The following is a message by Dr. James Renahan from Westminster Seminary, California. For more information about this message or Westminster Seminary, visit us online at WSCAL.edu or call us at 760-480-8474, that's online at WSCAL.edu or call us at 760-480-8474. Would you turn in your Bibles, please, to the book of 1 John and chapter 4. 1 John, chapter 4, will read verses 7 through 21. Hear the word of God. Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God, 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. The God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we 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. By this we know that we abide in Him and He and us because He has given us of His spirit. We have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him and He and God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him. By this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates His brother, He is a liar. He who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. Because blessing beyond this reading from His Holy Word, let's pray together. O Lord, we ask You now to come and meet with us as we proclaim Your Holy Word. It is our master, we are it servant. We desire to learn from it and to be Christ like through it. Bless us in these moments we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Writing of Christian Liberty, John Calvin said this, Christian Liberty is a matter of primary necessity, one without the knowledge of which the conscience must demure and fluctuate and in all proceed with fickleness and trepidation. In particular, it forms a proper appendix to justification and is of no little service in understanding its force. A century later, the great Puritan John Owen called the doctrine of Christian Liberty, the second principle of the reformation were on the reformers justified their separation from Rome. It would be a simple task to multiply comments such as these from writers ancient and modern. We can hardly underestimate the importance of this doctrine and a proper understanding and application of it. Our confessions understand this point. Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 20, paragraph one, begins by telling us that our Liberty has been purchased for us by our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a blessed fruit of His sacrifice offered to God. It consists of freedom from guilt and wrath and the curse. Of deliverance from the world, the flesh and the devil, of deliverance from the evil of afflictions, the sting of death and of everlasting damnation. But also, it brings us free access to God and I quote, yielding obedience to Him, not out of slavish fear, but a childlike love and a willing mind. And the proof text, which is attached to that statement, is 1 John 4 and verse 18. Our Father's understood that Christian Liberty has a direct relationship to love. And in order to understand and exercise our Liberty properly, we must grasp its connection to the action of love. Now notice our passage. In the context, the apostle is concerned with genuine love. He begins in verse 7 with that familiar phrase, one another. Let us love one another. And at the end in verse 21, he concludes by an exhortation, a commandment that if we love God, we must love our brother. In many ways, these statements form brackets around the passage. Where love is absent, so also is the true knowledge of God. If we confess that we love God, we must also love our brother, or we give lie to our profession of love for God. This is at the very heart of Christian Liberty. If Calvin and Owen and our confessions are correct, Christian Liberty has everything to do with love. This is because Christian Liberty has a direct relation to both God and man. The Lord has granted us Liberty, and we are to enjoy it for His glory. And we are likewise to use it for the benefit of others. But the reality is that unless properly understood, Christian Liberty can be dangerous. While the Papists, as Calvin calls them, protested vigorously against this doctrine because they viewed it as a door to licentiousness. Our confessions recognize the inherent danger of a misunderstanding and misapplication. Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 20, paragraph 3 says this, they who upon pretense of Christian Liberty do practice any sin, or cherish any lust, do thereby destroy the end of Christian Liberty. So we must ask the question, how does love help us properly to understand and apply this blessed doctrine so that we may avoid the danger of misapplication? Well, I want you to notice verse 19. That's the text that I want to open up so very briefly this morning. Verse 19 is at the heart of John's thought. He says, we love because he first loved us, and we may understand this text based on two simple points. God's love has priority, and our love grows from His. Think about these two things with me first. God's love has priority. Isn't it fascinating in looking at this text that a subordinate clause is really the central statement of the sentence? We love because he first loved us. That second clause is the basis for the first statement, the statement of truth that John makes at the beginning. He seeks to instruct us about our love, but he does so by grounding it in the priority of God's love. This is, of course, a necessity for there can be no true love without first considering the love of God. In the text, John adds pronouns for the sake of emphasis. Literally translated, it might read something like this. We ourselves love because he himself first loved us. And this is really a precious truth. John incorporates these pronouns to emphasize the interpersonal and mutual nature of love at this point. Now, think about it with me briefly. Think about first the subordinate clause. The one who was described here to us because he first loved us is God himself. Now, frequently when we come to a text like this, we don't pause and bring into our minds the reality of the person who is described. But I think we need to do that. We need to see that this one is the creator of all things, the sustainer of life, the one described by Isaiah the prophet as the high and holy one who inhabits eternity, the one who is independent in his being, who is self-sufficient in and of himself, who is majestic and glorious and omnipotent and omnipresent, the one of whom the four living creatures in the book of Revelation say he was and he is and he is to come. All of that is present in that little pronoun he because he first loved us. The great God of the universe is the one who does the action in this place. And John says he loved us first. He loved us in eternity. He wants us to recognize that his love has priority. It is before any other love. It is the source and the origin of all loves. We speak of this as pericuresis of the perfect mutual love of the members of the Godhead. But now no longer expressed simply to themselves now turned outward to us. And when we read the text, we remember that this profound prior love is a love that is expressed to us while we were yet sinners. As Paul says in Romans 5-8, it's astounding, isn't it? That this great and glorious God first loved us. And in the context of the text, John wants us to remember and to understand that this great God who first loved us has loved us in every conceivable way. And that is demonstrated in verses 9 and 10 by a statement about the life and death of our Lord Jesus. Let's read it one more time. 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. In 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. It's as if the Apostle is saying, do you want a demonstration of the love of God then look to Christ? Look to his life, look to his death. This is how it's manifested. He offered himself as a propitiation. He gave his blood to turn away his father's wrath. Paul draws the conclusion that if God gave his son what other conceivable love could be greater. The great and powerful God of heaven and earth loves us with an unquenchable, perfect, everlasting love. We love because he first loved us, but let's notice the other part of the text as well, we love. John wants us to understand that our love grows out of his love. Now, I'm using today the ESV. It, along with other translations, I think, properly renders this we love. They follow the UBS text in omitting any pronoun as the direct object of the verb. There are variants behind the text that we have in English. And it is useful to think of this statement without a direct object. But maybe you have a Bible in front of you, a different translation. And it says, we love him. It supplies a direct object. And it turns our attention to God. Now, if that's present in your text I think that actually it's good and proper. And it does follow one family of textual variants. If this is the proper rendering, we love him, then we are explicitly reminded at this point of the necessity of loving God. And that is the first and the greatest commandment, isn't it? Now, even if we don't supply the pronoun, this doctrine is still there. We can't say we love without first thinking of the necessity of loving God. Even if the pronoun isn't there, it teaches us that we love God because he first loved us. That is, our affection for him is rooted in and grows out of his prior love for us. If we would increase our love for him, the place to increase it is by going first to his love, contemplating his love. And then seeing our love for him grow in response. But if the object is properly unstated as in the ESV, and I think that that's right, then love for God may be supplemented with its necessary adjunct. We love others because he first loved us. This is explicitly in the context as well. We've already noted the beginning and the ending of the passage. Let us love one another. No one could say he loves God if he doesn't love his brother. This is explicit in the context. And this is the second great commandment, very appropriate for the thought that is present in the Apostle John. He wants us to understand that our love for one another must be rooted in God's love for us. His love which reaches his enemies. His love that sends his son to live and die on their behalf. His love for his people. And never dying, unchanging love for us. B.F. Westcott, in his comments on this text says, our love is the light kindled by the love of God that is our love for others. Grows out of God's love for us. Now, when we enjoy Christian liberty, we must do so with reference to love. Think first of our love to God. Every time that we live and walk in the freedom of the gospel, every time that we enjoy any liberty that is permitted to us, every expression of our liberty, we enjoy these things because our Lord Jesus Christ has purchased this freedom for us, every one of them. Everything that we do may be traced back here. And when you enjoy your Christian liberty, you show your love to God in the way that you use it. It is an outflow of his love to you. Paul said, in the midst of a discussion of Christian liberty, whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, now those are the most mundane affairs of life, aren't they? Things that we do every day. You lift the glass and put it to your lips. You take the fork and put it into the food and put that into your mouth. Paul says, you can do that. I didn't quote the end of the text jet to the glory of God. Now, Christian liberty has a lot to do with eating and drinking, doesn't it? We do it to the glory of God. Remember that your freedom came at the price of the blood of the Son of God. We love him because he first loved us. But secondly, what about our love to man? There are times when my love for others may call me to curtail my expression of and enjoyment of my proper Christian liberty. And dear friends, this is especially true for ministers of the gospel. I have a good friend who serves in a large church in a small town. And he's made a conscious decision that there are certain permissible activities, which for the sake of the witness of his church and his testimony as a gospel minister, he has determined he won't engage in because he's in a big church in a small town. And he knows that the eyes of the town are upon him. I think he's a wise pastor in making that decision to curtail his liberty. He's loving others because God first loved him. Sometimes we have a higher calling that goes beyond simply expressing our freedom. We are to think in terms of what John says. We love others because he first loved us. Thomas Watson, that great Puritan, said this, love makes the duties of religion pleasant. And I think that he was right. Let the love of God shape and mold your expression of Christian liberty to the glory of God. Thank you, you're dismissed. Copyright 2009 Westminster Seminary, California, all rights reserved. You were permitted to re-produce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a feebe on the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this broadcast on our website is preferred.