I John 2:10; 4:7-12 LOVING AS HE LOVED
I. Introduction
A. The word love is used 46 times in the next three chapters
1. His thought is about three chief considerations
a. love as it resides in God
b. love as manifested in Christ
c. love as exemplified through His followers
II. Love at It's Source - Love resides in God (I John 4:8)
A. We shall never really know love until we know Him
1. I am not talking about human affection or sentiment
a. I am talking about love as we see it in the New Testament
b. we must trace. it back to its fountain head when we do we find it in the heart of God
c. the Greek word used for God's love is used nowhere in secular Greek literature
2. This is true for one good reason - this love is known only through the revelation and experience of God Himself.
B. Loves Existence
1. Love has no existence apart from God and God has no existence apart from love
a. twice John affirms that - God is love
b. this says far more than God loves
2. His loving might then be just occasional or intermittent
a. his acts might be actuated by love today only to change tomorrow
b. in God, love is His unchanging nature
c. he cannot be other than love because that is what He is
d. it is the difference between saying - God has love than God is love
3. Just as He is light, pure and absolute
4. So He is love unmixed and unalloyed
III. The Impartiality of Love
A. Since loving is an expression of His nature
1. It is independent of any consideration outside of Himself
2. By this I mean God does not love because of the attractiveness of the person loved
a. nor does He love because of any deservingness in the person
b. because of this, God loves without partiality
c He is no respecter of person
B. His gifts of love are not bestowed because of any personal attraction nor are they withheld because of any ill desert
1. Because of God's impartiality He appeals to us to love in the same fashion
2 Jesus says to us, I say unto you, love your enemies, bless those curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them who
despitefully use you and persecute you.
3. For God makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good.
a. He sends His rain on the just and unjust (Matt. 5:44-45)
IV. The Passion of Love
A. God does not merely love but He loves with great passion and intensity
1. The Gospel hinges upon the little word SO
2. God SO loved the world
a. John used the same appeal in this epistle (4;11)
b. if God so loved us, we should love one another
c. it was a love so welled up that it could not contain itself - like a dam ready to break
3. Eph 1:8 - according to the riches of His grace; He has abounded (overflowed) toward us
a. our salvation is the overflow of His love
b. we call that overflow or dam break GRACE
c. Grace is just the overflow of God's love
4. Eph. 2 says, When we were dead in trespasses and sins
a. that was our spiritual state - that we ceased to be that we own to one thing
b. but God, for His great love where with He loved us made us alive in Christ.
B. How can we ever tell the wonders of His great love toward us.
V. The Incarnation of Love
A. Christ is God and God is love
1. Jesus came to manifest the Father - He came to declare Him, to reveal what He really is (John 1:18)
2. Jesus said, He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father
3. All that was said of God can also be said of the Son in his days on earth.
B. In Him we see that love is sacrificial
1. If God so loved the world He gave His son, then the Son in love would give his life a ransom for many
2. It cost God to love - love by nature is sacrificial
a. the Son of God paid the price of loving us
b. having given his life for us, He now has the gift of eternal life to give to us
C. In Him we see that Love is Kind
1. In Luke 6:35, Jesus said - God is kind even to the ungrateful and wicked
2. When that love is realized in our living, it is depicted in I Cor. 13 this way - love suffereth long and is kind
a. how that quality was expressed in Christ -
b. He was gentle under provocation, He was kind to the weak and erring
c. As His followers, our Christ likeness waits upon that kindness of life that reflects His love in our hearts
D. In Him we see that Love is Unfailing
1. The description of love in I. Cor. 13 concludes with this statement - Love never fails
2. With men and demons doing their worst to get him to break - he kept on loving
a. through the mockery and torture of the Cross, He kept on loving
b. if men will not believe His deity in any other way, they must in contemplating the disparity of their love and His love confess
c. truly this was the Son of God
3. Keep in mind we are His followers
a. we are His disciples - we are to learn of Him
b. it is in this respect that we are to, "walk even as He walked"
4. Such a walk of love as this is exactly what the world needs.
Love so amazing so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.