The Importance of Christian Love

Sermon Transcript

Let us pray. Our Father, how good Thou art to us that Thou hast given us Thy Word, that Word which is forever settled in heaven, that Word that Thou hast left us upon the pages of holy writ that sinks down deep into our soul, that Word which is a mighty sword in Thy hands, that powerful Word as it quickens and makes alive, as it destroys the lust and the pride and the unbelief and the self-righteousness of our hearts. In the hands of the Holy Spirit as it lays bare our hearts and brings us and causes us to cry out unto Thee for mercy, what a Word that can cut asunder the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow, and as a discerner in thoughts of the intent of the heart, and lays bare our hearts to let us know that we are naked and open unto Him with whom we have to do.

What a Word is Thy Word! And, Our Father, we ask in Christ's name this morning that Thy Word will do just that in our midst. It will sink down deep into our souls. We will never be the same again as Thou dost deal with us and lay bare our hearts.

We also thank Thee, Our Father, that Thy Word reveals unto us Thy heart, Thy heart of love, and herein is love, not that we love Thee, but that Thou didst love us and gave Thyself for us as a propitiation for all of our sins. Deal with our hearts, is our cry. Fill us with Thy Spirit.

May each word be from Thee, and open our eyes and our ears. We may be able to see and to hear the things that are made for our peace, and we will give Thee the praise and honor and glory, for it is in Christ's name that we ask. Amen.

I want you to turn with us in your Bibles this morning to 1 John chapter 4. We'll be reading verses 7 through 11. 1 John chapter 4 verses 7 through 11. 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. In 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. Herein is love, not that we loved 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. I'd like us to think along the line this morning of the importance of Christian love. I'd like for us to think along the line of this love that is given in so many places in the Bible, that is characteristic of the believing people of God.

In fact, he dwelt so much on it in chapter 4 of 1 John, if you'll count them, 27 times, beginning with verse 7 to the end of the chapter. 27 times he mentions the word love, loved or loveth. He wanted to impress upon us the love of God and the love that we should have one for another.

I'm not going to be able to cover it all this morning, I know this. So we're going to speak to the first part of it this morning, and that is the importance of Christian love. And then tonight, the Lord willing, I would like to show what this love is based upon.

It is based upon the love of God for us, and that we love because He first loved us. But go look at what verse 11 says. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

The basis of our love one for another is God's love for us. And it's in these verses that the Holy Spirit declares unto us the falsehood and vanity of all pretensions and all hypocrisy, and lets us know that the love that we are to love with is a divine love, agape love. The love that God loved us with, we are to love others with.

And this is what God would have us to understand this morning. He does not want us to pretend to obey the first commandment to love God, while we trample habitually on the duties of the second commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. Beloved, this cannot be that we say we love God, and at the same time we do not love our neighbor as ourselves.

If we are destitute of love to man, if we are destitute of love toward the believing people of God, it cannot be possible that we have any love in our hearts for God. This is searching to me. And here it is right before us.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. This is one of the seven places in the book of 1 John that he uses something as a test, whereby we can test ourselves whether or not we are in Christ, whether or not we are in the faith. And one of them is that we are to love one another.

For if we love one another, then we are manifesting the love of God for us, and the love of God in us, as it flows out to others. Because love, are you listening to me? Love must have an object to spend itself upon. And the objects that God wants us to spend our love upon is one another.

Those who are the household of faith, yes. But we have the commandment in Matthew 5, 44, to love our enemies. Therefore, if you cannot love me as a child of God, if you cannot love me as a friend, if you cannot love me as anything else, you've got to love me as an enemy.

If I'm your enemy, do you love me? So it boils itself down to this. God loved his enemies, for when we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. He did not die for us when we were his friends.

He died for us when we were his enemies. He loved us when we were his enemies, and this love is manifested toward whom? Ungodly sinners. When did he save Abraham? It was when he was an ungodly sinner.

He was poles apart from the living God. He had no holiness in him, no righteousness in him. He had nothing with him because Joshua says in the last chapter of Joshua that Abraham was an idolater on the other side of the flood.

When he was in the Ur of the Chaldees, before God called him, he was an enemy of God. So we're to love. We're to love the believing people of God.

We are to love our friends and our neighbors and our family. We're also to love our enemies. As you understand, chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, it does not matter what kind of gifts we may have.

It does not matter what kind of faith we say we have. It does not matter how we give our body to be burned or give away all that we have to feed the poor. If we have not the love of God in us, that charity of God in our souls, then we do not know God.

Now, beloved, I want you to look at my text real well this morning. 1 John 4, 7. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. That's a declarative statement of God.

But watch verse 8. He that loveth not has something wrong with him. This man knoweth not God. That's the test.

For God is love. And if we know God, and God dwells in us in Christ, and by His Spirit, His Spirit fills us, and every child of God has the Spirit of God dwelling in him, then he has the love of God. Because if he's a child of God, according to Romans 5, the love of God has been shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit, which has been given unto him.

Beloved, do you know that if we do not love, then we do not have faith, the faith of Christ in our hearts? For Galatians 5, 6 tells us that faith worketh by love. Faith worketh by love, and therefore mere carnal affections, or party spirit, or belonging to this church or that denomination, or believing this set of doctrines, or having to walk in this set of rules, it's all well and good in itself. But if we have not the love of God in our hearts, we are none of His.

Because faith, the faith that God gives, worketh by love. And this is the faith that causes us to go out, our hearts to go out to Him. Look at what he says in 1 Corinthians 5, in verse 1, Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.

In other words, if I truly am a child of God, and I truly have been born by the Spirit of God, then I will love every one of my brothers and sisters in Christ who have come out of the very mother womb of God as I did. And it will be shown in our daily walk and daily life because it is very plain that this is what God puts within us. He puts His love within us.

Here the argument in 1 John 5, 1 is plain. Everyone that believeth in Christ loves God. And everyone that loves God loves those also who are begotten of Him.

Therefore, if we love not those who are begotten of Him, we have no love to God nor any faith in Christ. Now, beloved, we are to love God's people wherever we find them. They might not have been taught all that we have been taught.

They might not have the same background as we do, but we are to love them. We are to love the weaker brethren. We are to bear long with those.

I am to love those that do not see eye to eye with me on many things in the Word of God. Now, we cannot differ on the new birth. We cannot differ on justification by faith.

We cannot differ on a holy life. We can differ on many things. I am to love those whom God loves and in whose heart God has put a love of the truth and a love for Christ.

I am to love them. Beloved, do we love each other like this? Do we love those who are not with us? Or do I have the fruit of the Spirit? You say, let's see some actual dealings along this line. Well, if there is no real love in my heart, then there is no holiness of life.

The man that is destitute of love tramples all the laws of God under his feet. For the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned, according to 1 Peter 1.22. If we do not love, then we trample all of God's laws under our feet. The very end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned.

And if this end has not been reached in our hearts and lives by entering in by faith into the Lord Jesus Christ from whom all of this flows, then we are yet in our sins and do not know the Lord. You know what I've cried? I've cried that you and I would see afresh and anew this morning, this matter of love one for another, love for each other, love for those on the outside, love for souls, love for those who haven't heard the truth. Love would so grip our souls and compassion in our souls that we would give all that we had and dedicate all our strength that others would hear of the grace of God that has gripped our souls.

It is because of love to God, it is because of what God has done in men's souls that men have left home and houses and friends and loved ones and have gone to the four corners of the earth to be missionaries, that they might tell others of the good news of the gospel of the grace of God. It was the love of Christ, Paul said, that constrained him to go forth and to do by the grace of God. And, beloved, may this be the motivating motto of our hearts.

The love of Christ constrains me. Look at what He's done for my soul. Then nothing's too great to do for Him.

I must give my all that I may follow Him, that I may know Him, that I may abound in love one for another. Now, before I get through this morning, I hope you will see that this truth is one of the most prominent truths in the Word of God, especially in the New Testament. This is one of the greatest truths, the most prominent truths in the New Testament.

And we are admonished over and over and over again to love one another, and to show that love, and for our love not to be that love of word only, but that word that is put into practice. For He tells us in chapter 3 of 1 John, "...hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us." And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. "...but whoso hath this world's good, and saith his brother have need, and shutteth up his vows of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

This is the way God wants us to love. And I told a prayer group this past week. I said, God has given us the truth.

He's given us the means to get it out with. And I said, how do we know? But that the words of Mordecai to Esther applies to us. Mordecai said to Esther, how do you know but that God has called you to the kingdom for such an hour as this? How do we know but that God has called this little group, this little assembly, to the kingdom for such an hour as this, to put forth His truth, and to preach it, and to teach it, and to scatter the seed everywhere we go, that the truth may go out, the truth that God has written upon our hearts, and that we would give of ourselves and everything that we have, that the word may go forth? Listen, we can love those in whom we would not even love to associate with in society.

Their characters are hateful to us. Their society is very disagreeable to us. But we should love them.

We should love their souls. We should desire to help them, that our love may be shown that it is of God. And beloved, this type of love, this type of love has to be the product of the Holy Spirit.

It is not something that we work up within us. Love is never loved until it is given away. Do you know that? It is to love.

All right? Now I want to take you through the Scriptures. What should be the objects of Christian love? Well, we find in 1 Peter 2, verse 17, that we are to love the brotherhood. First of all, we are to love the brethren.

Honor all men, love the brotherhood, love the brethren. We are to love with a love that passeth all understanding. Ephesians 1.15. I am not reading these Scriptures just to take up time, but to show you the importance that the New Testament puts upon this truth.

Wherefore I also, Ephesians 1.15, wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, there should be a love in our hearts for all the saints. Back to 1 John chapter 3 again, verse 14. We know that we have passed from death unto life, and what is one of the things that we know that we have passed from death unto life by? Because we love the brethren.

You see, we are to love the brethren. We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. We should love all men, but especially those of the household of faith. Of the household of faith.

We should love our neighbor as ourselves. And I would like every one of you in the house this morning who can say that you have kept that commandment, stand up. You kept it? Love your neighbor as yourself.

We all fail in this area. We need to cry unto God. Honor thy father and thy mother, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, is the word of God.

And to love him as ourself is to keep the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We're to be like the Samaritan when he found the man dying on the side of the road.

He was half dead. The priest passed by, and the Levite passed by, and they did him no good. They would have nothing to do with him.

Poor man. We're to be like the Samaritan. He gave his all, and he took him in.

We're to do unto others as we'd have them do unto us. And then there is an expression in 1 Thessalonians 3, verse 12, that should grip our hearts. Fall right into the church at Thessalonica, and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love, one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you.

You know, there's a prayer we can pray that I think ought to be in our praying all the time. Lord, give me a love that I've never known before for my fellow man. Lord, give me a... Let's start in the home.

Lord, give me a love for my wife that I've never known before. Give me a love for my children that I've never known before. Give me a love for my grandchildren, those in my home, those that I associate with.

Give me a love for them that I've never known before, that I will sacrifice for them. Give me a love for the brethren that I've never known before. Give me a love for that individual who's a child of God that is weak in the faith, and is not... that doesn't come up to my expectations.

Give me a love for them, a love for them that will bear long with them. Did you know that Romans chapter 2 and verse 4 is identically the same thing that our text tells us? Let me read it to you. Romans 2, 4, Or despises thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? The very thing that God desires us to do toward one another, and that is to suffer long, and to be patient, and to bear long with him, and to forbear with him, and be long-suffering with him, is the same thing that God's love manifested toward us.

For if when God first knocked at our heart's door, are you thinking with me? If when the first time God knocked at our heart's door, and we said, no, we will not have this man to rule over us, and he walked away and said, all right, let's leave him alone. Where would we have been this morning? But God bore long with us, didn't he? He bore long with me. He was long-suffering.

Under all provocations, He was long-suffering with me. He wants me to be the same way toward others. What do I have that I didn't receive by grace? What spiritual truth did I ever learn, but that God gave it to me by His Spirit? Did you ever get a thing by yourself? I'll guarantee you had to unlearn everything you thought you knew.

But when the Spirit taught you, and what did you have? The Spirit came and He taught. What do I have but what grace has revealed unto our hearts? So we are to be long-suffering toward others. We are abound, we should abound in love toward the people of God, and to all men.

That's what the Word of God says. And then one that we quoted, but let's read it all to you. Matthew 5, 44.

There in the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord said in chapter 5, verse 44, But I say unto you, well, 43, you've heard it, it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. I told you this was going to be searching, and I'm going to make it a little more searching.

Do we pray for those that despitefully use us? Let's turn the question around. Do I pray for them which despitefully use me and persecute me? I can only answer that before God, because you don't know my heart. But I ask you a question.

Do we pray for those that despitefully use us and persecute us? Or do we rail against them? We're to love. We're to love one another. We're to love our enemies.

They are specifically set apart for us to love. Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Do you know why Mr. Scofield with his notes in his Bible said that the Sermon on the Mount was pure law and was for those Jews in the kingdom age? It's because just of such statements is that.

But I'll have you to know that not only our Lord said that in Matthew 5, and it's for us, but Paul said it in Romans chapter 12, the same identical thing. He said, Dearly beloved, avenge not yourself, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him.

If he thirst, give him drink. For in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

In other words, love may come out of a pure heart, may it come out of a heart filled with the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Alright now, are you ready for this? It's all the way through the book. Brace yourself.

I want to ask you, are you ready for this? It's right here in the Word of God. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. Isn't that something? And then he says, in Titus 2, verse 4, he turns it around, and he says that the wife should be taught to be sober, to love their husbands, and to love their children.

You see, God doesn't leave anyone out. We're to love. Ephesians chapter 6, children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right.

Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live its long on the earth. We're to love our father and our mother. And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture, that is in the discipline, and in the admonition instructions of the Lord.

We're to love our children by teaching them of the things. This love is to flow out by the grace of God. Then the question is asked, how are we to love? Well, we're to have the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and love with that love.

For we are told in 1 Corinthians 16, 24, my love be with you all in Christ Jesus. We should love in Christ Jesus. The love of Christ should constrain us, and therefore we should have that special love toward the brethren.

We should have that love, that special love, toward those that are in Christ. And our love is to be love without hypocrisy. Love that is genuine.

Love unfeigned. Let it be no pretense. Let it be no put-on.

Then we love not merely in word, neither in tongue, but in deed, as we read to you in 1 John 3, 18, of in deed and in truth. Not in saying, but in doing. Not in professing, but let us do it in practice.

We should love from the heart fervently, because love, we're told in 1 Peter 4, 8, covers a multitude of sins. Do you love me like that? That you can live with my faults? Do you love me like that? That you can live with my faults? Do I love you like that? That I can live with your faults? There's one thing I haven't done in my lifetime, and I'm 66 years of age. I have not yet met a perfect woman, a perfect man, or a perfect young person, or a perfect child.

Have you? So what are we going to do? We're to love. We're not to love grudgingly, but this love is to abound more and more. We should love from the heart.

How much is that? Well, Christ gave His all. Christ loved us enough to give Himself. So we should love enough that we might give and lay down our lives for the brethren.

Do you love me enough that you'd lay down your life for me? Maybe that's the first time you've ever been asked that question. Do I love you enough that I would lay down my life for you? It is said that a prince or a king had been conquered by Alexander the Great, and he and his wife and children were brought before the king, expecting to be killed. He said, Alexander the Great says, what do you have to give to me? He said, my whole kingdom is yours.

He said, what do you have to give for this woman and these children? He said, my life. And he said, you can keep your kingdom and your wife and your children. And he thanked him, and he looked at his wife to see what she was going to say, and the wife was looking at him with such a look of love and surprise upon her face.

He said, aren't you going to thank the king? Thank the king. I'm so enthralled with the man who would give his life for me. He loved me that much.

He'd say he would give his life for me. Are we willing to give our lives for the brethren? How is this love manifested? I want you to turn with me to Romans chapter 13, verse 10. Romans 13.10. And I want to look at what he says there.

Love worketh no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Love is manifested by abstaining from everything that would injure another. I told you this was going to be heart-searching now.

And if you meditate upon that, if you just meditate upon those words, love worketh no ill to his neighbor, that takes in your wife and your husband and your children and your loved ones, your friends, your neighbors, love worketh no ill toward them. In other words, I am not going to do them. I love them too much to do them any wrong.

Love is manifested by doing good as we have the opportunity. Abstaining from doing any injury is negative, but being positive, doing that good, that God gives us the opportunity to do good. And then love is manifested by becoming a servant to others.

In Galatians chapter 5, we find these words. For brethren, we have been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. This love shows itself by us being servants to others, helping others and serving others.

Did not our Lord Jesus say this? Did he not show us the example in the upper room? He said, I came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. He said, I came to serve. He said, I want you to be servants.

The greatest in the kingdom are those who serve, who give of themselves and are willing to take the low place. And so he illustrated it for us. He took off his outer garment, he girded himself with a towel, he took a basin of water, and he began to wash his disciples' feet.

When he got finished, he said, go do likewise. Does this mean we believe in foot washing as an ordinance of the church? Well, I'd like to go to foot washing. But what he is saying here is that we are to serve one another.

We are to so love that we are willing to serve one another. And I don't have any other way than to deliver this this morning, but just by giving these scriptures to us. He says in verse 24 of 1 Corinthians 10, Let no man seek his own, but every man another's good.

We are to seek another's good. We are to seek to serve our another. Love is manifested by our not seeking our own, but our neighbor's good.

How can we help them? How can we help them spiritually and physically? Love is manifested by giving it away. And then love is manifested by us not looking or caring or having a regard to our own things, but to the things of others. That's hard to do, isn't it? Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

And let not man look upon his own ministry or his own doings or his own writings or nothing. But love is manifested by looking at what God has done through others. We are not concerned about our glory or about our honor, but we honor others.

And this is what our Lord Jesus Christ did. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in flesh as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. This is the example that he left us.

Love is manifested by our not looking or caring for or having regard to our own things, but to the things of others. Now I want you to go with me to John chapter 17. I want you to see something there that God would have us to understand.

John chapter 17. What does he say? Verse 21. How is the world going to know if there is any difference between us and them if we do not manifest the love of Christ day after day toward each other? And the world is going to know that we believe and that God is in us for a surety as we are one and love each other.

And this is the way we are going to be known. Behold how they love one another. This again is shown in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 2. Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the love of Christ.

Bear each other's burdens. Help a brother. Help him overcome his weakness.

Bear his burdens with him. Help him along the way. Encourage him.

Oh I mean encourage him. Give him encouragement to go on. When is the last time you told your brother you loved him? When is the last time you put your arm around your brother or sister in Christ? I don't mean for you men to start hugging the women.

The women with the women and the men with the men. But what I'm trying to get over is this. When was the last time you put your arm around your brother? Or your sisters put your arms around your sister and look them in the face and say, you know, I love you.

I love you in the Lord. I love you because of what God has wrought for you and in you. I praise God.

I admire the grace of God in you. Let's bear one another's burdens. Let us help our weaker brother.

Let us help them to overcome the things. Or you might be sitting there this morning and you say, Pastor, I know all of this. I know you should have preached that message to yourself.

All of it fits you very well. It all fits you very well. And you're right.

But are you getting anything? Does anything go home to your heart? Well, Pastor, I know that all of this fits you because you didn't do this and you didn't do that and you didn't do something else. And you're right. But will you love me in my infirmities and in my weaknesses? And will you pray for me that I will overcome these things? I'm serious.

If you see where I'm deficient, will you pray for me that I will overcome these things? I'm serious. If you see where I'm deficient, will you pray for me that I will overcome these things? I'm serious. If you see where I'm deficient, will you pray for me that I will overcome these things? I'm serious.

If you see where I'm deficient, will you pray for me that I will overcome these things? I'm serious. If you see where I'm deficient, will you pray for me that I will overcome these things? I'm serious. If you see where I'm deficient, will you pray for me that I will overcome these things? And be my friend and help me in these areas where I'm weak.

Will you? I ask of you. And be my friend and help me in these areas where I'm weak. Will you? I ask of you.

There's a word in 1 Corinthians 8 that often comes to me. Of course, as you know, Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 and 1 Corinthians 8, 1 Corinthians 10 has to do with Christian liberty, whether we eat this or drink that or something else, and how we are to bear with those who are weak in these areas or strong in these areas. But there is a verse that always sticks with me.

It is 1 Corinthians 8.13. This is where the Apostle Paul came in his love toward the brethren. This is what he said, wherefore if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world stand it, lest I make my brother to offend. If what I do and what I say offends, then let me walk in a different way and let me say it in a different way.

I don't mean whether the truth offends you, but my little things. Or as he says here, listen, I don't have to put another piece of meat to my mouth the rest of my life. I'll be a vegetarian if eating meat offered to idols is going to cause my brother, he was willing to do this.

That's love. He had liberty because he had said in chapter 10, all things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but all things edify not.

I have liberty, but I have liberty also not to do. And I believe that's the greatest liberty, to keep from doing that we might please God, we might please our brother and help him along the way. Did you know that? I fully believe that.

Then we're to love, let it be manifested by restoring those who have fallen. That's what he tells us in Galatians 6, 1. Brother, if a man be overtaken in a fault, he which is spiritual, restore such in one in the spirit of meekness, consider thyself, lest thou also be tempted. And I had a lot more here, but my time's gone, but the last one that I will give you is love for others is manifested by praying for them.

The greatest thing that you can do for me is to pray for me. The greatest thing I can do for you is to pray for you. We should pray one for another.