A Study of 1 John 4:7-21
Introduction: Three years before he died C. S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves, based on a series of talks he had given over the radio. He pointed out something that has since been repeated many times but it still bears remembering. There are four primary Greek words for love. This is important to us because the New Testament was originally written in the Greek language.
The first word is Storge (pronounced store’-gay). This is the kind of natural affection people in a family normally feel for each other. It’s being very fond of someone because you are familiar with them. A good English term is affection.
The second word is Philia (pronounced Phil-lee’-a). This is friendship love, and it’s easy to member because the city Philadelphia is named for this word and is supposedly the City of Brotherly Love. This is the kind of love you have for your friends and acquaintances.
The third word is Eros (pronounced air-os). The Greeks named one of their gods by this title, the god of love and sex. The idea is physical pleasure. We get our English word erotic out of this. Eros and erotic can have a negative connotation, but it’s also a word that describes the healthy physical love and pleasure that should exist between a husband and wife.
The fourth word is Agape (pronounced ah-gop’-a), and this is the kind of selfless love that only God possesses, along with His children with whom He shares it. It is the kind of selfless love that puts other people first, considers their needs, and seeks to meet them even at its own expense. It is the exact opposite of our human natures.
C. S. Lewis and many others have pointed out that all four of these loves are necessary for a good marriage. A husband and wife need Storge, or natural affection. They need Philia, or friendship for they should be each other’s best friends. They need Eros, or intimacy. And they need Agape, the willingness to constantly put the other before oneself.
Well, in the book of 1 John, the apostle John is doing everything in his power to instill large doses of Agape-Love among his church members. To use today’s terminology, John was telling them that Agape-Love was the Secret Sauce of the church on this earth. And when I say “church” that includes Christian marriages and all the relationships we have with one another. We need massive doses of Agape-love.
The passage we’re coming to is one of the best descriptions of this remarkable attitude in the Bible and in all of theological literature.
Let’s jump right into our passage today as we continue our study of 1 John. We’re coming to chapter 4, verse 7 and following:
Scripture
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 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. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 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. 18 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.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 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. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
Let’s articulate what John was saying.
1. Only those who are born again can convey God’s Love
First, he writes something very controversial. He tells us that only those who have been born again can experience and convey true love like this. Look at verses 7 and 8:
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
There can be many other emotions that look like love. Affection. Compassion. Altruism. Attraction.
Many people can experience and convey the other three kinds of love.
When you see, for example, a happily married couple who never go to church or read the Bible or follow Christ, they have apparently mastered Storge, Philia, and Eros. But they simply don’t know anything about the Agape love that comes only from God.
That’s why it’s such a shame when those of us who do know Christ don’t display Agape to the world. Only those who are born again can convey this kind of love.
2. Jesus Christ is the Ultimate Demonstration of God’s Love
Second, John tells us that Jesus Christ is the ultimate demonstration of this love. Let’s go on to verses 9 and 10:
9 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. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
John says this twice. He says it and he repeats it. The way God showed or demonstrated His love toward us is by sending His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, as an atoning sacrifice for our sins that we might have eternal life through Him.
The apostle Paul said the same thing in Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
John 3:16 famously says, “For God loved the world so much that He sent His one and only Son….”
Wycliffe Bible Translators posted a story on Social Media about a 69-year-old woman named Enol, who spoke four languages and had read the Bible. But the Bible wasn’t available in her original language. When Wycliffe translated the Scriptures into her tribal language, she read John 3:16, and it suddenly became very personal and poignant to her. She had read the verse in English, but she said, “When I read John 3:16 in my own language…I realized that this is what God did for me. He did this for me. He gave His only son for me.” She said, “This is very memorable for me [and] the only thing I will never forget in my life.”
I wish we could all have the sense of reading this and understanding it as never before.
3. We Have an Obligation to Personify God’s Love
In verses 11-12, John tells us that we have an obligation to personify this remarkable, self-giving, self-less, others-centered love of God. Let’s continue reading:
11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
The apostle John was very interested in the invisibility of God the Father. He made several references to it in his Gospel.
In his prologue, John wrote: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made Him known” (John 1:18).
In John 5:37-38, Jesus said to His critics, “And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you.”
John 6:46, John wrote, “No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.”
Now here in 1 John 4:12, John wrote, “No one has ever seen God.” But his point in this case is that other people can see something about God—they can see the personality and evidence of God—by the love they see in His people. When you love others with Agape love, it’s an expression or manifestation of God. It testifies of Him.
4. We Can Rely on God’s Love
Fourth, John tells us we can rely on God’s love. That’s the exact verb he used. Look at verses 13-16:
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
Verse 13 again brings us the subject of the assurance of our salvation. Remember the background of the letter. A host of people had rejected John’s teaching about the person of Jesus Christ and had left the churches. They had ridiculed those who had remained true, telling them they were foolish and mistaken and wrong. But John said here, “God sent Jesus Christ as the ultimate expression of His love for you, and the Holy Spirit shows you that truth and illuminates it in your heart and reassures you that you are God’s child.”
In verse 14, John reaffirmed that message: We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. In other words, you have my objective eyewitness testimony and you have the Holy Spirit’s eternal reassurance.
In verse 15, John repeated his great thesis: “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.” There is no might or maybe or should or could or if or but about it. If you acknowledge that Jesus is God, that Jesus is Lord, then God lives in you and you live in Him.
And that brings us to that wonderful verb, rely, in verse 16: And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
The word “rely” means “to depend on confidently.” When we rely on God’s love, we realize we don’t need to fret or fear, to worry or anguish. We can just go through life resting in His love, which will always do what’s best on our behalf.
In her book about spiritual disciplines, Jan Johnson wrote, “Before going to sleep, review your day and confess thoughts and deeds that were not motivated by love. Don’t drift off to sleep until you have rested in God’s love.”
When you are resting in and relying on God’s love, you are relying on:
His grace that provides all you need.
His mercy that forgives your failures and works with you to correct your weaknesses.
His presence that never leaves you for a single second.
His wisdom that ordains your steps.
His Word that speaks to every need you have.
His infinite longevity, which guarantees the eternal life we have in Christ.
In his book of devotions, Alan Fading said that at certain moments in his life he has struggled to believe that God loves him. “I imagine I’ve done something (or failed to do something) that has diminished God’s care for me. Instead of letting God’s love displace my anxiety and fear, I let fear displace my confidence in God’s love.”
But, he said, he has learned to pray: “Father, may Your Spirit enable me to be more deeply immersed in the height, the depth, the breadth, and the width of your love for me. Help me to know your love even if I can’t fully comprehend it. Open my eyes to see your loving countenance. Open my ears to hear your words of affirmation.”
Alan went on to say, “And when I stop to listen, I sense the Spirit saying, ‘My Son, I enjoy you because I made you. You belong to me and I care for you. The Son has opened the way for us to enjoy unbroken fellowship, so make yourself at home in my love today. Rest in my love and then share my love with others who will cross your path. That is how you can have confidence of my presence in you and my love for you.”
5. We Are Christlike As We Embody God’s Love
Fifth, John goes on to imply that we are Christlike as we embody God’s love. Look at the last part of verse 16 and following:
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 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. 18 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.
The first three words of this section are a little bit shocking: God is love. John said exactly the same thing in verse 8: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
When we study the entirety of Scripture, we can say that it’s wrong to insist that God is nothing except love. It’s not that this attitude of love expresses the totality of the essence of God. What John is saying is that God’s nature is a loving nature. He possesses true love and He expresses true love and He imparts true love.
In John 4:24, John said that God is Spirit. In 1 John 1:5, John said that God is light. Now he claims that God is love. John is simply giving us some of the infinite and wondrous attributes of God. When John says that God is love, He is not neglecting God’s other attributes. He is simply saying that the essence of the nature of God from before the beginning of the world—His limitless attributes and His infinite nature—includes the boundless capacity to love. It comes to Him naturally. He loves because He loves. He is loving because He is loving. He always has been and He always will be. And in that way, He loves you!
That means that when we abide in His love, we are becoming loving people. We become Christlike. In this world, we are like Jesus.
6. We Have No Assurance of Salvation if We Do Not Transmit God’s Love
On the other hand, if we do not rely on and express the love of God, we cannot have assurance of our salvation. Look at verses 19 through 21.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 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. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
Conclusion
While I was researching for this sermon, I came across the story of a POW camp built to hold Nazi prisoners during World War II. It was built in the little town of Aliceville, Alabama, population 1,400. It was a town like the fictional Mayberry. The government built a POW camp that would hold 6,000 German prisoners. As you can imagine, the townspeople were bewildered by this invasion of Nazi prisoners. They knew how brutal and evil these men were, and they were told the ones being sent to Aliceville were among the worst.
On the day when the first POWs were due to arrive by train, the local policeman told the citizens to stay in their homes. No one was allowed in the street. But no one paid any attention to him, and the whole town turned out to watch these monsters get off the train. But what they saw instead were hundreds of frightened, beaten down, defeated boys. Many were scared and some were scarred or disfigured or seriously injured.
An attitude went through the town no one had expected—compassion. The guard at the Aliceville POW Camp followed the Geneva Conventions to the letter and treated the prisoners with respect.
One writer said, “Neither the officers running the camp nor the people in the surrounding town were following just the letter of the law alone. Rather, they started to follow the true spirit of the Geneva Conventions and were treating these enemy soldiers the same way they would want their own sons and brothers to be treated were they captured in the war.
“When the soldiers first arrived at the camp, they found fresh linens and shaving equipment waiting for them on their bunks. In short order, they were introduced to the twin American delicacies of peanut butter and sliced white bread. They were given so much ham and so much corn to eat that they couldn’t finish it all…
“Within a year the prisoners had three different orchestras up and running, using instruments donated by the local community. They opened a school where soldiers could learn anything from pottery to mathematics to almost any language you could imagine. They set up correspondence programs with local universities where they could earn college credit. They had soccer games just about every day. They had a newspaper. They had poetry readings and theatrical productions.
“In other words, life was good for POWs in Camp Aliceville. According to one German soldier: they arrived in Aliceville expecting hell, but instead were greeted by heaven.”
In explaining it, someone said, “We love our enemies not because of who they are, but because of who we are.”
One of the prisoners later said he thought he was coming to America to be killed. At Aliceville, he was treated with such respect that he said, “If this was how America treated its enemy, then America is where I wanted to live. In 1956, he did return to America with only four dollars in his pocket, and a local church helped him establish his life.
In the years that followed, the town of Aliceville had several Friendship Days when the former POWs would return and everyone would celebrate together the power of the love and friendship they unexpectedly discovered in the middle of that terrible war.
I have to believe that there were many Christians and godly church members among the citizens of this Bible-belt community of Aliceville. I believe many of them had read the Gospel of John and the book of 1 John. They knew something about agape.
Only those who are born again can convey God’s love. Jesus Christ is the ultimate demonstration of that love. We all have an obligation to personify that love. We can always rely on God’s love for us, and then as we embody that love we are growing more Christlike. On the other hand, we have no assurance of salvation if we do not transmit God’s love to others.
It seems to me, to sum everything up, that the more we understand the ocean of God’s love for us, the more the tide of love will arise in our hearts for others—and not just Storge love, Philia love, Eros love, but the ultimate love of all—the love that transforms—the agape love of God.