First John

God is Love

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: I John 4:7-11, God is Love

Genre: Sermon

Lesson: 10 of 16

Track: #10

Year:

Dictation Name: RR308E10

[Unknown Speaker] Blessed is the man whom thou chooseth and causes to approach unto Thee, that he may dwell in Thy court. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple, let us pray.

Our most good and gracious God and heavenly Father we come before Thee in humility for our own inadequacies to serve You as we are. We pray that You would cause us to repent of those sins which have separated us from You in recent days, and we pray that You would help us to seek to obey You with our whole heart, soul, and mind. We thank You for Your goodness’s to us, they are more than we could acknowledge. We thank You that You have given our life meaning in terms of service to Jesus Christ, purpose in Thy eternal victory, and hope that we should overcome the evil that is in the world through Your Son and the future that He gives us both in this life and in all eternity. We pray that You would encourage us to stand fast, we pray that You would help us not to be discouraged by the evil that we see in the world about us, we pray that You would give us confidence to do Your will in our various responsibilities, in our families, in our callings, in our community. Help us to perform these responsibilities as to you. We know that You honor all honest and decent work, we pray that You would bless this time we have together in Your word, we pray that You would encourage Christians everywhere who gather together this Lord’s day in Your name. We pray that You would especially encourage those who are suffering because they claim the name of Your Son, we pray that You would encourage those who seek to give them assistance and relieve their sufferings. Bless now our time together, and bless the preaching of the word this Lord’s day, in Christ our Savior’s name, amen.

The scripture for this morning’s sermon is I John chapter 4, verses 7-11, and the topic of today’s sermon is “God is love.” First John, chapter four, verses 7-11.

“7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”

[Rushdoony] One of the important things to know as we turn to the Bible is to realize how much our English Bible has affected the English language and to what extent. Hebrew and New testament Greek have profoundly impacted all the languages of Christendom. If you go back a few centuries you find that English not only sounded different, but it was different. For example to give you a sentence in English from the fourteen hundreds [unintelligible gibberish] now that’s old English, or middle English. But even more than the difference in pronunciation was the difference in the kind of thinking that went into English. If any of you were brought up in a foreign language you know that the language is very different from English, but if it is a European or a near-Eastern language that has shown the effects of Christianity it is far, far more similar to all the other Europe and middle-Eastern languages than, say, to Chinese or Japanese. Or language was remade by the Bible.

If you go back, as I said, to the 1400’s, you will not understand the English. And if you learn that and you go back another century or two you will again not understand the English of the day, it changed constantly. But once a Bible was translated into English, or German, or any other language, the language was fixed, it became very, very much affected in the way a person spoke and thought by the Bible. However, at one point when it came to the relationship of English to the Bible, in particular New Testament Greek, there was a failure. In the New Testament Greek, as we saw when we began our studies in I John, there are three words for love. One which does not appear in the New Testament Greek or in our English Bible is eros, e-r-o-s, which means erotic, sexual love; the second is phileo, p-h-i-l-e-o, which we have in “Philadelphia’ which is a combination of two words, philos- love, Adelphia from adelphos meaning brother, city of brotherly love. Now the third word for love in the New Testament Greek was agape, a very strange fact that it was in the Greek because it was there but they never used it. It means the supernatural love of God which is pure grace towards us.

Well, when I John speaks of love the key word is “agape” and in every instance in these verses, 7-11, wherever the word “love” appears, it is a form of “agape.” What does agape mean? Phileo means normal, human love. You love your friends, you love your neighbor, that sort of thing. But agape is different, agape primarily means the love of God for us, a love which is pure grace, so that there may be a great deal in us that our family and friends find unlovable, but that does not mean that God does not love us. God’s love is very closely related to God’s grace. Grace means unmerited favor, we receive the grace of God even though we don’t deserve it, and agape means the same thing where love is concerned. We receive the love of God, agape, even though we don’t deserve it.

now the point John makes is because God is love, agape, and He by His sovereign grace saves us, this means that we are to show the same kind of love one towards another. The person we love may not deserve it, but agape is a religious love, we love him in spite of his unlovable attributes because God tells us to love one another.

So John says: “7 Beloved, let us love one another (agape): for love (agape) is of God; and every one that loveth (agape) is born of God, and knoweth God.” So when we are born again we go beyond eros and phileo, we are in the realm of agape, we love one another with a forgiving, a grace-filled love, because that’s the love God showed towards us. “For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were yet lawless, an anti-god, he died for us. That is agape, and how do we know God? If we are filled with agape, this kind of selfless love.

“8 He that loveth not knoweth not God;” He who does not have this agape love, this selfless love, this love that says “you may be unworthy, but I was unworthy and God loved me, and therefore I love you and hope to reclaim you for the Lord.” So those who are known and know God will show agape. Why? “for God is love.” Not love in our human sense, but love in His sense, agape. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” That is pure agape.

“9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” Something different took place in a world of sin, a dog-eat-dog world, in a world that began with Adam’s sin and fall, and where fallen men live in hatred one towards another, and show no love, nor kindness, nor grace, one to another, God sent His only begotten Son, that we might live through Him, that we might truly know life. We are told in scripture that outside of Christ we are dead in our sins and trespasses, we may not know we are dead, but in the sight of God we are, and when the end of our life comes we move into the realm of death, a world of life without God, therefore life without meaning, that is hell. It has been well said that in hell nobody knows anybody else because everybody is totally interested in themselves.

One prominent writer a few years back wrote a play about hell, he was not a Christian, but his hell pictures a room in which a number of people are seated or standing. No-one talks to anybody else, everybody talks to themselves, because now they are totally self-centered. They cannot recognize anybody else except themselves, nor can they do anything. No-one goes to the door to see if it is locked or unlocked, they are wondering if they can get out but all they do is to sit or stand there and wonder about things, they cannot talk to each other, they cannot ask. That is hell. So we on the other hand have God’s only begotten Son as our Lord, as our Savior, that we might live through Him.

“10 Herein is love, not that we loved God,” Because we didn’t, before we were converted we may not have been honest enough to say how we thought, but we didn’t care about God. “but he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation (the atonement) for our sins.” God, who is pure agape, pure grace, sent His only begotten Son, and even though we crucified Him His very crucifiction, unknown to man, made atonement for our sins. This is a remarkable fact, what John is telling us here is how amazing is God’s love, His agape. We dare not confuse our human love, phileo, with agape, and we dare not rest content with phileo as a sufficient way of living for a Christian, we have to move from the world of phileo, loving somebody because “think of all he’s done for me” to agape, the pure grace of God’s love, His mercy towards us; “For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

“11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” All this is very wonderful but it’s not a matter of intellectual interests, it’s a matter of absorbing it into our being, knowing how great and gracious God’s love is, and having that kind of love in our hearts so that we can continue in His grace and love.

I recall when I was young, very young, it’s hard to talk about. A missionary whose wife had been killed on the mission field; he was out in an outlying district and some natives came by and robbed his house of everything, and killed his wife. He said it was very, very difficult not to be filled with hatred, but he knew that he was lawless before God, and God loved Him and sent His Son to be His Savior, “therefore we ought also to love one another.” He continued the work, he never knew who had done the crime, but towards one and all he showed love. He never said that murder was lawful, nor theft was lawful, he preached the whole word of God, but he also said “Christ forgives us our sins, and we must forgive one another.” This did not mean if the person were caught he did not pay the price for his sin, but he said “if they are ever caught, I have a duty to go to the prison where they are held and witness to God’s love, to God’s grace.”

This is what John is talking about, that’s why it is so great a mistake to read it and because the word “love” is just one word in English, to assume that it has one meaning. No, the love of God and the love which in Christ we are to manifest one towards another, is the love that is of grace, it is a love that reaches out to the uttermost with the gospel. This is why it is so important to understand the meaning of love in John’s letter.

As I said in the beginning there are three words for love in the Greek and Hebrew, only one in English, which is a sad fact, and that’s why, at this one point, translations are not adequate, because we use one word to translate three things; and therefore a study of John’s letter is so very important. To love God is to love Him as He loved us, and to love one another is to love as God loved us. Only such constitutes, as John goes on later to say, being the children of God. Do you see what this means in a world of sin? The word love, “agape”, is very, very closely related to the word grace, and when we see that relationship we can better understand what this letter means. Or what it means when John elsewhere says “for God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” God loved the world, unlovable though the world was, but His love was a manifestation of His grace. Let us pray.

Our Father we rejoice in this Thy word, we thank Thee for Thy love, its redeeming, blessing character. We thank Thee that we live, move, and have our being in Thy sovereign grace and love. Teach us therefore to love one another, to grow in grace, to be faithful to Thy word. This we ask in Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions about our lesson?

As we shall see as we continue our studies in first John this is a book which comes fittingly near the end of the New Testament, before Revelations, and which in a particular way tells us a great deal about God and His nature. This is why John is called the beloved disciple, because John in particular tells us the meaning of God’s love.

If there are no questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee that we live, move, and have our being in Thy grace and in Thy love. Teach us therefore to love one another, to manifest unto all men and nations Thy grace and love, to know that through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ we are blessed with an eternity in Thy love and grace. Oh Lord our God how great and marvelous Thou art, and now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.