This is Love-1 John 4:10

” This is love Not that we loved God But that he loved us And sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” 1 John 4:10

I. This is love

A. John makes the point of this verse very clear, he is trying to give us a definition and understanding of love.

B. Now in our minds, when we hear the word love, many different kinds of ideas and thoughts and feelings come to mind. We throw the “love” word around all the time. To help clarify this confusion, let’s see how we think of love in different contexts.

1. When we use love in terms of objects: (i.e. food, shoes, clothes etc..)2. love and activities: i.e. I love basketball3. When we use the word love to human relationships:i. sibling, may not like your sibling, but you love themii. describe friendship we may think of our best friend. We may think of the times we spent together, the things we’ve been through and the secrets we shareiii. When we use the word love to describe our relationship with our parents we may think of respect and obedience and for some gratitudeiv. When we use the word love to describe the feelings we have towards a special someone girl or boy our minds may fill up with romantic fantasies. We think of love or marriage or a special love song that captures our emotions.

C. In each of these different contexts when we think of love, we think of love in a different way. When we use love to describe our relationship to a certain food it is a bit different then using the word love to describe our relationship with a friend. And when we use love to describe our feelings towards a special boy or girl its quite different then when we use the word love to describe our feelings towards our parents or our best friend.

D. So you see that love can mean many different things in different contexts and can take on many different forms.

E. The thing we are to consider today is what is love when it comes to my relationship with God? Here John gives us a definition of love, but it is not in the context of our relationship with food, or with hobbies, with inanimate objects or even with people. He defines love in the context of our relationship with God.

F. This is what makes this verse difficult. All the concepts we have about love are often restricted to the relationships we have with people or things around us. Sometimes we take these same concepts of love that we apply to people or things and apply it to God. This doesn’t work.

G. John here is describing a love that is quite different, because what he is really attempting to describe is the love of God for us. This love is a great mystery, it is profound and beyond our understanding. So before we begin let us ask God to help us understand and know his love for us that surpasses knowledge. Ephesians 3:18-19. Ask the Holy Spirit to teach us

II. not that we loved God.

A. So the first thing John does in describing love in the context of our relationship with God is by declaring what it is not

B. And here John says clearly, “love [is] not that we loved God”

C. This is difficult to understand because all our lives we are taught we should love God. So what is John saying?

D. john is describing our relationship with God from two perspectives. One perspective is us looking at God and “loving” him and the other perspective is God looking at us and loving us.

E. John is saying that our relationship is not about us loving God, that’s not where the love comes from that keeps us knowing God. John is saying love comes from God who loved us and sent us Jesus.

F. And think about this, what is our story to others and to the world? Is our story that we love God and are good people and so God has blessed us and given us many things, because we made right decisions? In this story who is the hero? This story says that we are the hero’s that we saved ourselves and that God rewarded us.

G. Our story as Christians is the opposite. Our story is that we are broken and selfish people. We made all the wrong decisions, but the emphasis is that despite this sin in us, God loved us. In this story Jesus is the savior and he receives the glory.

H. Or consider this, in the kingdom of God will we be patting each other on the back and congratulating ourselves for all the hard work we did and the sacrifices we made? No, we will be glorying in Jesus and the sacrifices he made and the love he demonstrated for us. Every knee will bow and tongue confess to Jesus

I. At the end of the day what is our testimony? That we love God so much? Or that he loves us so much? Let us look at how different our relationship with God looks like when we live it thinking that we love him, vs when we live our lives knowing that he loves us.

J. There are many traps we fall into when we begin to think that the Christian life is all about us loving God. I would like to suggest a few here1. We define love for God by rules. If we think our relationship is mostly about us loving God, we have to ask ourselves what it means to love God. When we think about this often times we start to define love for God by a system of rules, of do’s and don’ts. So we think: I love God when I am reading my Bible, going to church, praying, being nice to people. I love God when I am not cursing, not lusting, not experimenting etc… Jesus is not about following rules, but about following Him.2. When we live by rules we can become vulnerable to either becoming self-righteous or full of despair. The Pharisees learned how to live by the rules, but Jesus did not praise them for living by the rules. He cursed them. He cursed their pride and their smugness, he called them hypocrites, blind guides and sons of hell. This person fails to see their sin. They didn’t need jesus they could save themselves3. Some people who try to live by the rules find they are not so able and give into despair. They may begin to think that God hates them, that God is angry and doesn’t want anything to do with them until they learn how to shape up. This person sees their sin, but fails to see that God is love.4. Behind all of this if we think we must love God we may begin to think that it is our will and effort that brings us close to God. When we are blind like Pharisees who helps us see? When we are broken in despair who heals? Jesus gives sight to the blind, Jesus heals the broken. It’s his love for us, not our will or strength that brings healing. (i.e. New year’s resolutions)E. In every human relationship or any relationship we have with objects or activities there are elements of give and take. I give you my time, I share with you my money, I give you my trust and you in turn give me something back.When we think this way with our relationship with God, we may think I am giving God my time I am sacrificing my desires, he has to give me what I want (self-righteousness) or we may think I have not been giving God my time, I haven’t been living right, he must be angry with me.F. This is where our relationship with God is unlike our relationship with anything or person in this world. There is nothing you can give to God that is of worth to him. In Isaiah it says, “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags in his sight.” The things we are most proud of, our greatest accomplishments are in God’s sight filthy rags. Why? Because even the good things we do are tainted by our selfishness and our sin.We can see this in many cases, sometimes we give a gift and get angry if we don’t receive in returnSometimes we make a sacrifice and in doing so expect to be rewarded.In our relationship with God there is nothing we can give him.As long as we think we can give something to God or deserve to receive something from him, we will never understand his love for us.F. I said earlier our relationship with God is not about us loving him, but Him loving us. So now let us consider the last part of this verse, that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Let us consider this relationship from God’s perspective. This is what it’s all about that he loves us.

III. but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

A. Our relationship with God is established in that God loves us.

B. But the gospel teaches us that we are sick people, selfish in all our ways, even selfish in our pursuit of God. There is nothing lovable about us, but still he loves us. When we see that we don’t really love God and that we can’t love him no matter our best efforts, we begin to understand how beautiful it is that despite all that we are and all that we fail to be, He still loves us.

C. This is our story that He loves us. Our praise isn’t for ourselves and how hard we work and how spiritual or moral we are. Our praise is for Jesus that when we didn’t deserve anything he loved us and went to the cross for our sins, in our place.

D. God manifested his love for us by sending his Son. Jesus came into our selfishness, he came into the poverty of our souls. He shared in our brokenness. And he became broken for us, so that in him we could have hope for healing.Jesus shared in our humanity, he felt temptation he saw the bitterness that death bringsHe was born into the lowlest of lows, lost his father at a young age, lived a life of suffering, betrayed by his closest friends, cursed by those he had compassion for and mocked by those hw was dying for and in the end praying for their forgiveness.

E. In the relationship between people there always exists mutual debt. Sometimes I sin against you and you sin against me. To live in community or as family we are always struggling and praying to love and forgive one another.

F. However relationship with God is different. Because we have a debt to God that we cannot atone for and God has never sinned against us. The debt is not mutual. It is one sided and the debt resides on our side.

G. Sometimes we try to make up for this debt of sin in our lives by emphasizing the importance of loving God and trying to live moral lives, but the truth is that none of us can atone for our own sins. None of us can heal ourselves of our own brokenness.

H. And this is what love is, that despite this debt God chose to love us, to share in our brokenness to take our brokenness upon himself so that we could live new lives,

I. When we live life knowing he loves us it is very different then the person who lives thinking he must love God. The person who lives thinking he must love God, is always afraid and never certain of whether God loves. His heart can be either bloated with pride or deflated with a sense of obligation. Such a person is not free. But the person who knows he is loved by God in Jesus is free. He knows he’s not perfect but that Jesus is perfect, he knows that he is not worthy, but that he is loved, he knows that he makes mistakes, but that Jesus forgives him for each one. When we know he loves us, our hearts are free to love him in return. Just like falling in love, there are elements of joy, anticipation, excitement and passion when we consider Jesus’ mercy to us. He is confident in knowing that nothing can separate him from the love of God in Jesus.

The Christian life is not about rules, its not about you loving God. This is not our story. Our story is not that about what we do for God, but what he does for us, not about how we love God, but that God loves us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. When we created a divide that we could not overcome, God sent his Son Jesus to the cross to conquer that divide and to redeem us from our selfishness, to live as his people. And so we glory in Jesus. We worship Jesus and we seek to exalt Jesus, because we know our salvation is not from ourselves, or our goodness. Indebted to his grace we love him and in his love we find freedom to live new lives, through His love. Let us pray based on Ephesians 3:18-19 one more time, to know this love that surpasses knowledge.