Gospel of John [20:19]. Christ's Resurrection, part 15 (fellowship with Christ and the Father - Antinomianism).

Title: Gospel of John [20:19]. Christ's Resurrection, part 15 (fellowship with Christ and the Father - Antinomianism).

 

 

 

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.

 

The love of which John, like Paul, speaks is self-giving love, not an acquisitive love (of self-interest). Agape involves a consuming passion for the well-being of others - its wellspring from God.

 

The Greek word eros is a needs-based and desire-based, egocentric and acquisitive love: in other words, we can love other humans and God with a love of eros in which we love them out of self-interest in order to acquire and possess them. It is drawn from Greek Platonic thought.

 

Agape, by contrast, is spontaneous, unconditional, theocentric, self-giving, self-sacrificial: in other words, we can love others and God with a love of agape in which we reject all self-gain and interest and surrender ourselves to other and love them purely for themselves.

 

This explains why the Bible commands us to love God with an agape love.

 

To agape God is to love Him without respect to self-gain or self-interest and to surrender ourselves to Him purely for His sake, for who He is.

 

1JO 2:4 The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;

 

1JO 2:5 but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected [mature or complete]. By this we know that we are in Him [the evidence of our position]:

 

1JO 2:6 the one who says he abides in Him [fellowships in Him] ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

 

We don't experience the presence of God within us but we can know for a fact that He is because without Him in us we could never walk in the manner as He walked.

 

1JO 3:17 But whoever has the world's goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?

 

He is not a co-participant in the love of God.

 

1JO 5:3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome [rather joyful].

 

And eros love of God is more in line with the prosperity gospel, the teaching that the good news is that if we follow Christ everything in our lives will work out to our favor and we will prosper in every realm without suffering. That is a self-interested love of God. Agape love is loving Him simply because of who He is and laying down our lives for His sake, or as Christ put it, losing our lives (a selfish priority system in the soul) for His sake. It's not that He needs it. Sake is not used here in that context, but surrendering ourselves and loving Him for the sake of His essence and nature.

 

Those who show such love to one another give proof in doing so that they are God's children and that it is they, and not those who say so much about the true gnosis or knowledge of God without regard for the love of God, who really know Him. Those, on the other hand, from whose lives such love is absent give proof by that fact that they have never begun to know God, however confident their claims may be.

 

To know the love of God is to manifest His love.

 

And so simply put, God is love. God in His character and nature is love. It is who He is. So then by nature He possesses a consuming passion for the well-being of His creatures - all of them. This is actually one of the hardest things to believe about Him because it affects us so much. It is easier to believe His omniscience and omnipotence, His eternity and Sovereignty, His righteousness and justice, but it is His love that impacts us in the most personal way.

 

God is love - From His essence God has a consuming passion for my highest and best and that in grace and mercy, accepting me just as I am and blessing me beyond my wildest dreams.

 

It is His love for you that motivates you to lay aside the selfish soul, forsaking it, and pursuing Him.

 

ROM 2:4

Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

 

PSA 18:35

Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation,

And Thy right hand upholds me;

And Thy gentleness makes me great.

 

People, even Christians, have an easier time believing in a distant and wrathful God and that if He ever does get close to them it will be for judgment and not blessing. Grace follows from love and is the direct result of it. In a merit based world full of fallen creatures the grace of God is rejected and so the love of God is rejected.

 

JOH 3:16

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.\

 

2CO 13:14

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

 

2TH 3:5

And may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ.

 

ROM 5:5

hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts [at salvation] through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

 

To the Pharisees who thought that eternal life was earned by keeping the Law:

 

JOH 5:42

I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves.

 

They rejected grace and so rejected the love of God.

 

The love of God, that God is love, is hard to believe and that's why it takes much study and a significant time walking with God in order to become convinced of it.

 

Once convinced it will not be shaken.

 

ROM 8:38-39

For I am convinced [perfect tense] that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

The Christian affirmation that God is love is not sustained by ignoring the cross, in all its stark obscenity, but by setting it in the forefront.

 

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.

 

This is very similar to JOH 3:16. John returns to the sacrifice and presents it from the Father's point of view. The supreme act of God's love was His sending His only begotten Son into the world.

 

Wuest states:

Our Lord is the uniquely begotten Son of God in the sense that He proceeds by eternal generation from God the Father as God the Son in a birth that never took place because it always was, possessing coeternally with God the Father and God the Spirit, the essence of Deity. [Wuest]

 

The virgin birth was for a perfect body that was prepared for Him by the Father who sent the HS to supernaturally make Mary with child. Mysteries abound in the incarnation of the Son of Man and it is best not to conjecture on any details that God has not given us.

 

The agape love of God was manifested to us through the Son of God so that we may have life through Him - His life in fellowship with Him.

 

Since He is the manifestation, to know Him is to know the love that is of the character of God. One bit of information that the disciples did not have, which they did on that Sunday evening is that He was bodily resurrected and was going to send them into the world as He was sent and that He was always going to be with them. They learned beyond a doubt that He had conquered death and so through Him so did each one of them, so in death they had nothing to fear. They learned beyond a doubt that they would have life through Him and that they would receive the Holy Spirit, made incredibly real by His breathing on them the Holy Spirit in order for the Spirit to temporarily fill them until the time of Pentecost. All these manifestations of the Father's gifts through the Father's love brought them from experiencing fear and ignorance to life through Him.

 

"Sent" - avposte,llw[apostello; perfect active indicative] = to send on a commission as an envoy, with credentials (the miracles), to perform certain duties.

 

He was sent into the world with power in order to die for sinners, providing a salvation to be offered on the basis of justice satisfied to the one who places his faith in Him as Savior. The verb is in the perfect tense speaking of a past complete action having present results.

 

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.