THE SECOND PART: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Ministry of John
Message Five—Practicing the Divine Love
Scripture Reading: 1 John 2:3-11; 3:14-18; 4:7-12, 16-19; 2 John 5-6
I. The love of God is God Himself; love is the inward essence of God and the heart of God—1 John 4:8, 16: (2007 ST, msg. 10)
A. God’s predestination of us unto the divine sonship was motivated by the divine love—Eph. 1:4-5. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
B. God’s giving of His only begotten Son to us so that we may be saved from perdition judicially through His death and have the eternal life organically in His resurrection was motivated by the divine love—John 3:16; 1 John 4:9-10. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
C. “I drew them with cords of a man, / With bands of love”—Hosea 11:4: (2007 ST, msg. 10)
1. The phrase with cords of a man, with bands of love indicates that God loves us with His divine love not on the level of divinity but on the level of humanity; God’s love is divine, but it reaches us in the cords of a man, that is, through Christ’s humanity. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
2. The cords through which God draws us include Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; it is by all these steps of Christ in His humanity that God’s love in. His salvation reaches us—Rom. 5:8. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
3. Apart from Christ, God’s everlasting love, His unchanging, subduing love, could not be prevailing in relation to us; God’s unchanging love is prevailing because it is a love in Christ, with Christ, by Christ, and for Christ—vv. 5, 8; 8:35-39. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
II. The practice of the divine love is the outcome of our enjoyment of the Triune God as the all-inclusive Spirit, the One who is moving and working within us as the anointing in the fellowship of the divine life to saturate us with all that the Triune God is, with all that He has done, and with all that He has obtained and attained— 1 John 1:3; 2:3-11, 27: (2007 ST, msg. 10)
A. If we would experience and enjoy the divine love and have it become the love by which we love others, we need to know God experientially by continuously living in the divine life—vv. 3-6; Phil. 3:10a. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
B. God first loved us in that He infused us with His love and generated within us the love with which we love Him and the brothers—1 John 4:19-21. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
C. The life which we have received from God is a life of love; Christ lived in this world a life of God as love, and He is now our life so that we may live the same life of love in this world and be the same as He is—3:14; 5:1; 2:6; 4:17. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
D. Our natural Jove must be put on the cross; one difference between God’s love and our natural love is that it is very easy for our natural love to be offended. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
E. We must be persons who are flooded with and carried away by the love of Christ; the divine love should be like the rushing tide of great waters toward us, impelling us to live to Him beyond our own control—2 Cor. 5:14. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
F. The commandment regarding brotherly love is both old and new; old, because the believers have had it from the beginning of their Christian life; new, because in their Christian walk it dawns with new light and shines with new enlightenment and fresh power again and again—1 John 2:7-8; 3:11, 23; cf. John 13:34. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
G. Our living in which we love one another in the love of God is the perfection and completion of this love in its manifestation in us—1 John 4:11-12; 2:5. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
III. The church life is a life of brotherly love—4:7-8; 2 John 5-6; John 15:12, 17; Rev. 3:7; Eph. 5:2; cf. Jude 12a: (2007 ST, msg. 10)
A. The Body builds itself up in love—Eph. 4:16. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
B. Our God-given, regenerated spirit is a spirit of love; we need a burning spirit of love to conquer the degradation of today’s church—2 Tim. 1:7. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
C. The one who loves God and the brothers is enjoying the divine life; the one who does not love is abiding in the satanic death—1 John 3:14; cf. 2 Cor. 11:2-3. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
D. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”—1 Cor. 8:1b; cf. 2 Cor. 3:6. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
E. Loving one another is a sign that we belong to Christ—John 13:34-35. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
F. Loving to be first in the church is versus loving all the brothers—3 John 9. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
G. Just as the Lord Jesus laid down His soul-life so that we might have the divine life, we need to lose our soul-life and deny the self to love the brothers and minister life to them in the practice of the Body life—1 John 3:16; John 10:11, 17- 18; 15:13; Eph. 4:29-5:2; 2 Cor. 12:15; Rom. 12:9-13. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
H. We need to lose our soul-life by not loving the world with its pleasure; instead, taking in God and expressing God as love in the church life of brotherly love should be our joy, amusement, entertainment, and happiness—1 John 2:15-17; Matt. 16:25-26; Psa. 36:8-9; cf. 2 Tim. 3:4. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
I. Brotherly love in the church life is expressed practically in our caring for the necessities of the needy saints without any self-serving purpose or outward selfdisplay; in the sharing of material things with the needy saints, the grace of the Lord’s life with His love flows among the members of the Body of Christ and is infused into them—1 John 3:17-18; Matt. 6:1-4; Rom. 12:13; 2 Cor. 8:1-7. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
IV. First John 4 tells the secret of how to stand boldly before the judgment seat of Christ—abide in love—vv. 16-18; 2 Cor. 5:10, 14: (2007 ST, msg. 10)
A. To abide in love is to live a life in which we love others habitually with the love that is God Himself so that He may be expressed in us—1 John 4:16. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
B. Perfect love is the love that has been perfected in us by our loving others with the love of God; such love casts out fear and has no fear of being punished by the Lord at His coming back—vv. 17-18; cf. Luke 12:46-47. (2007 ST, msg. 10)
C. Love is the most excellent way for us to be anything or do anything for the building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ —1 Cor. 12:31b-13:8a. (2007 ST, msg. 10)