Lord's Day: September 7, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Love Scripture: 1 John 4:16–17; 1 Corinthians 8:4–6; John 4:24; 6:69; 1 Corinthians 13:6–8; 1 John 4:7–10; Ephesians 2:3; Luke 3:38; 1 John 3:1–3; 1 Corinthians 2:16; 1 John 4:13; 3:24

16And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has in us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17By this, love has been perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as He is, so also are we in this world. 1 John 4:16–17

I. “And we have come to know and have believed…”

• Belief, or faith, requires knowledge, understanding
• Faith in turn seeks a deeper understanding: “Faith seeking understanding” (Anselm)
• Augustine: Crede ut intelligas, “Believe that you may understand”
• Faith requires content, an object, something to grasp, something to "hold on" to

II. What is “the love which God has in us”?

• God is love (v. 16), and God loves us, His chosen people, we who have come to know and have believed God are the objects of God’s amazing love
• The love which God has in us is a Redemptive, Restorative, Regenerative, Reformative Love

III. This passage is highly emphatic about God abiding in us and we in Him—in His love—united to Him in Christ

• This mutually abiding union of love corresponds both to God and to us, and it must be true in both cases (God and us) and in the same sense (univocal)
• Abiding in love does not mean to blindly obey God in fear, but to love and believe the truth, which is the foundation of our obedience, because true love “rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6)
• “This intimate fellowship consists of having the same ideas, of thinking alike, of being in extensive agreement. Hence, intimacy with God, too, consists in knowing what God thinks. That is to say, in knowing a good bit of theology.”[1]
• A Marriage of Minds

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• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

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• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
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Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

[1] Gordon H. Clark, First John: A Commentary, Trinity Paper, No. 2, 2nd ed. (The Trinity Foundation, 1992), p. 143 .