Man's Love for God
Text: 1 John 5:1-12
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:
- Identify the three sides of salvation — wholly divine (God's love), partly divine and partly human (Christ's side), wholly human (man's part) — and explain why all three are necessary; why neither "grace alone" nor "faith alone" is the complete picture.
- Define what love for God actually is in New Testament terms: not a feeling but a pattern of obedience — keeping his commandments (1 John 5:3).
- Explain why feelings are an unreliable guide to whether one loves God, and what the reliable test is (John 14:21, 23).
- Articulate why there are no non-essential commands — why each command is a test of love.
- Apply the commands specifically: hear, believe, repent, baptism for the sinner; sober, righteous, and godly living for the saint.
Thesis
Love for God is not a feeling — it is a pattern of obedience. What looks like love but does not produce obedience is not love. What produces obedience, even in the absence of feeling, is love.
Burden
The normal condition of the human heart is to love God — this is the starting point, and it deserves to be heard carefully. Sin has produced an abnormal state. What is pathological is not love for God but the absence of it. The sermon preceding this one (Outline 92) established the unbounded magnitude of God's love for man. This sermon asks the question the preceding one makes necessary: what does it look like when man loves God back? The answer is not sentiment or religious feeling. It is obedience. And the obedience is not optional — if one does not love God enough to do his will, one does not love him enough to be saved.
Introduction
The tragedy the outline names is real: "it is one of the tragedies of life for all the love to be on one side — husband and wife; mother and child; God and man." A love given to one who cannot or will not return it is the most painful form of love. God's love for man is immeasurable; man's response to that love is, in the normal course of sinful human existence, indifference or outright rejection. The gospel is the good news that the door of response is still open.
1 John 5:1-12 is the governing text because it frames the love of God and the love of man in relation to the birth that the gospel produces: "Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him" (1 John 5:1). The new birth and love for God are inseparably connected. And the test of that love, John immediately identifies: "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3).
I. Three Sides of Salvation
Before addressing what love for God looks like, the outline establishes why man's response is necessary — and why the popular alternatives that remove it are inadequate.
The wholly divine side is God's love. God has taken the initiative; he has loved first; he has provided the plan, sent his Son, and offered the gift. No theory of salvation can be built on this side alone, because if God's side were sufficient without any human response, then all would be saved — and the New Testament clearly does not teach that.
The partly divine and partly human side is Christ's mediation — the atonement, the resurrection, the high-priestly intercession. Christ is the mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5). His work is essential; without it, there is no salvation. But a theory built on divine initiative and Christ's mediation alone — with no human response required — produces the same problem as the first: if Christ's work covers everyone regardless of response, universalism is the conclusion.
The wholly human side is man's part — his response of faith, repentance, confession, and baptism. A theory built on man's effort alone, as if salvation were earned by the quality or quantity of human performance, is equally false. Man cannot save himself; he needs what he cannot produce.
The three sides together constitute what the New Testament actually teaches. Man cannot be saved "by grace alone" — if "grace alone" means that man's response is irrelevant. Man cannot be saved "by faith alone" — if "faith alone" means that repentance, confession, and baptism are optional. God's love has taken the initiative; Christ's work has made redemption possible; man's response of obedient faith receives what grace and the atonement have provided. All three sides are necessary; none is sufficient alone.
The outline makes the connection explicit: God's part expresses his love to man; man's part expresses his love to God. The obedient response is not merit — it is love reciprocated.
II. What Is Love for God?
Having established that man's part is necessary, the outline turns to the definition of what that love actually is.
The standard definition in popular religion is emotional: love for God is a warm feeling toward him, a sense of closeness, a positive spiritual experience. the rejects this not because feelings are unimportant but because feelings are not the measure and not the definition.
The reason is structural. Human relationships of love operate between parties who are roughly equal — or at least comparable. The love between a husband and wife, between friends, between equals, is measured in terms of mutual affection, mutually satisfying exchange. God and man are not comparable. Divinity and humanity are not on the same plane. The categories that measure love between equals cannot be applied without distortion to the relationship between the creature and the Creator.
What the New Testament identifies as love for God is obedience: "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments" (1 John 5:3). Obedience is love's language in this relationship — not because obedience earns love or produces love, but because obedience is how the creature expresses love toward the Creator. Nothing so elevates man as to do God's will — to bring the creature's choices into alignment with the Creator's revealed purposes.
Jesus gave obedience as the specific test: "He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him" (John 14:21). And again: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him" (John 14:23). The love is verified by the keeping. Man gets the full benefits of God's love only by doing God's will. By doing God's commands we become his friends (2 John 6; John 15:14).
The corollary is equally important: "Cannot tell by our feelings that we love God or that God loves us." Feelings fluctuate, feelings are subjective, feelings can be produced by circumstances and manipulated by speakers. The reliable indicator is the objective one: are his commands being kept?
III. Must Do All the Commandments
The definition of love as obedience leads immediately to the question of scope: which commands must be obeyed? The answer is: all of them.
There are no non-essential commands. This is a sharp statement, and it needs to be heard in its context. the is not saying that commands of unequal weight cannot be distinguished — Jesus himself ranked the greatest commandment and identified the two that summarize all the others. But "non-essential" in the Restoration Movement sense means "optional, can be omitted without consequence." No command is optional in that sense. Each command is a test of love — an occasion in which the creature demonstrates, by choosing obedience, that love for God is real.
The specific application: "Why call Christ Lord and do not his commands?" (Luke 6:46). The title "Lord" means the one whose word governs. A person who calls Jesus Lord and then selects which of his commands to obey has applied a label without accepting the content. The Lordship is real or it is not — and the test of its reality is the obedience of all the commands, not the commands that happen to be convenient.
The outline names another implication: we cannot choose his commands. The phrase means we cannot treat the commandments as a menu from which we select what suits us. A person who obeys baptism but not repentance has not obeyed baptism — he has performed an act without the full surrender that makes it what it is. A person who loves the "Christian living" commands but ignores the gospel commands has not understood what Christian living is.
Complete submission to God is required. Humility on man's part brings the mercy and blessings of God — "To this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word" (Isa. 66:2). The posture of receptive humility before God's word is the posture from which all genuine obedience flows. It is also the posture most directly opposed to the selection of preferred commands.
Jude's instruction is the summary: "Keep yourselves in the love of God" (Jude 21). The keeping requires ongoing attention — not a single act of initial commitment but a sustained orientation of the whole life toward the will of God.
IV. Some of His Commands
The outline closes with the specific commands, divided by category of recipient.
For the sinner: hear, believe, repent, baptism. These are not a list of equal options from which one may be selected; they are a sequence that constitutes the full obedient response. Hear the gospel (Rom. 10:17). Believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:31). Repent — turn from the life organized around sin and self (Acts 2:38). Be baptized for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38). Each step is an expression of love toward the God who took the initiative, paid the price, and opened the door. Each step is the creature saying, in the language available to him, "I love you."
For the saint: live soberly, righteously, godly. Titus 2:12 is the text: "denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age." The saint does not graduate from love's expression into some other mode of living. The love that entered at baptism continues in the ongoing discipline of sober, righteous, and godly life. Every day of faithful living is an expression of love for the God who made possible what daily living now inhabits.
Application
Three tests this sermon puts to personal examination:
Is your obedience an expression of love or a strategy for avoiding punishment? The two may produce the same external behavior for a time, but they are different things with different trajectories. Love produces obedience that grows; fear-strategy produces obedience that looks for the minimum. The measure is not complexity of the commands obeyed but orientation of the heart.
Are you trusting your feelings as the measure of your relationship with God? Feelings are gifts; they are not guides. The reliable test is the objective one: are his commands being kept? Not perfectly — there is confession and forgiveness for the failures. But as the pattern and the direction of a life.
Are there commands you have placed in the "non-essential" category that belong in the "essential" category? Each command is a test of love. The one left off the list is the one that most needs to be examined.
Conclusion
"For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3). John adds the final word — "not burdensome" — because it is the most important thing to say to someone who has just heard that love is defined by obedience to all the commands. The commands are not a crushing load; they are the structure within which love lives. They are the form that love takes when a finite creature addresses an infinite God.
God loves man. He has always loved man. He did not withdraw his love when man forfeited the position it had given him. He has taken every initiative that love can take. The response his love requires is an obedient love in return — not perfect obedience, but genuine obedience; not the love of fear, but the love that keeps his commandments because his commandments are the form of his will, and his will is the form of his love.
Invitation
The commands for the sinner are the first expression of love's response. They are not difficult in the sense of being obscure or complex — they are the straightforward steps of a life that is turning from its own direction toward God's.
If you have not yet made that turn: hear — you are hearing now. Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Repent of the life organized around lesser loves. Confess him before these witnesses. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). Each of these is an act of love toward the God who loved you first — who formed the earth before you arrived, made you in his image, sent his Son to die for you, built the church for you to inhabit, and has been waiting for you to say what love says: here I am; your commandments are not burdensome; I will keep them.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Love of God | agapē tou theou | the love that is directed toward God | the genitive can be read as love for God or love from God | the genitive can be read as love for God or love from God; John uses both; here it is the love of the believer directed toward God, measured by obedience | 1 John 5:3 |
| Commandments not burdensome | entolai autou bareiai ouk eisin | his commandments are not heavy | bareiai is the word for a heavy, crushing load | bareiai is the word for a heavy, crushing load; John specifically denies that keeping God's commands is the crushing burden that legalism makes it; the new birth produces the capacity and the will | 1 John 5:3 |
| Keeps / abides in | tēreō / menō | to guard carefully, to keep watch over; to remain, to stay | two complementary verbs | two complementary verbs; the first describes active protection of what one has been given; the second describes settled residence; love keeps and stays | John 14:21, 23 |
| Badge of love | — | obedience as the visible mark of love | not self-generated goodness but the outward expression of an inward alignment with God's will | not self-generated goodness but the outward expression of an inward alignment with God's will; each commandment kept is the badge displayed | the image, grounded in 1 John 5:3 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| "Whoever believes…is born of God" — the new birth and love connected | Intro | 1 John 5:1 |
| "This is the love of God: keep His commandments; not burdensome" | II | 1 John 5:3 |
| "He who keeps My commandments is the one who loves Me" — the test | II | John 14:21 |
| "By doing God's commands we become his friends" | II | John 15:14; 2 John 6 |
| Man cannot be saved by grace alone nor by faith alone | I | Acts 2:38; Eph. 2:8-10 |
| "Why call me Lord and do not the things I say?" | III | Luke 6:46 |
| Humility and trembling at God's word — the posture of love | III | Isa. 66:1-2 |
| "Keep yourselves in the love of God" — the ongoing discipline | III | Jude 21 |
| Commands for the sinner: hear, believe, repent, be baptized | IV | Acts 2:38; Mark 16:16 |
| Commands for the saint: live soberly, righteously, godly | IV | Titus 2:12 |
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Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 93. Primary text: 1 John 5:1-12 (stated by Boles). OCR corrections: "Uohn 14:21, 23" corrected to "John 14:21, 23"; "11 J ohn 6" corrected to "2 John 6"; "riot love" corrected to "not love." Doctrinal audit: "cannot be saved by grace alone nor faith alone" retained as Boles's direct statement and developed through the three-sides framework; love for God defined as obedience (1 John 5:3) not feeling, without softening; the sequential plan of salvation (hear, believe, repent, baptize) retained in full without reordering; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).
