880. True Love

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services.

Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel platform. Today on The Daily Platform, Dr. Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University, is continuing a study series entitled Truth and Love, which is a study of the book of 1 John. Let's now listen to today's message, which is the last of the series, from 1 John 4, verses 19 through 21, entitled True Love. We're reading verse 19 where the Apostle John writes, we love him because he first loved us. If a man say I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar, for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

And this commandment have we from him that he who loveth God love his brother also. As we began this semester, I explained that John's writing style is quite different, for example, than the Apostle Paul's. And I think maybe Paul's reading is easier for a lot of it because his thinking is more Greek. It's more linear.

It's like a straight line, perhaps like driving from Greenville to Columbia and you arrive at your destination. That's the way Paul writes. He follows a form of logic. He asks questions.

He answers questions. Inevitably, you get to your point. It's almost like there's a conclusion to it. So when you read Paul's letters, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Romans, 1, 2 Corinthians, it's very much like that.

But when you come to John's writing style, it's very different. It's very circular. It's almost like you don't fully arrive at the destination. You just get a better understanding. It's a little bit like driving from here up into the Smoky Mountains and coming back and you go full circle.

And when you arrive back, you have a bigger picture, maybe a better understanding of the Smokies, but you don't really feel like you fully grasped it. Well, this semester as we have worked through John's theme, the focus has been on truth and love. I mean, how can we totally grasp truth and how can we totally grasp love? But hopefully we've gained a bigger and a better picture of the importance of both. And hopefully we have a better understanding of the importance of the balance of both of those, both truth and love. Maybe we can sum it up this way with two statements. Number one, you can't have love without truth and you can't have truth without love.

You need both of them. Maybe we could say it this way. Truth without love leads to Pharisaism, but love without truth leads to liberalism. So in our Christian life and our Christian experience, we're constantly working to have a balance of both. And we saw this semester what John's ultimate desire is for believers. And we've covered this in a number of messages. And that is that John wants us to reach a state of perfection or state of maturity to arrive at a particular point.

And what is that? Well, he calls it perfect love. And as we conclude this morning, I'd like to sort of do a wrap up of the whole semester with simply asking the question, how is it that we get to perfect love? And obviously it's not like you get to the destination it's over with. It's coming to a point of maturity. And that point of maturity comes as we are knowing, growing, and we are showing God's love. That's really my message this morning.

And there's our three points. So how is it that we become perfect or mature in love? And the first is by coming to know, or it comes by knowing God's love. And really that's what so much of this passage is all about. Beginning in verse seven, all the way down to verse 21, he just repeats the word love up to 30 times.

But there's some important things that we need to know, some things that are foundational. Number one, we need to know that love is God's nature. God is love. Notice verse seven, beloved, let us love one another for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God for God is love. It is who he is.

It's his nature. And since love is finding its source in God, love is of God, therefore this love is what we could call a holy love. You know, some may argue, what is God's nature? Is God holy or is God loving?

And the answer is yes. God's holiness is filled with love and God's love is filled with his holiness. When we speak of holy, it's, it's the sense of being different, special, unique, and pure. And the holiness of God's love means that his love is a one of a kind love. It's not like human or selfish love. It's a pure love. It's an unselfish love.

It's a divine love. So first of all, we know that love is God's nature. Secondly, we know that love is always understood in light of the gospel. That is, to understand God's love, we have to see it through the lens of the cross. That God sent his special one of a kind son into the world. Look at verse nine, and this 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. Here in his love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. God sent his son into the world and he sent his son into the world on a mission and that is that he becomes the sacrifice.

He's the one that removes the wrath of God and he removes the remembrance of sin in our lives and love cannot be really comprehended unless we see it through the sacrifice. This past weekend we celebrated both the crucifixion and the resurrection. And in a way, this is how we ought to live. Someone said it this way, we ought to live as if Jesus died yesterday and Jesus rose today and Jesus is coming again tomorrow. Hey, wouldn't that not be awesome? He died for our sins yesterday, today he rose from the dead and tomorrow he's coming again.

How would that change the way that we live? And when we think of love, we understand it through the nature of God in light of the cross. And then number three, we come to know God's love by knowing that love for God is caused by God's love dwelling in us. In other words, if we love God, if we have that in our heart, then it's not the means by which God chooses to love us. We don't choose to love God and then God chooses to love us.

It's the opposite. God's love is the first cause of all things. If I have any love for God in my heart, it's already because God has chosen to love me. Note verse 16, and we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him. God has poured his love into our heart through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. The very fact that I want to pray, the very fact that I want to sing, and the very fact that I want to learn God's word. That I desire to love Christians, that I desire to have a right relationship with believers. That I go to God's house on Sunday morning and going to God's house is not boring.

Going to God's house is a blessing. And all of this working within my heart that creates within me. The desire to love God is because God put that in me. We love him because he first loved us and I never have to worry about God requiting our love. If I come to love God, it is because he has already come to love me.

And these are things we have to understand. And then fourthly and finally, that is that we come to know God's love by knowing that God's goal is reached when we love one another. One is God's goal. It is that we love one another. Notice verse 11, 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. That statement, his love is perfected in us means that his love has reached its purpose.

Think of it this way. When Jesus came into the world, people came to know God because they saw Jesus. Jesus is gone. So how can people see God in this world? People see God in this world through believers who love one another.

Now I can say all that, but actually when you see it happening, it's pretty awesome. First time I really experienced watching believers love each other was my junior year of high school. I was unsaved and some of my friends had been recently converted through a ministry that had come into our public school. They had gone on a retreat. The gospel was preached. Many of them were converted and they came back to school and they began to spread the gospel. It's kind of like a wildfire going through our public school and one of the things that I noticed is that these guys, most of them I had grown up with who had been my friends ever since elementary school called each other.

This is public high school. They actually called each other brother and I remember that and I remembered the unique and special loving affection they had for each other and I saw that and I knew that I had not experienced that. And there was a drawing attraction to that.

There was something that that's what my heart wanted. When we begin to love one another, we have reached the goal that God has set for us. When people can see us loving one another, then God is fulfilling his purpose in this world. That his love has been perfected, has reached its goal. So how is it that we are made mature?

By understanding these things. We understand the nature of God and his love. So we know God's love. But then secondly, not only do we know God's love, but we have to grow in God's love. And that growing in God's love is transforming.

It actually makes us different people. And it happens as love comes in, it drives controlling and dominating fear out. We saw that in verse 19.

Let's notice that. Herein is our love made perfect that we may have boldness in the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world. There's no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

And I mentioned this last week that we, we know that we're saved. We have a confidence and therefore our love is being matured. But then I talked about the fact of God driving out fear.

And I'd like to kind of come back to that and sort of reemphasize it because it's something you have to think a lot about. The Bible says mature love drives fear out. So as we grow in love, we diminish in fear. So what do we mean by fear? Well, by definition, fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or threat. So if somebody tried to break into your house and you got afraid, well that's a normal natural fear.

If you just took a test and didn't do very well on it, you were afraid you might not pass the test. That's a natural, that's a natural fear. But then there's also anxieties. It's another form of fear. And that is an anxiety is concerning the outcome of something or the safety of something and the wellbeing of someone, but you're not really sure what's going to happen. We have a tendency to create these things in our mind. Someone said fear is false evidence, appearing reality.

Someone has said that a pessimist is somebody who daydreams of a nightmare. Perhaps you've experienced that. And so we have a tendency to live with these insecurities in our life where we're putting our trust in something or someone that can be taken away. And what happens when we're fearful? When you are afraid, you have immediate reactions to it. And maybe your reaction is of such a nature that you don't even recognize it because you've been doing it so long, it becomes a habit in your life.

It becomes a part of who you are. But there are basically two kinds of reactions to fear. They're defensive reactions. The first one is either we fight. We fight against the fear or we flee. We run from the fear, fight or flight. So consider the idea of fighting. For example, if you become a fearful person, you can become somebody who's easily angry. You attack. You become controlling and manipulative.

Perhaps you become stubborn or hard-hearted or demanding. My natural way of responding to fear is if I'm afraid we're going to fail, I'm going to become demanding. I'm going to drive it. We're going to make it happen. It's going to happen. We're not going to lose.

We're going to win. Sometimes people who are fearful have a tendency to react and hurt other people. And in some cases, they actually hurt themselves. But what about the idea of fleeing or flight? These are people when they become fearful, they have a tendency to withdraw, freeze up, hide, get paralyzed, live with anxieties and in some cases panic attacks. Or they get to a place where they actually don't care. And in either case, there are these responses that we have to fear.

And what is the result of this? The result is often we develop learned behavior as a way to cope. We develop wrong responses and bad habits. I think personally that these fears have been developed so much throughout our life that many times they become like a blind spot.

Other people see them, but we definitely don't. But these fears are enslaving. What is an enslaving fear? It's when your mind, your emotions, and your will are all one. That is you think it, you feel it, and you respond and act immediately so that there's almost like no gap between thinking, feeling, and action. There's another word we use for that.

That's called a stronghold. There's a stronghold of fear where it really becomes paralyzing and controlling in your life. So much so, it's almost like you're gripped in it and you don't even realize it. And often times we don't see it until something happens, maybe a disappointment or something that's very painful or difficult and it brings it to the surface and we begin to ask the question why. Why do I respond this way?

Why do I react this way? Often times other people have to come and point them out to you. We had a girl that traveled on our team a number of years ago. She graduated from Bob Jones here. In fact, she got her master's degree. She was a flute player and she was really, really good and she had a very beautiful tone in her style of playing, but she made like constant mistakes.

I mean, just like one after another. And then sometimes she would blame the flute. You know, it's the flute's problem. I need a better flute. And I began to watch her responses and her reactions and I thought something's going on in her life and I don't think it's the flute. And I know it's not her ability.

I think it's deeper than that. And after the practice we were walking out in the parking lot of the church and I remember exactly the church. I remember exactly where we were and it was one of these life changing moments in the parking lot. Her name was Danielle. I said, Danielle, I said, you are making a ton of mistakes on your flute. And she kind of like stared at me, like she was afraid that perhaps she was going to get in trouble or I was going to fire her or chew her out or something like that. So I asked her a question. I said, Danielle, let me ask you this question. Are you afraid of me?

She went, uh-huh. I said, Danielle, I said, you don't need to be afraid of me. Danielle, I love you. I thank God for you. You are here on this team by divine appointment. God brought you here. I said, Danielle, I actually need you. God is using you to do things in my life. I couldn't learn any other way. I am so thankful for you.

I believe you have incredible abilities. And we went through a process of conversation and she, every time I see her to this day, we laugh about it. We talk about the parking lot meeting in Florida, this particular church, because all of a sudden she changed her thinking from fear to love, knowing that I did care about her and I did actually love her. And she actually learned to relax.

And then she began to play the rest of the year in a very beautiful manner. How do you overcome fear? The answer is always love. How do you change? We have to go back to our fearful responses and recognize that we are actually letting those control us.

We have to, we have to, we start to grow when we go back to what we know. What do we know about God? The things I've already said. That God is love. That God loves us. He's demonstrated it in His Son.

He's put His love with inside of our hearts. We break these habits by going back to God's love and changing the way we think. Now this is not easy. Because you have to say no to the way you feel. You can't allow those controlling thoughts that dictate your emotions.

You've got to decide not to think that. It's a renovation of your mind. We are delivered from our enslaving fears by God's love and we have to demolish and dismantle the stronghold of fear, one thought at a time. It's like the tearing down of the administration building.

I mean we didn't drop, you know, the mother of all bombs on that to blow it all up and it's all over, you know. We dismantled it one piece at a time. And in many ways, overcoming your fear and growing in God's love is a dismantling of the way you think, one thought at a time. It's almost like you begin to see it and you start to confess it and you begin to think, I can't think that way and you begin to transfer your thoughts back to God's love and all the promises that He speaks in God's word.

So how is it that we are perfected in love? Number one, we have to know God's love. Number two, we have to grow in God's love and then finally we have to show God's love. And that's where we come to our final verses this morning, verses 20 and 21 and it says, if a man say I love God and he hates his brother, he's a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? Let me put it this way, it's easy to say I love God and hate your brother because you can't see God, but you can see your brother. But the real way that you really grow in God's love is you have to show your love to what you can see. And that is you have to show your love to your brother. You know, I can't think of any greater place to learn how to love than having to live in a dormitory with people you don't want to live with.

Really. One of the best training grounds for learning to love is to live in a dormitory and to rub shoulders with people all day long who are people that are not like you, they don't look like you, they don't think like you, they reason a little bit differently from you, and they do things that are very, very irritating. When I traveled in the summer of 1979 with a ministry called Neighborhood Bible Time, I had a teammate that traveled with me and his name was Steve, my name was Steve, so I was Mr. Steve, he was Mr. Steven. He was really a trophy of God's grace, God miraculously saved him, but he did things that just irritated the fire out of me. And one of them was he always cracked his knuckles.

And he didn't do it like this, you know, he didn't do it that way. He just, he had arthritis in his hands and it actually relieved the pain, and he just would go, you know, and go. So all day long it's like, and after a while it drives you nuts. And I began to find myself getting irritated and upset with him. And I found that even in those little things, those little irritants, that's really where you learn to love. I began to understand his physical problem, began to have more comprehension of where he was, began to see him in a different light. God began to help me to love him and not be irritated by those things. And that's a great training ground for marriage. Because when you get married, there are all kinds of things that irritate you about one another. And yet, what is, what is, how do I grow in love?

I have to show it. If I can't love my brother, then to say I love God and not love my brother means I'm the biggest hypocrite. And what he's saying here is, is for us to continue as Christians to be freed from my fear, be enveloped in God's love for us, and then begin to live that out by serving others. And what you find over time is that your service for God is not for what people think or what kind of promotion you could get or what kind of level you can go to, but you find that your greatest joy is actually the joy of serving. The joy of loving and serving other people. And when you have that spirit, it transforms the atmosphere that you're living in so you're no longer performance-based, but you're relationship-based.

And that relationship is what draws you to one another. One of my greatest prayers for Bob Jones University is that we'll experience that atmosphere, that we will truly love each other, and there'll be a drawing magnetic power that comes as we love one another. May God help us to know and grow and show his love. Father, thank you for your Word, and thank you for what we learned this semester.

In Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to a sermon from the book of 1 John by Dr. Steve Pettit, President of Bob Jones University. If you would like to order the study booklet titled Truth and Love written for this series, visit our website at thedailyplatform.com. I'm Steve Pettit, President of Bob Jones University.

Thank you for listening to The Daily Platform. The Bob Jones University School for Continuing Online and Professional Education offers convenient and affordable online programs. Whether you're seeking to expand your skills, pursue a passion, or develop a ministry on your own time, qualified and engaged instructors will help you reach your goals. For more information, visit scope.bju.edu or call 888-253-9833. This concludes our series in 1 John. Thanks again for listening, and join us again next week as we'll hear more chapel messages from the Bob Jones University Chapel Platform.