MARKS OF THE CHURCH:  LOVE

JOHN 17:25-26

JULY 6, 1997

 

As we approach the last two verses of John 17, we come to what has been called "the crown jewel" or the "apex" of our Lord's high priestly prayer on behalf of His people.  The subject is love, a theme of infinite proportions.  The uniqueness of the believer is that the love of God dwells in him in distinction from the world which does not know the love of God.

 

There are perhaps more distortions about love in the biblical sense, than there are clear words on love.  For many, simply having love is to be a Christian.  But our text points out clearly that love is not an emotion which is drummed from the depths of personhood.  It is not the feeble efforts of the carnal soul to promote benevolence.  Love is foreign to the natural man, so that apart from a work of grace, no man can love with the sort of love which has its clearest perfections in Jesus Christ.

 

How does love begin in a life and continue in growing proportions?  Let's consider the mark of love in those born of God.

 

I.  Love's Revelation

 

Sentimental ideas of the Father's love abound in our day.  It seems that multitudes think of God, not as the holy, exalted, righteous God of Scripture, but as a kind-hearted, easily manipulated grandfather-type figure.  He can be swayed by our pitiful pleas.  He loves on a whim without any sort of foundation.  He would not even consider judgment or wrath.  The death of Christ only shows God's great love, not His justice nor wrath toward sinners.  It is in light of this gross misunderstanding of the nature and character of God that we must consider the words our Lord who prayed, "O righteous Father, although the world has not known Thee, yet I have known thee...."  For any attempt to know God's love or express His love in practical ways must have its roots in the revelation of God to sinful man.

 

1.  God is righteous in His judgments

 

It is interesting to note how Jesus addresses the Father in this prayer.  In the first verse, He prays, "Father."  In verse eleven, He calls Him, "Holy Father."  Now we see Him calling the Father, "Righteous Father."  When you consider the meaning of both these terms, it almost seems to be a contradiction.

 

Righteous implies justice, an adherence to a specific moral character, an unbending practice of justice toward any offenders of holy standards.  Father seems to convey more of the idea of a gentleness, tenderness, acceptance without regard to conditions, a sense of family relations.  Put these two together and you have One being who is perfect in character, unbending in meting out justice toward those who break His Law, but who also is tender, forgiving, and accepting.  We must admit that this is contradictory!  How can God be both righteous and display all of the characteristics of fatherhood?

 

It is only in the mediatorial work of Christ that we can understand the perfect harmony of 'righteous' and 'Father' in the being of God.  We prize the forgiveness and acceptance we have with God as Christians.  Such forgiveness and acceptance has its base in righteousness or justice.  We must keep in mind that our Lord is praying for His own, those whom He has redeemed by His own atoning blood.  He is not praying for the world but for His people (17:9).  It is only through faith in Christ that we can truly understand the Father as righteous.

 

The nature of the word, "righteous," points to the justice of God.  It is that common term that we see throughout the New Testament with its cognates of righteousness, just, justice, and justification.  It must be understood in a legal fashion if we are to grasp the meaning of the term.  Jesus' use of 'righteous' in reference to the Father did not mean that He was simply good in His behavior.  At the culminating point of the mediatorial prayer of Christ, our Lord looks at the cross with all of its implications before Him and declares that all the Father has done is righteous, that He is full of justice in accepting sinners through the legal satisfaction of His Son.

 

Most people think that God ought to overlook their sins, ignore their sinful disposition, forget about the imputation of Adam's sin, and accept them because He is a loving Father.  While it is true that God is a loving Father, which we see in the story of the Prodigal, He is also a righteous Father.  As such, He has a moral responsibility as the Judge of the universe He created to adhere to the standard of justice derived from His own character.  For God to overlook even one sin would be morally, legally unjust.  For God to ignore the sinful dispostion of man and to forget the imputed sin of Adam would mean that sentimentality had usurped His just throne in the universe.  For God to neglect justice would mean that He is no longer God.

 

As a just God, He must measure the appropriate condemnation and wrath upon sinners who have broken His holy Law.  "I will by no means clear the guilty," (Ex. 34:7) the Lord declares.  David understood this, so that in his prayer of confession after sinning with Bathsheba, he acknowledged, "Against Thee, Thee only, I have sinned, and done what is evil in Thy sight, so that Thou art justified when Thou dost speak, and blameless when Thou dost judge" (Ps. 51:4).  He knew that due to the character, nature, and revelation of God, that God's condemation and judgment of sinners flowed out of the blamelessness and purity of His moral character.  He is just or righteous in pouring out the vials of His wrath upon every sinner.  To do less than this would be injustice.

 

But the believer has been accounted as righteous in God's eyes.  It is not because of the believer's own righteousness, for he has none to offer God.  It is instead due to the righteousness of Christ which satisfied all of the just demands of God as the moral Judge of the universe.  In Christ, love and justice meet at the cross.  John expressed it like this, "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" (I John 4:9-10).  It is not our love for God that saves us, it is God's love for us in His Son, so that He accepted the bloody sacrifice of Jesus Christ as sufficient for the judgment against us as sinners.  As "Father" He pursues us in love; as "Righteous" He satisfies His justice through the righteous sacrifice of His Son.  Now we can call Him, "Righteous Father," even as our Lord.

 

2.  God is personal in His revelation

 

This Righteous Father is unknown to the world.  Jesus stated, "The world has not known Thee, yet I have known Thee."  We should never get our understanding of God from the philosophers, psychologists, scientists, or politicians of this world.  The world has a distorted view of God since the very root of its unholy affections is that of being "God-haters" (Rom. 1:30).  The scribes and Pharisees did not know or understand God.  Though they were religious and knowledgeable in the Old Testament Scriptures, Jesus told them that they did not know God.  For God can only be known through Jesus Christ, whom they rejected (cf. John 8).

 

Since God is unknown to the world, the only way that we can known Him is for God to somehow reveal Himself to us.  Jesus declared that He knew God.  His knowledge of God was not an acquaintance through mental apprehension, but a knowledge of substance and nature.  He is God of very God, so that He alone, who took on humanity in the Incarnation, can reveal the transcendent God to sinners.  This speaks of the mediatoral work of Christ.  Here we see the need for Jesus to be both God and man in nature.  Without being God He could not know God nor reveal God.  Without being man He could not serve as mediator to reveal God savingly.

 

The wonder in the whole gospel message is that this holy, transcendent, righteous God can be known by sinners.  Even the least, most miserable, and poorest sinner can know the infinitely great God through the mediator, Jesus Christ.  Such a knowledge is communicated to us personally, individually by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.  

 

How does all of this relate to love?  John answers this question in his first epistle.  "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" (I John 4:7-8).  The saving knowledge of God through the revelation of the Spirit is necessary to know God and to demonstrate love for others.

 

II. Love's Foundation

 

This brings us to love's foundation in the knowledge of God.  Our Lord's words echo this theme of knowing God through Him.  "And these have known that Thou didst send Me; and I have made Thy name known to them, and will make it known."  Charles Spurgeon has rightly said, "We must know in order to believe; we must know in order to hope; and we must especially know in order to love" [MTP, vol. 28, 362].

 

1.  Something believers know

 

What do believers know?  Is it simply an increase in facts about God of which our Lord speaks?  If that is the case then how much knowledge is necessary to know God?  Does that not also imply that only the extremely intelligent have a chance at knowing God?

 

Jesus explains the knowlege of which He speaks, "And these have known that Thou didst send Me."  It is a knowledge that has a two-pronged focus and without which a person cannot be saved.  This knowledge demands a grasp of who Christ is and what He has done in His redemptive work.

 

Obviously, the human mind cannot begin to fathom the depths of the Son of God.  But the emphasis in the work of salvation is that we understand that this Jesus Christ has come from God, sent by the Father for to fulfill His redemptive plan.  The truth that He was sent by the Father implies that He existed before coming to earth.  To be sent means that He was available for being sent.  Very simply put, Jesus Christ existed before the world began.  But was He a created being as the angels or as us?  To be created would mean that He was not God.  John declares in the opening of his gospel, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being" (1:1-3).  He identifies Jesus as the Logos or the Eternal Word, who is God Himself.  To add clarification, John wrote that "all things came into being by Him."  That is an all-inclusive statement, which he also states negatively, "and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being."  

 

Who is Jesus Christ?  He is the God who created everything that exists...everything!  Nothing has come into being apart from Him.  For Jesus to be a created being would mean that He had to create Himself, according to the clear statement of John.  That is an impossibility!  He is God, who alone has the power to save sinners.

 

He is man as well.  He is God from all eternity but became man at a point in time.  There has never been a time when He was not God, but there was a time when the Son of God was not man.  Jesus became man that He might identify with sinners and give infinite value to His atoning sacrifice on our behalf.  He became man that He might fulfill the righteousness of God on behalf of men, so that in Him, the second Adam, we might have His righteousness imputed to us.  To know that He was sent from the Father is to know in our hearts that God has come to us in Christ.

 

This knowledge also includes a bare grasp of His redemptive purpose.  Jesus is God who became man so that He might save sinners through bearing the justice of God on their behalf.  He came as our substitute, fulfilling every demand of God's Law on our behalf, so that "Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to everyone who believes" (Rom. 10:4).  We do not work hard to save ourselves, attempting to be righteous before God.  "There is none righteous, no not one" (Rom. 3:10).  So Christ has become our righteousness, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (I Cor. 1:30; II Cor. 5:21).

 

The justice of God, which we saw earlier, was fulfilled on behalf of the elect through the death of Jesus Christ.  The great love of God for sinners is found in the bloody sacrifice of Jesus Christ as He atoned for our sins.  God's righteousness demanded eternal death for our sin.  But His love was manifest as Christ became our substitute and the full-measure of God's justice was executed upon the spotless Lamb of God.  Knowing that He died in my place, as my substitute before the justice of God, satisfying God's righteous demands on my behalf, is my salvation.

 

This is what Jesus meant by identifying believers as those who have "known that Thou didst send Me."  Yes, there is much we do not know and understand about Christ and His redemptive work.  But the barest understanding that as broken into the recesses of our dark minds by the regenerating work of the Spirit, when embraced by faith, bring us into an eternal relationship with the Father.  "This knowledge" in the words of Spurgeon, "...is the mark by which the elect are manifest" [MTP, vol. 28, 364].

 

2.  Something made known to believers

 

We must see that this knowledge of who Christ is and what He did redemptively does not come through intuition.  Jesus declared, "And I have made Thy name known to them."  This tells us that for us to know the love of God, it must be manifested or revealed to us.  It is not our studious disposition that reveals God to us.  It is the work of God the Spirit Himself.  Why is this necessary?  Why not just depend on our mental faculties?

 

The mind of man is veiled by the god of this world (II Cor. 4:3-4).  He can read the Bible, hear sermons, listen to tapes, watch gospel-videos, but not grasp anything savingly.  The darkened mind is fruit of a depraved nature.  He lives as one under the wrath of God, separated from God as one dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1-3).  His whole mind is at enmity with God so that he refuses to submit himself to God's law and does not even have the ability to yield to God on his own (Rom. 8:7).  So if he is going to know God, then God Himself will have to awaken the sinner's dead mind, renew the sinner's corrupt nature, and enliven the sinner's hostile understanding.  

 

"And I have made Thy name known to them."  Those are words of revelation and liberation!  Because of our spiritual condition, Jesus has revealed God to us.  "No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him" (John 1:18).  Notice that He has made "Thy name known" to sinners.  God's "name," as we have already seen in this study of John 17, conveys the whole person, character, being, and ways of God.  It is a "nutshell" word.  It points to the truths of God's personhood, actions, and works in one little phrase, "Thy name."  In other words, Jesus is saying that He has revealed to sinners who God is, what God demands, and how God has accomplished the redemption of sinners in a just manner.  We did not come up with this on our own--it is too amazing to do that.  We have been the recipients of God's revelation of Himself to us in Christ.  

 

Do you see that apart from God's initiative and intervention in Christ, you will forever remain at enmity with Him?  This is why we sing, "Amazing Grace," "O Love That Will Not Let Me Go," and other hymns that describe the Fatherly love of God in revealing Himself and His saving work to sinners like us!

 

3.  Something believers will know

 

Such knowledge of God begins as we come to faith in Christ, but continues as the Holy Spirit sanctifies us.  Our capacity for grasping the depths of God is limited.  So little by little, our Lord promises that he "will make it known."  There is the ongoing revelation of God as we go on in the Christian faith.  As we grow in the Lord, our knowledge of God increases.  Much more than just knowledge of facts, our experiential understanding of God grows.  

 

There's substance to our growth in grace.  I believe that this is why Paul could state that his great goal in life was this, "That I may know Him..." (Phil. 3:10).  We need to be the hungriest people on the planet, hungering and thirsting after a greater knowledge of God in Christ.  We must seek Him through the study of the Word, through the secret place of prayer, through the reflective meditations on His character, through the faithful attention to obeying His demands.

 

To know God in Christ is to love Him.  And to know Him is to love others as well.  It is in our growing in the knowledge of God that our love for others is affected.  For how can we grow in our understanding of the infinite measure of God's love shown to us, yet give no attention to loving others?  

 

III. Love's Manifestation

 

If we have the revelation of love in the knowledge of God as the righteous Father, and if our lives are built upon the foundation of love in knowing God personally through Christ, then the love of God will be manifest through us.  Our Lord added a wonderful clause to His prayer of knowing God that explains what happens to those who truly know Him:  "that the love wherewith Thou didst love Me may be in them, and I in them." 

 

1.  Indwelling love

 

2.  Indwelling life

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