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"Love Has Reasons"
1 John 4:7-11

Wednesday AM Bible Study
January 4, 2006

The greatest motivation for our love toward one another is a realization of God's love for us. Once we see and understand His love for us, we become motivated, by a godly sense of obligation, to love one another as He has loved us.

I. LOVE'S REASONS (vv. 7-10).

A. Because love is of God (v. 7).

1. This is one of the "tests" that John gives in this letter. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God; because the kind of love being described - the self-sacrificing love of Jesus - is a kind of love that the world cannot produce.

2. The reason this serves as a test is because love is of God. It has its source, not in man, but in God only (see John 13:34-35).

B. Because God is love (v. 8).

1. Even though this love is "of God" as its source, this doesn't mean that it's something that can be understood as distinct from God. There can be no such thing as real love apart from God because God Himself - in His essential nature - is love. He is not merely "loving"; nor can it merely be said that He "enjoys and recommends love". Rather, it is one of His own essential attributes.

2. "Love" didn't come into existence when we came into existence - as if God needed to create us in order to have something to love. He already experienced perfect love in His own triune being. The Father eternally loved the Son (John 3:35; 1 Corinthians 15:28; 2 Corinthians 13:14). Rather, we - as God's redeemed creatures - are welcomed into the marvelous overflow of the eternal love that was already there in perfection in His own being. (John 17:20-26).

3. The implication is that if we claim to know God and yet harbor hatred in our hearts for our brother or sister, we are fooling ourselves. How can we hate, and yet have a relationship with Him who is love (1 John 4:16)?

C. Because God loved us (vv. 9-10). Note the nature of this love:

1. This love was profoundly sacrificial (v. 9). It involved the greatest possible sacrifice on God's part toward us - that is, His own precious Son. He held nothing back for us.

2. This love was completely undeserved (v. 10a). God wasn't motivated to love us because we were lovable. Rather, we were spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1), and could do nothing to merit His love (Titus 3:5). He loved us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8).

3. This love was wonderfully practical (v. 10b). In it, God provided His own Son to be the "propitiation" for our sins - that is, that which satisfies His righteous anger toward us. No amount of good works could have ever done this; because we who had sinned against Him and deserved the death penalty (Romans 6:23) would have been the ones trying to do the works. Someone had to die because of our sins; and God gave His own Son to be that someone (1 John 2:2).

II. LOVE'S RESPONSE (v. 11).

A. Love's response presupposes that we know that God has so loved us.

B. If this is so, then we are obligated by His love to so love one another.

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