1 John 4

God the Son came in the flesh. God the Son is now one with the Man, Jesus of Nazareth, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, but is also the Son of Mary. Even after His death and resurrection, Jesus the Messiah (or Christ) is still God the Son and is still the Man Jesus of Nazareth. He is not two people, but one, fully God as well as fully man.

It is permissible for a person to be a Christian and to admit that this is more than he can really understand. It is not permissible to be a Christian, particularly a Christian teacher, and to reject this doctrine of the Son of God come in the flesh. It is not acceptable to teach something less than this in the church. Some instruction that insists on being called Christian must be rejected. It does not teach what the Bible teaches regarding the doctrine of Christ. We cannot always agree with everything. Either the Bible is right about Jesus, or those who have some other view on the person and work of Christ are right, or neither of them are right. We have come to believe that the Bible is right. We cannot affirm understandings of the Lord that contradict the Bible.

In every age, the church must test the spirits of those who would be teachers according to the established deposit of Scripture that God has given us. Those who reject the doctrine of Christ are not from God, for they are against the One who is the beloved Son of the Father and the child of Mary. God is for Christ. His enemies are anti-Christ.

We might wish that everyone in this present age agreed about the doctrine of Christ, but they do not. The difference is very basic. It comes from the source. One doctrine of Christ is from God, and those who embrace that message demonstrate that they are from God. A false doctrine of Christ is not from God, it is from the world, and those who embrace that false message are not from God, they are from the world. There is a difference in the spirits. One is the spirit of truth, and the other is a spirit of error.

Because we speak of error, of the devil, of antichrist, do we think that we have permission to treat those who disagree with us as less than human? Is God calling us to a life of angry hatred? No, God is love. We especially need to love one another. Not only is the true doctrine of Christ from God, the true way of living out that doctrine, love, is also from God. If we want to know what love is, we can do no better than to look to the cross. This is the way that the love of God was manifest to us. The cross sprung from a heart of divine love. Looking upon the elect of God in our helpless condition, the Lord saw our need before we were even born. He assessed our own inability and His singular ability, and determined in love to meet our need in a way that would secure our eternal well being. We could not really live without living through Him. That necessitated the sacrifice of His coming, living, dying, and then bringing forth the age of resurrection upon the heavens and the earth. Now we can live, since He lives, and we are able to live through Him.

This great divine love had to come from God first before it could ever be expressed in us. It is a costly love, requiring that Jesus the Son become the propitiatory sacrifice for those who belong to Him. If God loves us this way, if His love is the source of love, and if that greatest of all loves has touched us, we certainly should love one another. This love of one another is merely an appropriate reverence for the Son of God, and for His cross.

Throughout this letter the Apostle has been writing to the church about the Spirit of God. It is by the Spirit of God that we believe and that we love, and the Spirit of God at work within us moving us along in faith and love is the proof that we belong to the God of love. The Spirit is the deposit within us of a world of love, and of the God of that world.

By the Spirit we believe that Jesus is both the Son of God and the Savior of the world. By that same spirit we confess belief in Christ and we live a life of heavenly love consistent with the love that we have received from God. By this Holy Spirit we continue in the love of God.

The chain of saving events that will end with our vindication on the day of judgment began in eternity past with love of God. God, who is love, loved us. Long after God began the works of creation and providence that will one day find consummation in your participation in the life of the new heavens and new earth, you came to the realization that God loved you, and that the death of Christ on the cross was for you. It was very late in that chain of divine purpose when you first loved God. He had been loving you for a long, long time before you were even born. Today His love is being lived out through you. How wonderfully powerful is the plan of God! Now we do not need to live in the same fear of God which His love at first awakened in us. Our understanding of the love of the cross and the efficacy of the atoning work of Christ has cast away all fear.

As we obey His call to love, we grow in our confidence about the day of His return. As we respond to His call to love our brother, who we can see, we are brought to a greater confidence concerning the love of the invisible God for us that was with God in the beginning. God is love, and God has always loved you. Live out His love by loving one another.