What Love Does

People need love. You need love. We need love like we need water. But even though we live in a culture that’s obsessed with love, we have a love crisis in our world today. In fact, those who study these things tell us that we are lonelier than ever. Over 40% of Americans struggle with loneliness every day. The rest of us experience some degree of loneliness from time to time. But did you know that loneliness has a drastic impact on our health? Here’s just a few facts of what happens when we are socially isolated. First, your risk of heart disease increases by 29%; the chance of Dementia increases by 50%. Loneliness wreaks havoc your immune system, accelerates memory loss, and increases the possibility of depression and anxiety. So, I’ll say it again. People need love. We need social interaction, friendships and love. And yet, so many struggle with this concept of love. For many in our culture, we define love as a feeling, or an attraction, or romance, or just plain lust. And the sad reality is that people today are more at a loss as to what love is and what love does more than ever.

So, a group of professionals posed the following question to a group of four- to eight-year-olds, asking them, “What does love mean?” And the answers they got, as one researcher said, were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined: “Love is when you go out and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of them.” Chrissy – age 6 “Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.” Danny – age 7 “Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day.” Mary Ann – age 4 “When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.” Karen – age 7 And here’s my favorite: “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

But as great as these descriptions are, God doesn’t mean for us to rely on children to help us understand what love does. And God knows that. That’s one of the reasons why God sent His Son to die for us. Not simply to save us from our sins, but to have us experience God’s love. But God never intended for us to simply experience His love. God loved us so we would learn from Him how to love others. And that’s precisely what John wants us to learn as we return to 1 John 4:7-12 today. So, if you have your Bible with you, let me encourage you to turn there. For what we’re going to discover from this passage is some great stuff about love. But the main thing we will learn is this: You cannot truly love people until you know the God who invented it. And that’s where John begins today in verses 7 and 8, when he tells us

Love Comes From God 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. Love is the essence of His being. Love is who God is. Love flows out of God like a river.

To get a picture of this, listen to how John Piper describes God’s love. 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 indispensable part of that life is love. God’s nature is love, and in the new birth that nature becomes part of who you are…” John Piper

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 you, to flow out of you to others.

And what’s so great about this, is that when we let God’s love flow through us, our loving gives evidence of two things. One, that we have been born again spiritually. And two, that we know God. In other words, when we love someone with the love of Christ, we do what our Father does. Our love shows HOW we are like our Father.

It’s like what I saw the other day. We had two of our grandsons stay with us. On Wednesday morning after our Men’s Boiler Room, I asked the boys if they wanted to wash my golf cart with me. They jumped at the chance. But then as we were washing it, I learned something about Beckham. Beckham is a great little worker. When we were drying off the cart, he was in there making sure every single drop of water was wiped clean. He was even showing me a little spot that I needed to clean. Afterwards, I told Becky, “Beckham has your clean gene. He’s such a good worker. He’s just like his grandma.” When we love one another like God loves us, we show the world that we have our Father’s love gene! That we are just like our Father.

That’s the positive affirmation that loving gives. First, it shows you bear your Father’s character and second, it reveals that you know God. You know God, because you have experienced His love firsthand. You know God loved you, when there was nothing about you that made God love you. He simply loved you, because that’s who He is. He loved you when you ignored Him. He loved you when you disregarded His laws. He loved you when you deserved judgment. He loved you because God is love.

We don’t’ find this kind of love in our world today. This kind of love comes only from God. And when you trust in Him, you come to know this God, not just as God, but as your loving Father. A Father who gave His Son to die for you so you could know Him. That’s the purpose of His love for you. He loved you in Christ, so you could know Him. He loved you in Christ, so you would love like Him!

But now we see how John adds a negative twist to all this in verse 8. He makes a point about one’s lack of love: Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 1 John 4:8 He’s saying what I said earlier. You cannot truly love people until you know the God who invented it. Why? Because God is the source of real love, agape love. The kind of love that loves you unconditionally. The kind of love that loves you sacrificially. The kind of love that you can only learn from God, if you know God and experienced His love for you. John is simply reinforcing the truth that this love, real love, has its origin in God. So, then if you don’t love like God loves, he is not condemning you. He’s simply saying that you don’t know God. Because God is love. But the good news is this. You can know God and you can know His love. And that’s what we see next as John reveals how God loves us. And I would say it this way:

Love Gives It All Let me start with verse 10. John makes it simple and clear by saying, 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 4:10 There are three great truths about God’s love in this verse. The first truth is this: God’s Love Takes the Initiative. The very first thing John wants us to know, is that it was ENTIRELY God’s decision to love us. The initiative was entirely God’s. Out of His love He decided to love those who do not love Him and who do not want to love Him. God took the initiative to love rebels who had turned their backs to Him. God chose to love His enemies who stood opposed to Him. By the way, I’m talking about us. As Romans 3 says, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” Romans 3:11-12 As you can see, none of us deserved God’s love. But God chose to love us anyway. But that’s just the first aspect of God’s love. God’s love takes the initiative. God chose to love us even though there was nothing about us to love.

The second truth about God’s love is even more amazing because it shows us how God chose to love us. God’s Love Gives a Person. God sent His one and only Son into hostile enemy territory to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He sent Jesus to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins. To be the propitiation for our sins. I like this term “propitiation” because it describes how God’s love for us is full of mercy. Propitiation means to turn away the wrath of God by means of an offering. Here’s what I mean about merciful love: When God sent Jesus to die on the cross, God poured out the wrath we deserve on His Son instead of on us. And the beauty of this, is that when Jesus went to the cross to do this, He did so willingly, because He loved us. He offered up His sinless life to take the punishment we deserve, in order to satisfy the righteous wrath of God toward our sin.

Now, to understand the significance of what Jesus did, we need to understand that in ancient pagan religions, it was men and women who made offerings to appease angry deities. But with God, this is no longer the case. God asks nothing of us. He asks us to make no sacrifices, make no offerings, do no works.

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. That’s good news. That’s why we cannot add one thing to what Jesus has done. That’s how thorough God’s love is. God did it all. God initiated our salvation, and then God gave His sinless Son to make our salvation possible by taking upon Himself the punishment we deserve. That is love. God demonstrated His love to us by
giving Jesus to die for us. Now, there is nothing else He wants from us, but to receive His gift of love. And His gift of love is a person. His gift of love is Jesus. So, let me ask you: Have you received His gift of love? Have you trusted in Jesus for your forgiveness?

Now, let’s go back to verse 9, where John expands on the purpose of God’s love to us. He writes: 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. 1 John 4:9 Let the truth of these verse sink in. God loved us not simply to take away our sins and remove our judgment. God loved us to give us a new way to live: That we might live through Him.

What does it mean to live through Him? It means to be born of God and to know God. It means to experience His love and share His love with others. It means enjoying fellowship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It means walking in the light, enjoying fellowship with one another, confessing and receiving forgiveness of sins. It means initiating friendships, sharing your table, giving mercy. It means serving the least of these, sharing their burdens and letting His love in us accept and include anyone. It means giving a cup of cold water, being quick to forgive, and believing in brother when no one else does. This is the love our world is desperately longing for. And this is the kind love that God wants to create in us. And that leads us to the final thing that loves does, that we learn from this passage, and that is this:

Love Reveals God 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. 1 John 4:11-12 His point is simple: God’s love to us should produce God’s love through us. And when God’s love flows through us, people will see God’s love. And when they see God’s love, we will show them what God is like.

Jesus said we would be known by our love for one another. But for some strange reason this is not happening as it should in our culture today. Recent research by Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman reveals that Christians are often seen by our unbelieving world as “hyperpolitical, out of touch, pushy in our beliefs, and arrogant.” In particular we are viewed by young Americans who do not attend church as antihomosexual (91% see us that way); as judgmental (87% see us that way), as hypocritical (85% see us that way, and as insensitive to others (70% see us that way.

People are looking at our lives to see if we are loving; to see if we are kind, to see if we are compassionate. But above all, people are looking at our lives to see if God is real. Like John says here, No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:11 What he is saying is this. When we love one another, we make the invisible God visible!

In other words, when we love one another, we show that God is alive in us. And when we love one another, God’s love is made complete in us. English Pastor David Jackman said it this way: “This is a love that the hard-nosed cynicism of our culture desperately needs to see, because it is the nearest many people will ever get to seeing the invisible God. The responsibility belongs to God’s forgiven people. The church is his audiovisual presentation to a dying culture. People should be able to look at a Christian fellowship and see the God of love within His people. That is the goal God’s love is working for, and for us to be content with anything less is to deny the gospel.”

That’s quite a statement. How we love one another is how God designed His church to show the world what He is like. 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 God loved us so that He could love through us.

This is the love our world is looking for. 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 perfected – it will be complete. And the world will see God’s love in us. That’s the goal of God’s love.

And the good news of God’s love is this: If God has loved you, if you have experienced His love to you by receiving Jesus, if you have been forgiven and adopted into God’s family, then the love of Christ lives in you, because Jesus lives in you. And now all God wants from you to let Jesus love through you.

For when we love one another, we show the world that our God is real. People need love. Not touchy feely love. Not romantic love. But God’s love. So let me close by reminding us of His love by reading 1 Corinthians 13 from the Message: If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut

Love doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle

Love doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything

Love trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly and love extravagantly. For the best of the three is love.

People need love. God’s love. So, may we love one another as He has loved us, and so show our world that God is real.