1 John 4... What's God like?

1 John 4...   What's God like?  
God is Father (1 Jn 3. 1); He is Spirit (Jn 4. 24); He is light  (1Jn 1. 5); He is Love; He is like Jesus. 

God is spirit...
When John wrote his letter there were people coming into the Church who claimed to be “led by the Spirit.”  John writes that God has given us his spirit; then he imagines the situation where someone turns up to preach: they are shaking with emotion; their voice is charged with passion; the words flow freely with a persuasive power; maybe they have even healed one or two people, or spoken in tongues, or prophesied something that happened.  How do you know if all that power is from God?

Just because a person has a supernatural experience, just because they are speaking out under some powerful influence, does not mean that the Spirit of God has come upon them.  And yet you can't get away from the reality that the Christian life is life in the Spirit.  God is Spirit (Jn 4. 24) and has given us his Spirit (v. 16) so we know we belong to him. 

The dangers are that, as we enter into this realm of spiritual experience – which we should do because God has given us his Spirit – we can be confused, deceived, by spirits  and spiritual experience that are not from God.  The answer isn’t' whether you like what the person is doing.  Having the preacher heal your arthiritis may be quite appealing.  You may be put off by the shaking or the shouting.  But what John is saying is that we shouldn't be affected by that one way or the other.  John's question is “What do they say about Jesus.?”  “If a person claims to believe in Jesus, it is proper to ask “Is your Jesus the real Jesus.”

The Spirit of God will confirm that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.  The Spirit of Antichrist will deny that Jesus has come in the flesh.  Spiritual power, in other words, takes you into truth about Jesus.  That means at least three things:

1. Pre-existence.  He “Came” from somewhere – from God's presence.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was God...”  Jesus is really, truly, eternally God. It's not enough to agree that Jesus was a nice guy. It's not enough, to say that Jesus showed us something of God's character.  To say that Jesus has come in the flesh implies that he came from Heaven, that he is fully God.
2. Personhood.   He came in the flesh.  He didn't just look human. He was and is really human.  He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.  When he was in the desert and saw the stones, thought how like loaves they were, something inside him said “That would be a great idea!”  When he talked about the cross and Simon said to him “That will never happen to you”  his humanity said “Come to think of it, I don’t have to do this: maybe I should back of...”  When an attractive young woman was crying on his shoulder, he felt the pull of sexual temptation.   He came in the flesh.  To say he came in the flews h is to say he was fully human. 
3. Permanence.  .. Jesus came once for all in the flesh.  He did not adopt a human body. He didn't borrow someone else's flesh.  He became a human person and retains his humanity today.  To say he came in the flesh is to say that he is fully God, and that he was fully human, at he same time.  

To say that about Jesus is to accept that there is a supernatural, spiritual reality to life; and that such reality isn't locked away in its own realm beyond our reach.  Jesus has come in the flesh.  The other worldly dimension is a reality, and one that is seeking us. God is seeking us, because God is love.

God is love...
What is God like?  God is love.  John repeats that astounding definition of the nature of God twice, in verse 8 and 16.   Let's allow that truth to sink in.  God is love.  He isn't just loving.   On Thursday morning someone was upset and needed a hug and Rosemary gave her that hug.  Now you could say Rosemary is a loving person?  But God isn't just loving. He is love...  Love defines who and what God is.  God isn't someone who does loving things.  God is love and all he does is an expression of that love. Even the things we don't initially understand.   Listen, we don’t  have a vengeful, cruel, narrow, nasty God.   We have a God who is love.  Everything he does is done in love.   His very nature, the heart of who he is, is love. 

That doesn't mean that everything of love is “God.” To make “love” into “God” is to make an idol – and one all too common in our world; secondly, because we need to define love correctly, in the way that God defines it; “Human love...falls short if it refuses to include the Father and the Son as the supreme objects of its affection.”   What is true is that because God is love, all true love is “of God”, comes from Him.  We are created in God's image so when anyone shows love it can only come from God.  No definition of love is adequate that does not start with god and his Son. 

That means God is personal, not just a force. Creation is about a God who is love, relational in Himself, (therefore triune?) Father, Son and Holy Spirit living in a wonderful dance of love with one another,  extending that love, creating worlds, in love.  Creating mankind in his image (complex like God, male and female equally human as Father Son and Holy Spirit are equally God) is an act of love.  Judgement, driving sinful man out of Eden, is an act of love.  The Covenants,the agreements God made with his people, are an act of love. 

Sending his Son is an act of love. The Kingdom Jesus brought and that is yet to be completed, is a gift of love.  The death of Jesus on the Cross is an act of love.  We have seen God through Jesus.  Jesus shows us what God is like.  He shows us what God's Kingdom is like. And he deals with the stuff that prevents God's Kingdom from happening in our lives and in the world: our sins.  In his amazing love he sent Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins... 

God's Spirit, God's love and us...
When John tells us, twice, that “God is love” he does so for one very specific reason.  He does so because he wants his readers to be loving one another.  It is as simple as that. God's love calls us to love each other (v. 11). We love because he first loved us (v. 19) anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister (v. 21).  John is describing the natural flow of how things are meant to be, how the whole Christian, Spirit-filled, Jesus. Believing life is meant to work. It's the most natural thing that should follow from loving God.  The most unnatural thing by contrast, is a failure to love one another.  That, says John, is  absurd, a joke in very bad taste.  It can't happen, it's a contradiction in terms. 

We want to be close to God. So close to him that he is our home and we are his home.  To know he lives, in us, and the we live in him (v 12, 13, 15).   “If we love one another, God abides in us...”   Is loving each other is both the condition and the evidence of God abiding in us.  God's presence nurtures the love, which welcomes God's presence.   Love welcomes the Spirit and is evidence of the work of the Spirit. We journey together as  from Easter to Pentecost: we want to welcome the Spirit and all he wants to do. The environment the Spirit chooses to operate in, is one of love.

There are three things that prove who're real who who isn't
1. Right wonders: the power of the Spirit (v 13)
2. Right words: the truth about Jesus. (v 15)
3. Right works: the love of the Father. (v 12)

Love makes us fearless: in this life and on judgement day we have nothing to fear, because we are in that perfect two way relationship of love, that produces love in our lives for others.  We are in no doubt, we have no fear.  We are secure.  

The reason I am here is to teach you to show the Father’s love. We are learning to show the Father’s love.  Because people outside the Church are looking at us and asking, “So what's God like?”   


© Gilmour Lilly April  2012