The Visible Evidence of the Invisible God | 1 John 4:7-21 | Walking in the Light
No one has ever seen God. That's the plain claim John makes in 1 John 4:12, and it raises an honest question: how can an invisible God be known? This week's message from 1 John 4:7-21 walks through John's answer. The love of God was first made visible in the sending of His Son, whose sacrifice on the cross defines what real love looks like. That same love is now meant to become visible through the people of God, shaping how believers treat one another, especially those who are hardest to love. And the love that takes root in us has a second effect: it removes the fear of judgment, replacing it with confidence rooted in the finished work of Christ. Watch this week's sermon, "The Visible Evidence of the Invisible God," part of the Walking in the Light series through 1 John.
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Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week we dig into God's Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.
So I want you to imagine with me an ordinary living room. You walk in and You take in the furniture, the pictures that are hanging on the wall. You also notice that the temperature of the room is absolutely perfect and comfortable. You can sit there in a comfortable chair, you can watch TV, you could read a book, or you could enjoy pleasant conversation with friends and family. Every corner of the room is illuminated. And maybe you notice a baseball game on the TV and you're able to take in the sounds and the images of a game that is taking place hundreds of miles away. And you also notice the dull hum of the air being pushed through the ventilation of the home. It's pretty easy for us to imagine a scene like this. In fact, you likely have a specific room in mind, and maybe you could describe that room in unbelievable detail. But there's something that is essential to that room that most of us would never think to mention if we were describing it to someone. We would probably forget that it even exists, right up until it stopped working. How we see and experience a room like this relies on something that is unseen.
In our modern world, so much is dependent upon electricity. We are able to see everything in detail at any time of day because of artificial light. We can sit in comfort on the hottest day. In fact, someone in your family may need to go grab a light blanket because they are chilly even when it's 100 degrees outside. And when it is 25 degrees below zero, we can sit and watch TV in shorts and a t-shirt. We grab a remote and bring in images and sounds from all over the world without even thinking about it. But you take away the electricity and the room not only goes dark, but it becomes so quiet that it can become disconcerting for us. We are so used to the hums and the droning noises of the modern world We don't even notice them. But when the power goes down, you notice how loud even our quiet is. So as we arrive in the last part of the 4th chapter of 1 John this morning, we find John saying something similar about God. In verse 12, he reminds us that no one has ever seen God. It's not just you and I who haven't seen Him.
Everyone in history has not seen Him. But God, like the electricity running through the walls, He's real. He's active. He's always at work. But He is unseen. So how do we as the people of God make this unseen God known? Well, John drives home a point that we have seen him making repeatedly through this letter. He tells us to love one another. The current of God's activity becomes visible light through the love that we have for each other. The love of God becomes visible in our love. So working through the passage this morning, we're going to see that the invisible love of God becomes visible in Jesus, and that love now becomes visible in us, and then that, that visible love removes our invisible fears. So arriving in verses 7 and 8, we see John again repeating this phrase he's used many times: "Love one another." The repetition that he uses here is not only to make sure we understand, but to emphasize just how important this is. It is important that we show love toward our sisters and brothers in Christ. And he wants us to know that this is an absolutely essential part of the faith.
And he shows us this by reminding us that love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God. God is love, and because he is love, if we are in him, we will exhibit this trait of God. It will manifest in our lives. Now, this statement is not terribly controversial. And we might even find it to be a bit heartwarming. It makes us feel good to read that God is love and that love comes from Him. We may even have sentimental feelings rise up in us as we think about the love we have for others. And we learn here that this love comes from God's love and it's a way that it is made known in us. But John just doesn't emphasize the positive consequences of loving one another. He also makes sure we are clear on the negative side of this. If we don't love, we don't know God. God is love, and so if you do not love, clearly you are not of him. And as he continues, he makes sure that we are clear as to the nature of this love that God has for us and the nature of the love we are called to have with one another.
So these two verses here are at the root of what you've heard me say countless times. The love of God is not simply the emotional feelings that a mystical being has about you out in the ether somewhere. The love of God is made known to us in the truth that the Lord Jesus Christ left the glory of heaven that we might have life in him. Remember back to how the book of 1 John started. To make sure that the people receiving this letter are equipped to stand strong in the face of the knowledge cults that are coming their way, these cults that will tell them that the flesh is bad, and so Jesus couldn't have possibly come in the flesh, John tells his readers that he and the rest of the apostles are testifying to what they have seen with their eyes, what they have heard, and what they have touched with their hands. He wants to be sure as we read this that we understand that Jesus was not just a spiritual apparition. Jesus is not just an idea. He was truly human. And John reminds us that the point of this was to save his people.
Our problem is that we will physically die. And the knowledge cults were touting a solution telling them that the physical world is bad. In fact, it is evil. And if the physical world is evil, well, then the God who made it must be evil as well. And so they were telling people what they needed to do to shed the physical, to leave this world behind, to ascend beyond this plane into the spiritual and leave the physical world with all its problems behind. Well, that wasn't a solution. It didn't solve the problem of death. But Jesus came in human flesh because we live in a real world. A world that had really been polluted by sin. And God shows love to His people by taking on our flesh and suffering and dying for us. And notice here that we get in verse 10 that vocabulary word that John has for us. We've seen it earlier in the book. We read here that the Son is the propitiation for our sins. In other words, the love of God isn't just made known to us in Jesus showing up on the planet to impart wisdom to us. The love of God is made known in his turning aside the wrath of God for us.
The punishment we deserve for our rebellion against a holy God was poured out on Jesus in our place. And so the love of God that John wants us to understand here is that it is sacrificial. It is a love that did something for the people of God to rescue them from sin, death, and hell. So this is how the invisible love of God was made visible to us. The current of God's love for His people was shown in types and shadows of the Old Testament. But the arrival of God the Son in our flesh and the work that He does by dying, rising again, and ascending for us is how we not only see but understand the depth and the breadth of the love that God has for us as his people. And this has real practical implications for us. When your circumstances make you wonder if God really loves you, don't search your feelings for an answer. Look instead at what actually happened. Jesus left heaven. Jesus took on flesh and he bled for you on a cross. That's not a sentiment you have to talk yourself into believing. It is a historical fact that you can stand on.
God loved you and turned aside his wrath to save you from your sin. And when we root our lives in this understanding, it moves us to be the way that this invisible love of God becomes visible in us. So in verse 11, John tells us that the gospel is what frames our love for each other. If God had sacrificial love for us, we should have this same love for each other. The love of God shown to me in Christ moves me to love the ones that that He loves. When I understand that I've been rescued from my sin and rebellion, I realize that my sisters and brothers in Christ have received that same sacrificial love that I have. And if God so loved them, then I'm called to love them as well. And John He tells us then that this makes the God that we can't see visible to the world. And this statement here in verse 12 is simple, yet profound. No one has seen God. His majesty and glory has always been mediated to us. Remember, Moses was shielded in the cleft of the rock. And the priests in the temple had to burn incense not so it smelled good in there, but so that the smoke would rise up and shield them from the majesty and holiness of God.
He is not visible to us, and His immediate presence requires that frail humanity is protected from His majesty. Yet when we love when we love one another, the light of His love shines out into the world. It shows that God abides in us and how His love is perfected in us. In other words, God's love has caused love to stir up in us. A love that would not be there unless He had first shown His love to us. And so the love we have for one another would not be there without God's love and without his saving work in us. And this shows that God's love in us— because God's love is in us— because we wouldn't have it without his doing that good work in us through his Spirit. The love of God that we have for each other is ultimately supernatural. Because it's rooted in God's work in us, not in any human action. Like any work of grace in our lives, it comes through the Holy Spirit doing the good work in us through the proclamation of the Gospel and the Word of God. Our salvation is a work of God. And the love that we have for each other is a work of God as well.
And notice that we have just read that the love was given us by the Spirit. And now he says that they have seen and testified to the Father and Son. Notice that there's a Trinitarian shape to this. Our salvation is a work of all three persons of the Trinity. The Father sends the Son. The Son turns aside the wrath of God. And the Spirit works this faith in us. This is a truth that we cling to. And it's a truth that shapes the love that we have for each other. When we confess the Son, we are abiding in God and He in us. And the result of this love is that the world sees God. He is made visible. Despite his being invisible, he's, he's visible to the world through our love for one another. And it's a logical progression that this faith that we have been given will then manifest in love and show that we actually have faith. His point is that if we don't love one another, then clearly we have not understood what God has done for us. To confess Christ is to acknowledge the love that God has for us, and from that naturally will flow a love for the others that God has shown that same love to.
If we don't have it, it's time for a serious heart check. If God has loved that other person, why would I not love them as well? It doesn't make any sense to dislike or even hate someone that God has shown grace to when they are your sister and brother in Christ. When I was an enemy of God, he loved me, and he saved me by his grace. And if God has done that for me, I have no defense at all for why I don't love another fellow sinner saved by grace. Yet when we do this, when we love one another, that is a visible witness to the world. Loving the people God has saved is often the hardest kind of love to give. It's easy to love people who are easy to love, but when you extend grace to someone you'd rather avoid, simply because, well, we don't like them. That doesn't look good. But when we realize that God has forgiven them, God has forgiven me, and when we say, I'm gonna put my personal prejudices aside and I'm going to I can show the same grace that God has shown me to them.
The world can see that, and the light flips on, showing the light of God's love. Again, we know the world can't see God directly, but it can see that. So the practical step for us here is to be honest with ourselves about Who we struggle to love. And when we're honest with ourselves about that, we can then try to look at them through a Gospel lens and pray that the Holy Spirit would cause us to love them as a witness to the world, to show that God has shown mercy to me and I am showing mercy as well, because we have first been loved by Jesus. And as we move into the final verses of chapter 4 here, we see that this same love that makes God visible to the world also does something else. It drives out our fear. This love that God, through His Spirit, perfects in us, John says it gives us confidence for the day of judgment. Now, this statement that John is making here is not telling us that by loving others we are earning enough points with God so that we don't have to fear judgment. He's not saying, "Go out and love each other, and God's gonna keep track of that, and if you can get that to a high enough total, you don't need to worry about dying and going before the judgment seat." That's not what he's saying.
John's use of the word propitiation earlier shows that he is speaking of the finality of the work of Jesus for His people. He says there by using that word that God has turned aside His wrath. He wouldn't just a few sentences later suggest, well, it wasn't thoroughly turned aside. And you need to finish with your effort, and so your effort needs to be loving one another. No, our confidence is in Christ. So the confidence he is telling us that we have is that when we love our brothers and sisters in Christ, it shows that the Spirit has created faith in us, that we have believed the Gospel. And we know we are God's people because we love his people. And when the day of judgment arrives, we can have confidence that the punishment for our sinful rebellion has been poured out on Christ. His judgment has been turned aside by Jesus. And because of that, we can stand in the presence of God clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ. If we have fear for the day of judgment, it's because of a lack of confidence in the finished work of Christ. When we love one another, it shows that He is at work in us because we wouldn't have this sacrificial love for one another apart from the Spirit's work.
And to give us a clear and concise way to understand this, He says, "We love because he first loved us." The love we show each other comes from the fact that we have heard the gospel of God's love. We've believed by faith and now love our fellow believers with a Christ-like love. You know, I say that the love that God has for us is not simply a feeling. It's an action. And in the same way, our love for one another is a sacrificial love. It's more than just words. It's more than just emotions or nice feelings that we have. It's shown in our care for each other. It's shown in the prayers that we bring to the foot of God's throne on behalf of our fellow believers. And as this chapter closes, the final 2 verses have John being extremely practical. Extremely practical. You can't say, "I love God," and then hate another one of his children. If you do that, you're a liar. And then John gets even more real about it. Look, you say you love God whom you've never seen, yet you have a brother or sister in Christ right in front of you.
They're tangible. And you can't love them? And on top of it, the God you've never seen, the God that you claim to love, has commanded you to love your fellow believers. If you aren't concerned with keeping His command to love the ones that He has loved, he wants to ask this question: Am I really loving God? If you can't show gospel-shaped love to others who have been saved by the gospel of God's grace like you have, Do you really understand the gospel? So I want you to think back to that living room I had you picture in your mind. The electricity that runs through the walls isn't something you see directly, but you know immediately when it's cut off. The lights go dark, the fans on the furnace go quiet, and the comforts that we take for granted are gone. You feel the absence of something that you don't give a second thought to when it's working. That's similar to what John is telling us about the love of God in us. None of us have seen God, but the current is running when his love is truly alive in you. He is made known in the love that we have for one another.
It shows in the people. We forgive. Even when the world would tell us it's okay to hold a grudge. It's the love that you show when you care for a fellow believer in need. It's shown in the heartfelt prayers that you offer for those among us who are in need. It's shown in the confidence you have in the salvation that you have in Christ. Because you know the love of God was made clearly known in Jesus when he took on the wrath of God for your sin. So we depart from here this Lord's Day knowing that the love we are called to is more than just some nice ideas about how we are supposed to feel towards each other. The challenge is for us to check the wiring. If God's love is running through you, it's going to turn a light on for you somewhere this week. Maybe it's in a relationship you've been avoiding. Maybe it's a person you've been holding at arm's length. Maybe it's someone that you've been thinking about that perhaps you've seen that they've been struggling, whether emotionally or with their health or whatever. And you say, "You know what?
I need to remind them that I love them, that I care for them, and ask how I can help them in the midst of their need." The light comes on for us all the time. Let it shine. Because the world can't see God directly, but each and every day we have the opportunity to flip the lights on, to show his love and be a light that shows them the gospel is true and that the love of God is real as well. Let us pray. Great and merciful God, we thank you for the story of your love that we find in Scripture, that you tell us that Jesus loved us by leaving the glory of heaven and bearing the punishment for our sin. We pray that that good news would work in us and that we would look at our fellow believers knowing that they have received that grace as well, and that we would love one another. And we pray, oh God, that you would give us opportunities this week to share the light of your love, that the world might see the invisible God through the visible love that we have for one another.
It's in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.
Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website, edgertonfrc.org.
“The Visible Evidence of the Invisible God” is part of our ongoing series through 1 John, Walking in the Light. Explore the full series or browse our complete sermon archive to keep digging into God's Word.
