NOTES OF ADDRESS ON 1 John 4:7-217Beloved, 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. 20If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? 21And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also. (1 John 4:7‑21).
WHAT a place we are in, beloved brethren, a place into which He has brought us, at what expense to Him! As we sometimes sing, He has “left but the love” for us. It is a place of divine affections. There are very few affections in us. There are likings, but not loving’s, for with us there must be a cause for love in the object, but His was a causeless love. Even when we love Him, it is “because He first loved us.” God only knows the love of God. God only can measure the work of Christ. God only knows what sin is; we know it in some little measure.
A being of a higher order we cannot understand, unless we have His nature. We have it and love, for “God is love.” Every expression, every manifestation of it in us, is of Him. It is an answer to any doubting’s on our part, that we live by Him. “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.” Christ is our life. He turns our gaze away from ourselves — “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.” We are not to seek for the evidences of it in ourselves. Every evidence of it is outside myself — it is in Christ, or in my brother. I can admire it in him, but I am not to see it in myself. Have you not sought it in yourselves, beloved? And I have too, but we shall never find it. It will be our glory in heaven, that we are the expression of Another. Would it not be a pain to your souls to think of its being otherwise?
“He sent His Son a propitiation for our sins.”
The august foundations of this love are found in the cross. The cross and the glory go together. Christ deserved everything. He had great deserving’s, great merits, and God has acknowledged them. Is it not a righteous thing with Him to reckon those deserving’s to the vilest sinner who has faith in Him, and to bring him into the same place as His Son?
In the Gospel we are told, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him;” and here it is connected with the development of this love in us, “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us.” Communion is not a matter of attainment, or we could have no fellowship one with another. Some are growing a little, and others are but feebly developed, but the weakest may have it. “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God” (vs. 15). Have I known how to put “Jesus” and “Son of God” together? The One who was rejected here, and spat upon, was the Father’s delight.
Now we come to the highest point. What is it? “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.” He was the Father’s delight — we mustn’t take from Scripture — the eternal Son of God. Do I go about my business, my daily life, my talking’s, my eating’s and drinking’s, my sleeping’s, in the sense of the Father’s delight? I am a son of God, a child, related to God and to Christ. What a wonderful thing it is! ROCHFORT HUNT.