A Perfect Love | 1 John 4:13-21 (3-10-2024: Mark Evans)

The sermon is based on 1 John chapter 4, verses 13-21. It discusses the idea that perfect love casts out fear. The main point is that God dwells in those who confess Jesus as the Son of God. The evidence of God's indwelling is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The sermon encourages active participation in liturgy and emphasizes the importance of confessing one's faith publicly. The speaker also mentions the significance of the gift of the Spirit and how it unites believers with Christ. The sermon concludes by highlighting the signs of the Spirit's work in one's life. Amen. He is risen. Well, if you have your Bibles, do grab them as we make our way to the letter of 1 John as we continue our sermon series through this wonderful epistle. And for this morning, we will be in 1 John chapter 4, covering verses 13 through 21. 1 John 4, verses 13 through 21. And these are the words of the God who was, who is, and who is to come. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him and He in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love. And whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. Because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. In this commandment we have from Him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. The grass withers and the flower fades. Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we praise You. You are the God who is love. It is Your very unchanging character to be love. We praise You that You have shown us this love. You have sent Your Son into the world to be its Savior, to be our Savior. And so we pray once again that You would grant us eyes to see, give us ears to hear. We humble ourselves before You that we are completely dependent upon You and Your Spirit's work to illuminate the truth. And so we pray that You would do so now, for Your namesake and for our good. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. You may be seated. Oh kids, have you ever met a lion face to face? Would you be afraid to meet a lion face to face? This was a question that Lucy was nervously pondering in the Chronicles of Narnia. Lucy's first thought was, I've never met a lion before and I wonder, will he be safe? And it was Mr. Beaver who was taken aback by the mere suggestion that this lion would be a tame lion. And so Mr. Beaver responded to Lucy and he said, who said anything about safe? Quote, if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan the lion without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or just plain silly. So he isn't safe, is he, asked Lucy. To which Mr. Beaver answered, of course he isn't safe, but he is good. He is the king, I tell you. And that is very much what John tells us this morning, that the lion of the tribe of Judah is not safe. He is to be feared above all other gods. And yet at the same time, he is also good. So good that his perfect love cast out fear. It's somewhat ironic that as we fear the Lord, we learn how to no longer fear. So John is going to help us this morning to understand how love and how fear go together. You might think of love and fear to be opposites or at least incompatible, but John has something to show us. And so we'll walk through this text in just two simple parts. We'll look at the perseverance of love and secondly, we'll look at the perfection of love. It's a very simple main point, and that is perfect love cast out fear. Perfect love cast out fear. And so just a reminder, where we left off last week, we left off with a stunning, remarkable truth that God abides, or you could say dwells, in His people. And just the sheer magnitude of that claim should make anyone pause and ask, well, how is that so? How can we know that God dwells within us? Surely you have asked yourself that question. How can I know that God dwells within me? And John is known for providing concrete, objective ways to answer those kind of questions. Indeed, let's skip for a moment verse 13 and jump to verses 14 and 15 because John says there, here's evidence that God indwells a person. And he says, and we have seen and we testify that the Father sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. Verse 15, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him and He in God. There it is. Very simple. God dwells in the person who confesses Christ. Let's say you wanted to prove that an apple tree is an apple tree. I'm not a professional botanist, but you could simply look and see, does that tree produce apples? If it produces apples, it is likely an apple tree. And the same way throughout the letter of 1 John, he has said that fruits like belief in Christ, love for Christ, by such fruits one can know God dwells in me. As Romans says, if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is the risen Lord, you shall be saved. And incidentally, you should know, this is why in our liturgy, every Lord's Day, we have a time set aside to confess our common faith together, out loud, corporately, publicly. It might be the Apostles' Creed, it might be the Nicene Creed, it might be Westminster Standards, it might be Heidelberg Catechism, but we always have a time set aside to confess with our mouths. I'm just going to guess that you're like me. You're not a fan of doing things for no purpose, going through the motions as they say. Well, here in 1 John is a great reminder that genuine faith always seeks to make public confession. And so as a church with one voice, we corporately proclaim vital truths that bind us together. Notice John begins verse 14 saying, we have seen, we testify. Most often John does not speak as a private individual, but as a we, as an us. Indeed what makes the body of Christ so awesome is that we are not united around our income, our backgrounds, our recreations, our race, our age. No, we are united by the faith once for all delivered to the saints. And so just to encourage you to approach Lord's Day Liturgy as a kind of war shout, as a kind of battle cry from the heart, that here we are as the armies of God in a muster formation publicly proclaiming the truth that saves us. Now just ask yourself, is there any other time during your given week that you do that? Think through your Monday, Tuesday, all the way to your Saturday. I'm just going to assume that on a given Wednesday when you're out to lunch with your co-workers, you don't say, hey, before we eat these ham sandwiches, can we confess the Nicene Creed together? No, and well, you shouldn't because this is what makes worship so awesome and so unique. And so let that inform how you participate in liturgy on the Lord's Day. You are not a passive spectator. You are an active member. So don't approach it as some kind of empty, dry, formal ritual. No, confess it wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. So that is John's test. And we've seen it already. It's this good confession that Jesus is the Christ. But now John leverages that confession. He ups the ante, you might say. And those are not just mere words that a man mouths, no, his astounding, audacious claim is that the person, the people who confess that truth is evidence that the God of the universe actually indwells that man, that woman, that child. That is quite a claim. And so let's go back to verse 13, and John shows us his math. He shows us how he got there. He says, by this we know that we abide in Him and He in us. Okay, John, how do we know? John says, verse 13, by the gift of the Spirit. That ultimately is how we know, by the gift of His Holy Spirit. I've shared this once before, but I'll do so again. I'll ask you what a great teacher once asked his students, and that is, if you had to choose one or the other, would you rather have been alive during the days that Jesus walked the earth? Now, just think, you could have sat there and heard Him teach, you could have heard His parables, you could have witnessed His miracles, you could have looked into His eyes, seen the countenance on His face. You could have heard His tone and seen the love of His person. Would you rather that or the humdrum life that you have now, with Jesus no longer here on the earth? And it may seem like the right answer, the right instinct is, oh, to be with Jesus during His earthy ministry is far better. But our teacher encouraged us, listen to the words of Christ Himself in John's gospel, and He said to His disciples, it is better that I go away, it is to your advantage that I leave you, because when I leave, I will send you another helper, the Comforter. And of course, Jesus was speaking of His reward, the gift of the Spirit, the Spirit who would take the things of Christ and make them real to us. And so Jesus said, it's better that I go away and pour out My Spirit. And John Calvin captured this idea, he went as far as to say that everything that Christ did for His people, His birth, His life, His passion, His crucifixion, His resurrection, all of that would be of no value, indeed worthless, if Christ remains outside of us. Because what is the Spirit's great work? But to take Christ and all of His benefits and apply Christ to us, uniting us to Jesus Christ. And so John says right here, by the gift of the Spirit, we know, you know, I really do belong to God. And so you're right to ask yourself such a question, do I have the gift of the Spirit? And let us not hyper-spiritualize that question, as though the gift of the Spirit is for super-spiritual Christians. No, all genuine believers receive the gift of the Spirit. This was the great promise of the prophet Joel, I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh, from the least to the greatest. And what John has shown us throughout his letter is here are some sure and certain signs of the Spirit at work in your life. Things like confessing Jesus Christ, walking in the light and confessing your sins, the keeping of God's commandments, the not loving of the world in tandem with your love for your brothers and sisters in the faith. You can see those are not things of the flesh, of our own doing, that is the Holy Spirit at work in us and through us. And so as we walk in the Spirit, we can grow in that confidence, as verse 16 says. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. That's worded weirdly. John does not speak in the way that we are accustomed to. Of course, John does not say we've come to believe in the truth, or we've come to believe in Christ, or to believe in God. No, the object of belief is a little unusual here. Here once more, he says, we've come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. It's as if John is saying, it's one thing, isn't it, to believe in God, to know some things about God, which are all well and good. But John presses you as if to ask, yes, but do you know the love of God? Even more pressing, do you know the love that God has for you? Not just does God love in general, do you know the love He has for you? I think a likely answer is, yes, I do, but help my unbelief. Because the ordinary Christian life is one of growing and knowing the love of God. Our assurance that the Father loves us, it is so often shaken, darkened, obscured, muddled. One season at its strongest, and the next it seems as if God's love has dried up. And Scripture is clear. There are many reasons for this. That, for instance, if we are walking in unrepentant, unconfessed sin, the love of God will be hid behind the clouds, as it were. You can recall the prodigal son, when he thought, I will return to my father, to be what? To be his hired hand, his employee, not his son, his employee, doubting the love of his father. Or sometimes, in seasons of tribulation, doubt, depression, discouragement from our trials, we begin to wonder, does God still love me? It is in those hard seasons of life that we wonder, where is the love of God? And certainly, too, there are some persons who are just prone to endless introspection. Their mind is a kind of unsolvable Rubik's cube, always working themselves further and further into doubt of the love of God. It's that, on top of it, the strategy of our enemy is for you to doubt God's love. Consider how Jesus was tempted by Satan, that Satan comes to him and says, if you really are God's son, it's nearly the same thing as saying, if God really loved you, would he make you drink this cup of his passion? Now, friends, that is a lot stacked against us. But here's the good news, while that may be stacked against us, we have the Holy Spirit in us, indwelling us to make known again and again and again the love of God in Christ. I remember back in the old days, before online banking, you would get mailed to you this monthly bank statement and you would open up the envelope and you could see your relative wealth or lack thereof. How much more is that the Spirit's work in our lives? The Spirit pledges, testifies, just how wealthy you actually are, that you have a love fiercer than death itself. And so it falls to us to walk in the Spirit, to keep in step with the Spirit, to pray for the help of the Holy Spirit. And the more we do that, it can actually echo Paul's great confidence in Romans. I suppose that is a question. Let's put it this way. Paul says, shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword separate you from the love of God in Christ? Would it? That is a gritty question, right? Make it real. Say the economy folds, the state turns tyrannical, persecution heightens, or just make it more every day. Say you are stressed, you're anxious to the max, you're tired with no end in sight, your bank account is dwindling, and your health is worse and only worsening. This is what Paul puts on the table. Could these things divorce us from the love of God in Christ? And his answer is, may it never be. If God is for us, who could possibly be against us? And the only way to know that is to welcome the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, who will bear witness with our spirit that we really are the children of God. So there is a word on the perseverance of God's love. Let us now look at the perfection of God's love in the second half. And John certainly speaks of love in a way I think most of us would not, certainly in a way that the world does not speak of love. He speaks of the perfection of God's love in light of the fear of God's judgment. Fear is one of the most powerful of things that we experience. Man can do things he could never otherwise do out of fear. My wife gave me permission to tell this story, but when one of our children was a baby, through some freakish events, that baby was accidentally locked inside of her vehicle on a hot summer day, Texas temperatures well above 100. And so all of the fear of a mother's care for her baby welled up inside of my pint-sized wife, and with just one hand, she pulled the door so hard that she ripped the entire door casing, the door handle, clean off the Suburban. It was this adrenaline of fear brought about this amazing feat of strength. I think it's true that our God has made us as creatures capable of fear. The question is not, will we fear, because we will fear, but rather, will we fear the right things in the right way? Fear is a lot like love. Love is not an unqualified good in and of itself, but only as we love the right things and in the right way. And so it is with fear, namely with the fear of the Lord occupying the highest position, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And so when John says perfect love casts out fear, no, he's not contradicting, he's not mitigating the fear of the Lord. John is wise enough to know there are different kinds of fear. And so in verse 17, he introduces how a particular kind of fear is incompatible with love, that love has no friendship with this kind of fear. Indeed, perfect love will even cast out this fear. And we are speaking now of the fear of punishment, a kind of servile, dreadful, cowering fear of God's punishment. It is man's primal fear. You remember, when Adam and Eve sinned, they experienced for the very first time what it was like to cower and to hide from their God. It's this fear of having to do with punishment. As the verse 17 explains a little more of the nature of this fear, John references there confidence in regards to, you see that phrase, the day of judgment. The day of judgment, sometimes called the day of the Lord, is in Scripture the most terrifying, fearful, dreadful day of all. Scripture gives us days of jubilee and days of salvation, feast days, festival days. But what stands out in terms of absolute, unqualified, fearful expectation is the day of God's judgment, because this is the day wherein God, in His holy justice, reconciles all things to Himself. This day of reckoning is to the great glory and honor of God. It shows Him to truly be the supreme judge and creator of all things. And in God's final judgment, He manifests Himself to be the ruler before whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord of all. And all people of all time are summoned to give an account to Him and lay exposed and naked and bare before Him. With all of man's secret thoughts, intentions, motivations, actions, clear sins and hidden sins are brought before His throne of judgment, and God makes good on His promise when He says, Vengeance is Mine and I shall repay. And we get just a glimpse of the sinner's terrifying and terrible response to God's day of judgment. And in God's holy anger, it's so awesome, it's so overwhelming that man cries out for the rocks and the mountains to fall upon him, for something, anything to shield him, to cover him from the great and awesome day of the Lord, whom no one can endure and the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. And so man is rightly afraid. As verse 18 plainly says, fear has to do with punishment. Man carries this fear within him. It looms large at times, sometimes it is suppressed. But man will do everything from mocking, denying, ridiculing, contriving, scheming, all just to tell himself a believable lie. Where is this so-called day of the Lord? There is no coming judgment, that's just a religious fairy tale to make people behave. And that fear shows itself in all kinds of pathologies. You see the elites today, for instance, working incredibly hard on longevity. There are some elites even boasting that now, man might be able to live for one thousand years. I think John would love to poke and prod and simply ask them, okay, why? Why do you want to live for so long? Is it truly because you love life, or perhaps you are just afraid of punishment? Because deep in the pockets of man's psyche remains this fear of death, and of facing his maker and the consequences of eternal punishment. And so we have the question, who can endure the great and awesome day of the Lord? Well there is one man who has endured it. There is one man who has undergone the day of the Lord, and he has come out the other side as it were. That's why as we go back to verse 17, John tells us that not only do believers not need to fear this punishment, as amazing as that is, John goes a step further, and he says that believers can even be confident in the last day. And you want to say, John, are you sure? I mean, maybe you are overplaying your hand here, but John says, no, here is my reason, verse 17, because as he is, so also are we. So just catch the mechanics of that. John says, as it goes for this person, as it goes for him, so it goes for us. Of course you know, this he that John refers to is Jesus Christ himself, that Jesus Christ underwent the day of the Lord. He suffered the full weight of God's punishment unto sin. He cried out as one stricken, smitten, afflicted by the holy God. This is why Christ as our propitiation from last week, absorbing the wrath of God in our place, is the most awesome display of love, that he underwent the day of the Lord so that his people would not. We've begun packing for a trip this week, and you know how this goes, you start filling up spaces with the stuff that you're bringing. And you know this, whenever you pack, you reach this certain point of, well, there's just not room anymore. It doesn't really matter what you want to bring, there's just no room left in the trunk or in the car. In the same way, so it is for the Christian when it comes to fear. When you pack in all the truth of the love of God in Christ, of who Christ was and what he did, there's just no room left anymore for fear. What possible space could you put fear? Fear of death? Well, Christ has conquered it by his resurrection. Fear of punishment? Well, Christ has paid it all upon the cross. Fear of being separated from the love of God in Christ? No, we have the Spirit as the down payment. So John can say in verse 18, this amazing truth, there is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. You just imagine, say you were to put Christ and demons in the same room. Those two will not coexist together, no matter what the bumper sticker says, right? They will not play nice. It will not be a good day for those false spirits. In the same way, if you put God's love into the same heart with fear, perfect love will drive it out. You can't have love and fear coexisting together. Now that said, John is wise enough to know that fear still finds a way, right? Just as the dog returns to its vomit, we still fall back into fear. The ordinary Christian life is that of maturing, growing in knowing the love of God. We know this on the human level. Say you just brought home your baby from the hospital and you think, I love this baby so much. And you do. Of course, every parent knows that as the years go by, as the decades go by, that love matures and matures and grows and grows. And that's John's idea of perfection. It's more like this completion, this maturation. And he states it negatively at the end of verse 18, that whoever fears has not yet been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. See, when we fall back into servile fear, what we're often doing in those moments is just forgetting the love of God. We're acting like a non-Christian in that particular moment, battling this spiritual amnesia where we forget the love of God that He has for us. You might remember when Peter walked out on water to the Lord Jesus. There he is standing on water, but then he has that moment of fear, and he sinks and he slips and he cries out, Jesus, save me. Now, it's easy for us, isn't it, to kind of armchair quarterback that situation and say, If He enabled you to walk on water, do you really think He would let you drown and die? Of course, we do the very same thing, don't we, when we fear. God's Word would say to you, if God did not spare His own Son to save you, do you really think He would let you drown and die? And so the charge to us is to have this love of God filled up and filled out in our lives, in us, that drives out fear. Well, lastly, practically, John gives us his favorite method to mature us in love, and that is, you can simply look around, other people. There's an expression that goes, I love the church, it's the people that I can't stand. John says, may it never be. One of the main ways God has appointed to mature us in love is the body of Christ, one another. And just as perfect love casts out fear, perfect love casts out hatred. Verse 20, if anyone says, I love God, but hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, can't love God whom he has not seen. This logic has a very simple elegancy to it. John is saying, there your brother is, he's right there, standing in front of you. You can see him with your very own eyes. God, of course, you cannot see. So between the two, it's easier or more observable to love your brother. Again, he's right there in front of you. You can serve him. If he's cold, you can clothe him. If he's hungry, you can feed him. It's very visifiable, very verifiable. And John says, if you fail at the easier task, the horizontal task of loving your visible brother, then you cannot claim success in the greater command of loving the invisible God. And that is a good sobering word for us, because how easy to deceive ourselves in this area. How easy it is to tell ourselves the story, oh, how I love God. Deep down inside of my heart resides this burning, glowing love of God. But it's so deep within me, it's so special, it's so secret that nobody can see it. But I assure you, it's really there. I feel it. And John simply says, no, if we do not love our brothers and sisters, then we are lying and self-deceived, because the commandments of God are one. They are a package deal. As verse 21 concludes, this is the commandment from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. You cannot hold the first table of the law and neglect the second table of the law. So there is a word on God's perfect love casting out our hatred, His perfect love casting out fear. And so as we close, let us lay up in our hearts two great uses of this passage. Firstly, fear God. Fear the Lord. The fear of the Lord is to be our very delight. And we have seen this morning just a glimpse as to why we are to fear the Lord. He is the almighty potentate. He is the all-consuming fire before whom all mankind will give an account. And so our fear of the Lord should be full of awe and wonder and trembling love that He truly is not a safe lion, but He is good. And so one way to think of that fear is that fear should move us in the right direction. Fear should be directionally accurate. Right? The right kind of fear is a true north that orients you or points you towards God. You think of how a compass is just pulled magnetically north. So too, a right and reverential fear of God pulls, even draws us towards Him. And so if your fear of God is moving you away from God or serving God in servile, cowering ways, then it is the wrong kind of fear. Put on the fear of the Lord. Secondly, relatedly, just as we are to fear God, John has also shown us this morning, to not fear God, or more precisely, to not fear God's punishment. We are to be confident in Christ unto the last day that He has saved us from the wrath to come on that final day. And that, of course, impacts how you live today, this very moment. For the Christian can know that whatever comes my way, whatever tribulation, need not be received in the fear of punishment. That thought that perhaps God is punishing me through this affliction, this suffering, this dark season of mine, that God is up there with His lightning bolt punishing me. No, friends, it cannot be. God is our Father. Christ is our Savior, and the Spirit dwells within us. And so, yes, discipline is painful for the season, but His favor lasts a lifetime. Discipline is painful, but it's not the pain of His punishment. It is the gains of salvation. And why? Just what John says, there is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. Let us pray. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, indeed, we praise You. You are the God before whom every man, every woman, every child is summoned to give an account for things done in the body, for thoughts thought in the mind. Everything that is revealed, everything that is hidden will be made plain before You. Who could endure the day of the Lord? And so, Father, we praise You that Your Son truly was born of woman, born under the law, that He suffered the just weight of full punishment, and it was love that sent Him there. It was love that held Him there. It was love that has been shown to us. It is not that we have first loved You, but that You have first loved us. And so we do pray, Father, help us to believe, to know more and more of the love that You have shown us, and help us then to go and do likewise, to love our brothers and our sisters and to adorn the gospel and glorify Your name. In His name we pray, and amen.