1 John 4:7-11Living Bible (TLB)
Loving the unlovable
Dr. Ronald K. Powell
Scripture:
1 John 4:7-11 Living Bible (TLB)
7 Dear friends, let us practice loving each other, for love comes from God and those who are loving and kind show that they are the children of God, and that they are getting to know him better. 8 But if a person isn’t loving and kind, it shows that he doesn’t know God—for God is love.
9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into this wicked world to bring to us eternal life through his death. 10 In this act we see what real love is: it is not our love for God but his love for us when he sent his Son to satisfy God’s anger against our sins.
11 Dear friends, since God loved us as much as that, we surely ought to love each other too.
All of us have a list of people we don’t like but that conflicts with God’s Word telling us to love everyone.
- 1 John 4:7-11 makes it clear that God’s love comes from God and not from our impressions or opinions of people.
- To love others with God’s love it is necessary to be in relationship with God and then share with others the love you have found in Him.
- Our ability to love others on our own is pretty limited. It’s circumstantial, based on how we feel about the other person and the way he or she treats us. But with God’s help, we are able to love others the way Jesus wants us to — everyone, all the time.
Introduction:
It’s easy to love people who love you back. But then there are times when it’s not so easy to love. The times you have been hurt and wronged. Are you still supposed to love someone who hurts you? And, if so, how?
In 1 John 3:14-15, John, one of Jesus’ closest friends, warns us that hating someone makes us murderers in our hearts. God wants us to love even those who are hard to love.
1 John 3:11-24 New International Version (NIV)
More on Love and Hatred
11 For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brothers were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
The difference between Love and Like
- “All of us sport an invisible sign around our necks – ‘AS IS.’
- We act as if we are being good Christians because we aren’t being mean to someone.
- If anyone knew how to love people who weren’t very likable, it was Jesus. After all, He spent three years in the company of Judas, who was stealing, manipulating and scheming to betray Him. Jesus washed Judas’s feet.
- Love vs. like.
- Understand this… to enter into love & to be able to receive it into ourselves.
- The First fruit of the Spirit is Love… all other fruit springs from love.
- Our ability to love others on our own is pretty limited. It’s circumstantial, based on how we feel about the other person and the way he or she treats us. But with God’s help, we are able to love others the way Jesus wants us to — everyone, all the time.
- Our love for them… must come from God – (We can do nothing without Him)
- Our aim under love is not to be loving to this or that person, or in this or that kind of situation, but to be a person possessed by love as an overall character of life, whatever is or is not going on.
- 1 Cor. 13 Love does not demand its own way.
The “occasions” are met with that overall character. I do not come to my enemy and then try to love them, I come to them as a loving person.
- Love is not a faucet to be turned on or off at will.
- It is not something you choose to do, but what you choose to be.
- Grace – I love you … Not Grace I love you because.
Problem of loving someone because of how you want to feel.
- You get into a spot where you can’t get anything more than God’s presence.
- Not loving them effects your relationship with God.
- If we take care of the sources of our actions, the action will take care of itself.
Loving others is our way of loving God
- Many of us struggle because we’re trying to heal relationships at a horizontal level without going to God first.
“I have chosen to love.”
Grace has unlimited potential – Most loving persons are humble, gracious, courageous, sweet, & wise.
As I stand before the person who is hard to love, Jesus Christ sings through me to this person a song of love just as they are.
- Power did not drive Jesus here. Love did.
- What killed him? The loss of his father.
- Only his love can explain him.
- The more you see the love Jesus showed, the more you’ll see His love growing in your own life.
Jesus Loves the Whole World
His Message: Believe in Me-
- I will heal you,
- I will save you,
- I will Free you,
- I will make your life have purpose.
- I will teach my love
We are not to Judge the world: We must Judge our own hearts (only then can we be free to love one another.)
Closing
- 1 John 3: 14 (NIV)
14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other.
· 1 John 4:7-8, 13New International Version (NIV)
God’s Love and Ours
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.
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