Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

This video is a little over 4 hours long, but is broken into 11 segments. This part is covered from 3 hour 7 minutes to 3 hour 27 minutes.

1 John 4:7-19.

We have already noticed that the apostle regards loving the brethren as one of the marks of those who are “born of God.” It is one of the ways in which the divine life in us makes its presence manifest.

But it is not enough to know that we are children of God and have passed from death to life; that in virtue of this new life and nature we dwell in God and He in us; that this knowledge is not a mere fancy of our mind, but an authoritative revelation, we need to understand the character of God’s love: that if God dwells in us it is in perfect love; and if we realize it not, it means that we are not perfected in His love, which is perfect in itself. If the portion of the epistle we are now to look at communicates such knowledge, it demands our undivided attention.

In taking up afresh the theme of love’s activity, the apostle begins by exhorting to it. He says: “Beloved, let us love one another” (ver. 7). He would have us exercise ourselves in the nature we have received from God. Instead of cultivating the old nature, he would have us cultivate the new. Instead of developing the life natural to us, we should develop the life divinely communicated to us. And, let us notice, the love which our apostle exhorts us to practise ourselves in is the love which is of God — not mere human or natural love, but of the new nature, which we have as born of God. New birth confers a new relationship with God, a relationship in which God is definitely before the soul, whatever the measure in which this is realized or enjoyed. Every one therefore who loves, who practises the love that is of God, is born of God and knows God; while every one in whom this activity of love does not exist at all, does not know God — is not in this new relationship with God (v. 8).

Love in God is active — He loves. Those who are born of Him have in them His active nature. He is love, and therefore loves. They love therefore because He loves. In saying this, I am not forgetting the hindrances in us to the manifestations of love. In God, love is unclouded. Alas, how clouded it is in us! Yet, even so, love’s activity in us is of the same kind as it is in God. While it differs (how much!) in degree, it is the same in kind.

Now the activity of love in God has been manifested in our behalf. God has shown it in sending His only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him (ver. 9). As naturally born, we are under sentence of death: we are appointed to death (Heb. 9:27), which implies abandonment to an eternal doom. To what wrath we are thus subject in our life of alienation from God! But God is love. In sending His only-begotten Son into the world He has manifested the activity of His love in providing a way for us to pass out of death into life. In the activity of His love, He gives us a new life. The incarnate Son of God put Himself under our sentence. Appointed to death as we were, with judgment coming after death, He made for us a way out of that position and condition into a new position and condition in which we are no more subjects of death and judgment, but of life in community with God.

Thus we have life through Christ the Son of God. He is the source and channel of eternal life to us. By Him we pass out of death into life — out of alienation from God into community with Him. God had this in view in sending His Son into the world. What activity, what display of love!

It should be remembered that this activity of love in God was manifested toward us “while we were yet sinners” (Rom. 5:8). We shall fail to apprehend the true character of God’s love if we forget this. His motive for loving was entirely in Himself, not in those towards whom He has shown His love. In loving, God is but acting Himself out, acting according to His own nature — manifesting Himself, manifesting what His motive is, showing the object or end He has in view. As desiring to take us out of death into life, He sent His only-begotten Son into the world in order to accomplish His desire: He has thus revealed His nature as active in love.

Another thing also needs to be remembered if we are to apprehend the full character of the love of God. To accomplish His purpose, to attain the end He had in view, to secure the desire of His heart, He sent the very best He possessed — His only Son. This is the measure of the love of God. His Son stands to Him in a relationship immeasurably dear — His priceless Treasure; but God willingly sent Him into the world that we might live through Him!

God having thus manifested the love that is in Himself, we are enabled to know it, and in what it consists. This the apostle does in saying, “Not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation concerning our sins.” The apostle thus guards us against making the love of God consist in our love of Him. Our love of Him is the fruit of His love. It is not natural to us; it is produced in us. A power outside of ourselves has acted upon us and caused in us love for God. But love in God was not caused by something without Himself: it is in Him abidingly; it is His nature. The motive to love is in Himself. To contrast love in God and in us, as I have been doing, is to emphasize the difference — an essential one.

It would be a serious mistake, therefore, to say the love of God consists in our love of Him. It would falsify its character. Thus we understand the apostle’s earnestness in guarding us against so serious a mistake. “Not that we loved God,” he says, “but that He loved us.”

But it is not sufficient, however, to say that God is love and that He loved us; it is important that the holiness of the love of God be safeguarded. It must not be thought that because God is love, sins are of small account in His eyes. If we say, God loves men, it must not be understood as implying that He overlooks their sins. That would be falsifying His character. Sin is abhorrent to Him. He cannot behold iniquity. His eyes are too pure for that (Hab. 1:13). As antagonistic to His nature, an infringement on His sovereign rights, He cannot possibly tolerate sin. But how can God’s love to men and His hatred of sin be harmonized? How can He maintain the holiness of His love? If He loves us, does He not violate holiness and righteousness? Such questions show the need of a fuller statement. The character of God in His love to us must be expressed: hence in saying, “Not that we loved God but that He loved us,” the apostle adds, “And sent His Son [to make] propitiation for our sins.“

The character of love in God is thus fully safeguarded. For, seeking man, seeking to win men from their sins is very different from visiting upon them the due of their sins. In seeking to reconcile men to Himself, it involved atonement, therefore. While it is important to insist on this, the great point in the statement we are considering is God’s propitious attitude toward men in sending “His only Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The very act of sending His Son for this purpose was the wonderful display of God’s gracious attitude toward men. It was the love of God exercised in consistency with holiness and righteousness. It was Love operating in its sovereign rights, and in harmony with His hatred of sin.

Such then is the nature and character of love in God. What human mind could have conceived of love like this? How could we know it unless it were revealed? Being revealed, it is known and enjoyed by the children of God as infinite and eternal, as having foreordained the Lamb before the foundation of the world as a sacrifice for sin.

If such is the nature and character of love in God, if He loves in such a fashion as we have been contemplating, it is fitting that we should love one another (ver. 11). In saying, “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another,” we must not understand the apostle to be teaching that loving one another is a mere duty. Duty it surely is; but that is not the spirit of the love which the apostle exhorts us to exercise. He urges us to a love patterned after that which we see in God. “We ought also to love one another,” means, then, the exercise of that divine life we have received — the practice of it toward one another. The measure in which we fail in this is the measure in which we fail to manifest the divine bond in the family of God.

What a bond! how precious a tie! One in which we are first of all in community with God Himself, and necessarily share with all who are the objects of His love. As in one bundle of life, they are necessarily dear to us, and we ought even to lay down our lives for them.

We now pass on to other subjects in this section. It will be remembered that in John 1:18 it is said, “No man hath seen God at any time.” That statement is repeated here, but not for the same reason or purpose. There, it is in connection with the revelation of God. No one has ever seen God to be qualified thus to witness to what He is — only the Son who has come from the bosom of the Father, who has personal knowledge of God, is personally acquainted with the perfections of His nature and character; He is thus a competent witness; He speaks what He personally knows — what He has seen and heard (John 3:32).

Here, in verse 12, the apostle is not thinking of the Son of the Father testifying among men to what God is, but of God being manifested in His children. The children of God, loving one another, are displaying in their measure the love that is in God. “No one has seen God at any time,” but if we love one another that is a display of Him. The moral nature of God is in us. This, as we have already seen, is an active nature. If it is present at all in a man, it is present in activity. Since it is the moral nature of God, it is proper to say God is dwelling in us. God dwells in us by a nature and life from Himself. It is His love that is in us. In loving one another, that love is having its normal activity in us. This is what is meant by the expression, “And His love is perfected in us.”

The apostle is not speaking here of some advanced Christians, as if there were a class of believers of whom it is not true that the love of God is perfected in them. He is speaking abstractly, as he so commonly does. He is speaking of what is characteristic. He is not thinking of degrees and measures, but of what is normally and characteristically true, and marks every child of God. It is as loving one another that the children of God manifest themselves as those in whom God dwells — in whom the love of God is in activity.

If then we are marked by loving one another, God has given us “of His Spirit.” He has given us a nature which is of His Spirit. We are born of the Spirit. By this nature God dwells in us and we in Him; and it gives capacity to recognize those on whom it has been conferred. By this activity of love we realize our dwelling in God, and His dwelling in us (ver. 13).

Along with this communicated nature there is the apostolic testimony that “the Father sent the Son, the Saviour of the world.” They had seen the Son manifested upon earth as having the glory of an only-begotten of the Father. Their contemplation of it had wrought in them a divine conviction. If “no one has seen God at any time,” they personally were witnesses that the Father sent the Son; they could say, “We have seen, and do testify.”

The world has refused Him who was sent to save it. It has rejected its Saviour, but the fact that the Father sent the Son to save the world may be appealed to as a manifestation of the love of God. If no man has ever seen Him, His love has been manifested. It cannot be said, No one has ever seen His love. Multitudes have seen it and live in it. All who have received the Saviour whom the Father sent, dwell in the love of God. Every one who inwardly submits to Jesus as being truly the Son of God, lives in the love of God. All such are born of God. A new life, a moral principle, is begotten in their souls in the power of the Spirit, by which God dwells in them and they in God (ver. 15). It is the characteristic fact, true of every one who in reality confesses Jesus as the Son of God. The degree of individual realization is quite another matter; the apostle is not speaking of this here.

Loving one another, then, characterizes, more or less, all the family of God, and gives capacity to know or recognize one another. Undoubtedly there are hindrances in all to any full capacity for this. The great point urged by the apostle is that we have received a common life from the Spirit, and with it a full and reliable testimony to the love of God by personal witnesses of its manifestation. Those therefore who have become participators in this life through faith in Jesus, are those who know and believe the love God has to us. God is love; they are in community with Him; they dwell in God and God in them (ver. 16).

But while love may be in us, in a nature perfect in itself, yet it is quite another thing to be perfect in our apprehension of it. It is of immense comfort to be assured, as the word of God does assure us, that in new birth we have received a new and perfect nature — received eternal life, which abides for ever — an imperishable life indeed! Many who believe this do not realize that it stamps us as being already (even while still here in this world) as Christ is. If the day of judgment causes fear, love (the apprehension of it) is not perfect with them.

There is need to consider well the apostle’s words, and to weigh them. First, let us notice a defect in our ordinary translation. Verse 17 reads: “Herein is our love made perfect.” Now our love, our response to the love of God, is never perfect. It is never what it should be. To say it is, would be very pretentious. No child of God, unless under some deceptive influence, would claim that his love for God is perfect. In marginal Bibles this very serious defect of translation is corrected. They give “Love with us,” instead of “our love.” We should read, then, “Herein is love with us made perfect,” which gives an entirely different sense. It is evident the apostle is not thinking of our love of God, but of the love which God has manifested.

Again, if the apostle speaks of the love of God being made perfect with us, it is plain he speaks of our apprehension of it. What is meant by this is what we must now consider.

Clearly it does not express the same thought as when we say, We are the objects of God’s love. It is a great thing to know that. But many know this, heartily believe it, yet manifestly have not been made perfect in love. Love, in the perfection of its nature, is in them as we have seen; yet it has not been made perfect with them; the apprehension of what it is needs perfecting. The apostle, speaking of the day of judgment, says: “Herein is love with us made perfect, that we may have boldness in respect of the day of judgment.” (The Greek preposition en often has the sense of “in respect of,” “in view of.” I so translate it here.) Have we “boldness” — peace, rest of heart — in view of the day of judgment? If so, then, according to the apostle, love has been perfected with us. But if this is lacking, if there is timidity in our souls as we think of that day, there is a defect in our apprehension of the Love that dwells in us. What then is the defect? The answer to this question is found in what immediately follows: “Because as He is, so are we in this world.” This is what is not realized where boldness in respect to the day of judgment is wanting. The thought in the minds of many is that they are to be made as He is, not that they already are as He is. How many a child of God shrinks from believing that now, in this world, he is as Christ is!

It is said, We are not where He is yet. Our bodies have not yet been changed and fashioned after His body of glory. Quite true; we are still in the body suited to this life — not yet in a body suited to heaven. Our present body is a sinful and mortal body. But the apostle is not thinking of the body; he is not occupying us with the thought of physical likeness to Christ. If he were, he would not say: “As He is, so are we in this world.” We shall be physically like Him when we are changed into His likeness, but until then our body continues to be a natural body.

In what sense then are we now as He is? Let us remember that the apostle is looking at the children of God as characterized by community of life with God. From that point of view, the thing that is true in Christ is true also in them. They are one with Him in the new nature given them — one with Him in life. The apostle thinks of us as identified in nature and life with Christ. As having the same nature with Him, we are as He is. As having community of life with Himself, we are already what we shall be in the day of judgment. Christ is not, cannot be, an object of judgment. As children of God, neither are we objects of judgment. The apprehension of this blessed truth, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, is what the apostle calls “Love perfected in us.”