Read: I John 4:11-5:5
Read: John 3:1-21
Imagine you’re driving on the road to get something to eat, you see an ice cream shop and you think to yourself, “I’m going to have to come back to that after dinner.” You could stop and get your dessert first, there’s no judgement here, but it’s probably best to eat things in their proper order.
That’s probably the best way that I can describe John’s writing style here. He doesn’t follow a traditional outline in the way that we are used to, but he has a clear objective. This is the third time that John has mentioned the command of God to love one another. Each previous iteration has taken us down a different path, and now there is a new path to explore.
Love Defined
God is love. That’s a pretty strong statement. But it makes sense once we start to unpack it a bit. If God is love, and we are in Him and His children, then we will embody this characteristic as our own.
John likes to take us back to the beginning of creation to demonstrate the eternal qualities of God. He created the world out of love and designed it in such a way to bring comfort, beauty, and functionality to mankind, whom He created in His own image. If the love of God was not apparent enough in creation, God further demonstrated His love toward us by sending His only begotten Son into the world to die in our place.
Was God responding to our love toward Him? Was He moved by our worship and wooed by our righteous behavior? No! God loved us while we were still sinners. He sent His Son to die for us while we were yet His enemies. Jesus came with the intention of being the suffering servant, to bear the wrath of God so that we would be spared the punishment we deserved. That is how love is defined and that is how we ought also to love one another.
But all of this is review. We already know it to be true because we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ as our savior. This letter was written so that we would know that we have fellowship with God and by understanding it, we would extend this same love towards one another.
Love Revealed
Love is the way in which God has revealed Himself to us. Whether it is creation or the incarnation of His Son, love is the distinguishing characteristic. Notice how often God uses love to explain the gospel. When He is talking about marriage, He tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. He calls His church the Bride of Christ. We are His children and He is our loving Father. All of this demonstrates the embodiment of the truth that God is love.
No one has ever seen God. We see His creation and we read His Word, but no one has ever seen God Himself. John was an eyewitness of Jesus Christ, but he was writing to a generation that had never seen their savior. However, John is reminding the Church that we can be even more certain today that God is real than any of the disciples during the three years they spent with Jesus.
How is this possible? By knowing that God abides in us and seeing the fruit of love flourishing in us.
Abiding and Perfecting in Love
I think it is important to remember that when John is talking about abiding in God he is referring back to Jesus’ teaching in John 15 where He talks about being the “True Vine.” To abide in God is to be attached to the vine. This gives us our sustenance and strength, or what John would call the light of God as osmosis to our faith. We are attached to the vine, but the vine is also attached to us. It’s strength and power is flowing through us.
We cannot be on the vine and produce tomatoes. In fact, if we’re not producing grapes, and the same quality of grapes as everyone else, the vine dresser will come and snip us off. And, if we’re not producing enough fruit, we’ll be pruned until we do produce the fruit abundantly.
The fruit that Jesus is producing here is Love. If we attach ourselves to the vine, we should expect to produce the same kind of love. And since God is intending to make us fruitful in love, we should also expect a little bit of pruning in our lives to help us along the way. God is not punishing us out of hatred. He is pruning us to produce better fruit. That’s why we should not fear God as an executioner. He has already punished Jesus. There is no more punishment left for the believer. But there is a process of pruning designed to cut away all of the things that would make us unfruitful.
We can only understand this process if we have first experienced the love of God. That is why it is impossible for an unbeliever to produce the same fruit as a believer. They cannot love God because they cannot see love. Therefore, they cannot love those in their life that they can see as God has loved us.
Keeping His Commandments
The commands of God are clear. We are to believe in Jesus Christ, attach ourselves to the vine, and produce the fruit of love. If we were to just look at the commands on their own, it might be overwhelming, but John is not commanding us to be overbearing. He is showing us how we can know that we have fellowship with God and how the fruit is produced in us. If we love God, we will trust in Jesus. If we believe in Jesus, we will produce the fruit of love. Therefore, we can know that we are children of God.
We do not need to fix ourselves in order to present ourselves as something loveable that God can then accept. God demonstrated His love toward us while we were still sinners. We do not need to become experts on love before we can start to love God and love other people. We simply need to attach ourselves to the vine, rely on the power of God, and trust in the pruning process.
When faced with the insurmountable problems of this world, it might seem overwhelming to think that there is any hope. It might even discourage us when we look internally and realize that we have a long way to go in order to be made in the image of Christ. But we must remember that God is victorious. God gives us strength and power to overcome the world through faith in Jesus Christ.
John has already warned us not to love the world. But we struggle every day with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. How can we stop ourselves from falling for the temptations that are all around us? How can we overcome the world? Faith in God. Abide in Christ. Let the Spirit of God produce the fruit of love in your life.
Adam Miller is the president and host of Songtime Radio and serves as the pastor of South Chatham Community Church. This article is a condensed version of one of his sermons.