Love as the Basis for Confidence in Salvation: 1st John Lesson 23

1 John 4:12-16

Love as the Basis for Confidence in Salvation

 We are going to return to 1 John this morning. We are in Chapter 4. This section of Scripture goes from verse 7 through the end of the chapter, and actually into the first four verses of Chapter 5. I have divided this last part of chapter 4 into three sections each which I believe can be characterized by one word. As we read through this section again, look for the idea of evidence in verses 7-11. This is what we studied last week. In verses 12-16, our text for today, look for the idea of assurance. We will see the idea of “you know” presented a couple times. Then in the third section you will find the word confidence.

 The overall theme of this section is love as God loves. What we are seeing is that love is the evidence that we are born again in salvation. Love gives us the assurance that we are born again in salvation. Love is the basis for our confidence in being born again in salvation. Evidence leads to assurance and assurance produces confidence. And this confidence is based on something real, something tangible, something visible.  We can have all the assurance of salvation and all the confidence we can muster regarding our salvation, but unless it is based on evidence, it may very well be a false confidence. The presence of love, not just any love, but God’s kind of love in the life of the Christ follower is the evidence of salvation. This one can have assurance, and can stand with confidence in the day of judgment. Let’s read the passage.

 Everything I have learned about the practice of law I learned from Perry Mason or Caleb Harlin. I don’t know much. But I have watched enough to know what the lawyers in the court room are trying to do. The prosecuting attorneys in a criminal case are trying to present enough evidence to give the jurors enough confidence to reach a guilty verdict. And the defense attorneys are attacking the evidence in an attempt to create reasonable doubt.

 The Apostle John was not an attorney, but he would have been a good one. He is a master at presenting evidence. He is giving us evidence which either produces assurance, or leaves room for doubt. In the first section he says, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” That is black and white. If you know God and are born of God, you will love. Inferred in this is that you will love like God and this love will be expressed toward one another. If you do not love, like God loves, and not toward one another, then you do not know God and you certainly are not born of God.

 We all need to examine the evidence in our own lives. The presence of the evidence will foster assurance. The absence of evidence should convict of a need to determine what is wrong in our relationship with God. From the first part of the chapter we know it is important to test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world. One of the lies of the false prophets is that you can have assurance of salvation apart from the evidence.

 John sets the stage for what we need to learn today with the statement at the beginning of verse 12, “No one has seen God at any time…” My first thought was “Wait a minute!” We have read John’s assertion that Jesus is God and John saw Jesus. Didn’t John see God if he saw Jesus? How can he write this statement that “No one has seen God at any time?”

 John’s statement is not a contradiction. The fact is that no one has seen God at any time. Moses got close, but all he got to see was the backside of some manifestation of the glory of God. Isaiah got close, and fell on his face. James, John, and Peter got close on the Mount of Transfiguration. Jacob wrestled with God and stated that he had seen God face to face and lived. But the statement of John is true. While many, including those who saw Jesus, saw a partial revelation of God, no one has seen the fullness of Him completely revealed. The Bible tells us that no one can see God and live in Exodus 33:20.

 We can understand why John says this by looking at the first time he said this, or rather, wrote it. Turn back to John 1. Read verses 14-18. For the Law was given through Moses, verse 17 tells us. What does the Law reveal? The Law of God does not reveal the fullness of God. The Law reveals the holiness of God. The Law lays out the demands of a holy God and the requirements and expectations of God for His people. But, who can meet those expectations? Who can fulfill the Law’s demands? No one can.

 Thankfully, John also wrote, “grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.” Jesus revealed the rest of the truth concerning God. Jesus is the manifestation of the love of God and the extent to which God was willing to go to demonstrate love, grace, and mercy toward sinners who violated His holy Law.

 No one has seen God at any time because God is holy and the sinner who was exposed to His holiness would be instantly destroyed, completely decimated by His holiness. But Jesus, the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained, He has revealed, He has manifested the truth about God. Jesus is the manifestation of God’s love. This is what we saw back in verse 9. “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”

 Here is John’s point. Although no one has seen God at any time, if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. In other words, even though no one has seen God, they can see Him because He abides in us and His love is perfected in us. As we love like He loves, and we demonstrate that love one to another, God is being seen. We are able to prove the existence of God and manifest the presence of God by loving as He loves.

 No one has seen God at any time, but they should be able to know He is real by the way He empowers us to love one another. There are a lot of things that we cannot see but we know they exist because of the things they do. For example, wind. We cannot see wind, but we know it exists by what we see it do. That is a great example, by the way, because it was used of Jesus to explain to Nicodemus the power of the Holy Spirit in the work of the new birth. Another example is gravity. We can’t see gravity but we know it is real because of what it does. It keeps us from floating out into space. We can’t see electricity but we know it exists because it makes the lights illumine the room.

 Such it should be with the love of God. No one has seen God at any time but if we love one another, and we love one another with the same love with which God has loved us, we are showing the reality of God’s existence. “If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” (v. 12) Think about it this way. God’s love isn’t just something done for us. God’s love is something done in us. God’s love experienced will become God’s love expressed toward others.

 This is what it means for the love of God to be “perfected” in us. The word perfected means to complete, to make perfect by reaching the intended goal, to bring to a full end, to succeed fully, to finish. Now look closely at this verse. What is it that is being perfected in us? If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. It is His love that will be brought to completion, to be made perfect by reaching the intended goal. It is God’s love that will be brought to a full end, and made to succeed fully.

 How can this mean anything other than the fact that God abiding in us will bring us to the place where we love as He loves? This is exactly what John is telling us here. I read John 17 in the Scriptural Call to Worship because I wanted to set the tone for this message. There is another place this word “perfected” is used and it is used by Jesus. Jesus is praying, in verse 21, “that they may all be one; even as You, Father are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just was We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know the You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.” (John 17:21-23)

 The prayer of Jesus is that we would be as much in unity as was Jesus with the Father. Theirs was a perfect unity and that is what Jesus prayed we would have. If God truly abides in us and we are living in unity with the Father and the Son, the love of God is perfected, or brought to the intended goal. What is the goal? If the love of God is perfected in us, we will be loving as we see the love of God expressed in the life of Christ. We will love as God loves, if His love is perfected in us.

 You may be saying, “Brad, I don’t love like that.” I don’t either. I should. I want to. I struggle. All I can say is, “Welcome aboard the spiritual development train.” One of the realities of the Christian life is that there are so many of these things that say easy and do hard. We don’t always practice the disciplines of the Christian life as we should.

 So let’s just honestly examine our hearts. Look at your own life at your desires and your direction. What is the desire of your heart and what is the direction of your life? If you don’t have the desire to love as Christ loves, you don’t know God. He does not abide in you. You are not born of the Spirit. You don’t know God and God does not abide in you. If we are born of God and He abides in us, and the presence of the Holy Spirit is a reality, He will produce a desire to love as He loves, and to express that love to one another.

 This desire will show up in the direction. If we are born of God we will be growing in His love. The direction of our lives will show us to be loving self less and others more and more like Jesus loves.

 We see this principle of desire and direction expressed by Paul in Philippians 3:7-16. Paul said, I want to “know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being conformed to His death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” He goes on to say, “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do; forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” It is clear to see that Paul’s desire and the direction of his life was to be more like Jesus.

 Assurance of salvation is always based on evidence. The evidence John presents in verse 12 is the evidence of the love of God being perfected. God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. John gives us another evidence in verse 13. “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.” This is the third time John has told us about God giving us of His Spirit. Look at 2:27. This anointing is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. Look at 3:24. If God abides in us His Spirit abides in us. If the Holy Spirit indwells us we are indwelt by God.

 When John brings up the Holy Spirit again he has a purpose. John’s point – where God’s Spirit dwells truth prevails. Where God dwells God’s love is being perfected. Perfect love is never separated from God’s truth. Perfect love is always manifested in the context of uncompromised truth. God’s love is perfect love and God’s love is never separated from God’s truth.

 The “God is Love” cult does not get this. The “God is Love” crowd is using that declaration to justify every kind of immoral behavior. This is an attempt to strip the truth away from God’s love. If you strip the truth away from God’s love you don’t have God’s love. In fact, you don’t have love at all.

 These two truths will be attested to by those in whom the love of God is perfected. Look at verse 14-15. “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him, and he in God.” What you have in those two truths is the gospel. The Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him, and he in God. These are indispensable aspects of the true gospel.

 Look at what John says. “We have seen and testify.” Obviously John was among those who “confess” the truth concerning Jesus. So what is John getting at? In the lives of those in whom God abides, and in whom the love of God is perfected, there will be an understanding of the truth coupled with the testimony of the truth and the confession of the truth. When the truth sets us free, we want to share the truth so that others may be set free. As we are sanctified in the truth, and the love of God is perfected in us, we want to testify about the truth. 

 Listen, the church has fallen into the trap of watering down the truth, softening the truth, taking the truth out of the message so that people will not be made uncomfortable. The church is doing this in the name of love. Nothing could be further from the love of God. If you take the truth about sin out of the message of the gospel, you don’t testify that God has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. You may tell them that Jesus came to be the One to help them with their hurts, habits, and hangups. But that message does not save them from their sin. I would submit to you that if you really hate someone and you want to hurt them as badly as someone can be hurt, tell them how to be right with God with a message that does not make them right with God, and then convince them that they are right with God and nothing will ever change that.

 I can think of nothing more hateful because that is the kind of “love” that dooms people to an eternity in hell.

 John says in verse 16, “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him.” If we come to know and believe the love which God has for us, we are going to be transformed by that love. John speaks of coming to know and believe the love which God has for us. I fear that a great many people who claim to be Christians know about the love of God but they have not truly believed the love which God has for us. In those who have come to know and have believed in the love which God has for us, these abide in love because they abide in God and God abides in them.

 Can we say with John, “We have come to know and believe the love which God has for us..”? I have contended for years that if I truly believe something I live by what I believe. What we truly believe is what we live day in and day out. What we truly believe is what we live within the confines of our homes, when no one from the outside is watching. Anything we say we believe but do not practice, all that is just religious talk.

 If we are going to say with John, “We have come to know and believe the love which God has for us,” we are going to practice the same kind of selfless, sacrificial, need meeting love that God has demonstrated toward us. We won’t be perfect at it. But the desire of our heart and the direction of our lives will be making us to love more and more like Christ loved.

 In our culture it is hard to find very many people to share the gospel with who have not already heard about the love of God. We can tell them God loves them and sent His Son to be the Savior of the world and they are not impressed. What they need to see is that God’s love isn’t just something He has done for us. They need to see that God’s love is something done in us. It is something lived out through us. It is something we do to one another. If God’s people loved one another with the perfected love of God, our message of God’s love would be believable. Our testimony about Jesus would have much credibility.

 Let’s pray.