1. 1 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 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 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 seen God at any time; 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 in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify 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 in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.” 1John 4:7–17 Last week we were talking about how when we walk with God in intimacy, that He actually begins to love in us with His love and that it all becomes natural to us to love that way, and that is actually how we live. What we did not yet get into is how to love people who are really hard to love, the people we don’t even want to be around. How do we engage them?

2. 2 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 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 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 seen God at any time; 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 in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify 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 in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.” 1John 4:7–17 If you continue this process (present tense as the text says you should), you will find that you will actually begin to see other people, even the irritating ones, exactly the same way that Jesus sees them. It means that His love in you will overshadow your drive to protect yourself with isolation. You will see the malignancy in them that makes them unpleasant, and you will feel the need to risk yourself in order to deliver the life-giving love that the unpleasant person does not have. You know that what you have is exactly what they need and you will need to give it up even if it is risky. That will be Jesus in you and we will see how that works in two more slides. Let me also point out that loving others should not become something that you force. If you do not have the desire to love someone, don’t torture yourself with trying to do it in your own discipline. Go to the Lord and confess to Him that you do not have the power to love that person and wait upon Him to break through your defenses and produce in you a genuine love.

3. 3 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 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 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 seen God at any time; 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 in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify 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 in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.” 1John 4:7–17 This is critical. We are so ego-centric that we think that the core of our Christian life is that we love God. This is nonsense. Everything about our relationship with Jesus comes from the fact that He loves us, not that we love Him. I think that more often than not we focus on our performance more than His love. It is a huge mistake because it keeps us self-focused rather than Savior- focused. Have you ever stopped to consider the matter of how easy it is to focus more on our performance than Jesus’ love for us and how that more deeply enslaves us to self-focus? When focus is put on performance, the burden is intensified and the load becomes overwhelming, forcing us to even put more diligence on better performance until that is all we can think about. And we still live poorly.

4. 4 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 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 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 seen God at any time; 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 in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify 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 in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.” 1John 4:7–17 Now we are back to our original premise that we cannot even function normally in our own being if we are not constantly loving other people by sharing with them, whether they reciprocate or not, the overflow and multiplication of the love that God initiated in us with our first breath. When the satisfying love of Jesus first hits the readied human heart, it produces a living “love cell”. The first thing that cell does is divide. Now you have two identical cells of Jesus’ love. Before, you had none. Now you have two – so what should you do? You give one to someone else so that you can breathe in another love cell from Jesus. Besides, that love cell that you share with another person is exactly what they need, and if their heart is ready, it will bond with them and do the same thing in them that it did in you. And if they are not ready, it will begin to create a hunger in their emptiness for something real and satisfying.

5. 5 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 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 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 seen God at any time; 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 in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify 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 in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.” 1John 4:7–17 What does it mean for us to abide in Him? What would we abide in if not for abiding in Him? The only other place to abide is in ourselves, or we put our confidence in trying to abide in others as our security. Trying to find security in anyone but abiding in God will always yield frustration and insecurity and abuse. God alone is the only place we may safely abide.

6. 6 “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 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 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 seen God at any time; 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 in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify 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 in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.” 1John 4:7–17 Our flesh can fool us all day long on this and for many, it does just that. We can try to counterfeit abiding in Him but there is no way to counterfeit God abiding in us! The fact of the matter is that if we do not love others with a self- sacrificing love, if we live in conflict with others and are critical of or impatient with others, it is our FLESH that is abiding in us, not God. Many years ago I was studying the word μένω and discovered one author who said that for God to “abide” in us would mean He was “at home in us”. If we live selfishly and in conflict with others, we may be sure that we have given the keys to our heart to our flesh and are forcing God to live in the back yard as a Divine Squatter.