The Relationships of Heaven: Loving Others - GraceLife Church of Pineville

Introduction

In our continued series on eternal judgment and specifically now on the “Relationships of Heaven,” we turn to the love of God—which really means we are talking about everything and the only thing.

There was a time in which that was true to the fullest sense. “God is love,” we learn from the Scriptures, which means that love existed prior¹ to the creation of everything else. In that moment,² that time in which love existed prior to creation, there was actually no time, because God is endless, eternal.

But language betrays us. So, there was a time³ in which God was all that existed. He was everything. He was the only thing.

We might also say that love is the only thing in the sense that every act of God is an act of love. Creation is an act of love. Redemption is an act of love. The sustaining of all reality, even in this very moment, is also an act of love.

Love has always existed. Love will always exist into eternity. That love that we expect to experience in eternity has been our focus as we consider this topic of eternal judgment. Love is the activity of Heaven. Love frames the relationships of Heaven, which are with God, with yourself, and with others.

Love has always existed. … Love is the activity of Heaven. Love frames the relationships of Heaven.

Loving is, of course, the subject matter of the Great Command. It summarizes, “Love the Lord your God with all that you are, and love others like they are you.⁴

The Great Command, we learn from Jesus, leads to life. And we’ve been exploring this idea that our eternal life in Heaven will be the ultimate and eternal fulfillment of the Great Command:

We’ll love God completely for all eternity.
It will be joyous to finally know and love ourselves.
Perhaps the hardest idea of all (the subject of this sermon) is loving others.

As usual, we’ll turn to the Scriptures for insight into this subject. Specifically, we’ll be looking at 1 John 4.

A Present and Future Reality

The apostle John, who wrote the letter of 1 John, had the unique position of being the only New Testament writer to write a Gospel and an epistle (letter) and a book of prophecy. His Gospel, the Gospel of John, we can view as an introduction to our faith. Revelation, of course, reveals to us the future glory, when that faith will be realized. In his epistles and letters, John teaches us how to bridge those two worlds—our introduction to the faith and our future realization of faith.

John tells us how to live by faith in the present as those who have been born again and who will one day live with God forever. You will see all phases in the passage that we’re going to read: the past, the present, and the future. In terms of salvation, you’ll see justification, sanctification, and glorification.

As we focus on the future, we think of eternal judgment. And as we consider how it is that we are going to love others for all eternity, do not make the mistake of simply waiting for that day when everything will be fixed. (“Then I’ll worry about loving you!”) Rather, let this reading and message encourage you to love even now.

Do not make the mistake of simply waiting for that day when everything will be fixed. … [I] encourage you to love even now.

There’s a lot in this chapter about love, including the statement “God is love” (1 John 4:8). But let’s jump to verse 16, where that concept that God is love is repeated and built upon:

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:16)

Within this verse is a present reality that anticipates a more perfect promise. You see it repeated over and over: abiding, abiding, abiding. It’s a present reality that you can abide with God now, in addition to the perfect promise that you will abide with God forever.

We know from John’s Gospel writings this truth that abiding with God is a present reality. In John 15, Jesus is recorded as saying, “Abide in Me, and I in you. … I am the vine, you are the branches” (vv. 4–5), and “Abide in My love” (9). John 15 is also where Jesus reminds the disciples that they are to love one another (“Love one another, just as I have loved you”; vv. 12–13). We, of course, will all abide with God and with one another in this love in the future.

You will also see in 1 John 4 the Great Commandments of God. Actually, you’ll find them everywhere in the Bible (That should be no surprise, since they are the Great Commands.) But you won’t always find them explicitly stated, verbatim (“Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself”), although the principle is throughout Scripture.

Confidence in the Day of Judgment

So, as we look to this passage in 1 John 4, we are going to see descriptions about the love of God, about the love of self, and about the love of others. The passage furthers our argument about love being the business of eternity in this way: it’s going to argue that human love is a thing that can be perfected. It comes in degrees. John is also going to argue that love’s perfection affects judgment. Look at 1 John 4:17:

By this, love is 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.

There’s a huge principle here in verse 17: You can have confidence in the day of judgment. Why? Because of your current relationship with Jesus.

Which describes you more regarding judgment: confidence or fear? When we began this study on eternal judgment, I posed the question, How do you feel about the coming judgment—that is, about the prospect of being judged? Is it a topic that excites you, beyond just timelines and end-of-the-world kinds of things? Are you eager to stand before the Judge? Or does it make you scared or anxious?

Let’s continue reading in our 1 John passage, putting the verses together:

By this, love is 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. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. (1 John 4:17–18)

There’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). When we talk about judgments in specifics, we’ll talk about why there is not the fear of punishment for the believer. But for now let’s just hang on to this principle and realize this: If you have a fear of eternal judgment, your love has not been perfected. There’s some more growing in love to do.

Do not be overly discouraged by that. The reason that we gather together to encourage one another in the faith is because we have not yet attained to completion or perfection. So don’t be discouraged if fear creeps in, and if you discover that love has not been perfected in your life. You now have a new spiritual goal. You also have one more reason to long for Heaven. Your love will be perfected there.

If you have a fear of eternal judgment, your love has not been perfected. There’s some more growing in love to do.

Why and Who We Love

Now, to this point, these verses discuss the love of God, and how love is perfected within ourselves. And I’d make the argument that you probably love yourself to the extent you view yourself as complete. (I view myself as good at this thing, complete in this thing, and so I love that about myself. If I view myself as incomplete, imperfect in this thing, I don’t love that about myself.)

In verse 19, we get this solid quotable principle: “We love, because He first loved us.” There’s God’s love, and there’s my love because of God’s love. All is well. That theological principle is good, true, and righteous—we love because He first loved us. But it doesn’t end there.

The progression and outpouring of God’s love in us moves through us and extends to others. Or at least it should. Verse 19 is the kind of thing that will get cross-stitched on the pillow, or painted in cute script on a wooden sign and hung up in your home. But you’re probably not going to do that with verses 20 and 21:

If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. (1 John 4:20–21)

You may wonder, “Who’s my brother?” Let’s ask an even more basic question: “What is a brother?” A brother is a sibling, someone with whom there is a shared parent. So who is my brother? Well, the answer is in the next verse:

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father [the common father] loves the child born of Him. (1 John 5:1)

In his commentary on 1 John, Zane Hodges writes this:

If one asks who his Christian brother or sister is, the answer is that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. … Whether or not a believer exhibits an admirable life, he should be an object of his fellow Christian’s love. This love does not spring from something lovable in the person himself, but from his paternity, since everyone who loves the Father loves His child as well.⁵

So how well are you doing with love of your sibling in Christ? You know the one I’m talking about—the one who doesn’t “exhibit … an admirable life,” as Hodges puts it. Is that person still the object of your love?

That question might bring to mind someone whom you don’t particularly care for. Now, on the one hand, true, the Bible does not command us to like that person. On the other hand, the Bible is clear that we are to act in love toward not only brothers, but also those whom we could legitimately call our enemies.

The Bible does not command us to like [others]. … [But] the Bible is clear that we are to act in love toward not only brothers, but also those whom we could legitimately call our enemies.

Do you know the context in which the Bible tells us to love our enemies? It’s judgment and reward. Let’s look at the context:

Treat others the same way you want them to treat you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be children⁶ of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil people.⁷ (Luke 6:31–35)

So our command is to love not only our brother, but also our neighbor, our enemy … in other words, everyone.

What Does It Mean to “Love”?

So, what does it mean to love someone? We’ve talked a lot about it, but so far we haven’t really defined it. I’ve certainly defined it in past sermons, but let’s talk about it now.

Is loving someone measured by how I feel about that person? Is it measured by how I act toward that person? Is it affection? Is it action? Is it both affection and action?

The perfected form of love does include both action and affection.

The perfected form of love does include both action and affection. If you think of a relationship with someone you love, say a spouse, for example, no amount of verbal “I love yous” will matter to your spouse if your actions don’t back that up. At the same time, if you perform all of the actions of love but then told your spouse, “I don’t really have feelings for you,” it would be hard to categorize that relationship as a loving marriage—at least not in the complete or perfect sense.

In the complete sense of love, the perfect sense of love, the affections and the actions align. On earth, they don’t always align. On earth, sometimes those things align for a season, but they don’t survive a devastating winter. In eternity, though, your loving affection and action will align perfectly. Eternally in Heaven, you will love others perfectly, and, in turn, you will be loved perfectly. You will not merely tolerate. You will not merely be tolerated. You will be loved. You will love.

In eternity, though, your loving affection and action will align perfectly.

I think you probably understand the affection of love well enough—the positive feeling toward another. Let’s talk a little more about the action of love.

The Action of Love

First, let me define what it means to love. I think the best and simplest definition is this:

To love is to will the good of another.

For those interested in the philosophy behind that definition, the language is borrowed from Thomas Aquinas, who was basically building on the thought of Aristotle. One believer and one Greek philosopher, both defining love as willing the good of someone else. And I think “to will the good of another” does capture both aspects of love—affection and action—because there are things I can properly say that I wanted or willed to do just because I did them. For example, getting out of bed every morning. You could say, in a sense, that you willed to do that today. You could say you wanted to do that, too. Maybe you didn’t really want to, but you wanted to do it in a greater sense—because you eventually did.

Doing good to another is love. But completed, perfected love is doing good and desiring the good that you want to do. Thomas Aquinas wrote this:

The act of loving has two objects: the good you want for somebody, and the person you want it for. For true love wills good to someone. If the someone is yourself, then love seeks a unity with the good you want; if it is someone else, then love creates a community with him, for you treat him as yourself, willing his unity with the good as you would your own.⁸

So, for example, the cinnamon rolls that were left on the front row before I preached—that is a good someone wanted for somebody else (well done—that is love!). The second object is the person you wanted that good for (I don’t know if those cinnamon rolls were for me, but that’s where I sit!).

The principle of the quote is this: love seeks unity. To be united with the good, love seeks unity.

It’s also true that unity creates love. And this perpetual unity of eternity will be a community of love.

This perpetual unity of eternity will be a community of love.

Never forget the prayer of Jesus found in John 17: “I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity” (v. 23). Here’s what Aquinas had to say about unity:

Unity causes love: unity in substance [causes] love of oneself, and unity of likeness [causes] love of others. … Love causes [those who love one another] to seek some appropriate real unity: being together, talking together, doing things together.⁹

Perhaps it’s a complicated way to say it, but in the first part of the quote, he’s expressing a fairly simple principle: unity of substance causes love of oneself; I have unity in my body, and therefore I love this hand. I love this hand, I love this arm, because it’s mine. There’s unity in substance. I don’t want it to get hurt. I should care about yours too, but primarily, I protect myself. There’s unity in this substance; therefore, I love it. Unity in substance causes love of oneself.

Aquinas then speaks of “unity of likeness.” Things that are similar causes love of others, and love causes those who love one another “to seek some appropriate real unity.” I have this affection for someone, so I want to seek unity. What do we do? Well, I seek real unity like this: by “being together, talking together, doing things together.” And so we could say that another description of such love would be called friendship. I want to be with the person, I want to talk with the person, I want to do things with the person—that’s friendship.

Aquinas writes of friendship that “friendship must be mutual … : a mutual goodwill based on what we have in common.” Now here’s where Aquinas, for me, hits a home run. When it comes to love, all the things he has said to this point make sense if you have in your mind a true friend. It’s easy to think about love in terms of friends, but remember the challenge of Scripture: love your enemies. Here’s how Aquinas says we accomplish that:

So great can be our love for a friend that for [that friend’s] sake we love those connected with him, even those who hurt and hate us. And this is how the friendship of charity extends even to our enemies, [because we love them] for the sake of God, our chief friend.

You no doubt get the principle: You love someone so much, have such a great friendship, that you even love those who are connected to them, even though you may not know them as well. For His sake, we love those connected with Him, even those who hurt and hate us (our “enemies”).

Remember, all this enemy talk is about this life. It will not be so in the next. In Heaven, you will not have enemies, and that’s not because they’ll have been consigned to the other place (Hell). Rather, there are two reasons why you will love even those you see as scoundrels in this life.

First, you will love your enemies because of who they will become.

Second, you will love your enemies of this life because of how they will reflect God. And yes, you’ll be changed too. But to continue this focus on others—in case you missed that connection—the summary is this: You’re going to love others, including your enemies, perfectly in Heaven because they too will be fulfilling the Great Command, just like you. Who they will become, and how they will reflect God—beings who love God with all of their being; perfect beings who will in turn love you perfectly; and they’ll see you as the perfect being you are, loving God with all your being, and so on and so on for all eternity.

You will love your enemies because of who they will become. … [And] you will love your enemies of this life because of how they will reflect God.

Who will we all become? Again, the writings of John come to mind: “What we will be has not yet appeared” (1 John 3:2 ESV). We have to wait until we see Him and He shows us who He is, and then we’ll know who we are. But we can imagine it; we can think of who we will become, and we can think of who they will become. That thought, in the words of C.S. Lewis, is a “weight of glory.”¹⁰ At the end of a sermon of the same title, Lewis described who they will become like this:

… it may be asked what practical use there is in the speculations which I have been indulging. I can think of at least one such use. It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.¹¹

The change we see in others in eternity will be conformity to Christ’s image. We will love each other by reflecting that image. Your desire to be united to the good and to unite others to the good will result in an eternal fellowship of community in which we are in perpetual wonder of who God is and who we all have become in Him: perfect beings.

In that community there will be perpetual wonder at who God is, perpetual wonder at who we all have become in Him. Again from Lewis, this time in Mere Christianity:

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. … He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a … dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.

Conclusion

In eternity, the “boundless power and delight and goodness” of God will deepen our existing relationships, create new relationships, and restore our lost relationships.

In eternity … God will deepen our existing relationships, create new relationships, and restore our lost relationships.

We will save those topics for another day, but I want to give you this challenge: If loving others is the business of Heaven, perhaps it should be the goal even now. Let us make that our prayer:

God, in Your wisdom and direction, deepen our relationships with fellow believers. Create new relationships within the fellowship we are a part of (whether GraceLife or another). Father, if there be any hindrances caused by sin, if there be any hindrances caused by the enemy who wants to destroy us, we pray that You would help us, Lord, restore our relationships with each other. Soften our hearts as we continue to worship You and make an offering as we worship You in prayer, and as we continue to worship in song. Amen.

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