How to Know what Love Is (Part II)

One of the more popular game shows on TV these days is a show called Win, Lose, or Draw. Working against the clock, players try to draw pictures of words or sayings and have their teammates guess the correct answers from what they have drawn. You might say it’s a pen and paper version of charades.

The fun of the game is to see people’s often hilarious attempts to draw things in picture form that would be far easier for them to explain in words. It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in a game like Win, Lose, or Draw, a word can sometimes be worth a thousand pictures.

If you were playing such a game, I wonder how you would picture the word “love”. True, there are short-cut symbols you might use, such as a heart, which might do the job. But if you had to actually draw a picture of love, what would it be?

Love is a word which is hard to define, let alone draw in pictures. Webster’s Dictionary tells us that love is “strong affection or liking for someone or something.” I don’t know about you, but that definition doesn’t exactly fill me with rapture. You really have to experience love to know what it is. You need someone to show love in order for you to know love. Dictionary definitions of love are stale and dry in comparison with a living example of it.

In the book of 1 John, we’ve already seen that love is the mark of a true Christian. The apostle John told us, in ch.3:16-18, something about that love. The Bible says that love isn’t static, it is active. The kind of love we should have for others is a doing kind of love:

1 John 3:18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

Real Christians have love in their walk, not just in their talk. We learned that real love involves laying down our lives for the good of another person. Perhaps you’ll remember I told you a story about a leper who was willing to accompany a missionary on a dangerous journey through lion country. When he was asked what help he could possibly be in his weakened condition should they be attacked by lions, he answered simply “I have a life to give.” Real love is having a life to give, and giving it for the benefit of someone else.

We also learned in 1 John 3 that real love calls us not just to lay down our lives, but to lay aside our lives - to put aside our goals, our dreams, our agendas, our time, and even our emotional defences - in order to love others. How do you know whether you really love someone? How much are you willing to give up for them? There’s your answer.

But words, even the words of Scripture, are not enough to teach us about love; we need a picture, we need a living example, we need a model.

When I was doing my graduate work in education, I was introduced to the writings of one of the foremost educational theorists in America, a man named Morris Bigge. (I love that name… I always picture a man named Bigge as a thin, wispy little fellow who weighs about 90 lbs. soaking wet!) Morris Bigge knows all about the importance of modeling as a teaching tool. In his book, Learning Theories for Teachers, he writes:

Modeling… is the process within which a person observes the behavior of others… forms an idea… and uses that idea as information to guide his future behaviors. Most of the behaviors that people display have been learned, either deliberately or unintentionally, through modeling.

And God says to us in 1 John 3 that our model for love is Jesus. Unlike Cain, who hated his own brother and lifted up his hand against him…

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

Now we come to 1 John 4: 7-21 to see what else God has to say to us about love. In other words, in chapter four we’re going to get more! In chapter 3, we learned that an authentic Christian is a person who loves others. In chapter 4, the Bible tells us that an authentic Christian loves others because he knows God, and God is love.

This passage falls into four paragraphs, and I’ve put a label on each of them to help you follow along:

v. 7-12 Our Pattern How did God show us that He is love?

v. 13-16 Our Proof What proves that we know this God of love?

v. 17-18 Our Prospects What does God’s love mean for our future?

v. 19-21 Our Practice How should we live because of God’s love?

1. Our Pattern v.7-12 How did God show us that He is love?

Verse 8 contains three of the most important words ever written in human language: God is love.

We live in a world where babies are born addicted to cocaine, where terrorist bombs rip airliners out of the sky, where totalitarian governments use the starvation of their own people as a political tool. We are the heirs of thousands of years of “civilization” highlighted by the cruelty and inhumanity of man to his fellow man. The pages of our history books run red with the blood of people killed in hot hatred or cold calculation.

And to many people today, these three little words “God is love” have become a cruel joke, as irrelevant to us as the notion that the world is flat. They cry out “How can God be a loving God and allow all this?”

And yet, the answer to their question is that God allows it precisely because he is a God of love. Let me try to explain. When God created us, he gave us a will. He asked us to follow him, to love him, to have fellowship with him, but he left the decision up to us. He respected the free will he himself had given us. He gave us the dignity of being able to choose for ourselves.

God could have forced us to love him, but then we would have been nothing more than robots, and our love for him nothing more than the unthinking instinct of an animal. And that’s wouldn’t be love, would it? The measure of respect and love God has for us is that he allows us to decide, even if our decision results in pain and suffering and death. And when we go our own way, apart from God, it most surely does. So that’s why we have the addicted babies, and the Pan Am Flight 103’s. We have them because human beings have exercised their option to live life without God, and God has respected their right to do so.

But thank God, he has provided a way for us to get back to Him. Even though at one time or another, and in one way or another, all of us have given up on God, He has not given up on us. He continues to love us, even though we never loved him. And he took extraordinary measures, heroic measures to win us back to himself. What he did is given to us in v.9-10:

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Here is the divine pattern of love. God took the initiative to redeem us from our self-chosen position of separation from him by providing his own son as the sacrifice for our sin. But even in the rescue, God respects our right to choose:

John 3:16-18 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

God’s gift to us of Jesus Christ is the pattern for love. Our love for one another takes its energy and its shape and its form from God’s love for us. And, according to v.12, our love for one another demonstrates that God lives in us.

But how do you yourself know that God lives in you? Your love for others may indicate to them that you are an authentic Christian, but what indicates it to you?

2. Our Proof v.13-16

1 John 4:13-15 We know that we live in him and he in us, because 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. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.

When you become a Christian, God’s Holy Spirit comes to live in you. And, among other things, he bears witness with your spirit that you belong to God’s family. The Spirit is the mark of belonging. The Spirit lets us know that God loves us as a member of his family

Romans 5:5 …God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Romans 8:16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

The pattern of God’s love for us is the person of Jesus Christ. The one who points us to Jesus Christ, and who leads us to acknowledge Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is the Holy Spirit. His presence and ministry in our lives proves that we are God’s children.

3. Our Prospects v.17-18

God is love. That is a truth, as we have seen, that people do not readily understand or accept. And because they don’t, they feel uneasy about themselves and about life. From the savage in the Amazon basin, who lives in terror of offending his gods, to the socialite trying to come to grips with her anxieties in the Park Ave. office of her psychiatrist, people are struggling with feelings of inadequacy and fear. And it is because they have lost sight of what God is really like. They do not know that God is love. More to the point, they do not understand that he loves them. So they struggle with a sense of inadequacy, and of failure, and of fear.

Most people have a very poor concept of themselves. They are not happy with themselves, they can’t accept themselves. When they look in the mirror, they aren’t thrilled with what they see. This goes for almost everyone, from the homeless tramp in the Bowery, to the high-priced fashion model on Madison Ave. That, too, is because they have lost sight of the fact that God is love and that he loves them.

The only adequate foundation upon which we can build a proper view of ourselves as human beings is the biblical truth that God is love and that he loves us. He loves us unconditionally. There is nothing we need to do, indeed, there is nothing we can do to merit his love. He loved us while we were yet sinners. He loved us before we even gave him a thought. He loves us in spite of our weaknesses, our failures, and our sins. In spite of everything, he loves us.

And in that fact, we find the key to confident living. When we come into God’s family by receiving Jesus Christ as our Savior, we come into the sphere of God’s love. When we think of God, we don’t have to think of him as some cosmic boss that we have to try hard to please. As we look to the end of our lives, we do not need to be afraid of meeting our Maker, because we’ve discovered that our Maker loves us. That is what the Bible means when it says

1 John 4:17-18 In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. 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.

In Christ, our prospects are wonderful. God loves us. No matter what life throws at us in the meantime, we know that God will never stop loving us. No matter how badly we fail, no matter how few friends we may seem to have, no matter how alone we seem to be, God loves us. And because he does, we can face life and the future with confidence.

There once was a young British soldier who was fighting in the First World War. He had endured the nightmare of trench warfare: the bloody infantry charges where hundreds of thousands of men were mowed down to win a few yards of pulverized mud; the surreal horror of round the clock artillery shelling; the choking panic of mustard gas attacks. One day, after a particularly harrowing battle, the soldier crawled back into the trench he called home, took out a paper and pencil, and drew on the paper a sunrise, a cross, and the simple words, “God is Love”. That was his credo. That was what was going to get him through the valley of the shadow of death. The truth that God is love. The proof that God is love - the cross of Jesus. And the sunrise - the hope and confidence he had of a bright eternity with God.

Well, what practical difference does God’s love make in the way we live?

4. Our Practice v.19-21

Have you ever noticed that some people are givers and others are takers? There are some people who just seem to be looking for ways to contribute to your life and your well-being. When you’re with these people, you come away feeling refreshed and rejuvenated. You feel a better person for having spent time with them. But then there are others who leave you feeling as though they’ve sucked you dry - they’ve taken all you can give them and then thrown you away like an empty soda can. They make you feel that the only reason for your existence is to meet their needs: to make them feel loved, to make them laugh, to listen to them talk, to make them happy.

When you know that God loves you, you are free to love other people with no strings attached. Your needs for love are being met by God, so you can enter human relationships as a giver instead of a taker. And you can even put up with those difficult people who try to use you, because you’re not in it for what you can get out of it. You’re just interested in loving them the way God loves you.

An authentic Christian loves others because he knows God, and God is love. Is this truth making a difference in your life? J.I. Packer, in his excellent book Knowing God, asks some particularly pointed questions. Read quote p.115.