Would you open your Bibles with me to 1 John chapter 4. I have a message that is vital, I believe, to an understanding of a concept, a truth, that most of the world speaks of but doesn't really understand. And many would find this offensive. But the gospel is an offensive message. And it doesn't sound offensive.

The title of the lesson is God is Love. And it's taken from verse 16, where John wrote, 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.

Now, this issue of God's love, people want to hear about it, but they don't want to hear the truth about it. And the fact is this, if you read the Bible and believe the Bible, you'll know that God loves his own and by the Lord Jesus Christ. Outside of Christ there is no love from God. There's nothing but hatred and I know that that just grates against most people and the reason is is because they look at what the Bible calls God. You know the Bible says that Jacob have I loved Esau have I hated in the book of Romans chapter 9. And preachers try to tone that down. He didn't really hate Esau, he just loved him less. Well, that's not true. That's not what that word means.

But the reason it grates against people's understanding is because they equate God's hatred with their own, which we're commanded to love our neighbor as ourself, even our enemies. But God's hatred is not like our hatred. Our hatred mostly, unless it's in a certain context, is sinful because it's selfishness. It's selfish. It's wishing harm on others, even wishing death on others. Christ spoke of that in the Sermon on the Mount when he spoke of the law, said it's not only wrong, a sinful, it's not only murder just to kill a person but to despise that person, hate that person, that's murder in the eyes of the law.

And then the Bible says that God hates workers of iniquity, that's Psalm 5. Well, does God love any of us? Well, he says here, look at chapter four here, Verse nine, for example, he says, in this was manifested the love of God toward us. Now, who's the us there? Well, that's talking about sinners saved by grace, the elect of God chosen in him before the in Christ, before the foundation of the world, those who believe in him. They have a mediator, they have Christ, So God is love, but his love comes to his people through Jesus Christ.

And it was because of his love to his people that he sent Christ because God's love, God's grace, God's mercy, God's blessings must be just. Now let me give it to you this way. God's mercy and love does not have to be shown to everybody. In fact, he said it. He said, I'll have mercy on whom I will, and I'll be gracious to whom I will. That's soft. But now God's justice must be shown always to everybody because God reveals himself in justice.

So the question comes in all of this, how can God be just and still love and be merciful and gracious to a sinner like me who deserves nothing but death? Well, see, God's hatred is justice. That's what it is. God is just, God must punish sin because He's holy, He's righteous, He's just.

So how do we understand it? Well, God, John, the Holy Spirit through John gives us an understanding of it. Go back to verse seven. First of all, here's a command of love. He says, beloved, let us love one another. Now he's talking about the fellowship of faith here. the church, the true people of God, bound together in godly love. This is a love that no human being fallen in Adam, born in sin, has by nature. Now we have love, we love ourselves, we love our children, we love our wives and husbands, we have human love, we love our country, all of that. But the love he's talking about here is a love that is given to his people by the Holy Spirit shed abroad in their hearts when He shows them His love toward us in Christ."

And so He says, for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God. Now, not everybody is born of God, but everyone who truly loveth in this way is born of God and knoweth God. Not everyone is born of God, not everyone knows God. Now everyone may think they're born of God and everyone may think they know God, but by nature none of us do. We have to be born again by the Spirit through the Word to have this kind of love because this love, now here's what it does, this love regards and respects the honor of God above all things.

Do you love God? you want to honor Him above all things. You want to honor Him above anybody, everybody. And then to love God is to love His truth. Whatever God says we love because it's true. Now men may not tell you the truth, women may not tell you, but God tells the truth. So it's a love and regard and respect for God and His truth and mainly It's a love for Christ Jesus. Because Christ is the only access I have to God. Christ is the only acceptance I have with God. It's through His glorious person, who is God manifest in the flesh, God with us, and through His redemptive work on the cross, the obedience unto death on the cross, that God expresses His love to me.

Look at it. goes on, he says verse 8, he that loveth not knoweth not God for God is love, there's a term again, he says in this verse 9 was manifested the love of God toward us his people because that God sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. There you go, Now you know John chapter 3 and verse 16 talks about how God loves the world. It's not talking about every individual in the world. It's talking about God's people all over the world. Jew and Gentile. God has a people out of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation. And He's going to call them out. They're going to live through Christ because Christ is life.

But now look at verse 10, here's the source of that love. Herein is love, not that we love God. Now God's love to his people is not based upon their loving him. Because by nature we're enemies of God. Now turn over to Romans chapter five, I want you to see this. Because it reinforces what he's saying there in this verse. But Romans chapter five. It says in verse six of Romans five, it's talking about grace. And grace is salvation that we don't earn and don't deserve, but is given freely by God to his people. And Romans five and verse six says, for when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. Now that verse tells us that salvation is not by our power. We were without strength. We were powerless to save ourselves. And then he says in verse seven, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure for a good man, some would even dare to die.

But look at verse eight, but God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Christ died for us. And let's read on verse nine, much more than being now justified by his blood. What is it to be justified? It's to be forgiven of all our sins. past, present, and future to the point that they cannot be charged against us. They were charged to Christ, were justified, forgiven by His blood, His death. And then it means to be declared righteous in God's sight by His righteousness laid over to our account, imputed to us.

So much more than being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if, when we were enemies, We were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. When we were enemies. And that's why God has been reconciled to us through the death of His Son.

We must be reconciled to God. How does that happen? The Holy Spirit, in that holy calling, calls us unto Christ in the Gospel. And we lay down our rebellion we submit to God through the person and work of Christ.

Go back now to first John verse 10. Herein is love, not that we love God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. What is that propitiation? That's a satisfaction to God's justice. It's God providing for us through His love that satisfaction of His justice through Christ. Satisfaction, Christ, and how does that satisfaction come out? Through Christ, not through us, not even through our cooperation. We do cooperate because God brings us to do so but He's the propitiation for our sins and verse 11 says, Beloved, if God so loved us We ought also to love one another.

Now there's the command again. What should we do? You say, well, and you know, mainly what John is talking about here is the love that exists between fellow believers, the fellowship of faith. Now we're commanded to love our neighbor, even our enemies, but we don't receive them as brethren. We pray for their salvation. We help them when we can, but we tell them the truth. But this love that exists among believers, it's based upon the fact that God loved us and saved us from our sins by His grace through Christ.

And here's the point. God didn't save you because you were worthy. God didn't love you because you were lovable. Because in God's sight, none of us are lovable. I'm telling you. We rebelled against Him in Adam. We fell in Adam. We were born enemies of God until we're born again. That's why we have to be born again by the Spirit and brought to be reconciled to God, to love Him. That's a gift.

But God didn't love us and save us because we were worthy. You look at a person, and especially a fellow believer, and you say, well, they're not worthy of my love. Well, what are you saying? Do you think you're worthy? Remember what Christ said to the Pharisees in John chapter five? He said, I know you, you don't have the love of God in you. How do you know that? Because they rejected him. They rejected Christ as salvation. They rejected Christ, who he was, who he is, God manifest in the flesh, and they rejected what he would accomplish on the cross, save his people from their sins.

I want to be a recipient of God's love. What can I do to earn that? Nothing. What can I do to deserve it? Nothing. Because if I don't have Christ, when you stand at judgment, now think about it this way, when you stand at judgment, if you stand there on your own merits and talk about what you did, what you didn't do, or what you decided, the only experience you're gonna have from God is wrath, justice, and that's what his hatred is, it's just, it's a righteous indignation, it's not a sinful hatred. But if you stand before God washed in the blood of Christ, clothed in His righteousness, then you experience what you had all along, the love of God. And that's salvation. That's all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.

You say, well, how do you know all that? Look at verse 12. He says, no man hath seen God at any time. God is invisible. God is spirit. And these people who say they have a vision of God, or they saw, they don't. And they don't know, for example, they don't even know what Christ looked like. You might see pictures and everything, but that's not him.

So he says, no man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, now look at this, If we love one another, that's brethren now, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us. Now that doesn't mean we have a perfect love for each other because we still have too much self-love. But what does that perfected mean? It means the love of God has reached its goal.

If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love has reached its goal. bringing a sinner to Christ and bringing sinners together in Christ. And that's what he said to the Pharisees back in John chapter five. You don't have the love of God in you. I come and preach in God's name and you reject me. How do you know if you don't have the love of God in you? Do you reject God's word? Do you reject the God of the Bible? Do you reject the Christ of the Bible? Do you reject your brethren? see what I'm saying?

Verse 13 says, Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us because he hath given us of his Spirit. If the love of God is within my heart to love my brethren, and that doesn't mean we have to like each other and everything each other does, that doesn't mean we're not going to have problems, do some arguments or whatever, but not over the gospel now. That means we'll stick together in the faith. And nothing can pry us apart in the faith.

But he says, hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us because he had given us of his spirit. And so if that love was within our heart, that's an evidence of the Holy Spirit's presence within our hearts. And he says in verse 14, and we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Now, why does John keep using that word world so much? Well, in the context of the history here, the Jews had it in their mind that in order to be a child of God, in order to be saved and accepted with God, whether you claim to be saved by grace through Christ or whatever, you still had to be a Jew.

Like Paul in Galatians, when those false Jewish preachers came in and tried to get the Gentile men to be circumcised and that's what they were saying, you got to be a Jew. But see the gospel extends beyond the Jewish nation and goes to God's elect not only among the Jews most of who were lost and died in their sins and it goes out to the elect among the Gentiles.

Now God sent his son into the world made of a woman, that's his humanity, sinless humanity, made under the law, that's the salvation that's conditioned on him, to redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons. God adopted us before the world began. We receive that adoption when the Holy Spirit brings us to Christ. And that's when we first experience in our minds the love of God. It's not really the first time we experience the love of God because that's always been there. Remember he told Jeremiah, I love you with an everlasting love from the womb. You know if you're a child of God, God has taken care of you from the womb even when you didn't know it. But in the process of time, when you're born again by the Spirit and brought to Christ, then you'll know it. You'll see that love of God in you. And you'll struggle.

You know, I was down in Mexico one time preaching. And there's several men, you know, were driving out into the, what they called the Pueblos at that time. And there was one fellow there who just, he was a obsessive talker, kept talking. I mean, to the point where we're all about to go to sleep. And he was talking to the driver and he looked over at the driver and he's talking and the driver was like spaced out almost. And he said, are you, are you listening to me? And the driver looked at him and said, well, you're a hard man to ignore.

Well, that's the case. You come unto the Father through the Son. And the Bible says He shuts your mouth and brings you to submit. And you can't ignore it. You can't ignore Him. He says in verse 14, and we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. God has a people all over this earth. when it says he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth should not perish might not perish but have everlasting life. You see the objects of God's love shall be saved, they shall be born again, they shall live forever.

Verse 15, whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God. See all this comes together His love, His Spirit, the presence of God within us. How is that possible? By His Spirit and by His Word. And you love it. You love it.

Verse 16, he says, and we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. It's not simply that God loves, He does. But God is love, that's his nature. And he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him.

Now this love, I'll say this, I hope you've already understood this from the beginning. This is not that sappy, syrupy love that, I always say it like this, that you're reading about on a Hallmark card. Bible is not a Hallmark card. I like Hallmark cards, don't get me wrong, but that's not the Bible. You know, a lot of people, they talk about how the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath, but the God of the New Testament is a God of love. They don't understand the Bible. The God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath and a God of love. Wrath towards those who live and die in their unbelief without Christ, and love and grace and mercy to all who die in Christ. Same in the New Testament, same. If that's what you believe, if you believe that in the Old Testament, he's wrath, in the New Testament, you don't understand God's love. You need to understand it from the Bible.

But look at verse 17, now I love this. He says, herein is our love made perfect. Now that word perfect there means made complete, all right? And it's the idea is the same as what he set up back up here when his love is perfected in us or in us. It reaches its goal. God's love has a goal in mind. And it's not an unfulfilled love. It's to save His people from their sins and to give them life from the dead. And herein is our love made perfect, made complete, that we may have, now listen, we may have boldness, confidence in the day of judgment. In the day of judgment. Think about it. You know, most preachers use the day of judgment to try to, pardon my French, scare the hell out of people. Don't they? Oh, when you get to judgment, God's gonna weigh your good works with your bad works. Well, my friend, let me tell you something. If that's true, we're all doomed. We're all doomed. Salvation's not by your works.

So in how can I, a sinner, at my best, I still fall short of the perfection of righteousness that can only be found in Christ. So how can I, a sinner, come before God at judgment who knows my heart and be bold, be confident? Look at verse 17. We may have boldness in the day of judgment because as he is, who's the he there? That's Christ. So are we in this world. Now, what does that mean? That means I am as Christ is.

Well, preacher, I've watched you and you sure don't look perfect to me. Christ was perfect, is perfect. He loved perfectly. He obeyed the law perfectly. He never sinned, but I have. So how can I honestly say that as Christ is, so am I in this world? Only by the imputation of His righteousness to me. Romans 4 and verse 6, David described the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without works.

Romans 8 34. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. Who can condemn us? It's Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again and seated at the right hand of the Father ever living to make intercession for us. How can I say that I am as He is? What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. I stand washed from all my sins. past sins, present sins, future sins, not by the baptistry, not by the confessional, not by coming to church. What washes away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

This is all my hope and peace. This is all my righteousness. I have a righteousness that answers the demands of God's law and justice and I didn't have anything to do with making it. what Christ did in my stead as my surety, as my substitute, as my Redeemer. You see, grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. So I can say if God has given me the gift of faith and given me the gift of repentance from my dead works, can say that I am as Christ is, He is my righteousness." Jeremiah called him that twice, the Lord our righteousness.

And he says in verse 18, there is no fear in love, that's anxious fear, ungodly fear, but perfect love, that love that has reached its goal casteth out fear and because fear hath torment, he that feareth is not made perfect in love." Love hasn't reached, if you're afraid to stand before God at judgment, you're not pleading Christ, you're looking to yourself. And I'll tell you right now, if you're looking to yourself, you will fail, you will. We love Him, verse 19, because He first loved us. God is the source of all love. He's the catalyst. He's the giver.

And so verse 20, if a man say, I love God and hateth his brother, talking about his brother in Christ, he's a liar. Now again, your brother, your sister may do something you don't like, but if you hate him, you're a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? Now that's the significance of what he said up here, God is spirit. No man had seen God at any time.

You know, when Christ dealt with the rich young man who came to him and said, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Christ recognized that the man was trying to be saved by his works. So he met him where he was at. He said, well, if you're going to be saved by your works, love your neighbor as yourself. And he read to him the second table of the law. Why didn't he read him the first table of the law? Well, the first four commandments have to do with man's relationship with God, whom he hasn't seen. And you know, it's easier for a person to say, oh, I love God, whom you haven't seen. than it is to say, I love my neighbor, love my brother, whom you have seen, who you got to deal with on a weekly or daily basis. And that's what he's saying.

Verse 21 says, and this commandment have we from him that he who loveth God, love his brother also. That's the bottom line. Love, which is the gift of God that he gives to his people.