Gospel of John [20:19]. Christ's Resurrection, part 16 (fellowship with Christ and the Father - Antinomianism).

Title: Gospel of John [20:19]. Christ's Resurrection, part 16 (fellowship with Christ and the Father - Antinomianism).

 

Announcements/opening prayer:

 

 

1JO 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

 

1JO 4:8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

 

1JO 4:9 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.

 

1JO 4:10 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.

 

Not that we loved God [perfect tense] - the whole fallen human race has never loved God, their Creator.

 

That is a sobering thought that demands deep reflection. All of us were this before we were regenerated, and not even all believers can claim that they love God in this life, but they will in the next. What a sad race we are.

 

ROM 3:10-11

"There is none righteous, not even one;

There is none who understands,

There is none who seeks for God;

 

We could only be saved by God seeking for us.

 

But that He loved us, a constative aorist, which takes the action as a whole and so takes a panoramic view of God's love for the whole human race, for the sinner - for God so loved the world. He so loved us that He sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins. This is the same as what John uses in 1JO 2:2.

 

propitiation - i`lasmo,j[hilasmos] = the satisfaction of God's justice through the payment for sin by death, spiritual death of Christ.

 

The English word "propitiate" means "to appease and render favorable." That was the pagan meaning of the Greek word. The pagan worshipper brought gifts to his god to appease the god's wrath and make him favorable in his attitude towards him. But the God of Christianity needs no gifts to appease His wrath and make Him favorable towards the human race. Divine love springs spontaneously from His heart and caused the sending of the Son in human flesh.

 

God's wrath against sin cannot be placated by good works. Only the infliction of the penalty of sin, spiritual death, will satisfy the just demands of His holy law which we all violated.

 

God must maintain His government and so cannot allow sin to dwell amongst it. The penalty of death upon Christ provides the proper basis for His bestowal of mercy, namely, divine justice satisfied, so that members of the human race, sinners all, can enter into that government. Christ's sacrifice fully satisfies the demands of the broken law. Thus does this pagan word accrue to itself a new meaning as it enters the doctrinal atmosphere of the New Testament.

 

The initiative in sending His Son lies entirely with God.

 

1JO 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

 

Because of the work of Christ all believers are under obligation to love one another with divine virtue love, the perfect bond of unity.

 

We ought to love one another because we are His children.

 

The children of God must be holy because He is holy:

 

LEV 11:44

'For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth.

 

1PE 1:14-16

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."

 

The children of God must be merciful because He is merciful:

 

LUK 6:36

"Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

 

So we must love because He is love and loving. This is not a must of external compulsion but the must of inward constraint. It is a rejection of the temptations of fear, selfishness, and lusts and the expression of intelligent, divine virtue love from within. And as such we become witnesses of God's love to the world. It is sad when the world only sees the manifestation of arrogance, criticism, hypocrisy, selfishness, exclusion, legalism, and worldliness in the church. The church is to manifest the love of God within the message and within the lives of the members of the church and that love is to be manifested by the cross, not compromising with sin or condoning it, but teaching the forgiveness of sin through Christ.

 

1JO 4:12 No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.

 

"God" is in the emphatic position, coming first in the sentence. Without the article the word emphasizes His character, essence, and nature.

 

No one has yet seen the essence of deity. However, there is a manifestation of Him in this world. It is His word and His Spirit that is to be manifested through the church.  

 

The invisible God has been made known on earth by His Son. Now that the Son has returned to the Father, God is made known on earth by those who through faith in His Son have become His children. They manifest God if they love one another, JOH 13:35; 17:21.

 

The love of God displayed in His people is the strongest apologetic that God has in this world. The gospel is displayed at its brightest in this love.

 

The indwelling Trinity who has poured His love into their hearts will perfect that love when the believer has the complimentary response towards Him and towards his fellow man. It is in this way that they are not only holy and merciful as He is, but, as enjoined by their Lord as being perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect.

 

MAT 5:43 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.' 

 

MAT 5:44 "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you

 

MAT 5:45 in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

 

MAT 5:46 "For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same?

 

MAT 5:47 "And if you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

 

MAT 5:48 "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

 

The Welsh theologian C.H. Dodd wrote in his book, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel:

 

The only kind of personal union … with which we are acquainted is love… John makes use of the strongest expressions for union with God that contemporary religious language provided, in order to assure his readers that he does seriously mean what he says: that through faith in Christ we may enter into a personal community of life with the eternal God, which has the character of agape, which is essentially supernatural and not of this world, and yet plants its feet firmly in this world, not only because real agape cannot but express itself in practical conduct, but also because the crucial act of agape was actually performed in history, on an April day about AD 30, at a supper-table in Jerusalem, in a garden across the Kidron valley, in the headquarters of Pontius Pilate, and on a Roman cross at Golgotha. So concrete, so actual, is the nature of the divine agape; yet none the less for that, by entering into the relation of agape thus opened up for men, we may dwell in God and He in us. [C.H. Dodd]

 

1JO 4:12 No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.

 

"abide" - me,nw[meno] = to remain and not depart, to dwell in a home - used of fellowship. We cannot see God, but His love in us, manifested to one another, is the token that He is in us and abiding [fellowshipping] with us.

 

The love of God in us can only occur through regeneration and then the resident word and Spirit in our hearts. This love is the true manifestation of Him in us and abiding with us. Meno was used by the Lord, recorded in John's gospel, for the branch and the vine. If the branch abides in the vine he bears much fruit and the Father will prune him so that he may bear even more fruit. So then in verse 13 this love, the fruit of the vine who is God in the flesh, God is love, Christ is the manifestation of that love, we know that God abides in us and that He has given us His Spirit. Without the Spirit of God leading us into this love we would not be seeing it or expressing it.

 

This is wonderful in that I do not need another person to tell me whether God is in me or not or whether God and me abide with one another. I can know this with surety by the manifestation of agape love in my heart. And by the same token, I can know that I have not been abiding with God, if I see that I do not love the brethren.

 

1JO 4:12 No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.

 

1JO 4:13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of [out of] His Spirit.

 

"has given" [perfect tense] ek tou pneumatos autou = out of His Spirit. Each believer receives the entirety of the HS, and John here is referring to that which the saint experiences of the indwelling HS.

 

This is a repetition of 3:24:

 

1JO 3:24

And the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And we know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.