Love Is the Evidence of Salvation: 1st John Lesson 22

1 John 4:7-11

Love Is the Evidence of Salvation

 Let’s go back to 1 John again today for the study of God’s Word. We are working our way through this important letter. John wrote this letter so that anyone who believes in the name of the Son of God may know they have eternal life. It is possible to believe in the name of the Son of God and not have eternal life. There is a faith that is a dead faith, James tells us. John tells us that many believed in Jesus but He did not entrust Himself to them because He knew what was in their hearts. The demons believe in Jesus but they are not redeemed.

 There is so much confusion and error in the world concerning the issue of salvation. This is because there have been many false prophets who have gone out into the world sowing seeds of error. This is why, in the first six verses of 1 John, we are told to test the spirits to see whether or not they are from God. The first six verses were a call to discernment. We must be discerning because there is no such thing as harmless heresy.

 Satan’s favorite subject to attack is the issue of salvation. If he can sow seeds of doubt, or deny, or distort the truth concerning salvation, he can lead people into a belief system that does not save. If Satan can get people to believe a gospel message that is not really a gospel message, and he can convince them that they are securely saved because they have believed a message that does not, in fact, save, then he has perpetrated the ultimate deception. Satan is more crafty and deceptive than any other creature. He is dangerous. He is good at what he does. Thankfully, greater is He who is in the true Christian than he who is in the world. 

 As we move into the next section of 1 John we move on from the subject of discernment to the subject of love. For the third time in this short letter we again find John covering this topic of love for one another. We saw this topic in 2:7-11 and 3:10-18. John has said a lot already on the subject of love for one another and now he returns to it again. John does not do this because he is old and senile and has forgotten what he has already said. He does this because every time he comes back to one of his themes, he gives us a little more depth and insight into the subject. This is really a masterful approach to teaching.

 Let’s read verses 7-21 of chapter 4 of 1 John. As we do I want to tell you how we are going to divide this passage into three sections for our study. Today we are going to look at verses 7-11. Next week we will look at verses 12-16. Finally, we will look at verses 17-21. In this first section we are going to see the role of love as the evidence of our salvation. In the second section we will find the role of love in the assurance of our salvation. In the third section we will see the role of love as the basis for confidence in our salvation. You can hang on to the words, evidence, assurance, confidence. Read the passage.

 It might seem as though John as made a drastic directional change from verse 6 to verse 7. He went from teaching about the need for discernment to a discussion on the subject of love. It isn’t really as dramatic a change as it may appear on the surface. In fact, you could make the argument that these topics would need to be connected. In fact, the connection between discernment and love is vital. Why? Because you can always identify the false prophet by observing what he loves and how he loves. In fact, this is how the Bible tells us to identify them.

 For example, turn back to 2 Peter 2. I quoted verse 2 last week. Read verse 1.  Then Peter goes on to tell us that these false teachers are given to sensuality and greed. (v. 2) Look at verse 14. They have eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin…they have hearts trained in greed. In verse 18 they entice by fleshly desires and by sensuality. False teachers will reveal themselves by what they love and how they love. They will pervert true love. False teachers will always be exposed not only for what they teach, but also by how they live. How they live will be evidenced by what they love and how they love.

 This is in stark contrast to the approach of Paul to the Thessalonians. When I think of a man committed to loving truth and loving people I am drawn to the Apostle Paul. 1 Thessalonians 2 is one of my favorite passages describing his ministry. Note how obvious it is what Paul loves and how he loves as I read this chapter.

 John is obviously focused on the importance of love among the body of Christ. If John is so focused on this subject, why would he be? Why is there so much emphasis from the Apostle of love on the subject of love? There are several reasons. First, Love is the distinguishing mark of the true follower of Christ. Jesus told His disciples that they would be known as His disciples because they had love for one another. Another reason John places so much emphasis on love is because it is not optional. We are often commanded in the Scriptures to love one another. Love is the evidence of a transformed life.

 Perhaps, if we are honest, we would have to admit that John comes back to this subject over and over again because we need him to. I need fairly consistent reminders. If I am not focused on loving selflessly and sacrificially, as Christ loved, and as John tells us to love in this letter, my tendency is to drift towards complacency at best and selfishness at my worst. To love as Christ loves, to love another as you love yourself, to lay down your life for another – these are among those things that “say easy and do hard.”

 So we welcome another challenge and we must look intentionally at these instructions regarding our duty to love one another. In this section we find that love is the product of the work of God in bringing us into a saving relationship with Him. If we are born again, or “born of God” as John puts it in verse 7, or we “know God” as John also puts it in verse 7, we will love one another because this is what everyone who is born of God and knows God will do. Being born of God and knowing God makes loving as natural as breathing. Love is from God and love is the evidence that one has been born of God.

 Someone might object to what I just said by contending that there are a lot of people who do not know God who love. I know a lot of lost people who love their spouses, love their children and grandchildren. I think there are some lost people who would say they love even a crusty old codger like me. So how can we say, and why does John say that “everyone who loves is born of God?” 

 This is the key. If we are born of God, our love will be of the same nature as His love. God’s love is different. The way we love is to be different. God’s love is unique. The way believers are to love one another is unique. When we demonstrate love for one another it is the kind of love that Jesus demonstrated when He took the towel and the water basin and washed the feet of the hard-headed disciples. If the love we demonstrate for one another is the kind of love that lays down one’s life for another, that is the kind of love produced in those born of God. When we love others as we love our self, we are demonstrating the kind of love that is produced in those who are born of God and know God.

 John makes it clear that to be born of God is to possess the Spirit of God and if we possess the Spirit of God we know from Paul that the first manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit is love, followed by joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Those who do not possess God’s spirit will not produce that kind of fruit and they will not love the way God loves. This is John’s point in verse 8. The one who does not love (implied here is that this one does not love as God loves) does not know God, for God is love.

 Doesn’t the world love to take that statement and run with it. “God is love” is the mantra of even the world. Every perversion known to man is defended as acceptable to God because God is love. Let me tell you what is wrong with that. Listen to me. If you don’t remember anything else I have said through the study of First John you may want to write this down. Love does not define God, God defines love. It is true that love is one of the attributes of God and one of His primary and most important attributes. God’s love was the motivation for His plan and provision of salvation. But God is not only love. Love does not define God in that He is only love.

 God defines love and God never defined love as acceptance of every sinful, perverse act. You cannot dignify immorality by calling it love. Nowhere does the Word of God tell us that God will accept everything because God is love. A god who is only love is a false god of man’s own making and a violation of the first Commandment to have no other god’s before the One True God. Love does not define God, God defines love.

 Understand this. The first and most foundational of God’s attributes is His holiness. God is holy. If you read the proclamations of the angelic host around the throne of God the most often proclaimed reality is, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” Nothing God ever does will compromise or diminish or taint His holiness. If that ever happens, God will cease to be God. He cannot be a God of sin, or a God who tolerates sin, or a God who allows sin into His holy presence.

 I want to challenge you with a question. Can God love anything sinful? What is our answer? Well, God loves us and we are sinful. This leads to one of the most difficult things about God that must be reconciled. Because God is holy and cannot allow anything unholy into His holy presence, how is He able to tolerate the presence of sinful people? One of the most difficult theological problems we must be able to answer is how we reconcile the love of God with His justice and the wrath He promises to pour out on all sin.

 I want you to look at an important passage with me in Exodus 34:5-7. These verses tell us that God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin;. God is a loving God. There is no question about this attribute of God. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations. Because God is a holy God He must punish all sin, where ever it is found. He must punish the guilty sinner. God’s love cannot and does not cancel out His justice and His commitment to punish the guilty.

 Listen, God is a just God. God’s justice is as unchangeable as any other aspect of His nature. God cannot lower His moral standards. Any such change would diminish His perfection and His holiness. This cannot happen. God’s justice is inflexible and it is His holy nature that demands this level of inflexibility. God cannot leave the guilty unpunished. The implications of this are sobering because we are among the guilty. The Scriptures are clear. There is no one who is righteous, not even one.

 This would be an irreconcilable tension if it was left up to us to come up with the answer. “But for God, the tension between His love and His justice is the perfect scenario to display His glory through the Person and work of Christ.

This is precisely where the glorious light of New Testament revelation shines most brightly, revealing the true depth of God’s love. He does not merely acquit sinners. He does not overlook their sin. In the Person of Jesus Christ, He made a once-for-all, infinite atonement for their sins. Now He covers them with His own perfect righteousness by imputing it to them through faith (Romans 4:11). All genuine believers therefore stand completely justified before a righteous God. It is not a future hope but a present reality. It is not a drawn-out process, but an immediate divine act that occurs at the first moment of faith. God’s holy wrath is appeased and His love is perfectly fulfilled in the salvation wrought by Christ. Thus, He Himself is truly the stronghold to which sinners may flee from His awful judgments. [3]

Jesus Christ’s sacrifice resolved the tension between God’s love for sinners and His just wrath against them. It met the exacting demands of God’s justice while demonstrating the depths of His great love. “So that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

God is a loving God. But that doesn’t mean He looks the other way when we sin. And it doesn’t mean we have license to sin without fear of any divine consequences. It does mean, however, that God is bound to His loving nature—so much so that He was willing to send Christ to suffer in our place under the wrath that we so justly deserve.” (Grace to You website, blog on the Love of God)

I just gave you the explanation of John’s meaning behind what is written 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.” God’s love for us was the motivation to punish His only Son in our place so that we might live through Him. God’s demand for justice was satisfied as He poured out His wrath on His own Son, rather than on us. As we said when we looked at what it means that Jesus came in the flesh, the only way that the infinite wrath of God could be borne by One was that the One who bore that wrath was an infinite being. Infinite God bore God’s wrath on the Cross.

Verse 10 tells us that God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. This means that Jesus satisfied the demands of Holy God. The wrath of God was appeased because it was borne by Jesus on the Cross. The just punishment for our sins was executed. The appropriate wrath of God was poured out on Jesus and He suffered the full extent of God’s fury. Because He did that, God is satisfied that the penalty has been fully paid. We are reconciled to God because His justice has been satisfied.

None of this happened because we loved God and He decided that we were worth the sacrifice of His only Son. Verse 10 says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” If God had waited for man to come to love Him before He sent His Son into the world, we would still be waiting. Man does not love God unless man comes to understand the reality of God’s love. It was God’s love that was the motive. God’s love brought us salvation.

In verse 11 we read, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Sometimes we don’t think deeply enough about statements like this. Consider something with me this morning. What kind of love has John just described for us in a love that sends the only begotten Son into the world to be the propitiation for our sins? “If God so loved us…” What does the word “so” describe? What kind of words would you use to describe that kind of love? The hymn writers have called it “amazing love.” It is incomprehensible. It is incredible. It is magnificent. It is such a great love. It was perfect love. It was the fullness of love. It was the greatest expression of love ever conceived. Can we really come up with words that adequately describe the superlative nature of that love? We cannot.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another…how? With some ordinary love that only does the minimum? Or with some occasional expressions of love that impress a few people once in a while? What do you think John is challenging us to do here? I think John wants us to look at the way we have been loved and do what it takes to express that same kind of love.

If our love is a love that results from being born of God and knowing God, then our love should look at least something like His love. The kind of love that is evidence of salvation is a love that does not look like common, everyday, ordinary love. It will be love like God’s love. If we are to love like God loves, we will love with a love that is manifested, or revealed. It will be seen. It will be on public display. That is how God manifested His love.

But the objective will not be to be seen for our acts of love. We don’t want to be like the Pharisees who loved being recognized for their religious deeds. That would make us hypocrites. Sometimes our acts of love will be like our acts of giving and praying, done in secret where only God sees and knows what we have done.

If our love is a love that results from being born of God and knowing God, then it will be a love that sacrifices in order to meet the needs of others. God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. That was sacrificial love. If we are going to love one another with a love like God’s love, we will willingly love even when it costs us something, or everything.

If our love is a love that results from being born of God and knowing God, then it will be a love that takes the initiative in its expression. It won’t wait until someone else shows love before it takes action. This kind of love, like the love of God, takes the initiative, takes the first step, it makes the first move. It was not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

If our love is a love that results from being born of God and knowing God, then it will be a love that meets needs, just like God met our need and provided a propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. We ought to love one another with a love that gives evidence of the work of salvation in our lives.

Let’s pray.