Prove It 4 // 1 John 4:7-12 (ESV)
A message by Rev. Dr. Mark Jordan, Pastor

Last Week:
- Subdue and Master Temptation
- Believe, Love, and Live the Gospel
1 John 4:7-9 (ESV) | 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
GOD IS LOVE
- God IS Love; therefore, love and God are inextricably linked.
- Interesting to me that we throw around the word, love, so flippantly.
- Not God’s Way, though, and we see this in how God seriously God takes love since it manifested for us in Jesus.
REMEMBER: GOD’S LAW OF LOVE
- The original Law existed to show us our inadequacies.
- The New Covenant – or Law of Love – exists to shape us to be more like Jesus.
LACKING?
- Propitiation: in basic sense means, satisfaction.
- Jesus’ sacrificial death paid the penalty for our sin, but also satisfied God’s wrath.
- English word, atonement, means that Jesus’ death enables us to be made “at one” with God.
- Note: this shows that we aren’t just lacking in our comprehension of love, but totally in debt to the One in Whom love exists.
- Romans 13:8, “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
- Therefore, we need an expanded vision about what love truly is!
ABIDE
- Abide: actively remaining; to acknowledge and act according.
- John recorded Jesus talked about abiding in his gospel
- John 15:4-5 (ESV) | 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
- Love is the first fruit of the Spirit listed (Gal.5:22)
PERFECTED
- Perfected: final stage; complete.
- Imagine a telescoping spy glass – the idea here is we are not able to fully see how love works if we are not growing in what it means to love.
- 1 Corinthians 13:10, when the perfect comes, the imperfect disappears.
- Matthew 5:48 (ESV) | You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
WHAT ARE WE TO DO?
- Turn to God and seek out imperfect expressions of love
- Abide in Him to grow more like Jesus
- REMEMBER: this is a lifelong process
Reflection Questions
- What is God’s nature? How does that convict you when we attribute things to God’s nature that do not belong there?
- We once again looked at God’s Law of Love. What did Pastor Mark say the old Law existed to show us? So what is the purpose of the new Law of Love?
- What does it mean that we lack a true understanding of love? Why?
- What does it mean to abide? What illustration did Jesus use to help us understand what it means to abide?
- What does it mean to be perfected? What example do we get from the biblical language? How does that help our vision?