Loved ones, would you turn with me in the Word of God to the Apostle John's first epistle, 1 John chapter 4, and I would like to read from verses 7 down through chapter 5, verse 3. 1 John chapter 4, verse 7. And I shall read from the NIV translation. Let us hear the word of the Lord. 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. 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. 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. We know that we live in Him and He in us because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in Him and He in God. 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 Him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment because in this world we are like him. 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. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God, by loving God and carrying out His commands. This is love for God, to obey His commands, and His commands are not burdensome. So far the reading of God's holy and infallible Word. In this portion of his letter, the Apostle John instructs his readers on the great doctrine of the love of God. Both the love of God for believers and the love that believers have for God. And this was really part of his larger instruction and warning of some dangerous heresies that had crept into the church. One of these particular heresies was known as docetism, which essentially denied the incarnation of Jesus Christ and said that Christ only seemed to be a real man, only appeared to be a real man. Because what these docetists had done was they had pitted the material against the immaterial. Everything that was physical and material, they would say it was evil. And everything that was immaterial and not physical, They said it was good. And so they would say, how could it be that Jesus, the Son of God, could be a real man if a real man is bad by definition? And God, who is spirit, is good by definition. And so they lived their whole lives like this. And what it led to was, it led to a sense of, well, living against God's law. Doing whatever they wanted in the flesh. Because they thought, well, if it's just done in the flesh, it doesn't really matter. Because that's material. It's the immaterial that we're concerned about. Well, the Apostle John writes to these Christians, some of whom have been affected by this. And he's trying to straighten things out. He's writing to warn them and to tell them that God has been revealed in the real Jesus Christ in order to communicate eternal life to those who believe. He says in his letter that God is light, and that God is truth, and that God is love. And that these things that God is, these things will be communicated to His people. And so His people will desire to live a life of holiness in the light. They will cling to the truth tenaciously, and they will demonstrate the love of God in their lives. And by these things, they will show their authenticity of God's people. Well, in this section that we've just read, verses 7 down through chapter 5, verse 3, this is the section where John is expounding on the love of God. And if God is these things, if He is love, then these things will be communicated to His people. We will experience the love of God and we will show our love for God in return. And what I would like to draw your attention to is verse 19. Verse 19. This will be the text that we will focus in on this morning. Where John says, we love because he first loved us. This is, in a sense, a summary of everything that John has said from 4.7 down to 5.3. The love of God. And this cause and effect. We love in return. because God has loved us. So let us consider these things this morning. Let us first consider the cause. The cause. What might be called the subjective love of God. That is God as the subject. Loving His people as the object. John speaks of God's love to us. This is the cause and the motivation of our love to God and to our neighbor. But we have to consider what is the love of God? What is it exactly? We hear that term all the time in our culture, don't we? God is love, or God is a loving God. It's thrown around left and right. So we must define it. What is the love of God as it comes to us? Well, the first way that we must define it is in defining what it is not. We know that the love of God is not the modern liberal notion that God loves everyone regardless of his or her unbelief. This idea that all paths and roads lead to God as long as you're sincere, as long as you try to do good. It really doesn't matter if you're a Buddhist or if you're a Muslim or a Christian or what you even believe as a Christian. The point is that God is love and in the end everybody is okay. Well, that is not the love of God as it comes to us from His Word. Loved ones, we must remember that everything we are to learn about God must be based on what He has revealed in His Word. And so when we're going to consider the love of God, we can't just make up the love of God based on what we think love is. We must go to His Word as He has revealed it to us. And so His Word says that His love comes to us only through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Now that's too much for modern man. Too much for the natural mind to think that it's only through Jesus Christ. That's too narrow-minded. That's too exclusive. But this is what the love of God is. It is exclusive. It's only through Jesus. It is not, as G.I. Packer once well said, some vague and diffused goodwill toward everyone in general and nobody in particular. So in the first place, the love of God, this love that John speaks of, is not some broad and general love to all people that is tolerant and accepts them, regardless if they place their faith in anything or anyone other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, the love of God is not the liberal idea that God's love is contrary to His wrath. For several generations now, the love of God has been preached with such one-sidedness, such exclusiveness, that it's sort of gobbled up all of His other attributes. It's as if God's love is the only thing that God is. This has been greatly responsible for the weakening of the sense of our sin in the modern church today. It's responsible for the decline of interest in the church, of doctrine, particularly the doctrines of atonement, of justification. Well, God is love. We just want to hear that. Thus, many people today who call themselves Christians, they really can't conceive of a God of love punishing people for their sins. And this is probably particularly true in our country, where man constantly wants to bring in his ideas of fairness and equality and rights into everything that he believes. He can't believe in a God who doesn't love him. He can't conceive of it. He can't imagine this. He thinks he's entitled to it, that it's his right. But what he has really done is suppress the truth that is in his conscience, which tells him that he has offended God. And he's listened to that repeated phrase in modern evangelism that says, God loves you. God loves you. God loves you. And after a while, he believes it. This watchword, God is love. Gerhardus Voss once said, it has silenced all other voices from the realm of truth. As if this is the only thing God is. Resting in that phrase alone, loved ones, is no place of security because we must understand that God's love can never be divorced from God's holiness. The love of God can never be divorced or separated from the standards of God's law, those standards that He holds us to. The God whom John presents as love is the same God who demonstrated His wrath in redemptive history. The same God who destroyed the earth with a flood. The same God who rained down fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah. The same God who struck the Egyptians with ten plagues and killed the firstborn in every house that wasn't marked with the blood of the Lamb. This is that same God, the God who is light. This is the God who is love. God is love. But that doesn't mean that it's some kind of gushy sort of human emotion that just winks at sin. God is love. And He loves righteousness and He hates evil. So that is what the love of God is not. But what is the love of God exactly? Well, we might define it like this. The love of God is that attribute in God by which He is eternally moved to communicate Himself to others. And when we think of this love, there are some important aspects to it that we must consider, that we must bring into our understanding, that John himself presents to us from his larger context. Beginning with the fact that God's love is sovereign. God's love is sovereign. John says that God first loved us. It's God who is the initiator, not man. Earlier in verse 10, he said, In this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. It is God who acted and paid this ultimate price of sending His beloved Son, not based on anything that we have done, Nothing that we are or we would do moved God to give Him this love for us. Nothing prompted this love that He has shown to us. There was no good in us to merit the love of God. How could we possibly attract the heart of God, being wicked and wretched sinners? To the contrary, we deserve only the wrath of God. We are by definition lawbreakers. We are by definition wicked and evil sinners. As the Apostle Paul said to the Ephesians, we were in God's eyes dead in trespasses and sins. We walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath. A grim picture indeed. But God, Paul says, who is rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. It is God who acted. He is the initiator. And He acted based on His own good pleasure. The reason that He finds for loving is found in Himself. Not on the object. Just as God said to His people as they traveled through the desert to the promised land of Canaan. He said, The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people. For you were the least of all peoples. But because the Lord loves you and because He would keep the oath with which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh. the king of Egypt. So the reason that God finds for loving is found in His own purpose. It's according to His own pleasure. It's a sovereign love. That is the first thing we must understand. Secondly, because God does as He pleases and finds His reason to love within Himself, we see that the sovereign love of God is particular. It's set on a particular group of people. John says in 4.19, we love because He first loved us. There is a direct object, a particular people that God has set His love upon. Now there is a common goodness that God shows for all of His creation. A sort of general benevolence, a providential kindness, if you will, that everybody experiences. Jesus spoke of this in His sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5 when He said that God makes His Son rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. We find the same thing in Acts chapter 14 when Paul was arguing at Lystra that God did not leave Himself without witness and that He did good, but He gave us rain from heaven in fruitful seasons filling our hearts with food and gladness. Well, man, in all of his rebellion and in all of his wickedness, experiences this kind of kindness from the Lord. But this is what's common. And what is common is quite different. In fact, there's a huge difference between what is common and what is particular. The particular love, the sovereign love, that saves the sinner, that God sets His love upon, is not to every single person in general. It's set upon a particular group of people. It's that love of God that says, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. You know, from that verse that Paul quoted in Romans 9, it's often been said that the amazing thing is not that God hated Esau, but that He ever loved Jacob. For there was no more reason in Jacob that he should love Jacob than there was in Esau. There was no difference between the two. They had both done evil. They were both sinners. They were both wicked. And Paul highlights the fact that it was God's purpose of election. That is, his purpose of bestowing his divine love upon whom he chooses. That was made clear by the fact that he chose to love Jacob before either children were born or before either of them had done any good or evil. It's God's sovereign love that He sets upon those people that He chooses. And those whom He chooses are loved like no other. It's a particular love. It's that love that is even known between a husband and his bride to a certain sense. What bride is there that would want to be loved by her husband just like every other woman that's out on the street. Well, there's no bride. No, there's a particular love between a husband and his wife. And his wife is how the Bible describes the church. We are his bride. We are his people, his own, his children, if you will. What father is there that would love his child the same as he would love every other little child on the street? Children, how would you feel if you found out that your dad didn't love you any more than he has some kind of common kindness for every other little child on the street? Well, you wouldn't feel very special to your dad, would you? But you see, that's not the kind of love that you have from your father, and that's not the kind of love that God sets upon His people. It is this special, this particular love. This love as a husband would love a bride. He loved us first, even when we were absolutely loveless. He has chosen us as His own. Well, it is a sovereign love. It is a particular love. And third, it is an infinite love. We must also understand that this love with which God has first loved us is infinite. John says that God's love is manifested towards us by the sending of God's only begotten Son into the world. That we might live through Him. That He was sent to be a propitiation for our sins. The Father sent His Son, who knew no sin, to go to the cross and to bear the wrath of His people. to become this foul and repulsive thing, as it were, there upon the cross as He had sin laid upon Him. Hatred and murders and abomination. God loved us in that kind of way. Jesus said that He has loved us the same way that He has loved Himself. He prayed in John 17, You have loved them as you have loved Me. Here we see there's a depth to God's love that none of us can fathom. There's a height to God's love that nobody can climb, a breadth and a width that cannot be measured by any human standard. It is so great, so vast, so infinite is this love that God would send His only Son to die for sinners. What father here would ever dream of sending his own Son to die for a bunch of miserable criminals. If we went to the state penitentiary and picked out a bunch of the worst criminals serving 25 to life for violent crimes, heinous acts, and to think that you would give your own son, whom you love like no other, to die for them. And yet God has done this for us. And there we see that God's love is infinite. That God demonstrates His love towards us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. And knowing that we are partakers of that love brings us great confidence in this life. Great comfort, doesn't it? Well, God's love is sovereign. It's particular. It's infinite. What else might we say? It is immutable. We should also note that the love of God is unchangeable. Because God Himself does not change, He is incapable of change, His love does not change. And because His love is through the person and work of Jesus Christ, which cannot be altered, which cannot change. Well, His love is immutable. Those whom God has set His love upon need never worry that God's love might fail. And again, the conniving Jacob is a great example of this. Jacob in all of his disobedience, in his unbelief at times, God still continued to love him. God's love was immutable that was upon him. He never ceased to love him. John 13 also provides another wonderful illustration for us. That night that Jesus was in the upper room and speaking to his disciples, John records for us that he, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. He loved them unto the end. Even as one of them would say, oh, show us the Father and that will be sufficient for us. This isn't enough. Even as one would later deny him with curses, saying, I don't know that man. Even as later all of them would be scattered and would turn their backs on Him. Still, He loved them until the end. That is the love of God. It cannot change. And those that are joined to it cannot be separated from it. Why? Because it is in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ that God's love. It is through Him becoming a propitiation for our sins. It is through Him accomplishing all that needed to be accomplished. It is through Him satisfying the demands of the law that we were under. And once they have been satisfied, loved ones, they cannot be altered. They cannot be changed. We can't turn that work of God around by our puny strength. We can't do that. What God has done cannot be changed. And His love is demonstrated through His work. This is why Paul declares at the end of that glorious chapter in what is, I believe, this most glorious letter. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The love of God is only through Jesus Christ. If you go outside of Christ, you cannot know the love of God. And you do not know the love of God. And if you are not in Christ this morning, I would say to you, there's no way that you could possibly know the love of God. Don't listen to so much of modern preaching that has said God loves you, God loves you, and rest in that. For that has only cheapened and weakened the doctrine of the love of God. It has made it a common thing. No, it is only through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And those that are in Him, those that are in Christ, cannot possibly be separated from God's love. Regardless of what happens in this life. Regardless of sickness, regardless of trial, regardless of poverty, regardless of whatever happens, you cannot be separated from the love of God because it's in and through Jesus and His work. That gives us great confidence. It makes us rest completely upon the promise of Romans 8.28. And we know that all things, all things work together for our good. Every single thing that happens to us expresses God's love to us and comes to us for the furthering of God's purpose for us, even under the heaviest trial, even when we don't understand the why or the reason of God's dealings with us. We still have this confidence and this comfort of knowing that behind those things are the very hands of God, as it were. His love for us, His dealing with us. Well, there is much more that we could say, but suffice it for now to remember that we can be comforted and rejoice in the fact that God's love is sovereign. It is particular, it is infinite, and it is immutable. This is how God's Word describes it to us. Well, that is the cause in verse 19. God has first loved us. Now, what is the effect? What is the response of those who know this love? Well, it's very simple. It's in this. We love. We love. We now, as the subjects, love God as the object. Knowing the love of God causes us to respond in love to God. You know, our basic problem is that we don't love. We don't love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We don't love our neighbor as ourself. We've broken those two commands on which are hung all the law and the prophets. But yet when God has come and He has satisfied those demands of the law for us and brought us in and taken us as His own, for those that are in Christ, well, we have a heart of gratitude now that is produced by the Holy Spirit. It's this love that we have for Him because God first loved us with that sovereign, particular, infinite, and immutable love. Our love then is to express our gratitude. And we are to express it in this way. In the first place, in our obedience to God's commands. John says, for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. They're not burdensome to the one who loves God. To love means to serve, in covenantal language that is. In ancient covenants, when there would be two parties who would join together in a covenant and there would be certain conditions that would be laid out and a promise if the lesser party of the covenant fulfilled those conditions and also a curse if he did not. Well, in that covenant, the lesser party was told to love the greater party. And to love meant to serve. And this is why Moses says everything that God had commanded His people to do was expressed in this. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, with all of your strength. To love means to serve. And this is why Jesus, as the mediator of the new covenant, comes and speaks to us and says, if you love me, keep my commandments. So why do we bother to do good works? Why do we bother? If God has saved us by His sovereign grace, if He has satisfied the demands of the law, if we are complete in Him and we cannot change that work, why do we bother to do good works? Why do we bother to be like our Lord? Why do we strive against the world, the flesh, and the devil? All this toil. The Christian life is not easy. Why do we bother to do these things? Well, it's in this. That we love God because He first loved us. We seek to be obedient to Him because we love Him. The one who loves God will have a desire to be obedient to Him. Even when he fails, he will still have this desire, this struggle of wanting to be like his Lord, desiring to be obedient to his Lord. And yet we rest on the fact that our love for God is not earning us any kind of merit. It's not bringing us into rightness with God. It's not winning God's love in any way, for God has already provided all of that to us. He's given us all the merit we could ever possibly have. For we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Yet we love God. And so we seek to be obedient to Him. We seek to fulfill His commandments. Secondly and finally, our love is manifested in our love for our neighbor. And particularly, John says, in our love for the brethren. John says, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God must love his brother also. God loves his covenant people. And his covenant people are to love one another. And our love for each other is to be selfless and always seeking the good of our brother. It is indeed to be patient and kind, not envying, not boasting, not proud, not rude, not self-seeking, not easily angered, not keeping record of wrongs, not delighting in evil, but rejoicing in the truth, always protecting, always trusting, always hoping, always persevering. This is the incredible standard of the love that we are to have for one another. And it is modeled after the selfless love of our Savior Himself. Earlier in chapter 3, John says that by this we know love because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Jesus told His disciples in the upper room, This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for his friends. And likewise, the Apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians that we are to be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God and Christ forgave you. Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us. It's by this act of love for one another and our love to the Lord and seeking to obey His commandments, that we show ourselves grateful, that we show ourselves as those who love God. And so, may it be for us, loved ones. And if you're here today and you doubt the love of God in any way, then I say if you look to the evidence of God's love for you, look to the cross, Look to that wretched and that horrible place that God sent His only Son to be a propitiation for your sins. That there it is where He has shown His sovereign love to you. You, even individually. Paul said that Christ Jesus loved me and gave Himself for me. It even reaches to us individually. This infinite love, this love that cannot change, this immutable love, it is there that God proclaims and demonstrates His love in the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you're here today and you do not know the love of God, you say, well, I don't know this particular love of God. I don't know this love that only comes in and through Jesus Christ. Then I say, if you flee to Jesus Christ, Repent of your sins and place your faith in Him alone. Look to Him in faith. Put all of your sin in one heap and put all of your good works and your righteousness in another heap and look to Him in faith. Faith says, I need a Savior. Faith says, I can't fulfill the demands of the law. Faith says, I can't love God on my own. Faith says, I need to know the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ, and flee to Him. May it be so. Amen. Father, we are thankful for Your Word. We are thankful for the Gospel. We are thankful for the love of God that's demonstrated in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thank You, O Lord, that You loved us when we were unlovable. And Lord, that Your love does not change. Even despite all of our sin and despite all of our faithlessness. Lord, if we are in Christ Jesus, your love does not change. And Father, we are thankful for that. May we go from this place today at the conclusion of our worship, recognizing and remembering your great love for us. And may we show our love for you in our desire to be obedient to you and our love for one another. May it be so. For we ask these things in the name of him who loved us and gave himself for us, Jesus Christ. Amen.