God is Love (1 John 4)

This sermon on 1 John 4 was given at a wedding on 9 August 2025. A redacted manuscript for it (removing the original personal names and anecdotes) can be found below.

Love. Our culture is obsessed by it. Love is the theme of our most popular songs and stories, our favourite films and TV shows. If there is one thing it seems we can’t get enough of it is love. Now, of course we understand there are different types of love, even different levels of love. The love of rock climbing or of acting is one thing, but the love of family and friends is something even greater. And the peak and pinnacle of love, the most significant and satisfying kind of love, according to our culture, is supposedly romantic love. Our world looks at what is happening here today as sees this as the epitome, the very essence of love. When a young woman and a young man, come together: to have and to hold, for better and worse, in sickness and health, poverty and wealth, ‘til death do them part. Our culture looks at what is happening here today and declares: ‘This is love.’

And yet, if you were listening carefully to that Bible reading that we had have just heard from Maria, you will have noticed that it actually said something different. Our world says, ‘This is love.’ And yet, God’s Word tells us that ‘God is love.’ That is what we read together, there in 1 John 4:8/16, where John, the disciple of Jesus, makes one of the shortest, and yet most significant statements in the whole Bible, by declaring that ‘God is love’.

Now, if you know our bride and groom at all (and I hope that you do given you are here at their wedding!) then you will know that this ‘God who is love’ is of the utmost importance to them. Which is why they’ve asked me, on their special day, to spend 15 minutes telling you about him. And yet, I hope you realise that they’ve done this not just to share one of their favourite things with you (e.g. colour of dresses, type of flowers, and all the other surprises in store for us today). They have done this not just to share one of their favourite things with you, but because they believe with all their hearts that the God, who is so precious to them, can be and should be precious to each of you too. Our bride and groom wanted to make sure that the ones they love, that is all of you, hear about this God of love. And so the best gift you can give them on their wedding day […].

Two points I want to cover with you this morning. First, I want us to tell you about (1) The God of Love. Who is he? Why is he called love? How has he shown this love? And then, as we close, I want us to think briefly, about (2) The Love of God. How should his love shape our love? And specifically, our bride and groom's new life together [...]

1.     THE GOD OF LOVE

‘Tale as old as time, true as it can be.’ Those are, of course, the opening lines to the theme of the 1991 Disney classic, Beauty and the Beast. It’s often called one of the greatest love stories of all time, alongside others such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or Austin’s Pride and Prejudice. And yet, those lines also describe the love story we find in the Bible. It too tells us a tale as old as time, and unlike those other love stories, it really is as true as it can be.

For the greatest, oldest, truest, love story starts before the beginning, before there was time, where God existed in all eternity as a God of love. That is what John means here when he declares that God is love in 4:8/16. It is not just that God is loving, but that he is love in his essence, being, nature. Love isn’t simply what he does, love is who he is. Which for an eternal God, means that before there was anything else, he existed in perfect love. Who did he love? What was the object of his affection before the ages began? Well, it was himself. Not in an egotistical way, but in a trinitarian way. That is what the Bible teaches: one God, three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. And so, for all eternity the Father was loving the Son, the Son loving the Father, both united by a bond of love in the Spirit. This is the God of Christianity, the God of Love.

And flowing from this eternal fountain of love, the Bible tells us God (Father, Son and Spirit) created a world of love. The mountains and seas, the animals and, above all else, human beings, were all born out of this love, made to reflect his love. We were all created by the God of love to be his creatures of love. Made to both love others and to be loved in return. Which explains humanity’s enduring obsession with love, why so many of our songs and stories, across the ages, are all about it. It isn’t just because of some chemical reactions in our brains, or certain sexual desires in our bodies. No, humanity’s great hunger for love is not simply scientific, it is spiritual. Our hearts have been hardwired by the God of love. That is why we all love, and all want to be loved back.

And you know, this was not only meant to be true on the horizontal plain, between one human being and another (e.g. loving couples, families, friendships), but it was also meant to be true on the vertical plain, between us and God. We were made to be loved by God, and we have been loved by God. Every good and perfect gift you have has been handed down to you from the loving heart of God: food and family, health and home, skills and success. Even your very life is a good gift of God’s love to you. Which makes you think that it would be easy for us to love God back! Given how much he has loved us, you would think it would be easy for us to give our love to him! That is how it often works, isn’t it? A girl [...] finds out a boy is interested in her [...], he begins to show affection, and slowly, perhaps a little unsure at first, she begins to reciprocate his affection, return his love, until they both gradually fall more and more in love before us. And we all eventually end up at a day like this one, where they declare their mutual love for each other forever!

That is how it is supposed to work. And yet, the Bible tells us that is where our relationship with God went wrong. That is where it looked like the greatest love story of all time was going to unravel. For although the God of love, made a world of love, we did not become his people of love. Read the first few chapters of the Bible (Gen 1-4), and you discover that humanity did not love God like we were supported to. For Adam and Eve, our first parents, disobeyed his command. Rejected his loving gifts in the Garden of Eden, broke up with God as it were, and decided to strike out on their own. Nor did we end up loving each other as we were supposed to. For in the next generation, their son Cain rose up in anger against his brother Abel, and struck him dead. And of course, you don’t even need to read the Bible to realise these problems have persisted down through the ages. For when you look around the globe today, though there are occasional glimpses of love, glimmers of what our world should be, they are always overshadowed by our obvious overwhelming lack of love.

Friend, if you ever feel like this world isn’t how it is supposed to be, the Bible helps explain that feeling. It diagnoses that problem that you are perceiving. And it calls that problem ‘sin’. Sin is simply failing to love God and love one another as we were supposed to. Jesus himself said, all God’s laws can be summed up in those two commands: to love God and to love each other. And when we fail to do this, when we lack in our love for God or for others, the Bible calls that sin. And when we see that this is what sin is, which of us can claim to be free of it? Surely, we are all then sinners, for we all fall short of this standard of love.

And this all leads to the great conundrum of Christianity, the question confronting us on every page of the Bible: What does a God of love do with those who will not love? Or what does a loving God do with a sinful world? If that is a question you are trying to get your head around, I’d love to chat to you about it at some point today. Come speak to me, or Spencer, or anyone involved in the service, and we would be happy to ponder it together with you. Or why don’t you bring it up at the reception later. Knowing our bride and groom, I’m confident there is nothing they want you to chat about more at your dinner table later, than what a loving God does with a sinful world. But for now, the Bible answer in a nutshell is that just as a loving parent punishes a disobedient child, a loving creator judges a disobedient world. And because God’s love is eternal, his judgement is eternal too. Hell is real because God is love, not despite it. On that day of judgement, which John mentions in 4:17, the God of love will remove us from his world of love because of our lack of love. Put us in a place of pain, because of all the pain we caused.

The Bible teaches that Hell is real, because God is love. And yet, the good news of Christianity, that one Gospel we sang about, is that salvation is also possible because God is love. Yes, Hell is real, but Heaven is also open. We began by hearing how our world looks at the events of today, at a wedding, and declares surely this is love. And yet John, directs us to the God of love, and more than that he directs us to a specific moment of God’s love, for there in 4:9-10, we read: [READ]. Our world looks at today and says, ‘This is love.’ But God’s Word looks at the cross and says, ‘This is love.’ As Jesus Christ, the Son of God, suffered the punishment his people deserved, took the pain of Hell on our behalf if we only believe in him. The Bible tells us that if you want to see true love, don’t go to a wedding, go to an execution. Don’t show up on a sunny day in Surrey, but stand and stare at that dark day in Jerusalem. Where a loving God suffered for the sins of a loveless world. As John puts it elsewhere, John 3:16, God so loved the world that he made, God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life. That is who the God of Christianity, this God of love, is.

And you know, whoever you are here this morning, you can have a relationship with him, a relationship far more significant and satisfying than any romantic attachment. For you were made to be loved by God, and to love him back. Yes, you failed to do that so far, you’ve lived apart from him, perhaps even spent years running away from him, and yet the good news of the Gospel is that he will forgive you because of Jesus, if you turn from your sin and come to him, if you stop living for other things, and start loving him. Today we have the joy of celebrating a new marriage together, a loving relationship that by God’s grace will last through better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or health, ‘til death do our bride and groom part. And yet, if come to Christ, you will start a relationship with him that not only lasts through better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or health, but a relationship with him that even death will not part, for as surely as Jesus Christ rose from the dead, it too will go beyond the grave and stretch out into eternity future just as far as God’s love stretched back into eternity past. That is our bride and groom's God of Love, and can be your [...]

2.     THE LOVE OF GOD

I need to mention this as we close, because this is how John closes his point in the passage as well. [...] So what is the point of the passage? Having made that great declaration of what love is in 4:10, John immediately goes on in 4:11 to instruct us: [READ] John is writing here to local churches, telling them how they should live alongside each other. But given the setting of today, I want us to just zoom in and apply this to the new marriage that we are all here to celebrate. And so, bride and groom, if I can speak directly to you both for a minute…

You will know there are many passages in the Bible that speak about how a husband and wife should relate to each other. You have spent time thinking all about what it means to lead and submit, protect and obey. And that is right and good. Because those commands, that theology, is right and good. But can I also encourage you to not lose sight of the big picture, the overall command that captures all of those other ones, which is simply that you must love one another. And so,…

Groom, if at any point in your married life together, you find yourself wondering how you should act towards the bride, all you need to ask is ‘What does love look like right now?’ And if you even find yourself struggling to answer that question, then simply go to the supreme example of love. Ignore whatever you might hear out there in the world about what it means to be a man or a husband, and instead just keep looking at Jesus. Let your Lord show you how to love, how to be strong and kind, both a lion and a lamb. Follow in Jesus’ loving footsteps, and you will be the best husband that your bride could ever have.

Similarly, bride, if at any point in the years to come you somehow struggle to summon up the love you need to live alongside the groom, all you need to ask is, ‘How is it that God has loved me?’ How is it that he has been patient and kind, slow to anger and abounding in love towards sinful me? And then in light of that, go and show that same grace-filled cross-bought love towards the groom as well.

In short, if you want a simple seven-word summary of what your married life together should be like, look back to 1 John 4:19, ‘We love because he first loved us.’ Let that be the banner over your marriage, your home, and Lord willing, your future family. Let the banner over it all be God’s love. And you will find that your little love story begins to be caught up into that far older, greater and truer love story, and so begin to stretch all the way into eternity future as well.