1. There is much talk today of love and most of it is totally unscriptural – some equate love with sex, although they are two entirely different subjects. By the way I am totally opposed to this modern practice called "dating."
2. Some speak of love as if it was some sappy sentimental mush ("sloppy agape"). Some churches teach that God loves everything, even sin!
3. Occasionally people will tell me I do not preach enough on the love of God, that I preach too much on hell and judgment, etc. But every Sunday I preach on love (John 3:16).
4. But I admit I probably do not preach enough on the love of God. And I saw something these past months that has shaken me like nothing else has in a long time. And I am convinced that there are many people who call themselves fundamental Christians who do not understand that "God is love" (I John 4:8,16).
5. In fact one man told me recently that whenever a preacher talks about love and compassion he is a compromiser! Well, what does the Bible say? After all, the Bible and the Bible ALONE is our only authority – not some man-made rules and regulations, not some school, etc.
6. John is called the disciple "whom Jesus loved" (John 13:23; cf. 21:20). Here in this little epistle he uses the word love or loveth or beloved some 29 times.
7. In this epistle, John has declared that to love is a commandment from God (2:7,8), and that love is evidence that one is truly saved (3:14,15). You can mark it down if a church is unfriendly and unloving, then it is not a very spiritual church. I do not care how many kids they can pile into their buses, or how many Gospel tracts they distribute, or how on how many doors they knock, or how long their ladies’ dresses are, or how short the men wear they hair, etc. If there is no love, they are carnal and worldly.
8. My message today is very simple – the Bible says, "Beloved, let us love one another" (I John 4:7).

1. This is an exhortation – "let us love one another" (4:7).
2. This is a statement of duty – "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another" (4:11).
3. This is evidence that we are truly saved – "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us" (4:12).

I. THE EXHORTATION – "Beloved, let us love one another" (4:7-10)

1. "FOR LOVE IS OF GOD" (4:7,8). John is not talking here of that love which is common to all men, but of that love which has been implanted in those who have been born again (cf. 3:14).
2. "Love is of God" (4:7) and "God is love" (4:8). This means that love originated with God. God is the source and origin of love and all true love derives from Him.
3. One day Charles Haddon Spurgeon saw a weathervane with "God is love" on it and thought it was very inappropriate. But then a friend explained the meaning: God is love no matter which way the wind blows!
4. Another great preacher from the past, Harry Ironside, was trying to witness one time to a snooty, high-falutin’ woman who said to him, "I have no use for the Bible, or for Christian superstition, or for religious dogma. It is enough for me to know that God is love." "Well," Ironside replied, "do you know it?" "Why, of course I do," she said; "we all know that, and that is religion enough for me. I do not need the dogmas of the Bible." "How did you find out that God is love?" Ironside asked. "Why," she said, "everybody knows that." "Do they know it yonder in India?" he asked. "That poor mother in her distress throwing her little baby into the Ganges River to be eaten alive by filthy and repulsive crocodiles as a sacrifice for her sins – does she know that God is love?" "Oh, well, she is ignorant and superstitious," she replied. "Those poor heathens in the jungles of Africa, bowing down to idols of wood and stone, and in constant fear of their fetishes, the poor idolatrous pagans in other countries, do they know that God is love?" "Perhaps not," she said, "but in a civilized land we all know it." Ironside then asked her: "But how is it that we know it? Who told us so? Where did we find it out?" "I do not understand what you mean," she said, "for I’ve always known it." "Let me tell you this," Ironside answered; "no one in the world ever knew it until it was revealed from heaven and recorded in the Word of God. It is here and nowhere else. It is not found in all the literature of the ancients."
5. Ironside was quite correct – the precious truth that God is love is not revealed in any other religion. Most heathen people worship a god of hatred and fear and war, but the true God is love. Allah has many names and one of them is "the Master Deceiver." What a contrast between the God of love and the god of deception. As a matter of fact, according to the Bible, the master deceiver is none other than the devil himself!
6. And what a shame that there are those who call themselves born again Christians and they have no love in their heart for others, and they preach a Gospel without love – i.e. a false gospel.
7. The Bible says that "every one that loveth is born of God (born again) and knoweth God" (4:7). Do you know God or do you just know about God?
8. LOVE IS OF CHRIST (4:9,10). God’s love was supremely manifested by Jesus dying on the cross for our sins (4:9,10).
9. John uses some important doctrinal words that are being left out of most of these new Bible translations:

1. "His only begotten Son" (4:9) – this describes the unique relationship in which no other Son could share. Jesus Christ revealed God the Father to mankind and is the only mediator of salvation (John 1:18; 3:16; I John 4:9).
2. "Propitiation" (4:10) – this means God is satisfied with Christ’s death on the cross as a just payment for the sins of mankind. God’s wrath has been averted – God is propitiated.

10. God’s love was not shown to us because we first loved Him – but God loved us in spite of our lack of love and our opposition to Him (cf. Rom.5:6-10; I John 4:19).

II. THE STATEMENT OF DUTY – "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another" (4:11-21).

1. My friend, if you are genuinely saved, God has placed in your heart a love for other people – especially for your fellow Christians.
2. What John is saying is that since God loves us so much, shouldn’t we love one another? (4:11). Notice that powerful little word "so" (cf. John 3:16).
3. "No man hath seen God at any time" (4:12). (Although Oral Roberts claims to have seen a 900 foot "Jesus"). In John 1:18, we see that the invisible God is made known to the world through the Lord Jesus Christ, whom the apostle Paul calls "the image of the invisible God" and "God manifest in the flesh."
4. Here John again uses that expression, "no man hath seen God at any time," but this time he is saying that God is manifested through His people. In other words, we reveal God to a lost and dying world by demonstrating the love of God – "and His love is perfected in us" (4:12b). This means that God’s love to us has achieved its goal.
5. I read that when Chiang Kai-shek was ruling China (before he was chased out by the communists) he converted to Christianity. Supposedly his wife was saved way before he was and he said to her one day: "I cannot understand these Christians; why, they have been treated most abominably here, they have been robbed, beaten, many of them killed, they have been persecuted fearfully, and yet I never find one of them retaliating, and any time they can do anything for China, for our people, they are ready to do it; I do not understand them." Chiang Kai-shek’s wife said, "Well, that, you see, is the very essence of Christianity. They do that because they are Christians."
6. Months ago, my wife and I went to a visit an elderly Jewish lady. We brought along a Jewish friend who is now a Christian preacher. We had a wonderful time because this lady saw the love of Jesus Christ in my wife and another Christian nurse who has been witnessing to her. This poor lady has been hurt. She can recall her brother getting beat up as a child in Germany because he was Jewish (over 80 years ago!). She lost relatives in the Holocaust. Now she needs to see the love of God.
7. God loves us past, present and future – past, He sent His only begotten Son (4:9); present, He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell us (4:12,13); and future, He will give us boldness in the day of judgment (4:17).

III. EVIDENCE OF SALVATION

1. "Confess" (4:16) means more than mere mental assent. You can go down to the dock and say, "That’s a beautiful boat, I believe it could take me across the ocean. I believe the captain is a good man and he has a good crew and I believe they could get me there safely" and so on but unless you get aboard that ship, you are not going any where!
2. It is not really our love that is made perfect, but rather it is God’s love that is made perfect in us (4:17, cf. 4:12).
3. "As He is, so are we in this world" (4:17b) – the sin question has been dealt with. God does not see our sin – it is covered by the blood of Jesus.
4. In contrast to the "boldness" God will give believers in the day of judgment (4:17), unbelievers are tormented by fear (4:18). I heard a preacher say that "insecurity is the secular term for fear." There is a healthy fear that keeps us out of trouble and there is the fear of God which leads to wisdom, but the fear which John speaks of here is not from God (cf. II Tim.1:7).
5. The person who is controlled by fear does not love God. This is how the cults operate. We have even seen Christians try to control and manipulate others (especially children) through fear. This is not Biblical.
6. The unsaved man fears death and what will follow death. "Fear hath torment" (4:18). Fear anticipates and makes real the future torment it worries about.
7. At the head of the list of the occupants of hell, John places "the fearful" (Rev.21:8). Abraham said to the rich man in hell, "Remember…thou art tormented" (Luke 16:25). Torment in hell involves remembering all the opportunities one had to hear the Gospel and receive Christ, all the Gospel tracts left unread, all the Christians laughed at and rejected, all the warnings ignored.
8. "Every sin, every iniquity, every transgression, every disobedience, will come up some day, and will remain throughout all the ages to come. Men will remember the follies of this life and how foolishly they treated God’s offer of mercy" (H.A.I.).
9. It is ridiculous for some one to say that he loves God but hates his brother – "he is a liar" according to the Bible (4:19). One preacher said, "As spokes get nearer to the center of the wheel, so they get closer to one another. Thus, as we get closer to the Lord, the more we will love our fellow believers."
10. Love proves the reality of our profession. John summarizes it for us in 4:21 (cf. I John 3:23; John 13:34; 15:12).

CONCLUSION:

1. Years ago, there was a poor Indian woman in Arizona who was thrown out by her own people and they tossed her behind a clump of brush to die. She was old and very sick and it was mid-August, which in Arizona means extremely hot days and very cold nights. There she lay for three or four days without food or drink, suffering terribly when along came a missionary doctor who discovered her and brought her immediately to the hospital. There he did every thing possible to bring her back to health. With Christian love and his medical skills and with God’s help, she began to recover.
2. And as she lay there for nine weeks in the hospital she began to wonder and said to her nurse, "I can’t understand it. Why did this doctor do all of this for me? He is a white man and I am an Indian. My own people threw me out by the side of the road and a total stranger rescued me. I can’t understand it. I have never heard of anything like this before." The nurse herself was a Navaho Indian and was a Christian and said to her, "You know, it is the love of Christ that made him do that." "What do you mean by the love of Christ? Who is this Christ? Tell me more about Him." The nurse tried her best and then called for a missionary and then the missionary sat down and told her the Gospel story. Every day he would visit her and after a few weeks he felt she understood enough to get saved. Several Christians gathered around her hospital bed and prayed that God would open her blinded eyes and save her soul.
3. Again they explained to her the Gospel and then said, "Can’t you trust Jesus Christ as your Saviour, turn from the idols that you have worshipped and receive Christ?" She sat there quietly for some time and then her door opened and in walked the doctor who rescued her and brought her back to health. Her face lit up and she said, "If Jesus is anything like the doctor, I can trust Him forever," and she got saved.
4. This is what John is saying in 4:12. Jesus is like that doctor – He is the Great Physician. And if we want to see more souls saved, then we need to demonstrate this kind of love.