God’s nature given to us and the Holy Spirit in us who provides the power to obey.
“And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”
Romans 5:5 NLT
God made our participation in the New Covenant simple and attainable if we keep in mind these two requirements. Let’s not complicate what He simplified by adding extras not written in His Word.
Our continued fellowship with God and one another is the fruit of our obedience to these two commands.