God's Love for Man
Text: 1 John 4:7; Isaiah 45:18
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Expository
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- State why John's declaration "God is love" (1 John 4:8) is not merely a warm sentiment but a claim about God's nature that governs the interpretation of every act he has ever taken.
- Trace God's love through five successive manifestations: creation, the making of man in his image, the incarnation of Christ, the establishment of the church, and the gift of Scripture.
- Explain how man's sin did not extinguish God's love but intensified it — the plan of redemption required a deeper love than the plan of creation.
- Articulate why the promise of eternal life is the climactic expression of God's love, and why only man, of all created things, will survive.
- Rest in the conclusion of Romans 8:38-39 — that nothing created can separate those who are in Christ from the love of God.
Thesis
Everything God has done — creation, redemption, Scripture, church, eternal life — is an act of love. God is love, and his every act must be interpreted in terms of that nature.
Burden
Some themes are too large for words to do them justice. The outline says so directly: "some themes are so great that comments seem to detract; like the ocean measureless; like the sky without dimensions." The love of God is one of these. Every statement made about it is true but incomplete. Every illustration falls short. And yet this immeasurable love is the single most important fact about the universe, and the person in the pew on Sunday needs to hear it named, traced, and pressed to personal application. The goal of this sermon is not to exhaust the subject — it cannot be exhausted — but to establish the pattern: everything God has done is love in action.
Introduction
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God" (1 John 4:7). John's grounding of human love in divine love is the entry point for this sermon. The capacity to love is not a neutral human trait — it is derived from the source. God is love; human love at its best is a reflection of his nature.
The six manifestations of God's love move in sequence: the creation of the world, the creation of man in God's image, the incarnation of Christ, the establishment of the church, the gift of Scripture, and the promise of eternal life. Each is a chapter in a love story that has been unfolding since before the beginning and will not end.
I. God Is Love (1 John 4:8)
"The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love" (1 John 4:8). This is not a sentimental characterization — it is a statement about nature. God does not merely exhibit love or practice love; love is what he is. Every act he has taken must be understood in that light.
The first expression of this love is the creation of the earth itself. The universe was not made for God's convenience or out of necessity — it was made for man. "For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited)" (Isa. 45:18). The earth was not a random byproduct of divine activity. It was prepared — deliberately, purposefully — as a habitation. Love was present ahead of man, setting the table before he arrived.
The beauty of the created order — the variety of landscape, the variety of life, the astonishing complexity of the living world — is the visible expression of a generosity that did not have to exist. A world sufficient for human survival could have been grey and minimal. What was given is extravagant. The creation itself testifies: this was not made by someone indifferent.
II. His Love Is Seen in Creating Man in His Image
The creation of man is distinguished from the creation of everything else by a single line: "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). Man is the only creature in the created order that bears the image of God. Every other creature was called into existence by a word; man was formed from dust by hands and animated by breath (Gen. 2:7). The personal, intimate involvement of God in the making of man is itself an expression of love.
Being made in the image of God means being constituted for relationship with God — for communion, for moral reasoning, for worship, for creative work. Eden was the environment designed for that relationship. "Placed him in lovely Eden. Communed with him." The early chapters of Genesis describe a proximity between Creator and creature that was not accidental; it was the design intent.
Man sinned — and kept not that high position. But what happened next is essential to understanding the character of God's love: he did not simply withdraw. He closed the gates of Eden but opened the door of repentance. He separated man from the Tree of Life but promised that man would again have access to it (Rev. 22:14). He did not withdraw his love when man forfeited the position love had given him. That would have been justice. What he did was love.
The deepest statement of this section is the observation that God now pursues man's redemption with a deeper love than the love that prepared the earth for him. It cost nothing to make the world — God spoke and it stood. It cost everything to redeem the human beings who inhabited it.
III. Christ a Manifestation of God's Love (John 3:16)
"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). The grammar of this verse is worth sitting with: God so loved — the adverb modifies the verb, not the noun. It is not "God loved such a world" but "God loved to such a degree." The measure of the love is the gift.
The image is striking: Christ is "a photograph of God's love." In a photograph, the image captures what is actually present. When you look at Christ — his words, his works, his willingness to go to the cross — you are looking at what God's love looks like when it takes human form.
He lived among men doing good. He suffered for man. He died for man. These are not abstract theological propositions — they are biographical facts. A specific person, in a specific time and place, in a specific body that could suffer, made specific choices that led to a specific death. The specificity is part of the love. Abstract benevolence is easy. Going to Golgotha is not.
The image of the swan is apt: "like the swan that plucks feathers from its breast for its young." The image has been contested by ornithologists, but the point is not biology — it is the willingness to give from the most vulnerable part of oneself for the sake of those who cannot provide for themselves. God gave Christ — not something he did not value, but the one he loved most.
IV. The Church — a Token of God's Love
The church is not an organizational convenience or a post-resurrection improvisation. It is God's plan of redemption made institutional — the community in which the blood of Christ is applied, the promises of God are inherited, and the people of God are formed.
In the church, believers are "under cover of the blood of Christ." The image is shelter — protection from what the blood has already addressed. In the church, they are "heirs of all the promises of God" (2 Cor. 1:20). Every promise made to Abraham, every covenant commitment God has ever made, is available to those who are in Christ. The church is the address at which the heir receives the inheritance.
The church is the bride preparing to meet the Lord — watching for his return, kept unspotted from the world. The relationship between Christ and the church is not merely organizational; it is the closest human analogy to the love of God: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (Eph. 5:25). Christ gave himself for the church. The church exists because love gave everything for it.
The outline adds a claim that is worth sitting with: in the church only can we claim the fatherhood of God. This is not a statement of contempt for those outside — it is a statement about where the relationship of sonship is constituted. God is the Creator of all; he is the Father of those who are in Christ (John 1:12; Gal. 3:26). The church is where that relationship is lived.
V. The Bible a Gift of God's Love
Scripture is not merely a rule book or a theological reference document. It is love's communication. God, who loves, has spoken — and has preserved what he spoke.
The Bible contains the mind of God. His Spirit gave it (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21). His providence preserved it through millennia of copying, persecution, translation, and controversy. The fact that we hold in our hands the words God gave is not an accident of history — it is a sustained act of divine care.
The counsel — "Read it on bended knees" — is not pietism for its own sake. It is the recognition that this book is unlike every other book, because the Author is unlike every other author. The appropriate posture before it is the posture of one who knows he is receiving something he did not earn and could not produce — and who is grateful.
The two effects the outline names are simple and comprehensive: it will keep you from sin and lead you to God and heaven. These are the two directions of the Christian life — away from what destroys and toward what endures.
VI. Promise of Eternal Life Grows Out of God's Love
The final and climactic expression of God's love is the most radical one: the promise that man will not simply die, that the love that made him in God's image intends to preserve him beyond the dissolution of everything else.
All material things perish. The universe itself is described as heading toward a final dissolution (2 Pet. 3:10-12). All animal life ceases or dies. The created order, magnificent as it is, is temporary. Only man — the creature made in the image of God, the creature for whom the earth was prepared, the creature for whom the Son of God died — will survive.
This is the logic of love pressed to its ultimate conclusion. If God is love, and if love gives itself fully for its object, and if God has given himself fully for man in Christ, then the love that paid that price will not abandon its investment to the decay that ends everything else. "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matt. 25:46). The eternal life on the right side of that sentence is the fulfillment of everything God's love has been moving toward since he formed the earth to be inhabited.
Paul's conclusion to the great argument of Romans 8 is the right place to end: "For I am convinced 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, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:38-39). The list is exhaustive and the conclusion is absolute. Nothing created — not even death — can sever the bond that love has established.
Application
Three personal applications this sermon requires:
Read creation differently. The world around you is not religiously neutral. Every landscape, every living creature, every human being made in God's image is a testimony to a love that has been present and active since before any of it existed. Seeing creation as a love letter changes how you inhabit it.
Receive the Scripture as love's communication, not law's imposition. The Bible does not exist to make life difficult — it exists to keep you from sin and lead you to God. The commands are the shape of love's wisdom for creatures who need guidance they cannot generate on their own.
Trust the conclusion of Romans 8. The love that has been present since before creation, expressed in the incarnation, embodied in the cross, housed in the church, spoken in Scripture, and promised in eternal life — this love does not release. Nothing created can separate you from it.
Conclusion
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God" (1 John 4:7). The capacity to love is derived from its source. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). And he first loved us — before we were formed in the womb, before the foundations of the earth, in the eternal purposes of the one who formed the world to be inhabited and then came himself to inhabit it for our sake.
Nothing can separate us from that love. Paul was convinced of it, and the argument of Romans 8 is the most sustained logical demonstration in all of Scripture that the conviction is warranted. Start at the beginning: God is love. Follow the line through creation, image, incarnation, church, Scripture, and eternal life. Arrive at the conclusion: nothing created will break it.
Invitation
The love of God is not a condition to be analyzed from a distance. It is a person to be received. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name" (John 1:12).
Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God — the photograph of God's love, the one who suffered and died for you. Repent of the life organized around lesser loves. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). Enter the community in which you can claim the fatherhood of God, inherit all the promises, and rest in the love that nothing created can break.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| God is love | ho theos agapē estin | not "God is loving" (an attribute) but "God is love" (a nature statement) | agapē is the self-giving love that seeks the good of its object regardless of cost | agapē is the self-giving love that seeks the good of its object regardless of cost; this is the nature from which every act of God proceeds | 1 John 4:8 |
| Formed it to be inhabited | lāšebet yĕṣārāh | created it/formed it for habitation | the verb describes purposeful design | the verb describes purposeful design; the earth was not a random byproduct but an intentional preparation; love set the table before man arrived | Isa. 45:18 |
| Only begotten | monogenēs | unique, one of a kind | not simply "first-born" in a series but the unique Son | not simply "first-born" in a series but the unique Son; God gave what was uniquely his own; the cost of the gift establishes the measure of the love | John 3:16 |
| Separate | chōrizō | to divide, separate, put apart | Paul's word for what nothing created can do to the bond between God's love and those who are in Christ Jesus | Paul's word for what nothing created can do to the bond between God's love and those who are in Christ Jesus; the same word used for divorce (Matt. 19:6); this bond is unbreakable | Rom. 8:39 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| "God is love" — the nature from which all his acts proceed | I | 1 John 4:7-8 |
| The earth formed to be inhabited — love prepared before man arrived | I | Isa. 45:18 |
| Man made in the image of God — unique among all creatures | II | Gen. 1:26-27 |
| "God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son" | III | John 3:16 |
| Christ as the body that suffered, died, and was given for man | III | Eph. 5:25 |
| The church: heirs of God's promises; the bride of Christ | IV | 2 Cor. 1:20; Eph. 5:25-27 |
| The Bible: given by the Spirit, preserved by providence | V | 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21 |
| Eternal life — the climactic expression; only man will survive | VI | Matt. 25:46 |
| "Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ" | Concl. | Rom. 8:38-39 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 92. Primary texts: 1 John 4:7 and Isaiah 45:18 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "Jovel" corrected to "love!"; "varigated" corrected to "variegated"; "CHRlST A JVIANIFESTATION" corrected to "CHRIST A MANIFESTATION"; "Oohn 3:16" corrected to "John 3:16"; "m:iterial" corrected to "material." Doctrinal audit: "in the church only can we claim the fatherhood of God" retained as Boles's ecclesiological claim (grounded in John 1:12; Gal. 3:26 — sonship constituted in Christ, not in creation); no depiction of the Father; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).
