Love that sacrifices (1 John 4:9-10)

GREAT EXPRESSIONS OF GOD'S LOVE:
Love That Sacrifices (1 John 4:9-10)¹

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Dr. Paul Manuel—2005

Most jobs are demanding in some way. They may require physical exertion that leaves your body exhausted or mental exertion that leaves your head spinning. Most jobs, however, are not dangerous, so when an element of risk arises, it may be best to question the matter first.

The city editor just heard that a power line had fallen across Main Street in a storm. He went out into the newsroom and assigned the story to one of his reporters. "Jack, check this out, and find out if the wire is live or not." How am I supposed to do that?" Jack asked. "I may not live to write the story." "You're right," the editor replied. "Take Kevin with you.... After you touch it, he can write the story." (Adapted from Hodgin 1994:314)

Questioning an assignment does not necessarily get you out of that assignment.

Apparently, the editor thought the story was worth the risk of his reporter's life. Thankfully, Jesus considered our redemption to be worth the risk of his own life and was willing to embody one of the Great Expressions of God's Love—Love that Sacrifices.

In the late first century, proponents of a philosophy called Gnosticism find aspects of Christianity akin to what they believe. The idea that a person can be saved from this life is similar to what they teach, although salvation in their view is not from the penalty of one's sin but from the bondage of one's flesh. Gnostics regard the physical realm, including the human body, as inherently evil. Only the spiritual realm and man's spiritual body, which he enters at death, are good. In fact, according to the Gnostics, there is no relationship between the physical and the spiritual, and what you do in the physical realm has no bearing on your status in the spiritual realm.


The Gnostics argue that Christianity errs in two matters, and they are attempting to correct the thinking of believers in Asia Minor.

• The Gnostics claim that because Jesus, the son of God, first existed in the spiritual realm, he would not have left that perfect state to enter the flawed world of the flesh. While he seemed to appear to people here, those contacts were actually spirit in nature...like Casper, the friendly ghost.

• The Gnostics further claim that because the spiritual realm is all that matters, what one does in the physical realm, including sin, is irrelevant. Therefore, you may live as decadently as you please, because none of it counts after you die.²

Was Jesus an apparition, and are there no consequences to the way you live? John refutes both assertions in his first epistle.

• To the Gnostic claim that Jesus was just a spirit, the apostle counters.³

1 John 1:1 ...we have seen with our eyes [and not simply in our imagination]... we have looked at and touched with our hands [and not merely encountered as a phantom]...the Word of Life....

• To the Gnostic claim that sin has no meaning, the apostle counters...

1 John 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

In other words, denying the reality of sin does not diminish the recompense of sin. Whether or not you accept responsibility for your actions, you are still accountable for them.

John warns his readers not to be taken in by pretenders, by those who claim to represent Christianity but who actually represent a Gnostic revision of it.⁴ He explains that by knowing something about them, Christians can then identify and avoid (or refute) them.

• Because Gnostics dismiss the concept of sin, their immoral behavior gives them away. So, in chapter 3 John writes...⁵

1 John 3:7 ...make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as [Jesus] is righteous; 8 the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.

• Because Gnostics ascribe no value to the body, their denial of the incarnation gives them away. So, in chapter 4 John writes...⁶

1 John 4:1 ...do not believe every spirit...because many false prophets have gone out into the world.... 2b Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3a but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.

As John explains why these two differences between Gnosticism and Christianity are important, he offers one of the Great Expressions of God's Love. Please turn to 1 John 4:9, where the apostle states that...

I. The Lord has made His love evident to us (v. 9)⁷

1 John 4:9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.

In scripture, the term "only begotten" appears in reference to the tragic loss death brings—the loss of an only child.⁸ Here, John underscores that God, knowing full well the consequences,⁹ "sent His only begotten Son into the world" (emphasis added).

A. God did it despite the cost to Him.

What human parent, when faced with the same decision, would not resist or search for a less costly alternative? Yet, God did not....

• He was unstinting in His generosity.

Have you ever made a costly mistake?

• Perhaps you started a project that turned out to be more involved or demanding than you thought it would be, and you had to abandon it, despite the hefty investment you had already made in time or energy.

• Perhaps you made an expensive purchase, only to discover that you should have used the money for something else, because you did not really need the item and, maybe, never even used it.

I have more than 2000 volumes in my library, accumulated over the course of thirty years. Had I kept everything I acquired during that period, the number would be considerably higher, but I have thinned the collection more than once, often discarding books that I should never have bought. If I could begin the collection again with what I know now, I would have fewer books and would have saved a lot of money. Alas, the purpose for my collecting when I started was not as clear as it is now.... God has no such uncertainty. He knows "the end from the beginning" (Isa 46:10).

John further states that, when God sent His son, He had a specific goal clearly in mind: "that we might live through Him."

B. God did it to secure our resurrection.

 Jesus' death was costly—of that, there can be no doubt—but it was not a mistake. It accomplished precisely what God intended from the start. Through Jesus' sacrifice...

• He has enabled us to escape death.

Although Gnosticism is not as prevalent today as it was during the early period of the Church, the ideas it espoused still survive and surface from time to time. A course I took on pseudo-Christian movements included a unit on Christian Science, which began in the mid-1800s and espouses ideas similar to Gnosticism. My instructor compared Christian Science to Grape Nuts. As the breakfast cereal is neither grape nor nuts, the religious group is neither Christian nor science. According to the founder, Mary Baker Eddy, God did not physically become man.¹⁰

The Virgin-mother conceived this idea of God, and gave to her ideal the name of Jesus. (Eddy 1906:29-17)

Jesus was the offspring of Mary's self-conscious communion with God. (Eddy 1906:2932)

Mary's conception of him was spiritual. (Eddy 1906:332-26)

Such ideas may seem silly to us, but there are people ready to give them serious consideration.

The syncretism of Christianity and Gnosticism John opposed might have faded into obscurity, were it not that a cache of 4^th c. documents discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945 revived interest in the movement. The discovery also raised a question in the minds of some. Recently, a TV reporter interviewed a well-known scholar, who noted that Gnostic writings did not make it into the New Testament because they told a very different story about Jesus than we read there. Unfortunately, the reporter did not probe the matter further, ending the interview with his own uncertainty:

Given the discrepancies among these two sets of documents—the ones that are in the Bible and the ones that are not—we cannot be sure if the New Testament description of Jesus is correct.

This reporter was obviously not familiar with what the New Testament or Gnosticism teaches, and some of those listening to this segment probably agreed with him.¹¹

Did the early church include the wrong books in the New Testament? Should you be reading the Gospel of Mary instead of the Gospel of Mark, or the Apocalypse of James instead of the Epistle of James? If you or someone you meet wonders how to tell the difference, the answer, in part, is that unlike books the early church rejected...

• The New Testament books are credible accounts, because they are often by eyewitnesses of what they record, and

• The New Testament books are consistent accounts, because they agree with what God had already revealed.

As John wrote in the opening verses of this letter...

1 John 1:la What was from the beginning.... 3a what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also....

Gnostic documents, written centuries later, could not make that claim.

Having explained how the Lord has made His love evident to us through the sacrifice of His son, John goes on to explain how, through the same son...

II. The Lord has made His love effective for us (v. 10).

1 John 4:10 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.

However wonderful you may think you are, however wonderful your dog thinks you are, that is not why God sent Jesus. In fact, had it depended on you (or on me) Jesus never would have come. Paul says, because of our sin, "we were God's enemies" (Rom 5:10a), yet He still sent His son.

A. God did it despite the conflict with us.

It did not matter that some of us came from good homes and others of us came from bad homes. It did not matter that some of us had not done the really bad things others had done. All of us were on the same sinking ship.¹²

Rom 3:10 as it is written, "THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;

Some people have difficulty accepting the fact that God looks at everyone the same way. Surely, He recognizes that certain people are worse than others.... Indeed, He does, and He gauges their punishment accordingly,¹³ but whether a person has sinned little or much, all sin has one common effect; it separates that person from a holy God. Unless God remedies the situation, and unless the person accepts God's remedy, that separation will eventually become permanent.

Consequently, no matter how much better we might have thought we were than other people we knew, we could expect no special treatment, because...

• We were undeserving in our iniquity.

which makes what God did all the more wonderful. He did not wait for us to straighten up before He stepped in: "He loved us and sent His Son...for our sins." Paul says the same thing in...¹⁴

Rom 5:8 ...God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So, how important is this, really? ...If someone does not like you and does not want to like you, the best response may simply be to ignore that person. If you do not let his animosity trouble you, eventually, he will probably turn his attention elsewhere. If someone does not like you and threatens to hurt you, the best response may be to enlist someone else's aid.

I was sitting in a high school shop class, after the bell had rung, as the teacher took attendance, when in walked one of the other students. The teacher said, "You're late." "No. I'm not," he replied. The teacher turned to me and asked, "Didn't he come in after the bell rang?" Accustomed as I was to telling the truth, I said, "Yes, he did." What I was unaccustomed to was the violent reaction this kid had as he jumped over the desk and started pounding away at me. The teacher pulled him off and sent him to the principle's office, but not before he threatened to get me after school. As I was not a fighter, and this was long before my martial arts training, it presented a problem for me. Thankfully, I had a friend (Charlie) who was a weightlifter, who was on the football team, and who had a reputation as a fighter. When the word got out that he would accompany me after school, I had no trouble.

It is a relief when such conflicts are easy to resolve. If, however, your enemy is God, there is no way you can avoid Him, and there is no one who can defend you against Him. That is why the second part of v. 10 is so important, because it describes the result of God's having sent His son...

B. God did it to ensure our propitiation.

That is a good theological term in the King James Version and New American Standard, whose meaning is a mystery to most readers.¹⁵ Unfortunately, other translations' attempts to explain it often fall short.¹⁶ So, here it is: To propitiate is to satisfy God's anger against sin. You see, not only were we sinners, Paul also says that, because of our sin, "we were God's enemies" (Rom 5:10a) and, as such, "we were by nature objects of [God's] wrath" (Eph 2:3c)¹⁷ Most of us probably did not even realize how much trouble we were in, but it was bad...very bad.¹⁸

If you have ever been in serious trouble with your parents, or your teacher, or your boss, or the police, that experience, however distasteful it may have been, pales in comparison to the trouble you were in with God. You may have been worried, even frightened, about what your parents, teacher, boss, or the police would do to you, but...

Heb 10:31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

The problem is that we do not know how bad it really is until we die, at which point it is too late to fix. Thankfully, God has done what we could not, and through Jesus' sacrifice...

• He has enabled us to escape wrath. 

...before we ever had to face it.

You probably think of salvation generally in terms of sins forgiven and life eternal, but that is only part of what God did by sending His son. Jesus' sacrifice changed God's disposition toward you. As a result...

• You will escape the very worst He has planned, and, instead,
• You will enjoy the very best He has planned.¹⁹

This change is not automatic. You must consciously...deliberately forsake your sin and accept what God has done, a choice you alone can make. If you do, then Jesus' sacrifice becomes your propitiation.²⁰

The contact John's readers have with Gnostic beliefs raises two questions for them:

• Does it matter what we do in the physical realm?
• Does it matter if Jesus entered the physical realm?

To both questions, John answers, "Yes, it most certainly matters." It mattered then, and it still matters today.

• Many of the choices you make during your relatively brief period in the physical realm of this earth have consequences that affect eternity. As you review the past week, did those choices you made contribute to or detract from what you hope to experience in the future?

• The fact that Jesus entered the physical realm of this world means that he understands the struggles you face and, equally important, that he can help you conquer them, as he conquered them.

That is what the author of Hebrews says.²¹

Heb 2:18 ...since He himself was tempted in that which he has suffered, he is able to come to the aid of [you] who are tempted.

So, even if your performance this past week was not very good, you can do better this next week with his help. That would certainly be an appropriate gesture of appreciation for his love to you, a Love that Sacrifices.

For the Bibliography and Endnotes, see the pdf here.