All You Need Is Love

It’s Valentines Day Tuesday – a day synonymous with love, especially romantic love. Some of you will go out and purchase roses for your wife; others will bring home a beautiful piece of jewelry and many of you will go out to dinner, simply because this is a great occasion to celebrate your love. In fact before this holiday is over the average person will spend approximately $142 to express your love on this day.   I find that to be amazing. In fact, those who study these kinds of things say that nearly 19 billion dollars will be spent on this holiday, all because of love.

Love. We all want to be loved and we all need somebody to love. But what is love? Is it a warm feeling deep inside? Is it wanting to share life with someone? Is it an act of kindness that goes the extra mile? What is love? You see, we all have a lot of thoughts and feelings about love.   But sometimes it helps to hear from some experts on the subject. And some of our best experts on love are children. In fact, recently a group of professionals posed the following question to a group of four to eight-year-olds: “What does love mean?” The answers they got, as one researcher said, “were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined.”

“Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.” Chrissy, age 6

“Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is ok.” Danny, age 7

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” Bobby, age 5

“Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.” Noelle, 7

“When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” Karen, age 7

“You really shouldn’t say, ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” Jessica, age 7

“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.” Rebecca, age 8

Children do give us a beautiful perspective on love, but it’s even better to get God’s perspective. After all, the Bible tells us that God is love, and Jesus tells us that the one thing he desires most from us is that we would love one another like He loved us. So, if you brought your Bible with you today, let me encourage you to find 1 John 4:7-12, for it is here we will be reminded of how much God loves us, and also see how loving others with His love is still the most powerful force on the planet. So, if you’ve found 1 John 4, let’s begin by looking at verse 7 and 8 where God’s Word tells us that:

1. All You Need Is God’s Love Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. 1 John 4:7-8

Don’t miss this. Everything in the Christian life begins and ends right here. Love comes from God. God is the source of love. It originates in Him. Because God is love. In fact, the very first words John writes here declare this. He writes, “Dear friends,” but the literal translation is actually the word “Beloved.” Anyone who is a child of God – anyone who has put their trust in Jesus for salvation, is now known by God as His beloved. We are the object of His love. And that makes sense, because it is in these verses that we learn that God is love.

In other words, love is the core of God’s being. Love is the essential nature of God. It is who God is. Love flows out of God like a river. It is meant to give life to everything and everyone. That’s why we are called to love one another. For once we come to know God, once we experience His love and the new life He gives us in Jesus, God wants His love that’s now in us, to flow out of us to others.

To get the picture of this, listen to how John Piper spells it out. He says, “Love is from God the way heat is from fire, or the way light is from the sun. Love belongs to God’s nature. It’s woven into what He is. It’s part of what it means to be God. The sun gives light because it is light. And fire gives heat because it is heat. So John’s point is that in the new birth, this aspect of the divine nature becomes part of who you are. The new birth is the imparting to you of divine life, and an indispensible part of that life is love. God’s nature is love, and in the new birth that nature becomes part of who you are…”

So then, John simply states two facts. The first fact: If love comes from God, you will love like God.  In other words, before God invaded your life with His Spirit, you could not love like God. For God’s love is a completely unselfish kind of love. God’s love always seeks to benefit someone else regardless of the cost or consequences to oneself.  So God’s love is a no-strings attached love. He simply loved us when we were not worth loving. He loved us while we were still sinners.   But when God’s life invaded your life, He made you a new creation in Christ. And what happened at that moment, your old sinful nature died, and His new loving nature came alive in you. Jesus took up residence in your heart by the Holy Spirit, and when He did, He gave you all you need to begin to love like God loves.   Paul declares it this way in Romans 5:5, God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

So here’s the good news: all you need is God’s love! When you put your trust in Jesus, God’s loving nature was spiritually downloaded into your life. You were given a new life, with God’s Spirit so you could live this new life. And the way you are to live your new life is to be a conduit of God’s love. You are to love one another. That’s the first fact. If love comes form God, and you have this new life of God by faith in Jesus Christ, you will love like God.

Now, here’s the second fact: If love comes from God, you will know God. You will know God, because you will have experienced His love first hand. You will know that God loved you and forgave you, even while you were a rebel. That’s the thing with God’s kind of love. We don’t ask for God to love us. He already does. He chose to love you even when you didn’t give him the time of day. He chose to love you even when you willingly disregarded His laws. He should have been angry with you. But instead, He loved you when you didn’t deserve to be loved.

That’s what knowing God is all about – because you don’t find this kind of love in the world. This kind of love only comes from God. And if you’ve put your faith in this God, He’s no longer some abstract being; He’s now a personal being – loving Father, who gave His best, His all, to rescue and bring you into a relationship with Him. The reason you now know Him, is that you have experienced His amazing grace. You understood that you didn’t deserve anything from Him, but He gave you everything in Jesus. He made you His child, He calls you His beloved and you now know Him as your Father. His love made for you made Him knowable. You know Him who is love. And that’s good news. And that’s why His love is all we need!

Now, the good news is that He didn’t just tell us that He loves us. He acted on His love for us. And that’s the second truth we now see in this text: 2. God Has Loved Us All

This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His One and Only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4:9-10

Here’s the core of Christianity. This is why we preach Jesus. Here is why everything begins and ends with Jesus. For it is in Jesus that God revealed His love for us. God sent His Son into the world so the world could SEE His love for us. For God so loved the world that He gave His One and only Son. And God loved us through Jesus for a purpose – so that we might live through Him. So that we might have a new kind of life through Him: a new life of knowing God as Father; a life of communion with a new family of brothers and sisters – all sharing the same Holy Spirit kinship; a life where we are set free to walk in the light of God’s love, to walk with Jesus, and learn to live and love like Him.

And this new life was made possible because Jesus loved us by giving His life for us on the cross. He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. This is the heart of the gospel. This word “atonement” means that when Jesus gave His life on the cross, the blood he shed there did something profound, powerful and everlasting.   By offering Himself He turned the wrath of God away from us, and onto Himself. To get the significance of this, you need to understand that in ancient pagan religions, it was men and women who made offerings to appease an angry deities. But here, we see that this is no longer the case.   God asks nothing of us. No sacrifices, no offering, nothing. Instead, by sending Jesus to us, God Himself makes the offering for sin. And once Jesus offers His life on the cross, God is satisfied.   No other offering is needed. Jesus paid it all, and God is satisfied. And that’s good news. God is satisfied with Jesus death on the cross. That’s why we can’t add one thing to what Jesus has done. To do so after God was satisfied with Jesus’ giving himself, would be an offense to God. God has loved us all, because Jesus died for all, and God has accepted the offering of Jesus once for all!

Tim Keller said it this way, “The gospel is that Jesus lived the life you should have lived and died the death you should have died, in your place, so God can receive you not for your record and sake but for his record and sake.”

God has given us the ultimate demonstration of love in Jesus, so there is nothing else He wants from us, but to believe this and receive His gift of love on the cross. And so I ask you: Do you believe in Jesus? Have you received by faith the forgiveness, once for all, that Jesus paid for you? If you have, then God’s Word says you are not only forgiven, but you are redeemed – you have a new life as God’s child. Is this true of you? Have you received God’s gift of Jesus Christ? Because if you have, then the last point John makes in this passage is this: 3. Love is Now All We Need So John writes: Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us. 1 John 4:11-12

Love is now all we need. Can you see this? This now is the natural fruit of faith in Jesus. Out of God’s love for us, we are free to love one another. And when we love one another, something remarkable takes place. When we sacrifice for one another, when we love one another with God’s kind of love… John says three things will happen:

• We will show that God’s life is alive in us. When we love like Jesus loves, we are living a supernatural life and we help others experience the love of God. We show that God’s life is alive in us by our love. Perhaps you came here today wondering if you’re faith was truly real… but the truth is that when you lay down your life for the need of someone else, regardless of what it might cost you, your faith is real, because God’s life is flowing through you! It’s all about Love.

• We will make the invisible God visible. John says that no one has ever seen God, but when we love one another, we show the world what God is like – we love like Jesus loved us. And this is what the world is looking for. “Is there another way to live?” And we get to show them: “Yes, it is the way of Christ, it is the way of love!”

• God’s love is made complete in us. When John writes that this is how God’s love is made complete, he means that it reaches its intended goal when it flows from God, through us, to our fellow believers. God didn’t just love us so we could be forgiven, although that is true. God didn’t just love us so we could know Him and enjoy Him forever, although that is also true. No, God loved us so that He could love through us. This is what you need, what you hunger for, and what our world needs! Real love, sacrificial love, gracious and merciful love. And God loved us so that when we love one another like He loved us, then His love will have gone full circle – it will be complete! What a privilege is ours then, to love one another. We get to be the very hearts and hands that not only can change our world, but show the world what are God is like. For our God is love!

On June 25, 1967, more than 400 million people in 26 countries watched, via satellite as the Beatles performed the song, “All You Need is Love.” They had been asked to come up with a song that could be understood by all the nations. We can understand why it was the cry of their heart and the longing for the rest of the world. But the sad reality remains, is that human love has its limitations. What our world really needs is the God who is love with no strings attached. To be precise, what our world really need is Jesus, who loved us all. You see, all we do need is love – the love of Jesus.

Have you received His love for you?