All You Need Is Love, Part 2

Love. We all need to be loved and we all need someone to love and what our world needs now is love. And if you were here last week, we were reminded that all we need is love, God’s love. We learned that love comes from God like light comes from the sun, like heat comes from fire, because God is love. And because God loved us in Jesus Christ, now anyone who believes in Jesus can love just like God loves. And when we love others like God loved us some pretty great stuff happens. Not only are they helped, included, accepted and loved. But now when we love like God loves, it reveals that God is living in us and we help people see what God is like. But what’s even greater than that, we bring God’s love for the world to completion. In other words, when we love someone like God loves us, God loves them through us. That’s the point of love. He loved us so that when we love one another, God’s love comes full circle, and God has a way to love people who need His love. That’s pretty heady stuff. God loved us through Jesus Christ, so that He might unleash us to love the world.

Think of the potential! We all know and have contact with hundreds of people, and if we would simply let God love others through us, He could turn the world upside down. So why aren’t we doing that? Good question. Why aren’t we taking the love God has for us and loving people like Jesus loved us? After all, we want to love others like God loved us, but we find out pretty quickly that loving others as we have been loved by God is not an easy thing to do.

Sometimes we have a hard time loving people like God loved us because we fail to see them with God’s eyes. After all it is hard to love someone who has questionable morals, is self-centered, mean-spirited or unfriendly. We sometimes call a person who fits into this category as an “extra grace required” person.   We struggle with loving them like God loves them, because they often treat our overtures of kindness and acceptance with ingratitude or indifference. So we say, “O well, I tried loving them like God loves me but it didn’t seem to take.” So we retreat to something safer – and return to making friends with people we have more in common with.

Sometimes we have a hard time loving people like God loved us because we’ve had a bad experience. You know, where you’ve really took a risk to love someone who really needs God’s love, but when you did, you got burned.   You got taken advantage of; or rejected or even hurt. So now you say, “Been there, done that. I don’t need that kind of grief in my life.” “Let someone else try being his friend. He was such a jerk.”

Or sometimes we have a hard time loving people like God loved us because we’ve struggled with being loved.   We didn’t have a father who loved us. We experienced betrayal or rejection in marriage. All we’ve known in the area of “love” is broken promises and failure. So to try to love someone like God loved us is hard, because we have very little experience of what it means to be loved ourselves.

Finally we have a hard time loving like God loved us, simply because God’s kind of love to us is all so new to us that we’re still trying to grasp the meaning of God’s love.

Well, if you find that loving others the way God loved us is hard, then you’ve come to the right place today. For as we return to 1 John, we’re going to see that God knew we would need some help if we are going to love like God loves. So, if you brought your Bible with you today, let me encourage you to turn to 1 John 4:13-21, where we will see how God’s love for us gives us what we need to love others like He loves us.   So what does God’s love give us to help us love like He loves? Well, the aspect of His love for us is found in verses 13 – 16…

His Love Gives us the Assurance of His Presence    This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. 1 John 4:13-16a

God is a generous God. We see right away that God gives us the assurance of His presence by giving us of His Spirit. The moment anyone trusts in Jesus Christ, God gives His Spirit to dwell in them. This is the uniform New Testament teaching from the day of Pentecost forward. On that day, the promised Holy Spirit descended and filled the lives of every Christ follower. Peter affirmed this promise by saying, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.’ Acts 2:38-39

What a gift! The moment you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you receive the Holy Spirit. His Spirit, the Spirit of Christ takes up residence in your life. As Paul writes: What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 1 Corinthians 2:12

And one of the greatest things the Spirit desires is to awaken us to the love of the Father for us. That’s why Paul writes: God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Romans 5:5

So now we can personally know and experience the love of the Father on a daily basis. That’s love. The Holy Spirit is the catalyst that helps us know the Father’s love, and it’s the Holy Spirit that now awakens us to want to love like the Father loves. So the next time you experience that inner compulsion to love someone unselfishly, whereas before, you might have feared them, ignored them or rejected them… that is evidence of God’s Holy Spirit alive in you. The very fact that you can love someone you once had difficulty giving the time of day, is now proof that God is alive in you.

But there’s more that His presence in us does. John writes, If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. This is a second assurance of God’s presence in your life is your ability to confess that Jesus is indeed God’s Son. The fact that you believe that Jesus lived among us, had real flesh and blood, but was at the same time God’s Son, is also evidence that God’s Spirit is alive in you. This is how John said it in the passage previous to this: This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 1 John 4:2.

You can’t say that unless the Holy Spirit is alive in you.

Now why would John write this? It’s because this is precisely what Jesus said would happen with the arrival of the Spirit. He says: “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—He will testify about me.” John 15:26   This is the main role of the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t just come along side to affirm the Father’s love for us. No, the Holy Spirit’s main role in our lives is to make much of Jesus. So if you find yourself wanting others to know the Jesus you know… If you find yourself wanting others to know how gracious and loving and good Jesus is and what He has done for you; this desire doesn’t come from you… it comes from the Holy Spirit living in you.

So this is the starting point for loving others. It starts with knowing the love of the Father for you through the indwelling Holy Spirit. And the more you get in tune with the Spirit of Christ within you, the more you are filled by the Spirit, taught by the Spirit, and transformed by the Spirit, the more you will begin to live and love like Jesus. That’s why John says, And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

For many of us here today, this is what we need to do. We need to simply allow the Holy Spirit to do His work in us: To stop trying to live the Christian life in our own strength and get back in step with the Holy Spirit. To let Him fill you with God’s love, to allow Him to teach you and lead you. To spend time in God’s Word learning how the Spirit does His work in your life – to see how He wants to produce fruit in your life. For if we are ever going to truly love like Jesus loves, we must begin by letting the Spirit of Christ come alive in us.

Why? Because the Holy Spirit is God’s gift to us and God wants us to take advantage of what He has given us to love. So when we let the Holy Spirit live through us, He will help us love anyone, even the person you thought you could never love.   What a gift. But that’s just the first gift of God’s love to us. Now the second:

His Love Gives us Confidence to Face the Future God is love   Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:16-18

There it is again. God is love. And when you meet this God who loves you and you live in His love for you; when you embrace your forgiveness, when you rest in your adoption as His beloved; when you believe what He now says about you is true – that you are completely righteous and accepted in His eyes – this should do something to you. And what John says it should do to you is set you free from the fear of judgment.

Here’s the truth John wants us to grasp: Perfect love drives out fear. What is perfect love? We looked at that last week. Perfect love is when we allow the love that God has for us to flow through us to love another person. When we love another like God has loved us – God’s love is complete. It’s gone full circle.   That’s why God gave us Jesus and that’s why God calls us to be conduits of love. For when we love like God loves us, fear simply vanishes. Love defeats it every time.

And what happens when we live in God’s love and become conduits of His love, God’s Word says this about us: In this world we are like Jesus! Jesus had no fear because He was rightly related to the Father. And Jesus has made us right with the Father.

The truth of God’s Word is this: The moment anyone puts their faith in Jesus, you are not just forgiven, you are also made completely righteous in Christ. How does this happen? Simple, when you put your trust in Jesus, Jesus comes in to dwell in your inner being by His Spirit. So you not only have the presence of Christ in your heart, you have all of Christ in your heart – and one of the realities of Christ dwelling in you, is that He makes you a new creation; he gives you a new nature – His nature, His righteous, compassionate and loving nature. That’s why in this world we are like Jesus.

And the result of having Christ’s life invade your life, is that you gain a new confidence. You are rightly related to the Father forever. You are now and will always be His beloved. So God’s love for us banishes fear, because we know that since we are loved in this way, God will always be for us and nothing will ever separate us from His love. And that is good news. That’s the Gospel. And we can say with Paul, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

With Jesus we never have to fear judgment. And that means we are now free to love. That’s the second thing God’s love does for us. It frees us from fear so we can love anyone!

Now, the final gift of His love for us: 3. His Love Gives us Power to Love Like Jesus  We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 1 John 4:19-20

God’s love for us is the catalyst for our love for others. There is no other motive for loving someone. There’s no other power that will help us love like God loves. He showed us how to love. He showed us how far He would go to love us. He gave His best, His all, His life so He could rescue us, redeem us and set us free to love like Him. And now God reveals to us that there is only one evidence that proves that we love God: it is our love for a brother or sister. If we don’t love our brothers and sisters in Christ like God loved us, then God’s Word says we cannot claim to love God. Because to love God means to love those He loves. It’s that simple.

So if you are having trouble loving someone, no matter how hard it is to love them, this is what you need to do: You need to remind yourself that God loved you when you were at your worst. He could have left you to die in your sin, but He didn’t. He came to you, revealed His love for you in Jesus and made a way for your sin to be removed. Jesus took your sin away, nailing it to a tree. If God can love you at your worst, then His love for you can help you to love anyone. He can help you love your extra-grace-required person. He can help you love that person who just rubs you the wrong way. He can help you love the guy with questionable morals. He can help you love the ungrateful, the unattractive, the unlovable… simply because He loved you.

Therefore, God leaves us with a simple command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. 1 John 4:21 This is not a suggestion or a recommendation. It is the natural overflow of God’s love to us. If God first loved us, then we will love others in the same way He has loved us. We won’t wait for marching orders. We won’t wait for a need to arise. We will take the initiative to love. Because that is what God did with us. We love because He first loved us.

And God has given us everything we need to love like Jesus:

His love for us gives us His Presence to love                                                                               His love for us gives us confidence to love                                                                                    His love for us gives us a reason to love

All we need is love, and God has given us all we need in Jesus.