1 John 4
Abiding in Christ
1 John 4 offers a simple truth: our love shapes us. And if you were at retreat, you’ll recall this: love is both the cause and the cure of sin.
Because, as we explored, the very core of sin is not bad behaviours or bad theology – it’s bad love. Because sin is loving anyone or anything more than we love God. This twisted up and broken love in us causes us to ‘do’ all kinds of ‘sinful’ things, but that isn’t the real issue, our hearts are.
God’s call is to receive him as the one we most love, but today most people love the creation over loving the Creator. Now sure, this is the norm outside the church, right? But John’s speaking to the church! He’s talking to believers. Like us.
We’ve been in 1 John since September, and now we’ve made it to Chapter 4, the climax, of John’s letter where he holds nothing back. His challenge to the church is that as humans, we will always be loving someone or something because we are responders, and daily we’re in a battle of desires: love God – or love his gifts. And when we get this wrong, the result is broken relationships and hurt people.
Chap 4 starts and ends with a warning:
1. ‘Beloved’ don’t believe every spirit – you need to test them to see if they are from God
2. If you claim to love me, but hate even one brother, you’re a liar and you don’t really love God
So, what’s behind these two warnings? And what’s John on about with all this ‘spirit’ talk? Let’s consider how the ‘spirit’ we’re listening to affects how we relate to God. Starting with verse 1: do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the spirit – test them to see if they come from God!
There are 10 mentions of ‘spirit’ in chapter 4; half of them relate to the ‘spirit who lives in the world’ and the other half to the ‘Spirit of God’. But, how many of us could comfortably describe the Spirit of God? If I asked you about him, what would you say?
Most of us could probably rattle off 5-10 things about Jesus and the Father, but our ‘pneumatology’ (our understanding of the Spirit) is generally very poor. But if you can’t tell one spirit apart from another, that makes it almost impossible for us to truly understand 1 John 4!
So let me offer you a description – and see how this resonates with what you know of your relationship with the Spirit, and the truths you know of him from reading your Bible.
The Spirit is God’s bond of love. He’s fully personal: he has feelings, intentions and actions. He delights in elevating others, forming union and nurturing unity. We know the Father loves the Son, and the Son in return loves the Father, and the Spirit is the go-between of this love (1 Corinthian 2).
We don’t typically notice the Spirit’s love — but when a heart has the Spirit living in it (being reborn), a new union and unity with others forms. You know, I most notice the Spirit’s love when I’m talking with another true believers and I get this sense that we share the same heartbeat – the same spirit together.
In most Christian circles, the Spirit isn’t given much attention. Early organised church councils dedicated more time on the Father, Son, and Trinity, and while the Spirit is part of the Trinity (and equal to the Father and Son), his role never really got the depth of study that the Father and Son did.
But thankfully, a revival of Trinitarian theology is helping us to see how critical the Spirit is to our faith. How he is so much more than a jet engine that enables us, an empowering force or a fairy who dusts out sprinklings of spiritual gifts like a sugar shaker.
Mercifully, faithful, Biblical fathers in the faith like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Sibbes and Edwards all spent time making much of the Spirit, showing us how the Spirit gives and sustains our communion with God. (Frost)
2 Peter 1.4 tells us that the Spirit makes it possible for us to be in relationship with God forever because he is the centre for every eternal being. He isn’t just a bit of glue – holding two parts together: he’s the reason we have union with God! This union is what creates ‘being’ – LIFE!
But Satan, who despises the Spirit and the Trinity, is an ‘unbeing’ – he rules a realm called death – where there is no ‘being’, there is no life! That is the place that Adam entered into, and all humanity after him.
So now in 1 John 4, John starts by saying, in verse 3 that there are false prophets out there, all over the world and in our churches! They have a spirit – but be on guard because it’s not the Spirit of God!
The Holy Spirit will always affirm Jesus as God’s Son, testify that he put on human flesh, made himself like us, walk and talk among us, in order to show us what the Father is really like!
But the false prophets deny that Jesus was the true son of God. John says that these false prophets have the spirit of the anti-Christ. It’s a spirit that denies Christ and is actively against him. It looks for ways of damaging Christ and his reputation – whatever way it can – because that spirit is full of hatred and deception.
What happens when we listen to that spirit? Well, John covered that in Chap 3.11-12: remember Cain? This is the message you have heard from the beginning – we should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because Cain had been doing what was evil and his brother had been doing what was righteous.
When we listen to a spirit that is not from God, we’re being controlled by the spirit that is the most unlike Christ we will ever know.
People who are controlled by that spirit often live in a world of doubt and scepticism, they distrust others, seek to control, are easily angered, question the Bible’s authority and reliability, but often trust themselves because they lean into their own understanding. They think, ‘I’m intelligent, reasonable, thinking…I can tell right from wrong, I just need a mirror…’.
The driving force, hidden behind this spirit, is lies about the reliability of Jesus – because that spirit doesn’t want us to ‘be’ (exist / live) with God — and with each other— in community, forever.
But, like verse 17 says, God’s most Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts. He urges us to love him and one another deeply, verses 11-12. The Spirit causes us to hate the thought of behaving unlovingly to others – because we know and believe we are loved by God. And that is the only way to have real love for each other (verse 11).
The Spirit of God also gives us hope: real hope! Not wishful thinking or temporary fixes – but expectation and confidence in God as we face life. And this hope grows in us as we respond with thanks to God for being with us, knowing he’s in control, believing that he’s working everything for good. That is the basis of love, that has no fear!
There is no fear because this love is undeniable! John’s not talking about fear of spiders or the dark; he’s talking about the fear of being disciplined or punished by the Father! But if you are the Lord’s, His love expels that fear!
John says in verse 18 that, ‘Such love has no fear – because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.’
You can’t be ruled by dread, worry, anxiety, sadness, regret – and then say that you know God or love others.
That’s because fear of punishment and love for the Lord can’t co-exist! That’d be like being in an abusive relationship: ‘Gosh I love God – but I’m worried he’ll hit me, hurt me, punish me, be disappointed in me, reject me…’ That is not the voice of the Holy Spirit. That is not the voice of the God who adopted you and drew you in as his beloved.
1 John 3:1-3 said to put our hope in the truth that God the Father loves us so much, that we’re called his children! Now here in verse 17 he says to focus on Christ, because as we see him face to face, we become like him. That’s because all of us will become like the object of our heart’s greatest desire. We love doing the thing that makes us feel most loved, and eventually we become like that thing.
This is easy to see with children. For example, take boys who adore football – they start to dress like a footballer, talk like one, practice moves over and over in the back garden, they mimic behaviours, haircuts, fashion, and probably attitude.
If our deepest desire is to know God, then we’ll listen to the word of God’s Spirit, and we will become more like the Son.
But if our greater desire is for something (or someone) else first, then we’re listening to the spirit of anti-Christ and that’s who we’ll become like!
The mission of that spirit is to deceive us into believing in a horrifying version of god – like Adam did! That version of god will cause us to chase positions of power, it demands obedience, rigorous worship, it requires rules to be followed and justice to be served
so that its god will be glorified. That spirit is determined to get us biting and devouring each other.
So all through 1 John – he’s pleading for us to look for the signs that show us when our hearts are not fully the Lord’s. Like in 1
John 2.9, ‘Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness…’
The spirit of the world wants our relationships inside the church to be totally broken. Maybe patched up with cheap tape, but not made new. He wants outsiders looking in to see competition, conflict, bitterness, forced politeness, distance… not love.
That’s why we must ‘test the spirits’ as John says, because if we believe lies about what God is really like, that will shape how we respond towards the people around us.
But take heart: John reassures us by saying in verse 6 that if you’re here, listening to him now, even if you sometimes feel overcome by the spirit of the world, while you’re sitting under John’s teaching and soaking that in, be assured that you will hear the Spirit of God and he will help you reject any spirit that is not from God.
I said at the start, there’s a simple truth in 1 John 4 – that our love shapes us.
We know from verse 10 that we love God because he loves us. Not because we did anything right, not because we deserve it,
but ONLY because God is love. God wants to be our ultimate love, but more often than not, self-love and obsession usually wins and we end up loving people, possessions, food, comfort, money, holidays…
As we respond to the war of desires that tug on us from all sides, the challenge is to sort through the competing things pulling on our hearts. So what’s winning for you? Here’s a hint: look for clues like when you say out loud ‘I want this’ or ‘I like that’… In those moments you’re voicing what you love. Every choice you make shows a steady direction of travel to show you where you go looking for satisfaction.
When we understand this, we understand our preferred pleasure. Jesus, Paul and Timothy call these ‘boasts’ and there are 4: wisdom, power, wealth or oneself. They all promise a form of security and status, but Jeremiah offered us an alternative:
‘But let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.’ Jer. 9:24
To know God is the key – He defeats our backwards love by giving our new hearts, new desires – a greater love!
The spirit of the world uses lust to keep our souls captive. God’s Holy Spirit overcomes this by pouring out God’s love in our hearts (Rom 5:5). And this makes Deut 6:5 a reality: ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ The repetition of “all” is where faith redirects the desires we have and we’re motivated to shrug off lesser loves!
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus talked about two “masters” (Matt. 6:24). One is self-love: full of concerns for this life. The other is loving God and one another.
Jesus is saying that life isn’t just a mixed bunch of random choices: it’s a parade of our love! It’s a two-track option where you either love fallen desires or godly ones. Jesus’ call to love was “the greatest commandment” (Mark 12:30), yet even though most of us know it as truth, it isn’t always central to life everyday!
Building on Deut 6, Jesus pressed that — along with, ‘all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might,’ he connected John 13:35, ‘By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’
Love is the necessary display of faith. Not forced, not artificial – there’s no sense faking it because God’s Holy Spirit is fantastic at communicating and he’s in the business of fraud detection!
So, what about when a brother (or sister) in Christ wrongs us? What about when they hurt us deeply? Maybe they accuse, assume, blame, lash out, loose their temper or embarrass us.
We can’t control them, we can’t force forgiveness or reconciliation. And above all else, — we can’t do the Holy Spirit’s work for him! But, if even the thought of responding in an unloving way toward them grieves you to your core, then it is because you are born of God and know him (4:7).
John is saying all through 1 John (specifically in chap 2) that he’s writing these things so that we won’t sin: the context of sin is about walking in darkness and hating our family – our brothers and sisters.
To live in unloving relationships is the true definition of sin. Verse 12, ‘No one has ever seen God, but if we love one other, God lives in us, and his love is made complete in us.’
A couple months ago, I was face to face with a falling out. The details aren’t important so I won’t go into too much detail, but I was in a ministry meeting here at CBC when suddenly, during one conversation, things went south!
One of the guys in the group was really upset about something and he took it all out on me, in front of everyone… I was wrongfully accused, assumptions were made, blame was dished, the person lashed out and lost their temper. I was embarrassed, shocked, upset, angry, and then terribly sad…
A couple of elders offered to step in, but the Holy Spirit beat us all to it! He was doing a work already – showing us how his Spirit is far greater than the spirit of this world who wants to destroy us!
5 days after the incident — and several crazy events you’d never expect — I turned the corner of the cereal aisle in Sainsburys about mid-day on a Saturday. The shop was heaving with crazy customers – and there in front of me stood this guy. We made eye contact, pulled our baskets to the side and for about 5 minutes, it was like the show was paused while we talked. His first words were to ask for forgiveness! We both had tears in our eyes, and we were entirely reconciled. The Spirit of God did what he does best — winning the battle, pouring the love of God into our hearts, to overflowing to the hearts of our fellow brothers and sisters.
In contrast, when John referenced Cain (1 John 3), he said that Cain was of the ‘evil One’. That’s because Cain had zero desire to give God the first of his crops, his love, or anything else. But Abel did. And when Cain watched as God accepted his brother, but not him, he got violently angry and murdered his brother.
Sin is defined there in Genesis for the rest of the Bible: it begins with a hatred of God – not realising everything we have is from him. And it moves into a hatred of our sisters and brothers – despising any one of them for any number of things.
But John says, if we’re really children of God and if we really have his Spirit – then we will really love God and really love one another (verses 12-13).
But how?
At the start, I asked: is it any wonder that we have so many broken relationships and hurt among us? You probably have 1 or 2 broken relationships in your life and if not, you definitely know of some.As I was preparing, I paused a second to count up a few I know of –but then I stopped!! I was horrified – and so I started to pray!
I was grieved thinking about how hard we find it to live with one another – bear with one another – and to forgive one another when they hurt us. Yet – isn’t it incredibly easy to get bitter or get out!
But what if — instead of walking towards sin, like Cain, and hating one another, what if — we spent every moment listening to the Spirit of God who lights up what God is really like, in the light of Jesus!
But you might think ‘Hollie, really? Every moment? That’s a bit much! I have kids to look after, a stressful job, a demanding family…’
So, I have a question for you: Do you think your view of God’s love for you is right? Is his love big enough?
Most people wonder if an almighty God really has time or interest in our ordinary day-to-day life. Does your daily eating, sleeping, working and relaxing really matter to him? Does the invitation to love God in “all things” mean when you’re texting friends, watching tv, going out for drinks, scrolling social media, folding laundry, on the school run or making tea?
Psalm 139’s response to that is YES – YES very much so! Because God is fully engaged with us, all the time. If we don’t get this, then our God is too much like us!
Once we’re ‘born of the Spirit’ (John 3.6), God comes to abide in us by his Spirit. Not as an overwhelming presence, but as a gentle heart-to-heart companion. Spiritual life is a natural conversation with God, in the same way that we have day-to-day conversations with friends, spouses, parents…
The Spirit of God is the key! He’s the bond of our conversation with Jesus and we’re invited to bring him along into every activity, conversation, choice. In knowing him, we no longer look for satisfaction in the world because He gives us more love and hope than anything the world could offer!
So what’s the cure to broken relationships? John summed that up in verse 19, “We love because he first loved us.” When we know we are loved by God, his love heals our broken relationships and frees us to forgive those who have caused us harm. Only by knowing how greatly we are loved, will we love others and bear the fruit of growing to be more like Jesus.
John 15:9-11, ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.’
Our joy is full because the love of one thing, casts out the love of another. Instead of fearing the punishment of sin, we begin to hate it! Broken relationships are healed, we can forgive those who’ve wronged us and we are free to love others – completely!
John tells us in chapter 4 that the Spirit of God will always reassure us of the Father’s love. But the spirit of anti-Christ will do anything to distract us from knowing what God is like. He’ll get us looking in mirrors, competing, quarrelling – because that spirit wants to keep us from the Spirit of God.
So where do we go with this? What’s our response to what John’s said?
Well, how can you know what God is like if you don’t spend time with him?! Our response is to abide! It’s prayer! The real, most Holy Spirit of God invites you to be with him, in conversation, in every moment. But the spirit of the world will make this feel impossible!! He aggressively uses prayer to distract us!
C.S. Lewis nailed this in The Screwtape Letters where the senior devil, Screwtape, advises his nephew, Wormwood, to keep the patient (the person who’s soul they are trying to destroy) from prayer:
‘The best thing, where it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether. When the patient is an adult recently re-converted to the Enemy’s party, like your man, this is best done by encouraging him to remember, or to think he remembers, the parrot-like nature of his prayers in childhood. In reaction against that, he may be persuaded to aim at something entirely spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularised; and what this will actually mean to a beginner will be an effort to produce in himself a vaguely devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence have no part. One of their poets, Coleridge, has recorded that he did not pray “with moving lips and bended knees” but merely “composed his spirit to love” and indulged “a sense of supplication”. That is exactly the sort of prayers we want; and since it bears a superficial resemblance to the prayer of silence as practised by those who are very far advanced in the Enemy’s service, clever and lazy patients can be taken in by it for quite a long time.’
To hear God’s voice, we need to be in constant closeness with him. When we are – the greater we’ll know he is love – and
the deeper we feel the blushing joy of being loved by him first! ‘This is real love – not that we loved God, but that he loved us and send his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.’ (v10)
In response to God’s love, we will love him and our brothers and sisters – in an extraordinary way!
So, find a place where you can hear the Spirt of God speaking to the centre of your being and go sit with God. If you don’t – you won’t be convinced about your worth, so you’ll spend every day trying to earn affirmation and praise.
But if you do carve out time with God, you’ll know his voice, he will reassure you of his love, and you’ll be able to weed out all the false prophets.
1 John 2.7 & 9, ‘Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard…Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness…’
1 John 4.21, ‘And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.’
The wounds we carry have created a neediness in us. But instead of taking these to God, we often try to get other people to heal and satisfy us. But they can’t – and when they don’t, when they let us down – we bite and devour them – we hate them.
At the close of chapter 4 John says in verse 20, ‘If a person does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God Whom he has not seen?’ God is saying ABIDE in my word – abide in my son – be with me. Only then, can you walk in his light to love your bother who you can see, and really know God, who you can’t see, but who’s voice you will know!
GRACE PLACE 