LOVE INCARNATE (4:7-11)

John’s focus on the spiritual forces behind heresy and division within the church, now switches back to healing the bruised and battered congregations. No doubt amongst those left, there were some who were sad to have lost good friends, and perhaps felt the issues could have been been handled better. Re-establishing love within the community was vital.

JOHN'S PREVIOUS TEACHING ON LOVE

He has ready spoken twice about loving one another. Firstly, in terms of love as obedience to Christ's command (2:8-11), focussing on grace and forgiveness within the Body of Christ - just as Jesus had taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Secondly (3:14-18), he spoke about the world's hatred (typified by Cain and Abel), and the need for sacrificial generosity to those suffering under persecution. (The context was the rising tide of persecution from Domitian's emperor-worship - cult centred in Ephesus itself.) Forgiveness, generous sharing, and solidarity under persecution are some of the hallmarks of God’s love within a fellowship.  

But now he goes on to speak of love’s origins in the Godhead, and of our love as the extension of God’s mission to redeem mankind.

LOVE WITHIN THE CHURCH

"One another" obviously refers to the believers within the community of the church. John is focused very much on love within the fellowship, especially as the outside world grew more hostile. He is echoing what Christ said, when facing imminent crucifixion: 'Love one another, as I have loved you'. John recorded that at the Last Supper, 'having loved His own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end' (Jn 13:1).

The way Jesus loved His disciples, was the model from which Paul derived his wonderful summary of the nature of love, in 1 Corinthians 13. Christ :-

• was inclusive: He chose simple fishermen, a greedy taxman, an angry zealot, impulsive Peter, skeptical Nathanael and doubting Thomas - knowing they'd all abandon Him.

• shared life with them as their rabbi: eating, sleeping, travelling together, sharing a common purse, facing criticism & hostility together.

• loyally defended them from others' judgements over issues such as sabbath-keeping, ritual purity, and eating with sinners.

• treated them as friends, teaching them 'everything My Father has shown Me', revealing His heart to them.

• was honest with them about coming failure, persecution and suffering; whilst also reassuring Peter that failure wouldn't prevent Him praying for him and restoring him.

• served them humbly, not only by washing their feet but also in practical things such as directing their fishing, healing Peter's mum, etc

• cared for them, noticing when they needed time out (Mk 6:31-32) or were hungry, or afraid; praying for their spiritual protection and for greater revelation (Jn 17)

• patiently forbore their failings when they lacked faith, couldn't grasp what He was saying, or became jealous of each others' status.

• gave them responsibility, sending them out to preach, heal and cast out demons, using the authority of His name - knowing that there was much for them still to learn.

Having spoken of love as a command of Christ, and as the essential antidote to the murderous hatred of the world, he now invites his readers to love one another as a way to both experience and manifest the love of God.

LOVE WITHIN THE TRINITY

Some commentators debate what this phrase "the love of God" refers to. Is it God's love for us? Our love for Him? Or His love expressing itself through us towards others? John is clear, that all agape love has its origins in the heart of God. We love Him because He first loved us (v19). His move to send His Son, was initiated before ever we loved Him: 'while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us'. When we love one another, it comes from being reborn of the Spirit and in living relationship with God the Father and Christ the Son.

Whichever relationship we are talking about, the love of God comes from Him. Though the stream of love may flow through us, the wellspring is in the heart of God. 'The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us' (Rom 5:5). Through our union with Christ, we can become 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Pet 1:4); a reality the Eastern Orthodox church calls 'theosis'. Or as Charles Wesley puts it,

'Love divine, all loves excelling, Joy of heaven, to earth come down. Fix in us Thy humble dwelling, all Thy faithful mercies crown'.

This love has operated continually from eternity past, within the Godhead. Jesus refers to it in His High-Priestly prayer: "You loved me before the foundation of the world... I have declared to (My disciples) Your Name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved me, may be in them, and I in them" (Jn 17:24-26).

At His baptism and His transfiguration, the disciples had heard the Father say of Jesus, "This is My beloved Son". His Father's love was evident throughout Jesus's earthly ministry: He said of His miracles, He "could only do what He saw the Father doing ...The Father loves the Son and shows Him everything He is doing" (Jn 5:19-20).

The essence of God's revealed character (His Name) is that He is love!

LOVE COMES FROM COMMUNION WITH GOD, AND GROWS DEEPER AND DEEPER

At first sight, verse eight seems to be simply the same thought as verse seven, but in negative form: but there's a subtle difference. Love requires us to have been born again (to have the seed of God within us) and to be in fellowship with the Father and the Son (v7b). But it is perfectly possible for someone to be born again, and yet be unloving: the problem is they are not abiding in Christ, not joined to the vine, not bearing the fruit of the Spirit.. Only in intimate, ongoing fellowship with God, will our hearts be channels of His love and grace.

We need revelation from the Holy Spirit, to more deeply comprehend the length and breadth and height and depth of the love of God. The life-giving power of the Holy Spirit can work this in us, and so marinade us in the love of God that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith (Eph 3:14-20). This is the state which John later refers to as 'perfected love': a condition where though our actions may not be perfect, our heart is perfect towards God.

GOD'S LOVE AND HOLINESS GO HAND IN HAND

But someone may say, "What about the God of the Old Testament? How can you conceive of Him being a God of love? Yes, He showed Israel faithful, covenant love. But what about all the Egyptian firstborn sons who died?"

Yet when Moses asks to see God's glory God declares Himself to be 'The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the childrens' children unto the third and fourth generation" (Ex 34:6,7). God’s attributes are all true simultaneously. He is light, and has no fellowship with darkness; indeed, He is a consuming fire (Heb 12:9). And yet He is also love, through and through.

'The Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ'. God's justice demands that sin be punished with death; but His love enables Him to justify anyone who puts their faith in Jesus (Rom 3:23-26), who is our propitiation.

PROPITIATION IS MORE THAN ATONEMENT

Propitiation is a controversial word, and many modern translations of the bible avoid using it. Whilst its root meaning has to do with making someone favourably disposed, it has overtones of appeasing divine wrath. By contrast, expiation means making amends for wrongdoing, but in a purely functional way, and atonement refers to sin being covered over and hidden from God's sight. (On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would cover the Ark of the Covenant with the blood of a lamb).

When the angels worshipped at Jesus's birth, their message was two-fold. Not only would the Christ-child bring men peace with God, but also God's goodwill towards men. Grace is much more than 'just' forgiveness! It's a state of living under God's blessing and favour, rather than under curse and condemnation.

Some hate the idea of propitiation, regarding it as ‘cosmic child-abuse’ for Father God to deliberately offer His Son as a sacrifice; especially if it's only necessary because of His wrath.. And indeed, child sacrifice is a horrific thing. In the Old Testament, people sometimes burnt their infants alive in a metal statue of the god Molech, a thing which God utterly abhorred. But Christ offered Himself willingly: there was no coercion by the Father, neither was Christ a victim in any sense. And God offered His only Son, not for any sin of His own, but for ours. Perhaps only Abraham and Isaac could have had any idea of what that would feel like.

THE CROSS IS SEEN AS THE CLIMAX OF GOD'S LOVE

We can only grasp the depth of God’s love when we appreciate what it cost Him to give His only child. He describes Jesus as ‘My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’. Not only was Jesus His only child, He was only-begotten. He had always been God’s Son, in the bosom of the Father from eternity past, sharing that deep joy of Father-Son communion. And at the Cross, that eternal fellowship was in a sense torn apart, so that our fellowship with the Father might be restored. 'God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life'.

'For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation' (Rom 5:7-11).

And yet, though Jesus felt that He had been abandoned, ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’. Somehow God Himself experienced everything Jesus went through.

This is the ocean depth of God's generosity towards us. This is the wellspring of our generosity, both of heart and of material goods, towards others.

JOHN SEES THE INCARNATION AS AN EVEN GREATER REVELATION

Perhaps surprisingly, John says the incarnation - not 'just' the cross - reveals the love of Father God (v9). When a tree is felled and its trunk sawn in two, the pattern of tree rings becomes visible; but the same pattern runs all the way through the tree.

How does the incarnation go beyond the cross, in revealing Father God's love to us?

• He gives His nearest and dearest, His only-begotten Son, that we might know Him

• Christ manifests God's invisible nature of grace and truth (Jn 1:16-18)

• His love reaches down to us, not demanding we ascend to Him (Rom 10:6-10)

• The incarnation expresses solidarity, not just sympathy (Jn 1:14)

• It manifests humble self-giving, not coercion (Phil 2:6-8)

• God seeks relationship, not just rescue (Jn 1:12)

• In Christ, God restores human nature itself (Heb 2:14)

How precious we must be to God, for Him to have given His only-begotten Son for us! He chose us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love (Eph 1:4).

Salvation was a means to an end, not an end in itself. God's eternal purpose was for us to be restored to that intimate, continual fellowship with all three members of the Godhead. Love is the image of God, and He is seeking to restore it in us.

LIFE THROUGH CHRIST

God's purpose was that we might have life 'through Him' (v9) - that is, Christ. Later, John says, "God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son, has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life" (1Jn 5:11,12). Unlike human reproduction, when a child grows into independence of its parents and 'cuts the umbilical cord', our new life is permanently bound up in Christ. He is the Vine, we are the branches. Unless we abide in Him, we wither and die. The image of God is restored through our union with Christ.

The early Church Fathers made much of the fact that Christ united the nature of God with the nature of man: body as well as soul. In so doing, He became 'the second Adam', the Son of Man. (The Hebrew word for man is 'adam'). When Christ came to earth, He came as the Son of God; but when He ascended back to the Father, He did so as the Son of Man. He created 'one new man', as St Paul says.

We are 'a new creation in Christ' (2 Cor 5:17). We are to 'put on the new man, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness' (Eph 4:22-24); to 'clothe ourselves with Christ' (Gal 3:27). 'Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will bear the image of Christ, the heavenly Man' (1 Cor 15:47-49).

This theme of our bodily union with Christ, got somewhat lost during the Reformation - perhaps due to its association with the idea of trans-substantiation during communion. If we can only partake in the Body and Blood of Christ through a special ritual conducted by an ordained priest, then the church becomes the sole channel of our union with Christ: which is not the case. But as Jesus makes clear in John 6, there is something more than just a memorial involved in 'eating His flesh and drinking His blood' (Jn 6:53-57).

The early Church Fathers used words like 'assumption', 'communion', 'transformation', and 'theosis' to try and convey this union of Creator and creature which Christ's incarnation brought about. Wesley melded this patristic 'take' with the Reformation's emphasis on the covenantal love and costly obedience of Christ's sacrifice. As a result, he taught that true faith involved relational love leading to restored holiness. And holiness meant practical, sacrificial love both within the fellowship and for one's unsaved neighbours.

LOVE IS AT THE HEART OF HOLINESS

'If God so loved us, we ought to love one another' (v11). Let us identify with those in need, especially within our Fellowship but also the suffering church internationally; seek to serve one another in humility; build one another up with grace and truth; and imitate Christ in all our pastoral roles and relationships. All the time, seeking for the love of God to be shed abroad in our hearts more and more, and to put on the new manhood Christ created.