God Is Love

Thesis: We know we are Christians because we love one another.

God Is the Source of Love

A. The Apostles’ Teaching, v. 9

1. God sent His only begotten Son as the propitiation for our sins.
2. God give His love “to, in” us, to love with His love.
3. God’s purpose is “that we might live through Jesus.”

B. The Gnostic Teaching

1. Man loves God with a man’s love = self-gratification.
2. God cannot love because God is passionless and unmoved.

God Abides in a Fellowship of Love

A. The Apostles’ Teaching, v. 12

1. “We cannot see God” visibly, v. 12.
2. We do “see” God in the fellowship of faith because of the presence of His love:
   • a. Jesus lifted on the cross for our sins;
   • b. His Spirit in us gives us this “seeing/knowing” experience.

B. The Gnostic Teaching

1. False teachers “claimed to have visions of God.”
2. Their visions / revelations overruled Scripture.
3. Jesus is not the Messiah who saves us from sin.

God Replaces Our Fear with Faith

A. The Apostles’ Teaching

1. God is love.
2. God lives in us through faith in Jesus.
3. God assures us of salvation, eliminating our fear of apostasy.
   • a. “The believer who has practiced love during his earthly life will be able to approach the judgment seat of Christ without any shame. Such assurance is not presumption, ‘because as He is, so also are we in this world’: i.e. we are like Him in love.”
   • b. “Love prompts us to seek others; fear causes us to shrink from others. Fear brings its own punishment to the one who has not perfected his love.”

B. The Gnostic Teaching

1. Feelings and visions determine one’s relationship to God.
2. Few people have experiences of knowledge, thus they live in constant fear.

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