Love for Christmas
December 24, 2024 Speaker: Brian Wilbur Series: Advent
Topic: Advent Passage: 1 John 4:7–12
LOVE FOR CHRISTMAS
An Exposition of 1 John 4:7-12
By Pastor Brian Wilbur
Date: December 24, 2024
Series: Advent
Note: Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
Well, good evening everyone and Merry Christmas. Glad that you're able to join us this evening for our Christmas Eve service. If you have your Bible, I invite you to turn to First John, Chapter 4. And this may not be a typical Christmas Eve text to speak from, but I think it's very fitting and I just would like to spend some brief moments in this portion of God's Word this evening. I want to read First John, chapter 4, verses 7 through 12.
THE SCRIPTURAL TEXT
Holy Scripture says:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:7-12)
This is God's word and it is for our good. Let's pray:
Father, we thank you for that which we celebrate this evening, the gift of your one and only Son for our salvation. And Father, I pray that you would take these words and that you would encourage and strengthen our hearts. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
THREE LESSONS FROM THIS PASSAGE
I would like to call your attention to just three particular lessons that come to us out of this text.
God is characterized by love (v. 7-8)
The first lesson, just looking at verses seven and eight, is that God is characterized by love. And those who know God are also characterized by love. You can see right there in verse seven that “love is from God”. He is the originator and source. And at the end of verse eight, we're told that “God is love”.
Now Scripture says a number of things about what God is. And even in this book right here of First John, we're told in chapter one that God is light. We're told in chapter two that God is righteous. We're told in chapter three that God is pure. So this notion of love is not a stand-alone concept that we are free to define according to our own sentimental and worldly notions of love. This is a holy, righteous, pure, divine love. But nevertheless, it is good and right to say that God is love. And I'm going to talk in a few minutes about what love is.
But you can also see in verses 7 and 8 that love becomes a litmus test in terms of whether or not we actually know God. It says in verse eight, “Anyone who does not love does not know God”. But in verse seven, “whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” And really this just makes sense. If God is love, then those who know him – not simply know about him from afar, not just have kind of a theoretical knowledge of the way things ought to be, but if they actually know him, have experienced his grace personally, and he has begun to work in their hearts and lives – will begin to reflect His character. This idea of being born of God, where God has regenerated the sinner and made him alive and put his own Holy Spirit within the believer's heart, such people are going to reflect God's character. And this theme will continue as we go through the passage.
God demonstrated His love (v. 9-10)
For the second lesson, let's go to verses 9 and 10 where we see that God demonstrated His love by sending Jesus to save us from sin and death. And here I want to talk a little bit about what love is.
There are a number of things that the Bible says about love. But when we look at a passage like this, it's very easy to see that love is first of all a disposition or a desire for the well-being of another person. But that disposition or that desire doesn't stop at the level of the desire. We all know what it's like to sit back on our couch and desire something, but have no wherewithal, ability, wisdom, or determination to do anything about it. But God’s love, which begins as a disposition, as a desire for the well-being of another person, then actually manifests itself in concrete practical action that is designed to secure the well-being of the other person.
And so we see here that God is the One who takes initiative. We're not the ones who initiate this love. God didn't wait for us to take the first step toward Him. If he had waited for us to take the first step toward him, then we would not be here this evening celebrating the love gift of His Son. But he took the initiative. And you can see there in verse nine, “In this the love of God was made manifest”. That love, that desire within the heart of God, was made known, was made manifest in practical action – the practical action being “that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” It's good for us to remember that we cannot truly live apart from God's Son. We can physically live, we can have a physical life, we can have a social life, we can have an economic life and all of that sort of thing. But true spiritual life – to be alive to God, to have the capacity to know and understand the Lord and what he is like, and to be able to walk with him and experience his powerful wisdom working in our lives and bear good fruit that honors Him – we cannot do that unless he comes and gives us life, because we have a sin problem which manifests itself there in verse 10. We see that God didn't only send His Son into the world to be present among us, though that itself is a glorious thing – that he came and was born of the virgin Mary and in many ways lived an ordinary human life and then, of course, had a public ministry of teaching and doing good and casting out demons and healing diseases. But ultimately he came to address the fundamental problem which separates us from God, the fundamental problem that has us spiritually dead. And that is the problem with sin. And so, God “sent his Son” – there in verse 10 – “to be the propitiation [or to be the atoning sacrifice] for our sins.”
And you can see here that we learn some additional things about the nature of love. Love is sacrificial. God sent his very best, and Jesus Himself loved us and gave Himself for us on the cross.
God's love is also generous. He gave us his very best.
And God's love is actually helpful. Oftentimes we have good intentions. We love those around us and we try to help, and it doesn't do a whole lot of good. But God's love is to the point, it is relevant, it meets the actual need. And in dying for our sins and rising again from the dead, Jesus paid the price of our redemption. And now through him, we can be reconciled to God and enjoy spiritual life in Him.
God is present with those who receive and reflect His love (v. 11-12)
The third lesson that I want to call your attention to, now moving to the last part of the passage in verses 11 and 12, is that the invisible God is present with those who receive and reflect his love. Just look at verse 11 again, where it says, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” God's love is uniquely impactful.
You could meet a complete stranger in the airport and that person could show you unusual kindness and it might make an impression upon you. But there's no reason to think that that one encounter is going to dramatically change your life. That stranger is going to go his way and you're going to go your way, and it's not going to radically transform your life.
Even if you were to meet someone, another human being who becomes a good friend or even a spouse, and you do spend a lot of time with that person, and perhaps they are kind and gentle and generous toward you – and even that might make more of an impact than the stranger that you meet in an airport – but still, how transformative can another human being's love be? Because there are certain things that human beings can't do. They can't really touch you at the deepest level of your heart, they can't take away your guilt and your shame, and they can't do transforming work actually in your heart. But God's love, when you encounter it, when it confronts you, when it saves you, when it awakens you to the character of God, it absolutely transforms the way that you live. Because now you're reconciled to God and now God's own Holy Spirit takes up residence within you, and you're actually living now your entire life before the face of God, and he's producing good work in your life.
Notice how crucial it is that both in verse 7 and verse 11 begin with the word “Beloved”. I've been thinking about this concept recently in various teachings from Scripture, just about how it is people who know that they are loved by God, who are the ones who are able to then turn around and love others in a genuine, generous, and gracious manner. If we are insecure in our relationship with God, if we have nagging doubts as to his disposition toward us, if we are walking on eggshells before him, then we're going to be spiritually handicapped at best. But when we know that he loves us, and when he is 100% for us, and when he's actively at work in our lives, and even when we fall down and fail he's ready to receive us back and cleanse us through the blood of His Son, then we have a freedom – a freedom and encouragement and empowerment to love those around us.
And moving into verse 12, we are reminded that God is invisible. None of us have ever seen God. None of us have ever seen God the Father. None of us even have ever seen Jesus in the flesh, though some of the first century disciples did see him in the flesh. But none of us have seen God. And no one has seen God the Father in the spiritual realm, no human being. But although God is invisible, “if we love one another,” then the invisible “God abides in us.” This is another little link to the Christmas theme where we remember that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. God is with us. And of course in Jesus, God was with us in the flesh. But even now, Jesus having ascended to the right hand of the Father and sent out His Holy Spirit upon those who believe, the triune God is with his people now through the Holy Spirit. And as we receive his love, as we reflect his love to one another, the living God is active in our midst “and his love is perfected in us” – God’s love is brought to its proper completion.
Think about it: God's love is aimed at creating a group of people who walk in love. Love is the very opposite of being bound in sin, right? Scripture says that love is the fulfillment of the law. But to be bound in sin, to be in bondage to sin, is to be in bondage to all that is the opposite of true biblical love. And so when God sets us free from sin and death and puts his own Spirit within us, his whole design is to create a people who love one another eagerly, generously, graciously, and sacrificially.
WORDS OF APPLICATION TO THE RECIPIENTS OF THIS MESSAGE
And so I just want to encourage you all, first of all, if anyone is here this evening, and maybe you're not a Christian, or maybe you're unsure about your walk with the Lord, or you're trying to figure out what all this Christian message is and what the meaning of Christmas is. And for so many people out there, they think that the Christian message is about a list of do's and don'ts that you're supposed to do in your own strength. And if you pull it off, maybe God will be pleased with you. But that's not the Christian message. The Christian message is that when we were dead in sin, God sent Jesus to give us life. God sent Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. God sent Jesus to bring us all the way home, home into fellowship with God. And so we have to get our eyes off of all the things that we think we're supposed to do to make it right. And we need to look to the One who did make it right: “Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).
And for those of you who do know him and do love him, always keep revisiting the source, God himself. We can't live off of yesterday's grace. We need to know afresh and anew each and every day that we are loved, that his grace is sufficient, that he upholds us by his almighty power, that he is at work in us and in our brothers and sisters. And that is to encourage us as we live off of God's strength, to love one another and to lay down our lives for each other.
Let's pray:
Heavenly Father, I thank you that you kept your promise to send a redeemer from the lineage of David to save us from sin and death. And Father, I pray that you would impress upon each and every one of us that this truly is the best gift, knowing Christ and being reconciled to you and being filled with the Holy Spirit and being able to participate in your life, in your love. There is no greater gift than these. And Father, I pray that you would impress these things upon us and continue to bring them to fulfillment in the context of our relationships with one another. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
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