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Your Church Really Seems to Care: Why Is That? (Part 2)
God is love, and His children imitate their Father (1 John 4:8, 11). God isn’t just someone we worship. He is someone we know. We have a rela-tionship with Him and love Him as we love a family member or friend. God is our Mentor. We look up to Him as what we aspire to be. We seek to imitate His character and behavior—especially His love (1 Thessalonians 4:9–10). John reveals much of God’s nature: • "God is a Spirit” (John 4:24); Christians are spiritual and not carnal. • “God is light” (1 John 1:5); Christians enlighten and brighten. • “God is love” (1 John 4:8); Christians care. (http://biblehub.com/commentaries/1_john/1-5.htm) John makes three points about God’s love in 1 John 4: What God Is: “God is love” (1 John 4:7–8).2 How does God love? He loves be-fore He is loved (1 John 4:9–10). God loves even if not loved in return (Romans 5:8–10). God loves the unworthy (Ephesians 2:4–5). His love is in-discriminating. Unless Christians show this love, their religion is unauthenticat-ed (1 Corinthians 13:1–8). Love shows that Christians have passed from death to life (1 John 3:14). Love shows that we are born of God (1 John 4:7–8). Love is God’s fingerprint on our lives. What God Did: “He sent His Son” (1 John 4:9–11; cf. 3:16–18). Love must act. It demonstrates. It gives. Imitating God, Christian love must find an outlet. What God Is Doing: “God abides in us” (1 John 4:12–16). Abide is a key word for John. He shows the culmination of centuries of God’s love finding new ways to get closer to us. In Genesis, God “walked” with men and men walked with God (3:8; 5:22, 24; 6:9). Later, God dwelt in the tabernacle in the midst of the Jews’ camp (Exodus 40:34). After that, His presence filled the temple (1 Kings 8:10–11). Men became used to living with God ever near them. In the
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