Provocative Love - 1 John 3:1

Provocative Love.

The past several months we have been looking at the Law of God. Jon Adams has been speaking about the Ten Commandments.

The heart of the law is that it is a law of Love. The heart behind the law is that God loves us.

God’s love is to protect us and provide for us.

For the next three weeks we are going to take some excursions into John’s first letter.
1 John 3:1
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!


John’s letter was motivated to encourage and warn the young churches in the area and instruct them in their new-found faith.

In fact the purpose of letter is found in 1 John 5

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:13

John want them and us to know and understand the marks of our faith. What are the marks of a Christian. What does a Christian look like? What is the faith of a Christian, well according to John it is a Provocative Faith.

And John places as the foundation of our faith, the love of God. – so what we are talking about fits tongue and groove.


God’s Love is an exercise of his goodness toward sinners.. you and me.

As you think of God’s love you may be at a place where the reality of that isn’t there.

READ Brennan Manning – ABBA’s Child excerpt.

The Reality of Life may be overshadowing the Love of God.
- Perhaps you have just found out about a major health issue, or someone you love is going through bad health.
- Perhaps you are going through a hard time financially, or your relationship with your spouse or children is becoming fractured.
- Perhaps for you life has only been one disappointment after another

I know that I am suppose to believe that God loves me, but I’m experiencing it…

God’s love transcends a mere sentimentality

My daughter Brenna a couple of days ago wrote us Lauren and I a letter wanting to tell us how much she loved us…

Brenna talked about that love involves sacrifice. Brenna understood that love goes beyond mere sentimentality, love acts.

It is TANGIBLY displayed through Jesus Christ

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son a into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. – 1 John 4:8

God’s love is practical, and tangible. God’s love is expressed by his only son, living life among us, dying a criminals death on a cross even though he lived a perfect life, and then raising from the dead.

God’s love for you and me through Jesus Christ reminds me of the words of that great hymn..

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love
Leading onward, leading homeward to Thy glorious rest above!


He loves us not because we were pretty, not because we have our act together. In fact Paul says in his letter to the Romans,

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

And then a couple of verses later it says we were enemies of God.

God loved us even as we were unlovely. That was the heart of the video we just saw. I was all those things in the video, you were all those things. But by God’s grace he loved us. We are completely forgiven, we have been brought back into a right relationship with him. God’s love is great and vast but also that it is personal ---he loves you.

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”
- Augustine, Bishop of Hippo

It is totally undeserved…that’s why it is called grace.

Not only does God’s love get us back into right relationship…

God’s Love brings us Forgiveness and Freedom.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. – 1 John 1:9

Why do we confess our sin? Aren’t we already forgiven? Why confess.

Illustration. Lets say, hypothetically that I come home one day, go upstairs and I see a tricycle in the toilet. I know that tricycles don’t belong in the toilet. I know that I didn’t put the tricycle in the toilet. I know that my wife didn’t put the tricycle in the toilet. So I call my daughter Brenna upstairs. And I ask her the question…Did you put the tricycle in the toilet? Now why am I asking her that question? I know that she put the tricycle in the toilet. It isn’t because I need to know, but rather she needs to tell.

Remember in Genesis, the story of creation and the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. Let me set the scene… in the third chapter, after they have disobeyed God and eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God has come to have fellowship with them and this is the interchange..

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Genesis 3:6-11

Here is the God of the universe asking questions as if he doesn’t know anything. But the issue is not that God needs to know, but rather Adam and Eve need to tell. God desires relationship. Sin damages our fellowship with him, Confession restores our fellowship with God. Our relationship with him is always secure, but our fellowship becomes affected by our sin.

What does Confession Look Like?
Most often my sin is apparent – Whack on side of the head/Kick in the seat of the pants.. But we need to also do business with God….

-Ask God to search your heart. Ps 139: 23,24
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting. – Psalm 139:23-24

-Acknowledge your sin agree with him.
-Drink afresh of the Gospel of Grace, that you are completely accepted and forgiven. Remind yourself that you are child of the King, forgiven, not condemned
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”

Does that mean we can sin it up? No, God’s love won’t let us go there.
God as loving Father will disciple us
And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”
If we are parents, we understand this! GOD WILL INTERVENE!

God’s Love Brings Freedom
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.. – 1 John 5:3

God’s Loves frees us to obey and live for him
Jon has been talking about the heart of our God’s law for us. If we allow ourselves to be transformed by God’s love, our obedience will stem out of a heart for love. His love frees us to obey him.
If we think that God’s love is defined by the things we do (by our obedience), or don’t do,
- Then we will live by fear
- Condemnation when we fail
- Self righteousness when we succeed.
When we know that we are defined by how God sees us through his Son Jesus Christ. That we are fully loved and accepted. Not because of what we’ve done but because what Christ has done on our behalf. Obedience to God takes on a whole different essence. We don’t obey out of a sense of trying to achieve our acceptance from him. We are motivated to obey and follow him.
What does this mean???…
The application of this is everything that Jon Adam has been talking about the last couple of months. God’s law isn’t burdensome.
Knowing and experiencing the Love of God, tees up what we are going to be talking about the next several weeks, Next week we are talking about our love for one another – Provocative Community…

Prayer for the Ephesians and my pray for you and me.
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:14-19


Additional resources: Knowing God by J.I. Packer; Abba's Child by Brennan Manning; The Letters of John by John R. W. Stott