SERMON MANUSCRIPT
In baking a cake, there are some ingredients that are more essential than others. Sprinkles aid ascetics, nuts add texture, but it’s the eggs, flour, and sugar make it a cake. Those are foundational ingredients.
The same is true of a church. There are many potential elements that can be added to this recipe but they’re not all of equal importance. A building may add stability and significant attendance can bring excitement. It can be a blessing to have a great music ministry, thriving small groups, and a cool pastor, but those aren’t necessary. Many faithful assemblies exist without those ingredients.
The NT is clear, however, on what is essential, things like commitment to the gospel and submission to the word, prayer and evangelism, baptism and communion, discipleship and discipline, love of God and love of God’s people. And it’s this last essential ingredient we’re going to look at this morning: a love for one another; a self-sacrificing, need-meeting, others-focused love for one another.
The truth is, OBC cannot be what God wants us to be unless we love one another the way he calls us to love one another. We will fail in our mission, we will sacrifice our usefulness, we will misrepresent our Lord, and we will give up our intimacy with our God if we fail to love one another. It is the eggs, flour, and sugar of church life; an essential, foundational ingredient.
And so, John begs us, as God’s people, to add it liberally. [4:7a, 11b, 12b, 21b] It’s the one request of this passage, and it’s a good request: brothers and sisters in Christ, love one another.
But that’s easier said than done, if we’re being honest. We may all be saved but we’re all still sinners. We wrong each other, hurt each other, and disappoint each other. And we live in a world that celebrates victimhood, confuses affirmation with genuine care, and holds a definition of safety that condemns all things disagreeable, uncomfortable, and abrasive.
You put those things together and it can be pretty tough to stay with one another let alone love one another. But that’s what we’re called to do. It’s a foundation ingredient of a healthy church family.
And so, in his kindness, God provides motivation in our passage today. John is going to give five good reasons for us to love one another. My prayer is that our study this morning will help us become the people of God, the family of God, that God wants us to be.
Reason #1: When we love one another, we show-off our relationship with God. We put it on display for people to see.
[7] God is the source of love and when we redirect that love we’ve received form him to other recipients of that love we are declaring that we belong to him (that we’re born of God) and that we have intimacy with him (that we know God).
On the other side, [8]. Notice that it doesn’t say that those who fail to love are not born of God, it says that they don’t know God. There’s a such thing as unloving believers. Their lack of love doesn’t necessarily show lack of salvation, just a lack of intimate knowledge of God.
But we don’t want that. We want to know him well and show him well. [15]Notice the intimacy and mutual indwelling. [16] Love is from God because God is love. When we who have received that love love one another, we are showing-off our relationship with that God.
If you go to a university campus you’ll see students wearing shirts that declare the name of the school to which they were accepted and now attend. They’re proud of their belonging. But then there are those who can wear the alumni swag. There’s a different level of pride in those people. They’ve not only been accepted and attended, but they’ve endured and graduated. And they want to show it off.
Should we not be proud of our relationship with God, that we’ve been accepted by him, that we’re growing in him? I think so. We should want to show it off. And John says that one way to do that, is to love one another with the love that defines our God.
When you offer encouragement to a sister, you’re showing off your relationship with the God who loves with a love that does not seek its own. When you are patient with an immature brother, you’re showing off your relationship with a God who loves with a love that is patient. When you serve a church family that turns out to be comprised of normal, sinful, opinionated people, you’re showing off your relationship with a God who loves with a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Loving one another is a way to show-off our relationship with God.
Reason #2: Loving one another is a way to respond to God’s love for us. Just as kids need to learn that the appropriate response to someone showing them kindness is to say “thank you,” so believers need to learn that the right response to God’s love is to love.
[9–10] We can love one another out of sheer gratitude. When we struggle to love an unlovely sibling in Christ, we remember the love that God showed us. God’s love for us is an initiating love. It’s not that we loved God, but that he loved us. [19] He went first. He empowered us. We didn’t move toward him in affection. His is an initiating love.
It’s also a sacrificial love. It cost him. He sent his only begotten Son into the world. Not only did God initiate, but he went all in. His love cost him something precious.
God’s love is also a provisional love. It gave us things we needed: so that we might live through him and that he might be the propitiation for our sins. God loved us with a love that brought life to dead people, removed the just wrath of God from upon sinners. We couldn’t do those things and we didn’t deserve them. But God’s love for us is initiating, sacrificial, and provisional. So, John concludes: [11]. Loving one another is a way to respond to God’s love for us.
If we lose sight of the nature and extent of God’s love for us, we will fail to love one another with consistency and sincerity. My loving you and your loving me cannot be rooted merely in our affection for one another. Those ebb and flow. They have to be rooted in something outside of us, something eternal, something humbling and impressive. Something like God’s love for us.
We don’t love one another because we feel like it. We don’t give up an evening to sit with a hurting family because they deserve it. We don’t give money to the church because God’ll bless us back. We don’t give attention to the needy because it saves us. We don’t give up our preferences for music and church activities because it’s easier that way. We don’t give up comfort and convenience, hours and energy to serve the church family with the gifts God has given me because it earns be a certain reputation. We don’t bite our tongue in discussion because we don’t have anything to add. We don’t confront sin in brothers and sisters because it makes us feel superior.
No. We do these things and more, we love because he first loved us and loving one another is a way to respond to God’s love.
Reason #3: Loving one another is a way to make visible the invisible God.
[12] We sing, “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, open the eyes of my heart. I want to see you. I want to see you.” John says, you want to see God and make him seen? Love one another because, when you do, God is embodied in us. That’s really what his love is supposed to do: conform us into his likeness and move us to love one another.
[13–14] Notice all three members of the godhead are involved here. The Spirit of God which has been given to us by God, is given in part to make God seeable, drawing us close to the God of love. And while verse 12 announced that no one has seen God at any time, verse 14 says we have seen the Son who was sent, the Son who perfectly represented the Father’s love in becoming Saviour of the world.
God, who is unseen, sent his Son who was seen, and his Spirit to make him seeable through his people. The more we love like God loved, the more we make visible the invisible God. [Invisible man]
Have you ever been around a new parent or grandparent with pictures of their kids and grandkids? They’re in love with their new family members and the world needs to see them too!
For those of us who know God, who know Christ, who know the Spirit, do we not want the world to see him? His beauty, peace, majesty, holiness, and grace? Do we not want to see more of him? Why would we deny one another that privilege by failing to love one another. Because when we love one another we make visible the invisible God.
Reason #4: Loving one another is a way to confidently face the coming judgment.
[17] John’s addressing believers so he’s not referring a judgement that determines eternal destinies. Ours is secure in Christ and, as he says elsewhere, we’re free from such judgment. [John 5:24]
Instead, John’s referring to the day when we will all stand before our Saviour and give an account for the lives we’ve lived as his children. [2 Cor 5:10] Now, the thought of standing eyeball-to-eyeball with the all-knowing, all-holy, totally-glorified Lord Jesus may, for some, bring some anxiety, nervousness, and regret.
But John says, it doesn’t have to be that way. We can have confidence on that day if we love one another in this day, becoming increasingly like him in that love. We don’t need to fear the coming judgement. In fact, [18].
Living in fear is torture. Living scared that you’re going to be found out, discovered, embarrassed, exposed. It’s imprisonment. It’s punishment. And, according to God, it’s unnecessary. Live in love and you can kick fear to the curb because there’s no punishment for love. Love one another and you can confidently and fearlessly face the coming judgement.
Reason #5: Loving one another is a way to show we’re people of integrity. In other words, that we’re not hypocrites. That we strive to do and be what we say we’re to do and be.
[20–21] How could we ever claim to love the God of love, who has showered his initiating, sacrificial, and provisional love on us and our brothers and sisters, and yet not love them too?
As C.S. Lewis once admitted, “How difficult it is to avoid having a special standard for oneself!” Isn’t that true. We want to be part of a church in which people love, in which people show the compassion, patience, generosity, and intensity of the love that characterizes our God, but when we fail to love that way there’s always a good reason. Let’s call that what it is, friends: hypocrisy. It’s a lack of integrity.
We want to be a people of integrity. We want to cultivate a reputation for honesty. One way we can do that is by loving one another well. By loving one another, we show that we’re people of integrity.
A church family doesn’t need a building or a ministry specifically for youth or a nursery or an online presence. Those can be fine, useful, and even God-glorifying things, but they aren’t essential to the cake God’s baking here. Mutual love in the body of Christ is. This church will fail, will fall, will falter if we do not love one another.
And, while God telling us to do so should be enough, we sometimes lack motivation. So, God gives us five good reasons in this text. We’re to love one another because, when we do, we show-off our relationship with God, we respond to God’s love for us, we make visible the invisible God, we confidently face the coming judgement, and we show that we’re people of integrity. These are good reasons to go out of our way to love one another.
God is calling each member of this church family today to love as we’re loved!And I want to encourage us not to be simply hearers of the word but doers this week. Put this into practice, friends. Let’s change this church, let’s strengthen this church, let’s solidify this church.
I want to challenge you to take the initiative to love two people in this church in the next seven days. Maybe one person is someone you know quite well, maybe even a family member. The other, maybe someone you don’t know quite as well or even at all. Use the church directory, find people to serve with intentionality. Love as you’re loved. Focus on God’s love for you, show-off your relationship with God. Meet a need. Encourage a sister. Confront a brother.
How deep the father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure. That he should give his only Son, to make a wretch his treasure. We are so loved, brothers and sisters. Let’s respond and show that love to one another.
Josiah has served the Oakridge Bible Chapel family as one of its elders and one of its pastoral staff members since September 2018, before which he ministered as an associate pastor to a local congregation in the Canadian prairies. Josiah's desire is to be used by God to help equip the church for ministry, both while gathered (edification) and while scattered (evangelization). He is married to Patricia, and together they have five children—Jonah, Henry, Nathaniel, Josephine, and Benjamin.
