'Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.' (1 John 4)
This is John, who took care of Mary, who wrote Revelation; ‘Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world,’ (v1-3). When we are born again, we receive the Spirit of Christ; in these verses, John is looking at the spirit within a person. You can recognise the spirit within a person by their words and actions; we can have the Spirit of Christ or the antichrist.
‘You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world,’ (v 4). Because you are in Christ, you have a stronger spirit in you than any human or antichrist - they are from the world, and speak with the viewpoint of the world; if you are of God, you will listen to us, if you are not of God, you will not listen; ‘This is how we recognise the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood,’ (v6). But these two separate voices are in the world AND in the church.
‘Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love,’ (v7-8). God is love - we must show God’s love in speech and action; this is a practical application of Scripture; God showed His love by sending His Son. When we were sinners, God loved us.
‘This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins,’ (v10). When I was in prison for smuggling Bibles into communist Europe, my best friend was a murderer. I saw my fellow prisoners as people God loved enough to send His Son to die so that they might live. I once preached in a Siberian prison to all 1400 inmates, desperate men: 200 multiple murders, 400 serious sex offenders and 800 even worse criminals. The commandant said he was an atheist, that God could not change these men, that I was wasting my time. But, faced with the crisis of this challenge, the Holy Spirit came on me and God transformed the prison that day. All 1400 criminals repented and twenty of those convicts are now pastors and some of the best evangelists in Russia today were saved that day in that place! '‘Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us,’ (v11-12).
‘This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: he has given us of his Spirit,’ (v13). God has given us His Holy Spirit which is the same Spirit Jesus received; John saw and testified that the Father sent the Son to be Saviour of the world. God is love; whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God lives in them.
We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. (1 John 4:19-21, NIV)
I pray that the Holy Spirit will help us put the love of God into practice. Amen