Sermon notes, Second Sunday After Epiphany

INTRODUCTION
John frequently exhorts his readers to love one another (2:10; 3:10, 11, 23), and speaks of God’s love for us (3:1). Here, he connects these two loves inseparably. The noun or verb “love” is used 27 times (3 x 3 x 3) in this chapter, and twice he addresses his readers as “beloved” (vv. 7, 11). This is one of Bible’s great passages on love.

THE TEXT
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love . . . .” (1 John 4:7-21).

STRUCTURE
Verses 7-11 hang together as a sub-unit in this chapter. Verse 7 begins with “Beloved,” and so does verse 11. Both include an exhortation to “love one another.” Within this frame, there are two small chiasms (vv. 7b-8, 9-11a):

A. Love is from God
B. Everyone who is born of God and knows God loves
B’. The one who does not love does not know God
A’. For God is love.

A. God’s love manifested
B. God sent His Son to give life
C. Love is not that we loved God
C’. Love is that God loved us
B’. God sent His Son as a propitiation
A’. God so loved us

LOVE ONE ANOTHER
John exhorts his readers to love one another, and roots this in the fact that love has its source in God. Love, genuine love, comes from God (v. 7). But that is not all. Love comes from God as an outflow of His own inner character. He is love, and therefore everyone who is “born of God” resembles Him (vv. 7-8). On the other hand, John says starkly that the one who does not love does not know God (v. 8) and is not born of God. Love is the necessary fruit of knowing God.

MANIFEST LOVE
God is eternally and essentially love because He is Triune. God lives in an eternal communion of perfect love and joy and peace, the Father loving the Son through the Spirit, and the Son returning love to the Father in the same Spirit. For John, this eternal and essential love of God is manifested in God’s actions, specifically in the fact that God the Father sent the Son to give us life (v. 9, 14). John clearly has the whole career of Jesus in view, not simply the incarnation. He refers specifically to Jesus’ propitiating death (v. 10).

We can draw several conclusions from this. First, incarnation is not some bizarre contradiction of God’s character. It’s not as if God-in-Himself is surly and unforgiving, while God-in-His-revelation is loving and kind. The incarnation is the manifestation or revelation of His character (not the sequence in vv. 8-9). You want to know what God is like, really? Take a look at the gospel. Second, John highlights the priority of God’s love over our love for Him. Love is not defined by our loving God, but by His loving us (v. 10). As John says later, we love Him in response to His prior love (v. 19); He is the Bridegroom whose passion awakens the love of the Bride. Finally, God’s love sets the pattern for ours, and that means that we are called to give ourselves for one another as God gave Himself for us (v. 11).