“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the World. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God. is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the Day of Judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us.” —1 John 4:7-197Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 12No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. 15Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. 16And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. 17Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. 19We love him, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:7‑19).
THERE are four points in this Scripture to which I will draw your attention briefly, because they are all the fruit of this wondrous love of God.
First notice the connection between the ninth and tenth verses. The love of God in the ninth verse gives us something we have not got; the love of God in the tenth verse takes away something we have got, and which we are only too glad to get rid of, when once we are aroused to think about it. The ninth verse gives us the positive side of the Gospel; the tenth verse gives us the negative side.
The ninth verse gives us life, eternal life.
God says, You have not got it, and I sent my Son into the world that you might get it. In the tenth verse God says, Though you have not got life, you have got sins, and I sent my Son into the world to take away those sins.
If we had written those verses, we should very likely have put the tenth verse before the ninth, because the first thing we think about is our sins; but the first thing God thinks about is revealing His own heart by the gift of His Son.
“In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” Eternal life is the gift of God. What sort of life have you by nature? A transitory life; and, what is more, a forfeited life! You may think you are a living man, but God looks upon you as a dead sinner, for your life is forfeited; and in your case, my reader, the day in which you must pay the forfeit may not be far off.
Look around you, death is everywhere. What a world of broken hearts, and widows’ weeds, and children’s mourning, and open graves, and sorrow, and trial, and care, this is; and in it, what a blessed thing it is to have to do with a Living Man, who is alive for evermore, and who says, “Because I live, ye shall live also.”
What did God send His Son into the world for? To give you the very same life that Christ has. “Which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.” In the person of that Man of Sorrows all God’s heart comes out.
God “sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” He comes to give you what you have not got—eternal life— “life through Him,” not life through your prayers, or life through your tears, or life through your good works, but “life through Him.”
Thank God for that.
What is this eternal life? Life in the Son of God. Invincible life, invulnerable life, rock-life, resurrection life, life that is on the other side of death and judgment. Would not you like to possess that life? “Yes,” you say; “what can I do to get it?” You can do nothing; God offers it. What is the first thing you do when a person gives you a gift? You take it. Have you taken eternal life, the gift of God? If not, take it now. The first thing God does is to offer you life through Christ. Does He live? He does. Do I live? I do; and what is more, I can never lose that life. When could I lose my life? Only the day that Christ loses His. And when will that be? Never, never! I cannot lose this present life, for it is lost already; and, I cannot lose the life He has given, for I “live through Him;” it is His own life.
Look up, then, anxious, troubled soul, and see this precious Saviour, and drop at His blessed feet, not like John, as one dead, but like Mary, worshipping, loving—bathing them with tears if you will, but clinging to Him.
You who have known sorrow, bereavement and death down here, what a blessing for you to know you have One to love who can never die!
What a comfort to know that I can never hear those words, “They have taken away my Lord out of the sepulcher, and I know not where they have laid him!” I know where He is: He lives to die no more. Death hath no more dominion over Him; and He says to me, “Because I live, ye shall live also.”
Is not your heart drawn to this blessed one?
Does it not say, “Yes, I see it is all in Christ; He has died that I might live through Him, and the tendrils of my heart may twine round Him, and there is no fear that that dread, grim monster Death can come in and rudely break those tendrils, or snap the cord that binds my heart to Him asunder”? The link of communion between Him and me may be broken in a moment; a foolish thought will snap that; but the link of eternal life can never, never be severed, either in time or in eternity. “Because I live, ye shall live also,” is His word to me. Thus, you see, the first thing I get is
LIFE, ETERNAL LIFE IN CHRIST.
“Herein is love, not that we loved God.”
The Gospel begins by sweeping you and me clean off the scene. God loved the world, Christ died for sinners, “Herein is love.” People like the law, because it talks a good deal about themselves: You shall do this, and you shall not do that; but the Gospel puts an end to me, utterly ignores me, and brings in Christ—what He is, and what He has done—instead. The positive side of the Gospel gives me something I have not got, gives me eternal life, and then the cross puts away what I am only too thankful to get rid of, my sins. Christ came into this world to give life, and then He died on the cross to put away the sins that separated me from God.
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” This propitiatory work is done; God is satisfied, yea, glorified, about sin and the consequence is, I have
“PEACE WITH GOD, THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.”
Now if I have eternal life, and my sins are all cleansed away, so that I have peace, there are two more things still remaining for me. The next thing God does for me is this, He gives me His Spirit.
Yes, when you believe the Gospel, not only do you get eternal life from the love of God, and get rid of your sins as the fruit of the work of Christ, but you get the Holy Ghost, and that is
THE POWER OF A CHRISTIAN’S WALK.
Thus you see, in the ninth verse, you get life; in the tenth verse you get peace, because Christ is the propitiation; and in the thirteenth verse you get power to walk, “because he hath given us of his Spirit.”
But, “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” Therefore, you see, it is a solemn thing to profess to be a Christian, because the moment I take up the ground of being a Christian, I take up the ground of being one who is to show God to this world. I am to show what God is like, because I know Him and possess Him, to a world that does not know Him.
Then there is another thing still connected with this love of God to us. “Herein is love with us made perfect, that we may have boldness in the Day of Judgment; because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out fear.” The Holy Ghost says, When the love of God comes into your heart, fear goes out. Fear and love cannot occupy the same place: as long as you have fear, you do not know His love for you perfectly.
We Christians should be as happy as God’s love can make us down here, always looking on to Christ’s coming as the next thing, to take us to be with Him up there. Fear is a weed which has no proper foothold in the garden of God: His love casts it out.
What, then, does His love give to you who trust Him? Eternal life from God, peace with God, because all in is gone, power likewise from God, and
BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT,
because the One who is going to be the judge by-and-by is the One who bore my sins in His Own body on the tree, the One who is my life and my peace now, the One whom I shall be like then, and the One who represents us before God now, for “as he is, so are we in this world.”
The reason why I shall have BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT is, because the One who has taken away all my sins is to be the Judge, and when He is the Judge, I shall be there with Him, and like Him. What room, then, is there for fear? None. The Lord give you to know this love now, and to be a manifestation on this earth of that eternal life which is Christ’s own life, and which He has given to you who believe in His name.
W. T. P. W.