God Loves Us With Goals In Mind

Sermon on 1 John 4:13-21

Text: 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.

There are certain people who are very goal-oriented. Usually, they will not do something, unless they have everything planned out. They are good to have in an organization, because, while others might like to have something happen, they do not always have a plan for carrying it out. The goal-oriented person will help the group figure out exactly where it is that they want to be. They come up with some short-term and long-term goals to help the group to that end. These people realize that if you do not aim at something, you will not hit anything. God also has certain goals. For example, we read in 1 Timothy 2:4, that God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” God, also, has goals for those who have been brought to faith. This morning, as we look at these words from John’s first epistle, we are reminded that GOD LOVES US WITH GOALS IN MIND 1. That We Remain In Him, 2. That Our Fears Are Cast Out, and 3. That Our Love Touches Others.

Verses 13 and 14 remind us of God’s love for us. John writes, “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.” God did not just say that he loved the world. He put a plan in motion to show his love. John recalls two aspects of that love. “The Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” God chose to love the unlovable. That includes you and me. We were unlovable, because of our many sins. Each and every one of them was a defiant act of rebellion against him. We have not loved God with our whole heart, mind, and strength. We have allowed other things to be more precious to us. It might be a family member, whom we did not want to offend by telling them that they were sinning. It might have been our leisure time, figuring that it was more important than our spending time with God in his word. Any time that anything takes the place that God demands in our lives, we have shown that they are more important to us. For all of our loveless acts against him, God would have had every right to send us away into the exile of hell.

God chose to love us by sending his “Son to be the Savior of the world.” God chose to love you and me so much that he was willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice and punish his Son in our place. The death that Jesus died was to pay for all of our idolatries, which is really what happens when anything becomes more important to us than God. Jesus paid for every one of our sins. He completely paid our debt before his Father by his life, death, and resurrection. We know that his work of salvation was complete, because, as we celebrated on Thursday, he returned to heaven. He is now seated at his Father’s right hand. God’s goal was that you would spend your eternity with him. He made that possible through his Son’s sacrifice.

So that we might know about this saving work, John tells us, “He has given us of his Spirit.” Next Sunday, we observe the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in a very visible way, as the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to proclaim the work of Jesus Christ. As fantastic as those events were on the first Pentecost, they are no more so than when God sent his Holy Spirit into your heart and my heart so that we might be brought to believe in Jesus Christ as our only hope of salvation. God loved you so much that he sent his Son. He loved you so much that he sent his Holy Spirit. This is a love beyond all measure. Since these have been accomplished, God continues to love us with further goals in mind.

In speaking of love, someone once wrote, “If you love something set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be.” That is a rather sappy sentiment, isn’t it? I know that it is saying that true love will always find a way. If you are really meant to be together, you can set that person free and, eventually, they will find their way back to you. However, God does not have this idea in mind. He does not love us and then let us go free, so that, perhaps, we might come back to him. Listen to what John writes in verses 15&16, “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they 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 them.” One of God’s goals in loving us is that we remain in him. God wants us to be connected to him, so that we continue to receive the constant assurance of his love for us. God, also, wants us to remain in him, so that we are strengthened to show our love for him. It is kind of like an electrical cord. By itself, the cord is a cold, dead, lifeless object. By itself, it cannot run your microwave, heat the oven, or light the lamp. However, when you plug that cord into a socket, it becomes alive. Now those appliances do what they were intended to do. They cannot do it, without being plugged into the source.

The same is true for us. God wants us to be plugged into him. We are plugged into him when we learn about him in his Word. We are plugged into him when we take time out of our schedules to pray to him. We are plugged into him every time we receive the Lord’s Supper. When we are plugged into him, we are able to do those things that honor and glorify him. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2:10, “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” We are only able to do these things when we remain in him and he remains in us. God loves you and me with this goal in mind, that we remain in him.

God’s love shows itself in a very special way in the next part of this section of his Word. “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. 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.” (Verses 17&18) We know that Judgment Day will come. We do not know when, but it will come. Can you imagine the fear that you would have if you would have to stand before God on your own merits? Can you imagine the trepidation that would fill your hearts if you had to come before God on the basis of your love for others? If that were the basis, we would be like the Olympic athlete who has finished his event and now has to wonder if he did enough to win the gold. He thinks that he did, but he cannot really be sure.

God does not want us to have the sort of trepidation on the Last Day. We have been made perfect through love, not through our love, but through God’s love. Because of God’s amazing love, we do not have to fear the Last Day. Jesus Christ, in his infinite love for us, has paid for every single sin. This was the goal that God had in mind when he did all of this for you. He did not want you to fear Judgment Day. His goal has always been that you would look forward to that day. You know that on that day, you will be welcomed to live forever in his presence with all of the blessings that go along with it. You can have this confidence, because your God has shown you his endless love. Rather than cringing at the thought of the Last Day, we can have the reaction that Jesus spoke of in Luke 21:28, “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” This another of the goals that God had when he loved you so much that he sent his Son to be your Savior and sent the Holy Spirit into your hearts, which trusts in this amazing love.

There is one more goal that John specifically points to in our text for God loving us. We read in verses 20 and 21, “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. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” Verse 20 has some very powerful language. “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.” A person who says that they love God and simultaneously hates someone else is worshiping a fictional god. We have never seen the source of love with our own eyes, but we can see the objects of that love, namely, the people around us. The way that we treat other people, whom we have seen, shows what we really think about God, whom we have not seen. God loved you and me with the goal that we love those around us.

What exactly is Christian love? I saw it defined this way: “Godly love is the willingness to inconvenience yourself to bring benefit to someone else.” How can we show this type of love to others? It can show itself in a number of different ways. It might be the spouse who stays in a marriage, after the fun is gone, and wants to work at restoring it, because this is what God wants them to do. It might show itself in someone giving up freedom and travel vacations to care for an elderly relative. This type of love might be seen as the parent watches all of the money go to piano lessons, braces, and tuition rather than the new vehicle or the dream kitchen (and does not complain about it). Godly love can be seen when a child, without prompting, gives some baseball cards or a Barbie to another child who does not have as much. How are you willing to inconvenience yourself so that you might bring benefit to someone else?

As you can see, this type of love takes some effort. It is not something that we naturally would do. Yet, God also gives us the motivation in verse 19, “We love because he first loved us.” When we reflect on the love that God has shown to us, we cannot help but be filled with joy. We want to thank him for all that he has done for us. This is one way that we can do so. We love others, even those who do not deserve our love, because we have been loved. We love others, even if showing that love may be inconvenient at the time. While we will never do this perfectly while we are here on this earth, we continue to strive to do it better than we did the last time. God has given us both the motivation and the clear way to show love to him. “We love because he first loved us.” One of the goals that God had in mind in loving us is that our love would then touch others. May God help us to do this more and more every day.

As we conclude our series of sermons from 1 John, we are reminded of the basic theme that has run through all of our sermons. That theme is love. The world talks so much about love, but it really has no idea what love is. We see such shallow love portrayed in the movies and television. Songs are written about this type of love. People fall in and out of love at the drop of a hat. None of those things are true love. How blessed we are to see what true love is as we read through the pages of Scriptures. Love is God reaching into human history and sending our Savior. He chose to love us with an eternal love. We also see what love is as we have written the many ways that we can show love to those around us. This entire message is summed up in one little sentence in our text: “God is love.” How blessed we are to know this love and then reflect that love to those around us. Amen.