There are two things I want to say to you before we look at our passage this morning. One is they've removed the clock from the wall. I'm an excited man; it's sort of a preacher's dream. The second is I would really appreciate your prayers for some travels this summer. This coming week, I will be at Southern Seminary lecturing on pastoral care for a week, have a bit of a vacation break with my family, and then head for a speaking tour of South Africa for four weeks. You can pray for that if you would.
Speaking 40 Times in South Africa
I looked at that schedule this week. I think I speak over 40 times while I am in South Africa. I'm a man in need of prayer. So I would appreciate your prayers. Well, it was one of those very unremarkable human moments. Fortunately, by God's grace, He caused me to think about it afterwards. It was a phone call; it was a phone call from somebody that I care for whom I hadn't talked to in a while, and we were both excited to be talking. Well, I was actually excited by what I wanted to say. About 7 minutes into the phone call, I began to feel impatient.
It felt like this person was just droning on, and I wanted to say what I wanted to say. I had glorious things to say and couldn't wait. I finally honed my way into the conversation, took over and said those things that I wanted to say. I got off the phone and not a few minutes later, began to think of how selfish I was on that phone call. How hard it is for me, even in a brief phone call...to love. It's not that I failed to love my enemies. I don't love the people that I would tell you that I love.
And so, it's important for us to look at this thing the Bible calls 'love.' I mean, how quickly do you grow impatient? How fast does irritation come? How good are you at keeping a record of wrongs? How much unforgiveness marks your relationships? How often do you just feel like giving up and quitting the call to love? Well, turn in your Bibles to I John 4. We're going to continue in this passage that I've decided to speak to you on this summer three times and because it is probably the New Testament's clearest, most practical, most easy-to-understand treatise on love.
I'll begin reading with verse 7 and read through verse 12. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. 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. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. I want to look this morning at verses 10 through 12. What is love? The first time that we looked at this together, we looked at "Loves Rescue", and I summarized that with this sentence: "Love rescues you from love in order that you can love." Love rescues you from love so that you would love. God, who is love, rescues you from you, so that you would become a person capable, desirous, willing to love.
This morning, we want to look at "Love's Model". Where do we find a definition of this thing called love? Well, you won't find it on the Internet. If you Google 'love', you will get thousands, hundreds of thousands of websites, and if you would read your way through those websites, you would end up massively confused about what in the world love is. It would be ethereal and cloudy and foggy to you, and you would despair of ever understanding love. But you don't have to do that because in I John 4, verse 10, you have your definition of love, "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."
You don't find a definition of love in philosophy; you don't find your best definition in theology; you don't find a definition of love in a sort of cultural research. Love is most powerfully defined, not by abstract concepts, but by an action, the redemptive action of God on our behalf. Love is best defined by God's initiative to satisfy His own anger by the sending of His Son. Redemption defines love for us. And the epicenter of that love is God's willingness to offer His own Son as a sacrifice that would atone for our sin--that's what propitiation means.
It means 'atoning sacrifice'. Now hear me say this because this is scary. "Our definition of love must be nothing less than the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. You have been called; you have been chosen to live in cruciform love, love that forms itself to the shape of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ." Now the minute I say those words, my heart is filled with grief because my love falls so short of the willing self-sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. It just does. I wish I could say that last week everything I did and everything I said was an expression of Christ-like, cross-shaped love, but it wasn't.
Cruciform Love
And I'm afraid for us, that our tendency is to define love as something much less than that action of sacrifice that we see on the cross. Jesus says to you and to me this morning these words, "Love as I have loved you." And perhaps our problem is that much of what we would call love is not love at all. It falls short of this calling. Brothers and sisters, this calling should make you uncomfortable. It should produce in you neediness; it should produce in you self-awareness; it should produce in you hunger for the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, that we would be a community of this kind of love, that loves the way that Jesus loved us. Husbands, that's your calling. Wives, that's your calling. Parents, that's your calling. Children, that's your calling. Neighbor, that's your calling. Citizen, that's your calling. Brothers and sisters, in the body of Christ, that's your calling. You have been called to offer to the people that God, in His sovereignty, has placed in your life, cruciform love. God help us! That love is a call that is so powerfully depicted in verse 11.
Let me read this for you, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." If God loved us in this way, we ought to love one another in this way. And I actually want to spend a little bit of time just unpacking one word in this verse, the word 'ought'. We ought to know what 'ought' means in this verse. Now when you hear the word 'ought,' immediately you think moral obligation--you ought to love; it's your moral obligation to love; you're commanded by your Lord, by the King, to love.
This is your moral obligation and surely that's in this passage. You are morally obligated to love, but if you leave the word 'ought,' there, you miss its power and its genius. This is not just a word of moral obligation. Hear this, this is a word of design. You were created to love. That's what you were designed to do. When Christ reduces human calling down to two commands, what kind of commands are they? They are commands to love: "Love God above all else and love your neighbor as yourself." You say, "Well, Paul, I'm not sure what you mean."
Let me give you some illustrations. Birds ought to fly. Honey ought to be sweet. Night ought to be dark. The sun ought to be bright. Fish ought to swim. Things were created in creation for a particular purpose. You don't keep your poodle in an aquarium because you know that violates the purpose for which that being was created. You won't see your neighbor walking his fish on a leash down the street--if you do, run fast! Something has happened to the universe! You see, this call to love gets right at the heart of the reason you were given life and breath.
This is what human beings were created to do. We were created to love, and there is something weird and something horrible and something broken when the human being doesn't live in love; when he shrinks his life down to what he wants, to the confines of his own little agenda, there's something wrong with that. And love defines who you are as a human being, and the failure to love is not just a spiritual problem. It actually is a denial of your very humanity. Yet, I would confess to you, "There were many times this week where I was a fish on a leash, living more selfishly than lovingly, so caught up in my own agenda, so absorbed with my own feelings, so propelled by my own desires.
I neither sought, nor desired to love." Why are there so many people in human culture who are driven and sad and unfulfilled and hopeless and lost?...because they're attempting to do something they were never created to do. You were not created to live for you and you alone. That will never be a happy existence. It will never be a fulfilling existence. You think it will, but it will leave you empty because you cannot find fulfillment in denying what you were created to be. It won't happen. The most satisfying, the most lovely, the most glorious, the most fulfilling, the happiest life of deep, abiding contentment is found in a life of love.
And when your world tells you the way to be happy is to prioritize you and be absorbed with you and put you first, your world tells you a horrible lie, a dehumanizing lie! We ought to love... it was what we were created to do. It was what we were re-created in Christ Jesus to have the ability to do. Well, how many times last week were you a fish on a leash? Maybe in your marriage, maybe in your parenting, maybe in your education, maybe in your friendship, maybe in your neighborhood, maybe even here, the church of Jesus Christ, not doing the thing that you were designed to do?
Love Shaped to the Cross
Well, we've said that this love is cruciform love; it's true love, shapes itself to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. As I've thought about this over the last few months, I've been impressed with how utterly practical that is, and I want to detail with you this morning, what you learn about the nature of true love by considering the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's the first thing: Love requires perseverant commitment. Immediately upon the rebellion of Adam and Eve, Genesis 3, God sets Himself to a course of love that would redeem rebels such as Adam and Eve and you and me.
And that commitment was a perseverant commitment that was the basis of the writing of thousands of years of history, that were written so that Jesus Christ would come at just the right moment and live and die and rise again to provide for our forgiveness and acceptance. Love requires commitment. You won't always wake up in the morning feeling like loving. You won't always be around loving people. And that's why love starts with a commitment; I want to do this thing that I have been created to do.
And I'll wake up in the morning, and I'm going to look for opportunities to love as I have been called to love. Second, love is willing. It's not just that I carry this weight of obligation, and I say, "Okay God's called for me to love and so I'm going to love." Imagine me sitting next to Luella on a couch, and saying, "You know the Bible says that I'm supposed to love you as Christ loved the church, so here it goes. I love you, Luella." (Bland) If you are my wife, what would you be saying that moment?
"I don't think this is love." True love always comes out of a willing heart, a heart that finds joy in the communication and the expression of love. Jesus said, "No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord." I love because there's joy in my heart to think that I have been chosen to be part of this grand and glorious kingdom of love. I think, "How did that ever happen to me? And how could it be that I would be so privileged as to be an instrument of the love of God? What a beautiful thing, and that joy fills my heart and so I love."
Third, love requires self-sacrifice. Maybe one of our mistakes is we're shopping for love that's comfortable, that we can fit well into our schedules, that doesn't challenge our finances, that doesn't take us across uncomfortable cultural borders. We want love to not require sacrifice, and that love is not love. It's almost hard in a couple moments to characterize the magnitude of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. I think of little pieces of that, that perfect Messiah Jesus would be mocked by people, who at that moment, He was giving life and breath to--What love!
I think of trickles of blood falling down His face as a crown of thorns is jammed onto His head--What love! I think of nails being driven into His hands and feet as He was still alive, perfect Lord Christ--What love! I think of Him hanging on the cross and His Father turning His back on Him. Jesus saw the back of His Father's head--shocking thing--What love! I think of Him, after the tomb, finding His disciples more concerned about their own safety than the kingdom of God at that point--What love.
I think of Him looking at His church often divided, often broken, and yet not turning His back, loving us every moment of our existence, although we could never earn it--What love. Love requires sacrifice. Fourth, love loves the undeserving. The shocking thing about the cross is Jesus wasn't dying for His friends, He died for His enemies. He died for rebels against His Lordship, for people who are too arrogant to confess the need of His grace. Listen, I think I want to be surrounded by people who are easy to love, who return that love quickly, who love me robustly.
I Want to Love Only Those Who Deserve It
I want love to only have to be given to people who deserve love. And that is because I actually love me more than I love others. I don't want to have to love people who are hard to love. If love does not default to rights and positions, if Jesus had demanded His position, we would be damned. That passage that I read as the call to worship says, "He was willing to leave the splendor of eternity and humble Himself and be obedient to death on the cross." The degree of Christ's willingness to let go of rights and positions is powerfully depicted in one amazing moment near the end of Christ's life on earth.
It's the final meal Christ is going to have with His disciples; they're in a rented room. The custom in Palestinian culture in those days was, before you eat a meal, there would be a servant and a basin in the room, and your feet would be washed. That was not only just a cultural custom, there's a reason for that. If you were reclining on couches as you were eating, feet were at the height of the head; it's important for them to be clean. But there was no servant because this was a rented room. The disciples were so busy discussing who was going to be greatest in the kingdom and jockeying for the closest seat next to the Messiah, they didn't have any time to think about the basin.
And shockingly everybody ate with dirty feet. That's a cultural 'no'...' no'. Now, at the end of the meal, Jesus gets up, sweet is the heart of your Savior, and takes off His cloak. Now robed like a servant, the Lord of lords and King of kings gets down on His knees and washes the feet of the disciples too arrogant to be concerned about doing that for Him or one another. The Scripture tells us that Jesus wasn't forgetting who He was. It says that He knew He was from God, and so He did this. He did this precisely because He was Messiah.
And then He looks at us and says, "What I have done to you, you do to one another." Here's what love is: If you love someone, there is no action, no calling so low, so debased that you would refuse to do it. That's love. There was nothing beneath your Messiah. There was nothing that He was not willing to do in order to purchase your redemption. Sixth, love by its very essence is forgiving. The epicenter of the cross is the forgiveness that it purchased. And perhaps this is the dark secret of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ; perhaps the reason we don't love as Christ has called for us to love is because we aren't willing to forgive as Christ has forgiven.
And so, I carry thoughts of condemnation; I rehearse people's failures in my head; I keep a record of wrongs. In moments of gossip, I share the sin and failure of someone with somebody else. Listen! It's very hard to move lovingly towards someone you are, at that moment, condemning. I want to be honest with you this morning. I do think that unforgiveness is in the way of this call to love. There are husbands here that need to forgive their wives, and there are wives that need to forgive their husbands.
There are children that need to forgive their parents, parents who need to forgive their children, friends who need to forgive their friends, neighbors who need to forgive neighbors because true love is forgiving. Seventh, true love isn't deterred by the extent of the call. I am amazed as I read Scripture how zealous God is for His initiative of love, how even in the face of difficulty, He will not turn from it. As Dr. Ryken has been preaching from Kings, I Kings in the morning, you see the chaos of what is going on there.
You expect God, at any moment, to say, "Enough!" But He doesn't. Prophet after prophet is sent, and God's people are too rebellious to hear, but God does not relent. Jesus is sent; the Bible says, "He came to his own, but his own did not receive him." But God does not relent. As Jesus is ascending, the world's best teacher, His disciples are still asking inappropriate questions, but He does not relent. And, as He looks at us, broken and failing and stumbling and often lost, as we are, He does not relent.
He will not turn from His love. Praise Him! How quickly do you turn? How quickly do you drop an initiative of love and pick up an initiative of anger? How easily tired do you get and reason that it's okay for you to punch out from your calling to love? How soon does it become okay for you to be a fish on a leash? Finally, love, by its very nature, true biblical love, by its very nature is incarnational. Look at this interesting statement in verse 12, "No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."
Making the Invisible God Visible
There is something magnificent that's being pictured in this verse. How is it that we come to see a God who is invisible? We come to see that invisible God. We make that invisible God visible as we incarnate His love to one another. "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, (By what?) by your love for one another." Jesus's final prayer has these words in it, "Father, I pray that these would be one as we are one so that the world would know that you sent me." Maybe the ultimate apologetic in the human community of the veracity of the gospel is the love of God's people for one another because, if you take two self-oriented human beings and they begin to live in self-sacrificing love, you know divine grace has visited those people because that's the only way they'd ever be able to love in that way.
Nothing is more radical than the love that we have been called to, and when we live in that love, we argue for the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in a way that's very powerful. You see, when you love, when you take up that call to love, when you begin to give yourself to cruciform love, you are not just speaking the Gospel, you are doing the Gospel in the world that you've been placed in. It's the ultimate argument for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, how are you receiving this call this morning?
Maybe you're saying, thinking, "Paul, this is hard." If you're thinking that, you're in a good place. This is hard, and this call to love ought to produce in all of us a deep awareness of our neediness. This call to love should drive us to the place where love is best defined; it should drive us to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ . Listen! That grace of that cross is not just your forgiveness, it's your power; that cross is not just addressing your guilt, it's addressing your inability; that cross is meant to give you the potential to love in ways you couldn't have loved before you came to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Be comforted; that God who is love now lives inside of you by His love to empower you to love. Now, what does that mean? That means there are some of us in this room that need to quickly seek forgiveness. We need to seek forgiveness for being rebels against God's created design and commit ourselves to a life of cruciform love. We need to seek forgiveness of the people in our lives. Husbands and wives, it would be great for you to rush home and put your arms around one another and say, "Please forgive me.
I have not loved you as I have been called love, and by God's grace, I want to give myself to that." There are parents who, you need to hug your children and say, "I haven't loved you the way God has called me to love you. There are times that I have been angry and impatient with you. Please forgive me. I want to love you in this way." There are children; you need to say to your parents, "I have made your life hard. It's because I've been selfish and self-absorbed, and I haven't loved you as I have been called to love.
Please forgive me." There are friends who need to restore relationship of one another and say, "I gave up on you because I was unwilling to love you in the way that God called for me to love. Please forgive me. " Maybe some of you need to go your neighbors and say, "I have spatted with you over boundaries. It's a ridiculous thing; I've made boundaries more important than my relationship with you. Please forgive me. I want to love you as my God has called for me to love." Why?...because that revival of forgiveness will result in a new expression of love amongst us.
Maybe you're here, and you've never experienced the grace of this God of love. And maybe, for the first time in your life, you've heard this beautiful story of love, and you say, "Paul, I'm one of those people. I'm so discontent and so dissatisfied." I would welcome you right now. Bow your head, and say, "God, I need Your help. Please forgive me, and please, by Your love, accept me into Your family. I want to be part of this kingdom of love." "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, by this if you have love for one another."
That love must shape itself to no lower standard than the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, and for that, we need the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Oh, Lord, how great and grand and marvelous is Your love. We sit before You needy this morning, but not afraid. We run to Your grace; we rest in Your grace; we receive Your grace so that we would love as You have loved. In Jesus name, Amen.
