Seek First: Love Like the King (1 John 4:16)
• 1 John 4:16 This verse tells us three things: God Loves us. God is love. We are to live in love.
• Two are statements about the character and nature of God, king Jesus
o One is a statement about how we are to live in light of God’s love.
First statement: And so we know and rely on the love God has for us
• The basic element of this phrase is that God loves us.
• The NASB translation catches two key concepts from the Greek
o First to know, we are to know the love of God.
o Second, is to believe, believe in His love. This is referring to an active belief
• Remember this King and His Kingdom have an enemy.
o And that enemy loves to come and tells us that we are not loved by the King.
o But scripture has an answer for that lie Romans 8:8.
Second statement: God is love.
• There is no one else who can make this statement. No one, can claim they are love.
o This means that God’s very nature is love. It’s who He is, the very make up of His being.
o Therefore, He cannot change or act in any way counter to this nature.
• His love is also perfect and pure and Holy.
Third statement: Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
• Because of what we know and believe from the first two statements, we can live in love.
o This last phrase of this verse is our action to take. Three parts, order is important.
1. Love for God: The OT gives us this command in Deuteronomy 6:5
• This speaks of loving God will all of our being
• It has to start here, if we don’t know and believe in His love, we can’t move forward to the others.
2. Love for self: Because God is love, he cannot them also hate Himself.
• We are created in His image and His Spirit is in us, if we hate ourselves, we hate the God in us.
3. Love for each other: This is not love like the world does, where everything goes.
• The world’s definition of love is more like lust or false acceptance
• The love we are called to always points to the King, Jesus.
• But Kingdom love also come with a call to obedience.
o We are called to leave comfort zones and familiarity to go where love is needed.
• These verses challenge us to not hate our brother/sister.
The promise: Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”
• 1 John 4:16 ends by saying that if we live in love, God will live in us.
• Romans 8:35 shows what the fruit of that is.
With God in us, nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Seek First: Love Like the King
