1. "When the subject and the predicate are the same, it means nothing. It's not actually contributing anything to your understanding of what that word is. Love is love means that what I already think is love, well, that's love. I get to determine what love is. I get to shape what love is."

2. "Love is not an abstract concept, it is a personal quality of God. It is a characteristic of God. What that means is, if dictionary writers could, when they are writing down L-O-V-E, they need to look to God. Whatever God is, that is love."

3. "If people say they love love, but they reject God, it's not really love that they love. It's something else because God is love."

4. "We're not going before the Creator of the Universe and saying, okay, Creator of the Universe, you tell me what love is like. Rather, we're going before Him and we're saying, I know what love is like. Let me tell you about it. Now you need to conform to me."

5. "The love is love version of love extols the word diversity and difference, but in fact, it insists on uniformity. It says, I will only love you if you first conform to my way of thinking, and if you first give me what I want and affirm me. The love is love version of love cancels. The God is love version of love sends, redeems, embraces."

6. "Do you think the badness of your sin somehow outstretches the goodness of God's love? That your sin, that badness, is more powerful than God's love? Or as bad as that sin is, could it be that God's love outstretches it even further still and swallows it up?"

7. "The God is love version of love looks sin in the face and calls it for what it is. It grapples with reality as you and I experience it, live in it. It sets up an address there. It pursues the unlovely and the rebellious and the broken and loves us there."

8. "A love is love version of love wants to be free from all obligations and commandments. And in so doing, have you noticed, ironically, that it creates a tiny, tiny little universe, a black hole even? It sucks everything into itself. The God is love version of love creates a never-expanding and growing universe."

9. "Biblical love requires us to move out from ourselves, to draw towards someone, something different. It requires us to forget ourselves temporarily, but then somehow discover ourselves more deeply."

10. "We're not the sun, we're the planets. The light doesn't emanate from us. Light comes from us only as we reflect the sun's light by looking to the one who is love. Our love for Him and for one another is the fair offspring of His love for us."

Observation Questions

1. According to 1 John 4:7-8, what is the relationship between loving others and knowing God, and what reason does John give for this connection?

2. In verses 9-10, what two specific actions does John describe that demonstrate how God's love was "made manifest" among us?

3. What does verse 10 say about who initiated the love relationship—did we love God first, or did He love us first?

4. According to verse 11, what obligation does God's love for us create for believers?

5. In verse 12, what does John say happens when we love one another, even though no one has ever seen God?

6. Looking at verse 19, what is the reason John gives for why "we love"?

Interpretation Questions

1. The sermon contrasts "love is love" with "God is love." Why is it significant that love is defined as a personal quality of God's character rather than an abstract concept that exists independently of Him?

2. How does the doctrine of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit) demonstrate that God's love existed eternally, even before creation? Why does this matter for understanding what true love is?

3. In verse 10, John uses the word "propitiation" to describe what Jesus accomplished. How does dealing with our guilt problem through Christ's death relate to God being love, and why would a loving God need to address sin this way?

4. The passage moves from God's love for us (verses 9-10) to our obligation to love one another (verse 11). What is the logical and theological connection between receiving God's love and being obligated to extend it to others?

5. According to verse 12, how does Christians loving one another make the invisible God somehow visible to the world? What does this suggest about the purpose of the church's love for one another?

Application Questions

1. The sermon pointed out that appeals to "love" are often used to justify personal agendas. When you hear someone appeal to love to defend a position or behavior, what specific questions should you ask to evaluate whether it aligns with God's definition of love?

2. If God's love initiates and reaches out to sinners while they are still rebelling (verses 9-10), how might this change the way you approach a specific relationship with someone who has wronged you or who disagrees with you on important matters?

3. The sermon illustrated that biblical love requires obligations that initially feel like sacrifice but ultimately expand our lives. What is one specific area where God may be calling you to embrace a sacrificial obligation in order to love someone else, and what would taking that step look like this week?

4. Verse 12 says that when we love one another, God's love is "perfected in us." Who is one person in your church community that you could intentionally love more fully this week, and what concrete action could you take to demonstrate that love?

5. The sermon emphasized that we love people most by pointing them to God who is love. Is there someone in your life—a family member, coworker, or neighbor—who needs to hear the gospel? What would it look like to lovingly share with them the truth about God's love shown in sending His Son?

Additional Bible Reading

1. John 17:20-26 — This passage shows Jesus praying that believers would experience the same love the Father has for the Son, demonstrating the eternal, Trinitarian nature of God's love.

2. Romans 5:6-11 — Paul explains that God demonstrated His love by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners and enemies, reinforcing the initiating nature of God's love.

3. John 13:34-35 — Jesus commands His disciples to love one another as He has loved them, explaining that this love will be the visible mark by which the world recognizes His followers.

4. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 — Paul provides a detailed description of what love looks like in action, showing how God's love shapes patient, kind, and truth-seeking behavior.

5. Hosea 3:1-5 — God commands Hosea to love his unfaithful wife as an illustration of how God loves Israel despite their rebellion, demonstrating the initiating and redeeming nature of divine love.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Phrase "Love Is Love" Hides an Agenda and Lacks Substance

II. God Is Love: The Source and Definition of True Love

III. God's Love Initiates and Reaches Out to Sinners

IV. God's Love Draws Us In by Dealing with Guilt and Corruption

V. God's Love Creates Obligations to Love One Another

VI. God's Love Becomes Visible in Us as We Are Perfected

VII. Pursuing God Is the Only Way to Pursue True Love

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Detailed Sermon Outline

It is very good to be with you. Greetings from Cheverly Baptist Church. If you've joined in the last five years, you wouldn't know, but you guys sent out about 63, 64 of us in February 2018 to plant a church in Cheverly Baptist, named Cheverly Baptist. Things are going really well. It's a joy to be a part of it.

It's known for having slightly shorter sermons. And so a couple of you literally texted me this week and said, Shorter sermon this week? And I actually did think about that. I thought maybe it would be a nice break for Capitol Hill to have a shorter sermon. But then I thought, you know, when in Rome.

So it's going to be pretty typical this morning, I think.

I can't tell you how much this church has meant to me. I joined in 19-- originally joined in 1996. A few of you, Maxine, a few of you were members at that point. And I grew tremendously through this church. Felt called to the ministry through this church.

Was grown and edified and loved by this church. My ministry has been shaped by this church. So deeply, deeply grateful for you. And your ministry to many. To Cheverly Baptist, to people like me, friends, it is great to be with you.

As Kevin's remarks anticipated, the title of this sermon is Love is Love or God is Love. That's what we're going to think about.

And I trust you've heard that phrase, Love is Love. By one account, it was first coined in an interview by Hamilton composer and director Lin-Manuel Miranda, country singer LeAnn Rimes also recorded a song called Love Is Love Is Love. And in both cases, of course, the goal is to celebrate the LGBT community. One article I found online interviewed a series of people and asked them what that phrase Love Is Love means to them.

Angelique Kinney, 52, said, Love is love means to me that we should all be able to love how we want, and there's nothing wrong with any kind of love. Sarah Fox, 25, said, To me, love is love means that my friends and family and anyone who might love someone is able to love them freely and willingly. No one is telling them that it's not okay. They can be celebrated for their differences and appreciated for who they are. I want you to meditate on that phrase, love is love for just a second.

When you have a subject and you have a state of being verb and you have a predicate, and the subject and the predicate are the same, right? Love is love. Love. And I have to be honest, I remember that word predicate from my junior high years, and I was very proud of myself, predicate, right? But what does it mean when the subject and the predicate are the same?

Well, it means nothing. It's not actually contributing anything to your understanding of what that word is. Like if I said, A house is a house, or, A dog is a dog. All you would do is take what you already know about a house or a dog and just kind of fill it back in. So for instance, if I just say made up a word, doppel-doppel, and you said, well, what's doppel-doppel?

And I said, well, doppel-doppel is doppel-doppel. That would not help you at all, right? You would have nothing to do with that. Whereas if I said, well, a doppel-doppel is a fish, okay. I'm beginning to understand.

Well, so it is with this phrase, Love is love.

What does that mean? It means that what I already think is love, well, that, that's love. I get to determine what love is. I get to shape what love is.

Exactly as Angelique Kinney and Sarah Fox said.

The trouble, of course, is what if what I think is love you think is hate, or what you think is hate I think is love? How do we resolve that? Well, maybe it doesn't matter. You're kind of to each your own. Well, the problem with that, of course, is that if LOVE covers what I call love and what you call love and what I call hate and you call hate, well then, love doesn't mean anything.

It's nothing. It's just pure selfishness. That's all it is. Or, Is it the case that when people say love is love, they do have a very definite content in mind? Could it be that the phrase love is love, as it's used in classrooms and commercials and country songs, is in fact, in that sense, a little dishonest?

It's a phrase that is meant to hide something. It hides a sexual agenda, a political agenda, an ideological agenda, a religious Agenda.

Now, if you're here this morning and you're a guest, I'm grateful. I trust the church is grateful that you are here. We all know it's Gay Pride Month, right? That's what it is. We know that.

But before we have the LGBTQ conversation, there's actually a conversation behind that conversation that we need to have. And that's the conversation about Love. Now, why is that the conversation behind the conversation? Well, because people today in our culture use this idea of love. They appeal to love in order to justify something.

So as Dr. Colleen McNicholas testified before Congress last spring, abortion is normal. It is an act of love. Now, why would Dr. Colleen McNicholas say abortion is an act of love? Well, because she understands rightly that in a Christian or a post-Christian culture, that's not necessarily shed all of its Christianity. Love is actually a very powerful thing to appeal to if you want to get something, defend something, justify Something.

So have you ever heard two people say, well, if or someone say, if two people love each other, well, certainly then we should. Or, if God is really loving, then He would never.

Or, Mom and Dad, if you love me, you'll let me We appeal to love to justify something, to get something. Likewise, when people say love is love, they're trying to defend something or justify something. So when you hear someone appeal to love, you should always ask the question, what are they trying to get? The agenda. What do they mean by love?

I would prefer something a little more straightforward and honest. Someone who tells you exactly what love is. There's no guessing. No hidden agenda. Just straightforward honesty.

Where will we find that? Well, we'll find that from the apostle John. Turn to John chapter 4, and he is going to give us there precisely the content and the shape and the contours of what love is. Not when he says love is love, but when he says God is love. Now, John is writing to a group of Christians who are trying to make sense of the fact that a group of them had left the church.

There's kind of a church division. Some had gone out. Maybe they'd have been appealing to love, not sure, but throughout this letter, John is coming back again and again to this theme of love to help them know how to continue to live one another and what to do with those people who left and so forth.

And in today's passage, we kind of come to the pinnacle in some ways of 1 John, in which we discover at the center of all is God, and that God is love. Look at verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, We also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God.

If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.

John's goal in this passage is very clear, very simple: to get Christians to command Christians' evil even to love one another. So when you go into work tomorrow and somebody says to you, How was your weekend? And you're telling them about church, you can say that the preacher, the text of Scripture that the preacher came from told us to love one another. That's the basic point of this text. That's what John is driving at.

Love one another. If you're not, You should. As we walk out, that's the command. That is the call. Beloved, let us verse 7, let us love one another.

Are you? How are you doing on loving one another? That's the question. Furthermore, love for others should be one of the key lenses through which we do all of our moral evaluation and decision making. Love is Love theme allows you to do all your moral thinking and decision-making through the framework of what's most loving to me.

Oh, what's most loving for you to you. What allows me to be myself, express myself, pursue whatever I believe is deep inside of myself. That's the framework. What should I pursue for a job? How should I spend a Saturday night?

Who should you date? What religions are good? Which political party is Bad. How should I dress? How should I speak?

Well, according to a love is love ethic, all these decisions should be evaluated according to what's most authentic or natural to me. I've got to be me. If you love me, you've got to let me be me. That's loving. I'm going to evaluate life through that lens.

Now, John obviously offers a different ethical and spiritual framework when you choose what to wear to church today, when you choose what you're going to do after church today, when you think about how you're going to spend your money, the question you're always asking and you're evaluating through is, Does this love other people? That's what I'm seeking to do. Now, to be sure, this requirement feels a little heavy, doesn't it? Feels a little heavy. Hard to do.

In fact, even though John makes this the primary goal of his text, he actually doesn't spend a lot of words on it. He spends most of his words in this passage helping us to understand why we can and should love. What's behind that? And he gives us five reasons, five reasons for how and why we can love. Number one, God is love.

Verse 8. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. And if you glance down that page, that phrase, God is love, shows up again in verse 16.

And truly, friends, is this not one of the weightiest and most precious truths imaginable for a Christian? With that phrase, Love is love, we saw there is no substance, there is no content, there is only what the self already wants. Christianity, on the other hand, places At the center of the universe, this rock-hard, immovable reality, God, is love.

Whatever God is, that's what love is. And whatever love is, it begins with God, because God is love. The one who who designed comets and acorns, the one who sustains our souls and bodies, the one who plans every day before one of them came to be, He is love.

Now we need to think carefully about this. When John says, God is love, he doesn't mean You have this kind of abstract view of love out there in the universe, and God somehow measures up to that. As if you have dictionary writers writing down, okay, this is love. Now let's look at God. Okay, yeah, God, you're loving like that.

We'll say you're love. That's not the picture here. Rather, love is not an abstract concept, it is a personal quality of God. It is a characteristic of God. Of God.

What that means is, if dictionary writers could, when they are writing down L-O-V-E, they need to look to God.

Okay, that is love. Whatever God is, that is love. We define love by God. It is a personal quality of God's. When the world is saying love is love, It's super important to understand this point.

God's own character and nature and persons give us the definition and standards of love. Furthermore, if we want to understand that even more, understanding what love really is means we have to look at everything else about God. We need to look at His holiness and His righteousness and His goodness. God's righteousness, for instance, shapes His love. Whatever His love is, it's righteous, and whatever His righteousness is, is loving.

Do you see? So you've got to look at everything else about God to understand what His love is like. His righteousness, His holiness, His goodness gives shape to His love. Love. Now, you and I obviously could name dozens of romance novels and movies and love songs that are popular today.

People love, love, love sells. Love is enticing. We devote a holiday to it every February. I remember as a little kid getting these stale heart-shaped candies. You know, you can probably taste it in your mouth right now as you're thinking about it, those nasty little candies, because we love love.

We think we love love, but remember what I just said: Love is not something independent of God. It is a personal quality or characteristic of God. Anything called love that does not have its source in God is not love. So if people say they love love, but they reject God, it's not really love that they love. It's something else because God is love.

Notice what's happening then when people say if they really love each other, then of course we should accept. If God is loving, then surely he wouldn't. Well, in those moments, people aren't really interested in the God who is love. Rather, we're interested in our ideas about love becoming God. In other words, it is not God is love, it is love is God.

Small G. In other words, we're not going before the Creator of the Universe and saying, okay, Creator of the Universe, you tell me what love is like. Rather, we're going before Him and we're saying, I know what love is like. Let me tell you about it. Now you need to conform to me.

That's what we do when we reject God and yet claim to love love. And as a result, we find ourselves confronted by an idol hidden in an utterly convincing costume, a lie nobody can recognize, an angel of light. What is the Bible saying with this wonderfully simple verse, subject, state of being, verb, predicate? God is love. What is it saying?

Well, it's saying that love is essential. Love is characteristic of God. Love is definitional of God. It is saying He is love like oceans are wet and suns are hot.

His goodness is loving. His holiness is loving. His judgments are loving. His discipline is loving. His soft bits and his hard bits are loving.

His decision to answer the prayer the way you wanted it or the way you didn't want it is loving. The good things that He gives and the bad things He allows, they're all loving. His plans are loving. His affections and motions, His purposes and persons are loving. Father, Son, and Spirit abide together eternally, perfectly, purely, forever as love.

This brings me to the last comment on this glorious center of the universe fact that God is love. God is love by virtue of the fact that God is triune. By contrast, think about the God of Islam, for instance. Now the Quran calls Allah all loving, and it points to creation as evidence of His love. But honestly, friends, this is just the Quran stealing labels from the Bible.

Because if you have a monistic, one person, monistic God in eternity past, before the creation of the world, who is there for Allah to love or receive love? There's nobody. He's not loving. And yet in eternity past you had Father, Son, and Spirit abiding together perfectly, purely, in love.

Jesus in John 17:24, Father, you, loved me before the foundation of the world.

So, friends, what do you want? Do you want love as love? Or do you want God as love? Do you want the facsimile thing? Or do you want the real thing?

The temporary, every person finally centered on themselves thing, or the from all eternity out of which the universe is stitched thing.

Okay, so that's where love comes from. It comes from God. But what is God's love consists of? Point two. God's love initiates.

And reaches out. God's love initiates and reaches out. Verses 9 and 10, In this, the love of God was made manifest among us. It's as if you're thinking, okay, it's fine to talk about God is love, John, but can you be a little more concrete about that? Sure, he says.

In this, the love of God was made manifest among us. That God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Okay, so God's love initiates. God's love takes the first step.

God's love is manifest in that God God sent. God sent His Son. And who does He send His Son for? We'll look at the end of verse 10. He sends it for sinners.

He doesn't come for the beautiful damsel in distress.

He doesn't come for the people who share His ideological agenda. He comes for, borrowing from the Old Testament book of Hosea, for the wife who has committed adultery, even sold herself into prostitution, because she wanted the pleasures of the world more than she wanted him. He comes for the people who are opposed to his ideological and his religious agenda. That's who He comes for. What is God's love like?

It takes the initiative. It reaches out. It is generous. It is so generous. It gives and gives and gives.

It is merciful. It goes to the spiritually ugly and traitorous. The love is love version of love extols the word diversity and difference, but in fact, it insists on uniformity. It says, I will only love you if you first conform to my way of thinking, and if you first give me what I want and affirm me, the love is love version of love cancels. The God is love version of love sins, redeems, embraces, Father, Son, and Spirit in eternity past, making a plan to send the Son for sinners, for rebellious people who have not yet conformed, who are in the very act of rebelling.

God says, I'm sending the Son to love you and redeem you and embrace you and do all of this by dying for you. That brings us to point 3. Point 3, God's love draws in. God's love draws us in. Okay, so if point 2 shows us a boomerang going out, Point 3 shows us a boomerang circling back.

God's love initiates and goes out, and then it draws us in. And He draws us in in these two ways in these verses. He first deals with our guilt problem.

We're guilty before a judge and we need to be cleared, forgiven. And he deals secondly with our corruption problem. We act corruptly, and we must learn to not act corruptly. Let me start with a guilt problem. Verse 10, He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation.

That's a fancy word for wrath remover. He sent His Son to turn away His own wrath, paying the penalty that sinners deserve. That's why Jesus died on the cross to deal with our guilt problem. But also, verse 9, he deals with our corruption problem. Verse 9 again, God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

So not only did Jesus die, he rose and draws us into that resurrection life. He draws us into living like if God is indeed the greatest good, then loving someone means helping them to live like God.

I grew up in a Christian home, and yet I chose a decade of rebellion in the pursuit of what I wanted. And of all the regrets I have in life, among the worst is how selfish What a jerk I was in college, how I used people. I even called myself a Christian during that time.

I'm calling myself a Christian, I'm being selfish. Why did God not---here's a King James Bible word---why did He not smite me? I'm serious.

I deserve that. I earned that. Yet God said, I love you. You see, the Son, I sent the Son for you to redeem you and then to conform you to myself.

He's died the death I deserve. He's risen again. And whereas before I would set myself to using people, now, little by little, like a wobbling toddler, I'm beginning to love, serve people by His grace.

If God is love, that means teaching me to love like He loves. Now, some of you deny the fact that you deserve God's judgment.

Some of you very much know that you deserve God's judgment. You know you deserve it. You've lied, you've cheated, you've committed adultery, you've lusted. Homosexual lust, heterosexual lust. You've said, God, I want to have nothing to do with you.

You've sought your idols. You've made yourself an idol. You've worshiped the world. You've worshiped yourself. What does God say?

He says, Do you see my Son? He has come in love for you right there. In that rebellion against Me. He has died the death that we all deserve because I love, and He's risen again to draw us into Himself because He loves.

I remember talking to a friend, he and his girlfriend had had an abortion, and now they were married and had kids.

He still struggled with what they had done years before. I said, Yes, that sin really is as bad as you're saying it is. I don't want to downplay that at all. And yet, or as Dennis prayed, But God!

Do you think the badness of your sin somehow outstretches the goodness of God's love? That your sin, that badness, is more powerful than God's love?

Or as bad as that sin is, could it be that God's love outstretches it even further still and swallows it up?

Undermines it, cancels it. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world for sinners. God loves, goes out. God loves, draws in. I'm going to deal with your guilt problem and your corruption problem.

I'm going to draw you to myself. To love someone is to want their good. If you want a dictionary definition of love, that's love. Love is desiring the good of another person, right? But of course, it's not just any good.

It's the greatest good. It's God. It's to desire another person's good, which is God. I want you to know God, because he is the great-- I love you by wanting you to know God. Who is the greatest good.

For God to deal with your guilt problem and your corruption problem and draw you to Himself and teach you to be like Him is indeed the greatest good and the greatest love because God is love.

Friend, if you are visiting this morning, what does that mean for this church's love for you? How can this church most love you? Well, this church, I will most love you by pointing you to the God who is love. And to tell you, you only know love, true love, not fake love, true love, by looking to this God who is love and receiving his love as he has defined it. And seeing that he sent his only son to live the life that you and I should have lived but didn't, and die the death on the cross that you and I should have died, die, and then rose again conquering sin, conquering death, so that you and I can now be drawn into the embrace of his love.

If we would only stop looking at our fake versions of love and look to him, the true source and the true love. And once again, to make this contrast clear, this is not love is love.

This is not love as self-indulgence and self-discovery and self-expression and pleasure seeking. This is not to each his own because there's no really such thing as sin. Rather, the God is love version of love looks sin in the face. And calls it for what it is. It grapples with reality as you and I experience it, live in it.

Do it. The God of love, version of love, goes to work in a sinful world. It lives there. It sets up an address there. It pursues the unlovely and the rebellious and the broken and loves us.

There. It pays the penalty. And then it remakes us to live as Him, no longer in our oppression and quarrelsomeness and impatience and lust and hate and oppression. That's the God of love version of love. And that's what we want you to have.

Please talk to me afterwards. Talk to just about anybody here. In other words, point four, point four. God's love creates obligations.

God's love creates obligations. God's love for us creates the obligation in us to love one another. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. The love is love version of love wants to be free from all obligations and commandments. The only obligation, if there is one, is to look inward and be true to yourself.

And in so doing, have you noticed, ironically, that it creates a tiny, tiny little universe, a black hole even? It sucks everything into itself. A one standard of being true to me. The God is love version of love on the other creates a never-expanding, and growing universe. And it does this by creating these sets of obligations that were to train ourselves by and conform ourselves to so that we become like this God of love and righteousness.

Let me illustrate it like this. Some time ago, I remember a single friend expressed to me his reluctance to have children in light of all the sacrifice that's required.

I understood completely. Trust me, many of you do too. Who enjoys waking up at 3 a.m. to a crying baby, right? And helping the kids with piano or get to softball practice. Sometimes it means saying no to the things that you really want to do.

Here's what I explained to my friend: Yes, There is a sacrifice up front. And staring at the face of that sacrifice, I mean, who wants it, right? Nobody wants to swallow that, at least not at first. But when you do obey, and you love your wife, and you love your kids the way you're supposed to, once you do swallow that, submit to that, you somehow discover that you're nourished. And you're stronger.

You're a bigger person somehow. It's like reaching the top of a rugged hill and looking over the hill and seeing this beautiful green valley, this glorious space that you had not envisioned before. So no, I don't like waking up at 3:00 a.m. to a crying baby. I don't like saying no to opportunities at work that I want, but I'm no longer, in fact, the single man that I once was. Somehow, through all the sacrifices and commitments to and obediences to God, I'm a bigger person, a stronger person.

And the value of my children and watching their personalities blossom and grow offers a much more profound joy than a night of sleep, an opportunity at work. My heart somehow weighs things differently.

Now, the sacrifices, the obedience has changed me. There's no regret. And thanks to my four daughters, I'm a much bigger person. I live in a much bigger universe, more to the point, than the single version of myself ever imagined. Biblical love, here's the point, biblical love requires us to move out from ourselves, to draw towards someone, something different.

It requires us to forget ourselves temporarily, but then somehow discover ourselves more deeply. For instance, I am not a woman. I will never be a woman or know what it feels like to be a woman. But here's this strange thing. The Bible commands me to somehow try with this command.

Live with your wife in an understanding way. That requires me to sort of reach, stretch, try to be understanding of what it's like to be her.

And that grows me. That grows my universe. I'm forced out of myself in the attempt. My natural narcissism is left behind. It requires self-denial in the beginning, which, as I said, always looks painful beforehand, but ultimately I require a larger identity and a bigger world in the process.

A love is love version of love, however, that shines the light exclusively on the self cannot but help cultivate or culminate in intentional childlessness and even homosexuality, where the self seeks to complete and complement the self only in the self, two tabs colliding, two positively charged ends of the magnet trying to unite, incapable of uniting or finally creating anything.

The biblical view of love indeed has a bed, but that bed produces its generative. It creates a garden and a mess of shoes by the front door and swing sets and skyscrapers.

Creates a universe.

That's God's love. That's His version of love. It is not a black hole. It is a universe exploding outward, growing ever larger and larger. And it does this by commanding us, because as I said, those commands train us, they strengthen us, they require us to conform to Him.

And He is love. And little by little, every saint in this room is learning to do that. Point five. God's love becomes visible in us gradually as we're perfected. God's love becomes visible in us gradually as we're perfected.

Look at verse 12.

No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. Okay, so no one has ever seen God, at least since Adam and Eve left the garden, God has made himself unseen by human eyes. Yet if God is love, and if God abides in us, Little by little, we learn to live like Him, walk like Him, love like Him, and people therefore will begin to see Him. They'll see love in us.

He becomes, in some sense, visible through us. Now, to be sure, that sounds like a tall order. Who of us loves like God? Answer, no one, except the perfect one, the Son Jesus Christ, who was sent by the Heavenly Father and looked exactly like the Heavenly Father because I only came to do what the Father told me to do and say what the Father told me to say. And as He did and said what the Father told Him to do and say, so the world saw the Father.

But then, as we're united to Him, and we're being conformed to the same image from one degree of glory to the next, little by little we begin to look like Him. We begin to look like love. And it's being perfected in us, brothers and sisters in Christ. So maybe you're discouraged about the state of your spiritual life. Do you realize, though, that you look a lot better today than you did when you first came to Christ?

If you go back to the version of you at conversion and you follow that particular trajectory and you just stay on that trajectory, how would you look today? If it was still college Jonathan, but now 30 years later, that's not a pretty picture. But changes have been happening in my life. Changes has been happening in your life little by little. We're looking more like the sun.

We're loving one another. And friends, that brings us back to where we began. God's love is being perfected in us as we learn to love one another. How do you love one another? By looking to God, who is the source of all love.

Glance down at verse 19. We love because he first loved us.

In other words, friends, we're not the sun, we're the planets. The light doesn't emanate from us. Light comes from us only as we reflect the sun's light by looking to the one who is love. Our love for Him and for one another is the fair offspring of His love for us.

Said one old preacher. This means love must feed upon love, he said. It means feeding upon God because God is love. How would you grow in love? You look to the one who is love.

Only by looking to God in Christ is our love grown and nourished, enabling us to love him and each other. And on the flip side, of course, don't tell me you love God who is love and who first loved us if you're not then loving one another. If you're loving God and knowing God who is love, you will, we will love one another. Our love for one another is proof of our love for God. And I wonder how many churches around the world would Look, if we took this lesson to heart, how different would our lives look?

Or think of your workplace. Maybe you're a teacher, an engineer, a lawyer, a Hill staffer. What would love look like there? I can't fill it out all the details for you. That'd be a good thing to think about later.

What would loving others look like in your workplace? Well, as preachers around here like to say, let me conclude.

The love of love version of love says, Live however you want. Love people by letting them live however they want. There's no such thing as perverse or misdirected desire. The God is love version of love says, if God is love, then all love is from God. Anything the world calls love that's not from God is not love because God is love.

We love people most, as I said, by pointing them to God who is love. When people who claim to love God but walk away from God, we love them most by correcting them and saying, no, no, no, you're not going to have love if you walk away from Him. I want you to have love. Walk back to Him. Because He's love.

And what you're going to, you're calling it love, but it's not love.

If we want to pursue love, we must pursue God. We must follow after God. Imitate God. Walk in God's ways. Listen to Him.

Do all that He says. Remember, He is love. Jesus models this love. He tells us that He abided in the Father's love by perfectly obeying the Father's commandment. Jesus says of Himself, I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.

He says the same about us. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.

If God is love, we love people by sharing the gospel with them so that they might know God. If God is love, we love them by teaching them everything that God commands that they might image God. If God is love, we love people by correcting them when they walk away from God. If God is love, we even love people by removing them from membership in the church when they insist that their own desires must be God. And we do that because we know that the only hope of life they have would be to turn away from the lie and turn back to the truth of God's love.

When I was in high school, my favorite artist was Sting. Sting famously saying, if you love someone, set them free. And there's times in which there's truth. There's some partial truth in that. The bigger truth, of course, is if you love someone, point them to God who is love.

Such love is patient, it's kind, It does not envy or boast. It's not rude or proud. It does not insist on its own way. It does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It works for truth, says John in his second letter.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. It lays down its life for its friends. Indeed, This is how God has loved us. If you're His, it's how He has loved you. And if you're His, what does He have in store for you?

Well, it has in store for you heaven. Or what Jonathan Edwards, I've heard Mark say this many times, what Jonathan Edwards calls a world of love. What is a world of love? Well, that world of love, friends, has actually begun here. Now you are citizens of heaven.

And that means heaven has has begun in reflective form as you love one another. But it also means you are looking forward to the day in which God's generous, bountiful love saturates completely every person, characterizes every conversation, shines on the face of every friend and stranger you meet.

In that place where there is no sun, because the Lord God is the sun, the rays of sun that you feel on your face will quite literally be love, because God is love.

I look forward to being there with you.

Brother and sister, pray. O Lord, you are love, and we only know love because of you, having sent your Son to be a propitiation for our sin and to draw us into your way of loving and living through Christ. We give you thanks and praise. In Jesus' name, amen.