Reading
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
First John chapter 4 and beginning with verse 7.
Beloved.
Let us love one another.
Love, this is God, and everyone that loveth is born of God.
And knoweth God.
Neither loveth not No, it's not God.
For God is love.
In death 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 love 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 has 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 and us, because.
He has given unto us His Spirit.
And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
Whoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
And we have known and believed the look that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
Herein is our laws 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 casts without fear because fear, death, torment. He the fearest is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. If a man say I love God and hated his brother.
He is a liar, or he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen.
How can he love God, whom he hath not him?
And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God, loves.
His brother also.
Or any other animal.
Cannot understand us.
Human beings.
It has a very limited capacity and yes, man can have some very, very limited fellowship with an animal.
But an animal can enter into our true extent of our feelings or our thoughts.
It's not. It doesn't have our nature.
And when we were born into this world.
As creatures of God, we had very limited capacities.
To know God.
More capacity than an animal because we have a spirit which makes us God conscious. An animal that doesn't even know God exists because it has no spirit. But we are conscious of God even as born into this world. But the way we were born, in the condition in which we were born, we really didn't have a capacity.
To enter into the heart and thoughts and feelings and purposes of God.
But what's brought before us in the verse where we started is everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.
It's the life, we call it eternal life in other places in Scripture, when I put my trust and you put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, God at that moment in time gave us a gift.
The gift of eternal life.
And at that moment in time, we got a capacity to know God that we never had before.
Because we received a very divine nature.
God is love, and from that moment on within us dwells that same capacity, that divine life.
That is love in its very nature. And so as it says in the verse, everyone that loveth is born of God. That is everyone that has this kind of love, not natural love that we're born with, but the love of God in us, that divine love. The only way you can have it is if you are born.
00:05:21
Of God. Without it you don't have it and.
And so it says in the end of the verse, knoweth not joy.
You don't know God if you're sitting in this room and you don't have the gift of eternal life. You don't have a nature capable in you of knowing God as He wants you to know Him.
That is, to be able to enter in to his own heart, his own thought, his own way of looking at things, feeling things.
Where God is love. And so it's a wonderful thing for us to have that blessed life.
That was spoken about in the to the Lord in the first prayer.
Either half the Son, it says in the next chapter, either half the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son hath not life.
Just that straightforward. If you have the sun that we have had before us today, you have life. But if you don't have the sun for yourself, if you cannot confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.
Then you don't have life and you don't know God.
Actually we look for something in the object.
To generate withdrawal, health and love from our hearts. But.
There was nothing enough naturally to.
Bring forth the love of God toward us in our deep need.
In our lost condition, it was the source of that love is in the heart of God.
And so.
That love didn't have anything in the object.
To stimulate it and that's the love that we have now.
All right.
And so we can love the person that actually may be unlovable.
And even obnoxious.
We may be that way ourselves.
But divine love doesn't look for something deserving or worthy in the object.
Source is the heart of God, and so the brother mentioned is the activity of the new nature in the belief.
Divine nature that partake of the characteristic of God's nature which is divine love. You have to be seen developing the official love and righteousness light.
The nature of God, in fact, in the book, in the writings of John.
This is the family that is in question from the body of Christ.
The thought is.
Eternal life, the very light of the Lord Jesus it was.
40 Manufacturing is a marvelous pathway down here in the Gospel of John especially.
In every act and word that you have been reminded. But in first John, we have that the same divine life acted in the believer we have in that life. It should be manifest. Now this is the characteristics of that life.
Love, life, righteousness, obedience, obedience.
Those are all the characteristics of the divine light and.
Also here exhorts us to manifesto.
Expectations are on the grounds of what we already possess, not.
Trying to secure the thing by our own efforts is what we now have a whole nature and a divine nature that loves even those that.
Naturally not the raw health power affect the divine love, love those that are undeserving. That was the character of God. Love to watch wasn't was it not nothing in US but marriages.
Would deserve that Marvel smoking that we're going to like.
00:10:03
If a person is alive, there's generally evidence of it.
Mr. Death, there's evidence of that as well.
And so if we.
Are not dead toward God, but if we are alive for God, there will be evidence seen of that life.
And here in this 4th chapter.
The Apostle John is writing to his brother, and then he's saying, brethren, love.
The real evidence of the life in you is loving each other.
And so if that life is really enough.
There will be seen in our behavior and what's in our hearts.
Toward each other.
I want to give a little more emphasis to what John just said to about.
It doesn't require that the person be very lovable or lovable at all.
God demonstrated his his love toward us.
When we run godly, that is the love that is in the heart of God for us was toward us when we were not just unlovable, but absolutely.
Ungodlike against God in our very nature, in our very life. And so that's the love that he exhorts us to have toward each other. I, I remember hearing, and I'm not going to try to quote it exactly.
But I'll paraphrase it, but there was a meeting like this quite a few years ago, and the brethren were talking about this subject of love. And it went on for quite a while. And it's an easy in some ways something to say something about. But everyone was sort of brought up short when finally one brother said, he said, brethren, the measure of divine love that's working in your soul.
Is the love that you have.
Toward the most well, he said. Cantankerous and prospering, but the most unlovable person you know.
In other words, if you think about those who you call brethren.
And we'll just confine it to that, not just to your next door neighbor or somebody at work, but just for the moment think about somebody that.
Well, they're not very lovable to you, but the measure of love working in your heart and your life is the amount of love you have and demonstrate towards that person.
Don't take somebody that you might call easy to love and have virtues that are lovable.
No, that's not that might be just what the Bible calls brother-in-law natural love and love towards somebody that's lovable or we have a relationship with that we a friendship. But if God's love is is a love that does not, as John said, depend on what's in the person being loved. Want to just make this comment as well?
In Ephesians chapter this is religious I guess brothers but sisters old be happy for it I think.
But in John in Ephesians chapter 5, it says husbands.
Love your wives as Christ also loves the church.
Gave himself for it.
You, if you're a Christian husband, have a greater responsibility to love your wife.
Then your next door neighbor or somebody at work who's a husband and is not a believer.
Because the standard for you and me is to love our wives as Christ loved the church. What kind of love was that? Was the church lovable and lovely?
No, it wasn't.
And when he gave himself for it.
But it is to love your life with a divine kind of love that does not depend in itself upon the response.
To draw it out.
But if that love is there, it will draw the response. When the heart is of one that has that same love in them. You also do this divine law which was naturally. We are such selfish teachers because of our own.
00:15:12
Comfort and our own reputation and so on. But.
With the Lord Jesus.
Was a love that led him.
Lay down right for us.
That says walk into love as Christ also has loved us and has given himself for us and offering an effective life. He's gone for a sweet smelling savor. There was the love demonstrated to it.
Bias degree in the gift of himself.
It was a sacrificial love.
Led the Lord Jesus to the cross of Calvary well.
That's what we demonstrate as well.
Relationships one with the other, the assembly. We are thrown together very close.
In our fellowship, which is a wonderful thing, but the results of the danger of the differences coming in encryptions and so on.
Like First Corinthians chapter 12 is the.
Machinery First Corinthians chapter 14 is the machinery in action. The 12Th chapter the gifts that the Spirit of God has been parted.
In the assembly, who's won a place to be fulfilled and in chapter 14, these eagles gifted in activity the assembly, every brother and sister I've got response to that privilege, that responsibility. Every man has received the gift, even though minister the same one to the other as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
But then in between?
Chapter 13 very important.
The oil that lubricates.
That relationship, those gifts must be exercised in love. That's just your first 13. Very important that we we have that love. You know, our hearts and souls don't try to love the Lord any more than you do.
Into our own hearts and we have to acknowledge it.
How often they are cold, unresponsive to the Lord's love, my needs, and probably everyone could say that.
But as we were often reminded as the young people sit down and constantly the love of God towards you and it will warm your heart up. The love of the Lord in giving Himself for us. His patience is great with us all along the pathway. Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. What kind of decisions were they?
They forsook them and fled, and they didn't get so much fidelity.
We got the acknowledge to them as those that continued with him in his.
Temptation.
The Lord's love never grew cold toward those disciples.
Toward the nation of Israel. In fact, you find in Scripture the expressions of God's love to His people are at times when he would least expect it, like in Jeremiah.
31 I think it is. I have loved me with an everlasting love. That was just at the time when God had to take the nation of Israel into captivity because of their unfaithfulness and idolatry. At that very time the Lord said, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.
Even at the end of the wilderness journey.
The verse in Deuteronomy.
Not quoting it exactly correct but.
Yeah, he loved the people. All his Saints are in thy hand. At that time when they had been so unfaithful throughout that that 40 year period, the Lords love toward them had never changed. It was still the same.
At the end of Malachi had just before the Canon. The Old Testament Canon was closed before the 400 years of silence.
And.
We read the first chapter of Malachi and we see the sad condition in which the nation was They were questioning the Lords love to them. They wouldn't open the temple doors unless they were paid. They were offering to the Lord, the lame and the blind and the halt. The second that which they wouldn't offer to the governor, they were offering to the Lord.
00:20:21
But at that time you notice how the.
The Prophet begins. I have loved thee, saith the Lord. His love had never changed toward his people.
And.
Martha and Mary, we would think, well, the Lord must have loved Mary more than he loved Martha because she was so devoted to him. Martha was cumbered with much serving. But when he speaks of the Lorde love to that family, it mentions first first the name of Martha. The Lord loved Martha and Mary and.
Lazarus So the Lord's love did not change in spite of.
The departure and the coldness of these people, and it's the same with us.
God sent His only begotten Son into the world.
Why?
Why?
That we might have liked.
Through him, sometimes we limit the message of the gospel to the thought that I'm a Sinner. I am that if I don't accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior, I will go to hell. And I will. And if I accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior, I'll go to heaven someday.
Instead of hell and that all my sins will be removed from the sight of God.
All of that is true and wonderful in this place.
But God wants us to go on into the enjoyment of all that He.
He purposes and he says here I sent my son John 316 is the same message with really the same emphasis. I sent my son into the world in love. Why?
But you could have life.
But if you have life, everlasting life in John 316, here it just says.
In verse nine that we might have life through him.
God wants us.
To be part of his family.
And we want this to have the life of the family so that we can enter into and enjoy fellowship with him.
God wants us to have a more near and personal relationship with Himself and Adam and Eve ever did or could enjoy, even before they sinned in the Garden of Eden.
And while sin brought a separation between man and God, God isn't defeated in his purposes of love.
And so he sends his son into the world to give a life.
To man that will bring him into a relationship with God that.
To never be separated from God again. Never have a break.
In that relationship.
In Adam all died, and Adam had a life and a nature of responsibility to God, but.
He exercised his will and unbelief and descend, and he separated him, and he became dead toward God.
But here God says no, I'm going to send my own son into the world.
So that he could be a life giver.
The matter of the cross had to be taken up, and it was so that God could give life.
There was life in the that tree in the midst of the garden, and as soon as man had sinned, left he partake of that tree in the condition in which he was.
Which would have been a horrible thing, really.
Imagine living as you are, even as a believer in the state in which you are, that is, with sins still in you.
It's a horrible thing, really, to think about if God would let a person live on this earth without dying in the condition in which they are. Although it's a more horrible thing still to die and be forever separated from God in the second-half.
But it's a wonderful thing for us to enjoy that God in love sent his Son.
That we might covet earnestly the best gift. 1St Corinthians 12.
00:25:01
The last verse, and yet so I unto you a more excellent way.
Now a bit of faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity or love so.
Every one of us can display that character of the divine nature.
Says there in the book of Jude that we are to keep ourselves in the love of God, that is, walk in the sunshine of his love.
In communion with God, enjoying that Lord, if sin has come into my life.
Which I am not willing to judge, of course.
There's a cloud, then, between my soul and God, and I can no longer enjoy communion. I can't.
Revel in the love of God. There is a hindrance there. So it's my responsibility to keep myself in the love of God. That is to to be, to walk himself judgment.
And to be unsparing. Above all, nature which we have displays hatred and enmity toward God, toward man.
But now God has put into everyone of you and young people, everyone of us. Now God has imparted that divine nature, all the good that comes out of my life.
Everything that is for the glory of God in my life, in your life, it comes from the new nature, and we're called upon to keep the old nature in the place of death. Remember when the children of Israel went into the land of Canaan, before they used sharp swords on their enemies, which they were commanded to do, they were exhorted.
And commanded to use sharp knives on themselves.
That was circumcision. You can read that it's very interesting in Joshua chapter 5 yoga there speaks of self judgment in my life. Those things which are are.
The fruit of the old nature which we all have.
We need to judge and put away.
Reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through.
Right. But sometimes we hear people saying it's a poor thought, but I suppose we might have said it ourselves.
Well, there's no love in this assembly where I am.
There is no love. Oh, I've heard that different ones who were once at the Lord's Table make this excuse.
But if that's the case, then I have the responsibility to bring love into that assembly.
Provoke, the apostle says in Hebrews 10.
Look at that verse in Hebrews 10.
That exploitation that the apostle gives us 24.
Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.
Used to be a brother in the Ottawa meeting and he said to.
A sister, he said. Sister, do you provoke the Saints? Oh, she says, brother, I hope I don't. Well, he said, you should.
The pro. The word provoke here is used in the sense of the stimulates.
Encourage.
It says here, provoke unto love and to good work. There's no love in the assembly. Then you bring some love into it by the way you act, and you'll be surprised at the return that you will get. And good works too, Don't need to complain about lack of gospel work in the assembly. We have the privilege of going out and doing it ourselves.
And perhaps that would encourage others to to follow. But the point that I'm trying to make is.
What do we contribute in the assembly? What do we bring?
We're always occupied, often with what we get, and that's all right.
We certainly have had a feast this weekend here, an Oasis in the desert. But what do we bring in our local assemblies? That is what God is looking for. Are we bringing love? Are we bringing?
00:30:12
Understanding and.
And showing that divine life in the way we react one toward the other.
The fear in His love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Earlier in this same epistle, before bringing out a matter of love, we have God is life, and it's important for us to recognize that to disobey God is to disobey that sin is a terrible offense against God's own nature.
It's a dishonor to God not to obey Him as a creature.
And so God is, in a holy way, offended.
By sin, in fact, God says in a in a eternal way.
Every such matter will have to be forever removed from his sight. He cannot allow by his own nature that which is not consistent with his own being, so to last to exist.
Absolutely. This whole world, this building, this whole world is going to cease to exist.
Why as it in its present form? Because.
It bears the marks of sin, it bears the marks of a terrible offense against God and and he won't allow it to remain in that condition before his eyes for eternity. And so he he will remove it.
Everything that our eye can put us, our eye on is going to be removed from his sight because all of it bears the marks of of sin and the offense it is to God. And so God must be propitiated. That is God's holy nature must be satisfied.
In the matter of what is offensive to him, and it's a wonderful thing to see this verse connected, this verse of God's nature needing to be satisfied as to something that's offensive to him to be connected with his love.
When God decided to work with us.
Nobody had any interest.
Man just went his own way and his own trespasses and sins without any care or interest in God at all.
Cain is a figure of man in the flesh. He goes out from the presence of God.
And man, it says in Romans chapter 1, doesn't want to retain God.
In his knowledge and so many people say no God, I don't want God. I don't even want to believe there's a God.
And yet what does it say here? It says God in love sent the Lord Jesus, even when we could care less, if you will, about Him, to take up the matter, to propitiate his own nature in the matter of sins.
Why? So that, as it were, he could come out to us in Colossians, one that Bob had this afternoon. In that chapter he made peace through the blood of his cross.
That is, God acted so that he could.
Show us His love so that He could do something for us.
And be consistent with his own nature.
And yet he had to do it, and he did it before we cared about him and all. There was number love in our hearts toward him at that point.
And yet God in his own love and his own purpose of saying, well, I love them.
I want to give them life, but I can't give them that gift of life in the condition in which they are. And so God takes up the matter of sin and deals with it between.
Without us being involved in any sense in this case at all. But he sends the Son into this world to become a man and sends him to the cross. And then God, as God deals with Jesus the man over the matter of sins or sin, God is propitiated in that sacrifice. And now God says to us, oh, I love you.
00:35:03
And I want to give you the gift of eternal life.
We accept it.
Well, if you are sitting in this room this afternoon and you haven't accepted it, you don't know God and you don't know love.
You're dark.
Your soul is in darkness.
And God would desire to speak to you. You know, you might be dead in this room, but.
It's a wonderful thing if there was a dead body.
Put here before us in this room, we would all feel immediately, and since there was nothing we could do to say to that person, or what had been a person, totally helpless to say anything to that person, they're dead. We can't communicate with a dead person.
But not God, not God in John's gospel, he.
Says he speaks to the dead, and what does it say? They that hear shall live.
God isn't even limited by a person dead and spiritually dead, but God speaks even to the dead, and they that hear shall live.
Wonderful, wonderful thing that God is able to meet us in the extreme condition in which we were.
And show his love.
And bring us into the enjoyment of that love and say, you're my children and I love my son the Lord Jesus.
And so I'm giving you life so that you can share them with me and we can enjoy them together.
And I brought him, if I could speak for God in this sense this afternoon, God would say, I've been bringing my son before you this, after this conference so that we can enjoy him together now. And you can taste it and say, oh, I want more.
And look forward to whatever time is left here on Earth, but even more so.
To anticipate when there will be no hindrances and we will spend an eternity enjoying.
The Father's love in the son.
At the center.
Certain hours of the day, anyone who would come in to the room where he was and said bring your debts.
People came in to the area, they stood around the door.
And people were afraid because they said, what if I go in and he doesn't do it? They're going to laugh at me when I come back out. Some people, a few started to go in. They were carrying papers of the bills that they were not able to pay.
They went in.
And no one came out during the time period. Some others went in. And finally at the end of the appointed hour for this time he went. People started coming out and they said, well, what happened?
That's her page. He took all of them. Everything is going to be paid and he's paid it all. And the others started knocking on the door and said, well, you know, we want it too, but now it's too late.
Had your opportunity. The man was wealthy enough to be able to cover the depths of the people in that town.
And when the priest walked in and he bells and pomegranates, they could hear that he was still alive. They could detect the movement by that when he put the blood on the altar.
They were all, in a sense.
Could have been protected by that, recognizing that it all waited for the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus.
Gospels offered to whosoever will.
Because he's the professiation for our sins and says for the whole world, the deposit is so great that everyone can be saved. On the other side. He died for the sins of many.
He's not going to punish the same sins twice and so someone refuses the gospel.
Not a question of propitiation of the question of substitution. He's the substitute for all who will believe. He's the propitiation for all others. An opportunity while we're still alive because of the price he paid was so great.
Clarify. It's better than that.
It's an introduction.
Sin is an offense against the holy nature of God.
Officiation is that aspect of the work of the cross that removes that offense.
00:40:05
From before God's sight.
When we have, as Dean mentioned, our individual sins themselves were placed upon the Lord Jesus on His body on the cross.
And he bore the judgment for those sins.
There's more to the satisfaction of God than simply paying for the sin.
You might.
Throw a rock through your neighbor's window.
And then you might turn around and pay to have the window fixed.
Maybe you put a new window in that's nicer than the old one.
But you may not have removed the offense of what you did, especially if you had been warned not to do it and you went ahead and you, you broke the window, you've offended.
Perhaps the upright sense of that person and.
God sent his own son.
The propitiation, and so the propitiation is intimately connected with the person of the Sun.
Very feeble sense of it, but if.
You were a neighbor boy and you threw the rock through your neighbor's window, and the neighbor's son was your best friend.
You might be saying, will you tell your dad?
Will you tell your dad for me? Tell him I'm sorry or something like that? That is, you have a sense that the father might accept that son intervening for you.
And God made his own son.
To be that propitiation before him, he offered himself up to God, and in doing so, the offense against the holiness of God was removed, was taken care of.
So that all men.
Could have the gospel presented to them and.
The blood of the Lord Jesus is sufficient to atone. That is the work of the Lord Jesus and the shedding of his blood. The blood applied to the sins of a persons life totally removes them from God's sight so that there's no memory of offense or anything left. God says I won't remember it anymore.
It'll never be brought back and so God is totally satisfied. And I don't know what translation John's referring to, but the aspect of.
It is part of the atonement because atonement is that which covers. The word means covering, and God through the blood totally covers the offense and the blood in what it is the death of Christ and His suffering totally removes or makes the payment, so that when God looks at that person, He looks at them in all the perfection.
And satisfaction of the person and the work of his Son, the Lord Jesus.
And God says please, please enjoy it.
As an expression of how much I love you.
Someone gave me a thought which I kind of expanded into a story. Been helpful to me.
Let's say there's a king with a Kingdom and his people rebel against them and throw them at thrown out.
In this case, he retreated to an island that really wasn't too far off the shore.
He was a very good king, and we know in this world we live in that the opposing of some kings seems to be a good thing, but in the case of this story, it's not.
And he had a cure for his people and he saw how things were going very badly for them, and so he built a bridge.
From the main lab to his island.
And those who wish could make use of that bridge.
And that way.
Christ is the propitiation.
It's, it's a, it's a thing. It is things, of course, but it became something also of propreciation. And on that bridge was an appropriate standing place for both the king and his subjects. And they could meet there on that bridge and really appreciate you've done that for us. God is satisfied with Jesus, he said.
00:45:21
But also because of the work of Christ, that bridge has been made. We have a place to stand as well. So not only God has a place to stand, but we have a place to stand and it's together. So just a little picture form of propitiation, or what aspects of it, at least it's an appropriate place to stand for both God and believers.
We can meet there.
Appreciation many.
69 Then I restored that which I took not away. The honor of God was violated by the end lawlessness.
And the Lord, as a man returned honor to God. Plate then every.
Stored that away because he is so satisfied with his son.
He offers to all men.
Give the plan.
Romans chapter 3, verse 25, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation.
Faith in His blood to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed.
Through the forbearance of God.
Sometimes misunderstood. Now God is that Christ is the propitiation, the one who has met all the holy claims of God against sin. I think that's the basic thought in propitiation, is it not? But in the Old Testament, Christ had not yet been manifest. He had not offered his life in sacrifice for those sins.
So he but God was righteous.
In forgiving the sins of the Old Testament Saints.
Even before Christ had appeared on the scene, because he knew in his foreknowledge that the Lord Jesus would offer a sacrifice for the remission of those sins of the Old Testament Saints. That's the meaning here.
God looked forward to the the the sacrifice of his Son and on credit, so to speak, he said. I will forgive the sins of those people in the Old Testament. David Abraham.
Moses and so on. They were all saved because of the work the Lord would accomplish for the sins that are fast. There is not sins in our lives that are past, but it's the sins that were committed before the sacrifice.
Lord Jesus, In fact, now there's not a covering. Uh.
No longer in the Old Testament, God covered, as it were, he. He passed over those sins, not that he was indifferent to them, but he didn't impute those sins because he looked forward to the death of Christ. Now there's no more covering. The work has been accomplished. We have the we have settled peace with God, we have.
A fallen, complete redemption. There's no more covering over. There's no more.
Waiting for something to be accomplished. It's completed. We have that wonderful.
In pardon through the propitiation of our Lord Jesus.
On the cross.
One word to me, it's a wonderful word that.
The apostle John repeats a number of times to his brethren.
Not trying to get all of them by any means, but just notice in chapter 3.
In verse 21, he starts the verse beloved.
Chapter 4, Verse 1, beloved.
Verse 7, beloved. Verse 11, a love that's enough to get the thought.
00:50:00
We all who have relationships and families and wives and husbands and so on, or brothers and sisters. We often come up with terms of endearment, a nickname perhaps, that is a special expression of our relationship and our affection for each other.
And because we've been brought into the family of God, particularly here, that this is family.
Matters and the John, I think, loved to use such an expression to his brethren, beloved, that's what they were. To him they were beloved, they were somebody. And to me it's a term and it's an expression that.
Like sometimes today you'll hear sweetie or honey or deer or something like that.
Why is it so special? Well, when the Lord Jesus came into the world, God opens heaven and he says, this is my beloved.
Son, and in Ephesians chapter 1, when it says, He hath taken us into favor.
In the Beloved, it's actually a name of the Lord, a special name of endearment that God has given to the Lord Jesus. And because we belong to the same family, we can use the same expression.
You know, you, you hear somebody say to somebody else and I'll say, sweetie, you don't feel immediately liberty to start saying to that person, sweetie. In fact, you'd be in trouble probably if you did.
But.
God, as it were, has given us the joy and the liberty of using the same expression that the Father gives to the Son, and I doubt not we can say to the Lord, beloved.
Because just as the Father says, beloved, we can think of him and we can even say it, beloved, Lord Jesus, and to one another, beloved. Because we are, as Scripture says, we're bound up for an expression that's often used. We're bound up together in the same bundle of life.
It's you. It's a little off, but we're talking about life here. You have your individual life.
I have my individual life. Yours isn't mine and mine isn't yours.
And if this afternoon the Lord Jesus decides to take me into his presence through death and not you?
Then my life, my natural life, is done. But you still have yours.
That's not the case with the life we've been talking about this afternoon.
Life we have in Christ is different.
It says in Colossians, Christ, who is our life?
Christ, who is our life, that is this gift of eternal life which we have, we don't have separate from His life.
And so the expression has been used. We're bound up together in the same bundle of life.
Your life and my life is bound up. It is his life we have.
It's eternal.
It's his life and it's ours. Can we fully comprehend that? I doubt it. I certainly can't. I suspect none of us can. But it's still true. Christ, who is our life.
When you love your brother, what are you doing?
You're displaying the life of Christ to your brother because that's your life. And so if you're not displaying life to your brother, if you walk into the assembly and say there's no love here.
Then you're saying about yourself. Forget your brethren. You're saying about yourself, I don't have the life of Christ to bring here to display here.
But if you have it, if you're alive, it's pretty hard not to in some measure manifest that you're alive. And it is the very bundle. It's the life of Christ that it. And so it, it has to love. It's his life. They can't do anything else.
00:55:04
And so that's why John makes such a point of it. He says if if you don't love your brother, you don't have life.
You would have to love your brother if you have the life of Christ in you and are displaying it to your brother, and consequently you can go forward and say love just like he would.
I mean, everyone of us catch you in your mind, in your heart, think, oh, the Lord just says to me, beloved.
Lord says to me, Donald, beloved, a personal individual and one that can be shared in, sharing with others. You're mine, I love you, we're bound up together.
Time is almost up, but I think it's important.
To verse 13 just to make a comment on it. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and He and us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
It says the Spirit witnesses with our Spirit that we are the children of God.
That is the Spirit of God who dwells in US, witnesses to us through the Word of God.
That I am a child of God not I hope to be not I want to be.
Not as this or that, but I am the Spirit of God in US, witnesses to our spirit that we are children of God, and so we can, with confidence and assurance, say we know we have passed from death.
To life, and it's a work of the spirit in us to give us that assurance and knowledge, self knowledge.
That we say I am, I know.
Child of God.
And that's the privilege, that's the desire of God to work in everyone of us to the end that we we have this enjoyment.
Of being part of the family.
God says you can know each other as part of the same family, and so all of us have probably in one time or another sort of experience that fact. When we met somebody, we never saw him before. We talked to them for a little bit and we find out.
That they really are a brother in Christ, a sister in Christ. And immediately upon the consciousness that we are having to do with a brother or sister in Christ, we have a sense in our hearts of belonging to each other. And we should, because we belong to the one true family of God. We're children together in God's family.
Thinking about these steps.
This expression here.
God dwelleth in US and His love is perfected in us. What does that mean?
Well, sometimes we love a person and we don't get a return.
And we're sort of frustrated and disappointed is not the return of love.
For the love that is expressed.
But when there is a response in our hearts to that love of the Lord, the Lord values our love. It's sometimes very feeble, but He values the least expression of love, and with one another too. If we get a return from our brethren, there should be, then there's a bond form our the love.
Affected in us, between us, you might say, and that's what God did. Desires in our pathway, our thinking in connection with what Don said. There's a lot of parents here with children. I think one of the truest signs that your boy or girl is saved.
Is that when they come home and say Mother I?
Found another boy or girl at school that was that is a Christian.
01:00:00
That's that's almost a sure sign that that child is the Lord, because his divine life, that new life he has.
Responds to the light in another. There, there. There's a connection there, so to speak.
Mother is perfected. There's there's a rich, there's a recognition.
That there is a believer there, one who loves the Lord whom he loves.