Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” And essentially what that means is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth of life. It is the source of life, and it’s the way of life. Belief in Christ’s gospel gives us life, and it teaches us how to live. You cannot truly live unless you have accepted this gospel as truth, and trusted in Christ as your Savior. Without that new life, the gospel teaches us that you are essentially dead in your sins.
Now a lot of people are attracted to religion for a variety of reasons. Far too many reasons to speculate on today. But John tells us in chapter 4 verse 1 that not everyone that claims Christianity is of the truth. He says there are many false spirits, deceiving spirits that have gone out into the world. So we are to test the spirits to see if they are from God. But John is writing this epistle primarily to people who are already supposed to have this new life in Christ. They are supposed to be born again, to be saved, to have become followers of the truth of Christ. They already have received the source of life that faith in the gospel provides.
So John isn’t primarily writing to people who are unsaved, to those who are still dead spiritually, but he is writing to people who have received this new life, and he is writing to make sure that they know the way to live. You understand the distinction? He’s not primarily teaching people how to become born again, how to have new life, (though the truths of salvation are evident in this epistle) but he is teaching believers how to live this new life.
And the major principle that John has been teaching is that if you are truly made alive in Christ, you are a new creation, then that new life will be characterized by fellowship with God. I believe that practically everything that John is presenting here in this book can be characterized as an aspect of fellowship. Fellowship is essential to this new life. This life cannot be lived as God designed it to be lived without fellowship. Now if you want to investigate this further, I would suggest that you go on our website and read some of the past sermons in 1John, and hopefully you will learn all the principles of fellowship and the benefits and blessings of it.
But as an introduction to today’s message, let me revisit one important principle of fellowship that John has stressed again and again. And that is that fellowship with God will produce love for God. The natural result of fellowship is love for God. You can illustrate that principle by looking at a couple that is dating. The more they hang out together, the more they learn about one another, the more they know the other person, the more they begin to love that person. So in like manner, fellowship is communing with God. Fellowship is spending time with God. John likes to use another word to indicate fellowship, and that is the word “abide.” To spend time with someone to the point that you never leave. And of course, in human love, that’s when the couple get married. They become one. They abide with one another. And their happiness and contentment comes from that abiding, or that fellowship. And that is the goal of our fellowship with God. That we would become one with God, that we have HIs Spirit abide in us, and we are in Him, that we communicate with Him through His word and through prayer, and the more we know Him the more we love Him, and the more we love Him the more we want to please Him. So the principle is that fellowship results in love.
The problem when we start talking about love is that the world’s concept of love falls far short of God’s definition of love. There is a tendency in the church today and in music and in teaching to present the word “love” as a euphemism for God. You hear this in contemporary Christian songs quite a bit, they talk about love coming down, or something to that effect, instead of using the name of Jesus. But the Bible never presents God and love as being synonymous. The Bible teaches that love is an attribute of God, it is defined by God, but God is not solely defined by love. And to attempt to reduce God to a one word description is to slight the name and character of God.
However, the possible basis for this misappropriation of God’s character is found right here in this chapter. Twice in this chapter it says “God is love.” Vs.8 and vs16. These are the only two places in the Bible where you find this statement in these exact words. But we need to understand that this statement does not limit God’s character to this one dimension. But rather John is just expounding this dimension of God’s nature, not excluding other essential attributes of God like He is holy, He is righteous, He is just, He is omnipotent, He is sovereign, He is light, He is Spirit, He is truth, He is light, and He is life.
But let me explain this attribute of God is love by saying that what John is teaching through this phrase“God is love”, is he is giving us a synopsis of the gospel. It is the gospel in shorthand. He isn’t talking about some sort of affectionate feeling from God. In fact, John himself interprets this statement for us in vs.10 which says, "Here is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." To say that God is love is to say that he sent the Lord Jesus Christ to be the propitiation for our sins. That's the apostle's definition of divine love.
Now to take that a step further, to fully comprehend “God is love” you must also understand what God hates. God hates sin. Sin is antiGod. In that it is the opposite of God’s nature and God’s intention and design in creation. Sin is death, God is life. Sin put the curse of death upon God’s creation. And God hates sin so much that He sent Jesus His Son to die on a cruel, horrible cross; beaten with a whip to within an inch of death, His head lacerated by a crown of thorns, HIs hands and feet pierced through with great iron nails. God put your sins and mine on Christ and let Him hang there naked and bleeding and hardly able to breathe and watched Him writhe in agony and torment and called it “love.” Now that is what “God is love” means.
Furthermore, God is love speaks of divine love. Not romantic love, not sentimental love, not sexual love - that’s how man speaks of love - but the love of God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. That divine sacrificial love is the type of love that God desires for us to have in this new life. And as a spiritual new creation, if we truly have the life of God, then we have been given the capacity to love like God loved us. And God wants us to love like He loves so that our fellowship may be complete. That’s the title of my message today; the perfection of fellowship, or the completion of fellowship. John uses the word perfection, or perfected four times, which in every case might be interpreted as complete. God’s design for us is that we might have our fellowship, our love, completed.
Now John gives us a few principles which will help us to see how that is accomplished. How we can have complete fellowship with God. First fellowship is completed through the Spirit of God abiding in us. Vs. 13 says, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.” Remember, John started this chapter by saying that we should test the spirits to see if they are from God, because not all are. So you test the spirits how? How do you test to see if a spirit is from God? Well, the answer is that you test the spirits by the word of God. Because the Holy Spirit is the author of scripture.
Peter said in 2Peter 1:21 “for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” So scripture is authored by the Holy Spirit, and since God cannot deny Himself, we can verify the spirits by the word of God. That’s the primary job of the Holy Spirit; to teach us through the word of God. Jesus said that “He will lead you and guide you into all truth.”
When you are born again, you are born by the Spirit of God. The Spirit lives in you. He abides in you, and you know this John says, because He has given us of His Spirit. That simply means that our spirit is reborn with God’s Spirit, so that our spirit has life, it has the interior witness of God’s truth as we read His word. We know that God is speaking to us. We are able to come to know God, to have communion with God. The Spirit of God in us is the foundation of our fellowship. He indwells us, so that we have communion with God. This is the first and foundational step of perfect fellowship with God. We must be born again by His Spirit and His Spirit must live in us.
Listen, don’t be deceived here by false spirits. Being born again by the Holy Spirit is not some supernatural or emotional or ecstatic experience by which we think we have come to know God. Being born again comes through faith; through believing in the truth of Christ’s propitiation for our sins. When we come to God as a sinner, and confess our sins, and call upon Christ to forgive us our sins and make us a new creation, to give us a new heart, then God answers that prayer and transfers our sins to Christ, and gives Christ’s righteousness to us, and once we are made holy and righteous He gives us a new spirit and the indwelling of His Spirit, so that we might be the children of God. We cannot have complete fellowship until we have the Spirit of God abiding in us.
So the Spirit in us is the internal witness to our fellowship. But there is an external witness as well which is closely correlated. We have already introduced it; it is the gospel of Christ, the word of God, which is the testimony of the apostles. Look at vs.14 “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.” John is speaking of the testimony of his fellow apostles. The apostles doctrine is the foundation of the church according to Ephesians chapter 2. So there is an external witness to our fellowship, and that is that we hold to the testimony of the apostles to Jesus being the Savior of the world.
We confess, we agree with the gospel as recorded by the apostles. His word abides in us, and that is evidence that He abides in us. Look at vs.15, “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” To confess means to agree with. So that’s the completion or perfection of fellowship. We have the Spirit of God in us through salvation, we confess, that is agree with that testimony of the apostles, and the word of God confirms that we have God abiding in us and that we abide with God.
Listen, God is love means God is truth. Love comes from faith, and Rom 10:17 says that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” And if there is not this relationship of faith, belief in the word of God, there cannot be the life of God and there cannot be the fellowship with God and there cannot be the love of God. So faith in God’s word confirms God abiding in us. As you read and study HIs word, the Spirit confirms your faith.
John states this principle succinctly in vs.16 once more; “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Now that is the perfection of fellowship. We have come to know the love of God because we have believed in the gospel by faith. As a result we have the abiding Spirit of God in us. And we abide in Him through obeying or abiding in His word.
This is how our love or our fellowship is perfected. We have faith in His gospel, we have His Spirit abide in us, and we abide in Him through obedience to His word. That is the perfection of fellowship says John in vs.17, “By this, love is perfected with us…” By this faith in the gospel, by this indwelling Spirit of God given to us as a result of our faith, and by our faith and obedience to His word. By this love is perfected within us. Now as a result of this love, this fellowship completed, John gives us three benefits or blessings of this perfect fellowship which are described in vs17 and 18, “By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.”
The first benefit is that of no fear of judgment. Because we have this fellowship with God through the inner testimony of the Spirit and the external witness of the Word, we have confidence concerning the judgment that is coming upon the world. We know we have nothing to fear when Jesus comes back because we love Him and He loves us, we are His bride and He is our bridegroom. The rest of the world will mourn that they rejected Christ as their Savior, but we will rejoice as a bride rejoices to see her husband.
Further, John says we have confidence because as He is, so also are we in this world. We have confidence that we are as He is because we keep His word. Because we keep His commandments. Listen, if we disobey His commandments then we have reason to fear. But if we truly love God, then we want to please God, and Jesus said if you love Me you will keep My commandments. So if we are keeping His commandments then we have no reason to fear. As He was a light to the world, so are we lights to the world. As He did the Father’s will, so we do the Father’s will. As He kept the Father’s word, so we keep the Father’s word. As He ministered in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit, so we minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. And we are able to keep His commandments because we have His Spirit abiding in us. Jesus is not just our Savior, but He is our example for how to live as God would have us live. He is our pattern as Peter tells us in 1Peter 2:21 “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.” So as He is, so are we in this world.
The third benefit is that we have no fear of punishment. We have no fear of punishment because we have the love of God perfected in us. When the love of God is completed in us, when we love God as we are loved, then we have confidence in judgment, because there can be no punishment for those who have been forgiven. Now I want to make a distinction between punishment and discipline. The author of Hebrews tells us that if God loves us, He will also discipline us. Heb. 12:6-7 “FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES." It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” So discipline is a necessary part of being a child of God, so that we might learn to walk as Christ walked.
But John isn’t taking about discipline here, he is talking about eternal punishment. The word punishment could also be translated as torment, as in eternal torment. I was speaking with a man in prison the other day, and during his incarceration he has become very knowledgeable about the law. And in the law is a principle called double jeopardy, which prevents a person being tried or punished twice for the same offense. I was telling this man that God has placed his punishment on Jesus. Christ has paid the penalty for our punishment. God being just and holy cannot punish twice for the same offense. So that is what John is getting at. We need not fear that God will punish us in eternal torment because God is love means that God has already punished Jesus for our crimes against Him.
Now there is one more point John makes concerning this completed fellowship, or the perfect love. And that is what we might call the expression of perfected love. The expression of love. In other words, the love of God does not stop with us. It is designed to flow through us, to be given out again to one another. Love is not just self directed, it is not selfish, love is self less. Love isn’t completed when it finds me, but when I love another as God loves me.
John declares this great principle in vs 19 “We love, because He first loved us.” Now this statement is so simple yet it is so profound. There are two major principles that are incorporated in this little statement. First is that our love for God is predicated on His love first finding us. As I said at the beginning, we cannot come to love God, to have fellowship with God without first coming to know the love of God towards us. That is the basis for our relationship. We have to first come to believe in God’s love for us that He sent His only Son into the world to save sinners by dying on the cross for our sins. That is how we are saved and how we are given the capacity to love.
But there is another application of this principle as well. Not that we are loved, but that we love others because He first loved us. Because we have the love of God in us, we are able to love like God loves. We are to love one another as we love God. There are two commandments Jesus said that are the foremost commandments of God. All the law could be contained in these two, which we read from Mark 12:30-31 “AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.' The second is this, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' There is no other commandment greater than these.” So we are to love God and love one another in fulfillment or completion of the love of God towards us.
Now John illustrates these two commandments in the following verses. First, the commandment of loving God, John says, cannot be completed if you do not love others. Vs. 20, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
John doesn’t give us an easy out. If we say we love God, but don’t love our brother, then we are a liar. We don’t really love God. Because if we have the love of God, then we share the nature of God, and God’s nature is to love. And he gives us only two options; you either love your brother or you hate him. You are either one way or the other. You either exhibit the nature of God or you do not. We tend to measure our Christianity by degrees. “I may not be perfect, but I’m better than this guy, and I’m not so bad as that guy.” But God measures our Christianity by Christ. He is perfect, so we are to be perfect. Peter said it this way in 1Peter 1:15-16 “but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, "YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.” We either love our brother or our Christianity is a lie. That’s the options John gives us.
And the last illustration of this love of God, which is the love we are to have, is simply restating the commandment in vs.21, “And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.” I said last time that this is a mandate, it’s not a suggestion. Jesus said in John 14:15 "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And His commandment is exactly what John has just said; the one who loves God should love his brother also. Our love for God is evidenced by our love for one another. We love others not because they are lovable, not because they are loving towards us, not because they deserve it, but we love them because God first loved us even when we were sinners, even when we were in rebellion against God. So in like manner we love others in order to manifest the love of God towards them. God uses His people to reveal His love to people. It’s that simple.
If we love God then we will love the things God loves. We love God enough to love those that God loves. And when we exhibit this kind of love, then the circle of fellowship is complete. There is so much talk today about how much God loves me. And He does. Thank God for His love for me. But I don’t reciprocate that love by just singing it back to Him. Or by saying it back to Him. We reciprocate God’s love by being obedient, and if we are obeying Him, then we will love one another because that is His commandment to the church. This is the template for fellowship. This is the way of life which God has designed for us to live. This is the way to fulfillment, to joy and contentment. Love one another, even as God loved us, giving up His life for us, revealing God’s truth to us, that we might have life in Him and fellowship with Him.
I cannot help but wonder if today there is someone here who does not know the love of God. You cannot say you have fellowship with God. You cannot say that you have the abiding presence of His Spirit within you. But perhaps today the Holy Spirit has convicted you of your need for forgiveness, your need for new life. I am here to proclaim to you today the good news. God sent Jesus to take the punishment for your sins, so that by faith in Jesus Christ, you might be born again by His Spirit, that you might come to know the truth, and that the truth would make you free. Jesus has paid the price for your salvation, all that remains is for you to recognize that you are a sinner and that Christ has paid your penalty, and by faith in Him as your Savior you can receive eternal life right now. Call on Jesus today, and He will save you. Today is the acceptable day of salvation. Let’s pray.
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