What is the nature of God’s love? This is an important question that we need to answer and in today’s presentation , we are going to be looking at the characteristics of the love of God as described by the apostle John. Last week, we talked about the importance of protecting ourselves against deceiving spirits. John brought that to the attention of his readers because there were many false teachers that had infiltrated the church. They were promoting gnosticism, a heresy that denied the God man and also promoted licentious living. John started the first 6 verses of chapter 4 to teach us how to recognize the spirit of the antichrist. This week, he shifts gear and is going to define what true love is. I think John did that on purpose; since chapter 4 was intended to teach us how to identify deceiving spirits, John probably thought it best to also teach us how to identify the characteristics and nature of the God’s love. We’re going to look at verses 7-18
The Nature of God’s Love presentation
Passage:
God Is Love
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 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. 10 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. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 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.17 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. 18 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.
Scripture References:
The Presentation’s notes are available in the slideshow below
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My name is Tayib Salami and I started Tayibs.com for the sole purpose of exploring difficult questions about the Christian faith that most of us shy away from. In 2017, I entered a very dark time in my life and it’s only by the grace of the Living God that I’m still alive today. It led me to really go deeper in my faith and consider a myriad of questions that I never thought about asking myself or others before. Welcome and enjoy the ride with me.