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Welcome to day five of our look through 1st John chapter four, this incredible
chapter. We're going to be looking at verses 19 to 21 today. This is an awesome
chapter about love and how it's made real in our lives, how I experience it
through God's love for me and how it's made real in my life.

And if as we walk through this chapter fairly quickly, you thought, huh, I want
to go back and listen again. I need to be reminded of some of these things. I
feel the same way.

And God's spirit through John and writing this has the same opinion because he
goes back at the end of this chapter in verses 19 to 21 to sum up what he said
to us. Here's what he says. It's as if in these verses, John is going back and
saying, okay, let's go over this one more time.

Let's just simplify this, distill this down and say it one more time. And he
says three things. First, we love because he first loved us.

We're going back to that. Wow. We love because he first loved us.

That tells me how to love. It begins with his love, not with my love. It also
tells me who to honor for love.

Any expression of love in this world, any action of love comes out of God's love
for us. Any unselfish love is from his love. So in the end, we honor him for
what he's done.

We honor his love and honor what he does through us. Don't miss this. John says
we love because he first loves us.

Also he says don't miss this. Let's go over this one more time. If I say I love
God, but I hate my brother, I hate my sister, I'm lying.

I'm lying. I'm lying to myself. I'm lying to God.

I'm lying to the other people in my life. That tells me what love really is.
Real love has to reach out to the people that God loves.

If I say I love God, but I don't have the heart of God, then I'm lying to
myself. Love your brother. What does that mean?

He's talking about Christian brothers and sisters here, the people that are
closest to you. If I don't love my brother, if I don't love my sister, then I
don't know God? Does that mean that I somehow have to be perfect, that I never
have feelings of irritation, I never have feelings of unforgiveness?

No. No. It means that you settle on living a life of love in all your
relationships.

Let's walk through the book of 1 John in this. John's words in this letter allow
for growth in love. He talks about being perfected in love.

So this isn't about me immediately being perfect. No, I'm growing in love.
John's words in this book even allow for failure in love.

He talks in the first chapter about if we sin, we have an advocate before the
Father in Jesus Christ. John's words when it comes to my love, they're not
asking me to be perfect. They do allow for growth.

They do allow for failure, but they do not allow for hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is I
tell everyone I have a deep love for God while being perfectly satisfied all my
life with hating the people that he's created. This is exactly what the false
teachers in John's day were doing.

That's why he's warning the people about this. A love for God that's just words
only or a love for God that's just spiritual, just between you and God up in
heaven and does not do anything in your relationships with other people, that is
not love for God. How does this work in your everyday life?

Well, there are times when you don't feel like forgiving, but you struggle to
forgive and you eventually forgive. That is love. There are times when you feel
irritated and you don't want to give to the other person, but you eventually
sacrifice because God is at work in your life.

That is love. There are times every day in my life when I would rather be
served, but I choose to serve sometimes. How does that happen?

That is love. You see, he talks here about whoever hates his brother, does not
love, hates his brother. That's the idea of a settled, a permanent decision.

This isn't talking about having a feeling of anger, it's talking about a life of
anger or bitterness or using others. So how does this work? Well, in the end, he
says in verse 21, this is his command, "Whoever loves God must love his brother.

" In the end, this is not a suggestion, it's not an idea, it's not a happy
thought. Love is a command. As we said earlier this week, you cannot command a
feeling.

It is the action of love, the unselfish action of love that's being commanded
here in these verses. Now to act differently, to act in love, I have to discover
the difference that God can make in my life. And as we walk through God's
command here, I just want to remind you of three things as we come to the end of
this week.

Three things that we talked about in our study of the Gospel of John, John
chapter 13 in daily drive-time devotions. If you haven't listened to that study,
you might listen to it after this one. It'd be a great follow-up to this one.

As we looked at John chapter 13, where Jesus talks about loving one another,
there are three differences that I have to discover in my life to love God's way
in my life. I have to discover the difference between what I feel and what I do.
I have to discover the difference between should and can, and I have to discover
the difference between old and new.

The difference between what I feel and what I do. Most of the world thinks that
love is a feeling that you're going to feel when you feel like you've got a
feeling like you've never felt before. It only comes through emotion.

Jesus commands us to love. You can't command an emotion. So it's the decision to
love that's important.

If you're waiting for feelings of love before you act in love, you could wait
the rest of your life. But God commands you to love now. Now I know that some of
us feel, "Well, it's not real if I don't feel like it.

" Not true. Not true. You think Jesus felt like going to the cross?

But he did. Do you feel like going to work every day? But you do.

There are many things you do in your life that you don't feel like doing that
are actions of love. In fact, when every fiber of you feels against it and you
act in love sacrificially anyway, that is love. That is love.

Now our feelings are part of the package, of course. They're the spice. But
what's the spice without the meat?

And the meat is your decision to love. Who do you need to love today? To decide
to love even though you don't feel like it?

You need God's power for that. Ask for it right now. You discover the difference
between what I feel and what I do.

You also discover the difference between I should and I can't. I should love
this person. That's just another burden.

That's just making love another burden in your already overburdened life. When
Jesus says, "I command you to love one another," I want you to hear him saying,
"You can love the other people in your life. " Because God never, He never
commands us to do something He is not willing to give you the power to do.

God will give you the power. And then you discover the difference between old
and new. Jesus called this command to love a new command.

A new command. It's a new command that's based on love and not fear. That's new.

Stale love and stale lives, a lot of us are experiencing that. We need a new
commandment. We need a whole new way to love.

And what's new about this new commandment? Well, it's not the command to love.
There are plenty of commands to love throughout the Old Testament.

No, it's the power to love. What's new about this new commandment is the one who
gave it. Jesus Christ commands you to love.

And in commanding you, He offers you the power to love. That impacts every part
of your life. The way you raise your kids, the way you talk to people at work,
the love that you give to your husband, to your wife, the way you reach out to
those who haven't yet heard the good news.

It impacts every part of your life. What I'm saying to you is this. You are not
in this alone.

You're not meant to be in this alone. God wants to love through you. And if
you're worn out trying to love, if you think I don't have the power to do this,
I can't forgive, I can't be unselfish, I can't do it one more time, then I
encourage you right now to ask God for a strength that you can only find in Him.

Lord, we do turn to you. As we read about love, there's something challenging in
this for us. It's a little scary because we wonder if we can do it, but I pray
that out of that fear we would determine that we can't, but that you can.

Instead of adding love as another burden to an overburdened life, God, I pray
for the freedom of a new kind of love in our lives, a love that flows from you
to others in our lives. Lord, I know that begins with our relationship with you,
with knowing you, your spirit in our lives. And I pray.

I pray that you would give us a new sense of joy in the kind of love that you're
releasing through our lives. I pray we'd have an experience of that this very
day, and through building on that experience that you would increase our joy
daily, our joy in you, our honor to you, our praise for what you have done. God,
we love because you first loved us.

Thank you for loving us. In the name of your Son we pray, Amen. Be sure to join
us next week.

We're going to be ending our look at 1 John, 1 John chapter 5, a chapter that
deepens the assurance and confidence that you can have as God's child.