Ida Scudder’s father and grandfather had both been missionary doctors in India, but she had decided that India was the last place she wanted to have a career. A visit back to India to help with her sick mother changed her vision. Three men, two Hindus and a Muslim, had come requesting help for their wives who were giving birth, but they had refused the assistance of her father because customs forbade contact with the opposite sex.
For Ida Scudder that night was long and traumatic: ‘I could not sleep that night- it was too terrible. Within the touch of my hand there were three young girls dying because there was no woman [doctor] to help them. I spent much of the night in anguish and prayer. I did not want to spend my life in India. My friends were begging me to return to the joyous opportunities of a young woman in America. I went to bed in the early morning after praying much for guidance. I think that was the first time I ever met God face to face [not that she saw Him, but rather encountered His presence], and all the time it seemed that He was calling me into this work.
When she awoke, she learned that the women had died. Later that day she told her parents she would study medicine and return to India to help such women. After graduating from Cornell Medical College, she left for India and began a women’s medical complex in Vellore. Today the complex has become known as one of the best medical centers in all of India. The sight of three anguished husbands became a vision from God that thrust Ida Scudder into a lifetime career of medical practice and development.[i]
Love is the most powerful motivating factor in bringing grace to our world. John, in writing to explain the true nature of being a child of God, states in 1 John that God’s children not only renounce sin and become obedient to His Word but also reject the ways and values of a society devoid of God’s motivating love in their lives. The greatest identity marker of a genuine follower of Jesus Christ is love.
In 1 John 4:8 and 16, John states that God is love. In other words, God is the one that defines for us what love is. He is the source and greatest model of love. The greatest longing in the human heart is to experience a love that will embrace us unconditionally. When we experience that kind of love, it changes our lives, as Nicky Gumbel writes, “When you really know God’s love for you, your life is transformed.”[ii]
The first commandment that God gives believers is that we are to love Him, which in turn empowers us to love others. Jesus summarized the entire law by stating that when we love God and others, we are fulfilling them which is our purpose on earth. When we love, we are most like God.
Pastor Alex Buchanan once asked Alpha founder Nicky Gumbel a question that we all need to consider.
‘Do you and I believe that God approves of us?’ Nicky’s response is probably similar to what most of us would say. ‘Actually, I really struggle with that because I know things about myself that I find difficult to believe that God approves of me.’ Buchanan responded ‘We all struggle with things about ourselves, but God wants us to know that he approves of us, as his followers. He wants us to know he loves us “unconditionally,” “wholeheartedly,” and “continually.”’[iii]
In 1 John 4:7-5:3, John explains the nature of a love that transforms us. Today we are going to look at the heart of God’s love and how it affects our lives. There are three elements revealing whether we are experiencing this transforming love.
THE FIRST EVIDENCE REVEALING WHETHER WE ARE EXPERIENCING GOD’S TRANSFORMING LOVE IS BY LOVING OTHERS
The reason that love expressed toward other believers is so critical is that we only really love others unconditionally when we truly experience God, as He is the source of love. If God is living within us, then one of the characteristics of His life is that love will be manifested from us. We will be loving, even as Jesus is loving.
The nature of a compass is to point to the true north because of the magnetic field of the earth. It does this because it is responsive to the nature of the earth’s make up, just as the believer will reflect the true nature of God by loving others.
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.[iv]
Does this mean that whoever has ever loved anyone therefore knows God? No, what we are to understand here is what the true nature of love is. Human love has limitations, God’s love is unlimited and unfailing. For many believers, their understanding of God’s love drifts into mere sentimentality, not understanding the full scope of God’s essence.
Not only is God the source of all true love; he is love in his inmost being. There are three other statements in the New Testament concerning what God is in substance and nature: he is ‘spirit’ (John 4:24), ‘light’ (1 John 1:5) and ‘a consuming fire’ (Heb. 12:29 from Deut. 4:24). The Gnostics believed that God is immaterial spirit and light, but they never taught that God is love. It is the most comprehensive and sublime of all biblical affirmations about God’s being, and is repeated here twice (8, 16). Nevertheless, it is important to hold the biblical assertions about God together. It is true that the words God is love meant not that loving is ‘only one of God’s many activities’ (Alexander) but rather that ‘all his activity is loving activity’ and that, therefore, ‘if He judges, He judges in love’ (Dodd). Yet, if his judging is in love, his loving is also in justice. He who is love is light and fire as well. Far from condoning sin, his love has found a way to expose it (because he is light) and to consume it (because he is fire) without destroying the sinner, but rather saving him.[v]
This does not mean that love is God. And the fact that two people love each other does not mean that their love is necessarily holy. …love does not define God, but God defines love.[vi]
It is true that loving people are to be found outside the Christian Church as well as inside it; but, important as love is, John is well aware that by itself love is not a mark of being a child of God and knowing him. In 3:23 the command to love is directly linked to the demand for faith; and, indeed, in that context love is mentioned after the obligation (laid upon every would-be Christian) to believe in Jesus Christ. So here it is likely that love is being presented as the effect of new birth from God, and the knowledge of God, rather than as their cause.[vii]
Love then is the outcome of a genuine faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We can say then that to simply confess Christ, but not to love, would be an empty profession of faith. Love is the fruit of, or result of, genuine faith (cf. Gal. 5:22-23). The love that John is talking about is an unconditional love that gives even sacrificially on behalf of the person who is loved.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.[viii]
John Stott explains that “while the origin of love is in the being of God, the manifestation of love is in the coming of Christ.”[ix]
This is the essence of the Christmas story. God sent His son to earth. Though God always had demonstrated His love to mankind in providing for their needs.
The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he had made. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.[x]
Yet, in Psalm 145, God’s grace is especially experienced by His people.
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them.[xi]
In the Christmas story we have the highest and greatest need being met through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, namely the defeat of sin and the hope that comes through the resurrection from the dead.
Eternal Life is one of God’s expressions of love to us.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.[xii]
We struggle with how to live well. What is even more challenging is how to live a life pleasing to God, a loving life, because sin short-circuits love. How can we live a selfless, forgiving, and self-controlled life? Listen as the apostle Paul tells us what God’s Spirit does within us and then through us. In the book of Galatians, we are challenged to use our spiritual freedoms to walk in the Spirit rather than to walk according to our sinful nature.
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: Love your neighbor as yourself. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.[xiii]
THE SECOND EVIDENCE REVEALING WHETHER WE ARE EXPERIENCING GOD’S TRANSFORMING LOVE IS ITS IMPACT UPON US
How is God’s love shaping my life? Do I fully grasp that I, apart from God, have nothing to offer? Only when we experience God’s grace in our lives can we become a channel for that same love to be expressed to others. God’s love can heal past hurts and free us from all our fears. My prayer is that God will reveal His love to each of us. So what does God’s love look like?
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.[xiv]
The ultimate expression of love is this self-giving love which God demonstrated on our behalf by dying for our sins. Though the Christmas story is the opening scene of God’s redemptive love, it concludes with Good Friday and the Easter story which are the ultimate expression of God’s love for us.
The fact that God sent His Son into the world is one evidence of the deity of Jesus Christ. Babies are not sent into the world from some other place; they are born into the world, but as the eternal Son, He was sent into the world.[xv]
The greatest gift in life is Christ and what he came and did on our behalf.
A. God is our redeemer from our fallen condition.
It was love that motivated God’s sacrifice on our behalf. It is rare that someone would give up their lives for another.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.[xvi]
Jesus is an atoning sacrifice on our behalf. What does this really mean?
We need not stay to enquire whether ‘expiation’ (RSV) or ‘remedy for defilement’ (NEB) would be a preferable rendering of hilasmos; ‘propitiation’ or ‘atonement’ will do well enough, if we use either word in its biblical sense-not as something which men must do to placate God, but something which God provided in His grace to bring men into His presence with the assurance that they are accepted by Him, since He has removed the barrier that kept them at a distance-guilt, with its attendant retribution, the ‘punishment’ which is banished by ‘perfect love’.[xvii]
What is Bruce saying? That God took the penalty for our sin rather leaving us to try to placate God’s anger toward sin. We can never be good enough, and therefore because of God’s love toward us, even when we were in rebellion toward Him, He demonstrated His love by sending His Only Begotten Son into the world to die for our sin. Jesus died a substitutionary death on our behalf.
B. How God’s love creates maturity within us.
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.[xviii]
What does John mean by “his love is made complete in us?”
In fact, when the Elder [John] writes that this is how [God’s] love is made complete, he means that it reaches its intended goal when it flows from God, through us, to our fellow believers. The love with which God loved us must in turn be extended to the fellowship of believers.[xix]
Only when we love others is God’s love made complete in us. This is how people see God at work, through the loving actions of believers to each other and even extending to those who oppose them, where forgiveness and grace is shown. Warren Wiersbe writes about the nature of this Divine love in how we are to relate to a world that is hostile toward God and that hostility is reflected in how some people treat followers of Christ. “One reason why God permits the world to hate Christians is so that Christians may return love for the world’s hatred.” Jesus explains this in the Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.[xx]
So, what should our response be?
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.[xxi]
Later in the chapter, John will repeat the idea of a mature love and the confidence it gives us in face God’s judgment. This is not the judgment for sins, but God’s scrutiny in how we lived our lives, serving and loving others. Though our acts of love may go unnoticed in our world, God sees and will reward in eternity.
C. Confidence comes from God’s Spirit in our lives.
This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.[xxii]
It is only through God’s Spirit within us that we can know and experience God and allow God’s love to flow through us to others. It is this work or love of God within us that manifest and reveals God to onlookers.
THE FINAL EVIDENCE REVEALING WHETHER WE ARE EXPERIENCING GOD’S TRANSFORMING LOVE IS AN ASSURANCE OF OUR RIGHT RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
We can stand with confidence on the day of judgment because of God’s love that has been extended to us through the Spirit and helps us to put our trust in God’s substitutionary death for us.
A. What we believe is critical.
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.[xxiii]
We are resting on the assurance of a right relationship based on knowing who Jesus is and what He has done for us.
This involves more than the repetition of a creed; it means total commitment to Jesus Christ. To make this confession in John’s Day meant persecution and, perhaps death. As one has said, it involved complete separation from one’s former community, whether Jew or Gentile. Such a confession would be made only if one saw in Jesus the total answer to his need and found in His indwelling power the presence sufficient for such a need.[xxiv]
What is he saying? That being a follower of Christ is more than just an intellectual assent to truth, but a life-long commitment despite some of the challenges that may come our way. We will only do that if we believe that Jesus is truly God and able to meet every need in our life.
B. What we do is critical.
There are three things that happens when we love like God loves. Not that we are saved by what we do, but if we are really trusting God, we will be experiencing change in our attitudes and values in life. What happens when we live in love is that God, who is love, is living in us and helps us to love Him, to love others, and love even ourselves. We are confident not in ourselves, but in God, who we know as our Savior.
1. It brings an assurance at the time of judgment.
In other words, we will have confidence when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.[xxv]
2. God’s love causes us to love other believers.
We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.[xxvi]
So if we love God we will love His children. You may not agree with another Christian, or even like him or his ways. But in the sense of agape, selfless giving of yourself to him, you must love him. We may be certain that in our sins of commission and omission God is not pleased, but He loves us just the same. We must do the same with our brothers or sisters.[xxvii]
3. Finally, God’s love ruling in our hearts causes us to live an obedient life as expressed in obeying His word.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.[xxviii]
Loving God means that we love His word and delight to do it. Keeping God’s word is not a duty, but it becomes a delight. An example of this is in the realm of what love does: it gives.
You may give without loving, but you can’t love without giving.[xxix]
I think the great struggle in loving others is that it is easy to love those who we feel attracted to for a variety of reasons, but it is another thing to love those who are difficult, frustrating, or just different than we are. Our problem is our focus. We are looking at the object of love rather than the source of love. What do I mean by that? Let me state it this way. What drove the apostle Paul and his team of ministers to suffer so greatly in bringing the good news of Jesus to those who often rejected the message, or worse, even opposed them, to the point of violence against them? It was the love of Christ constraining them (2 Cor. 5:14). It was God’s love flowing out from them. For that to happen in our lives it means we need to open our hearts to be a channel of that love to others, despite their response back to us.
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[i] Leighton Ford, Transforming Leadership: Jesus’ Way of Creating Vision, Shaping Values and Empowering Change, (Downers Grove, Il: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 107.
[ii] Nicky Gumbel, The Bible with Nicky and Pippa Gumbel: Classic Version, The Bible App, December 4, 2024.
[iii] Ibid, paraphrased.
[iv] 1 John 4:7-8, The New International Version of the Bible, Zondervan, 2011.
[v] John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, Revised, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), 163.
[vi] Warren Wiersbe, Be Real, (Wheaton, Il: Victor Books, 1985), 139.
[vii] Stephen Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, (Waco, Tx: Waco Books, Publisher, 1984), 238.
[viii] 1 John 4:9.
[ix] John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John, 164.
[x] Psalm 145:9, 16.
[xi] Psalm 145:18, 19.
[xii] 1 John 4:9.
[xiii] Galatians 5:13-14,16, 22-23.
[xiv] 1 John 4:10.
[xv] Warren Wiersbe, Be Real, 142.
[xvi] Romans 5:6-8.
[xvii] F. F. Bruce, The Epistles of John, (Grand Rapids, Mi: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), 50.
[xviii] 1 John 4:11-12.
[xix] Marianne Meye Thompson, 1-3 John, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, (Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 1992), eBook, 1 Jn. 4:11.
[xx] Matthew 5:11-12.
[xxi] Matthew 5:44-45.
[xxii] 1 John 4:13- 15.
[xxiii] 1 John 4:15-16.
[xxiv] Herschel H. Hobbs, The Epistles of John, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983), 114.
[xxv] 1 John 4:17.
[xxvi] 1 John 4:19-21.
[xxvii] Herschel H. Hobbs, The Epistles of John, 119.
[xxviii] 1 John 5:1-3.
[xxix] Herschel H. Hobbs, The Epistles of John, 120.
