Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas
Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday morning service, August 30, 2026 Understanding Christian Love, the finale · A3 D8 · 1 John 4:17-19 · Revelation 2:4-5
► Watch this lesson on video (47:05)
This morning we finish a series. Eight lessons ago we started asking a simple question — what is Christian love, really? — and we have been working our way toward this morning ever since. Before we go any further, let us stop and remember where we have been, because the road we traveled is what makes this morning’s destination matter.
Two commandments hold everything together. Love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. If we could actually manage to do that, we would fulfill every law in the Old Testament and every principle in the New. But obviously we are not able to do that.
We learned that Christian love does not originate with you and me. It comes directly from God. And love is the evidence of salvation — it is not the condition of salvation. Another way to say the same thing: we cannot love until we have already been saved. To try to earn salvation by loving, or by doing, is getting the cart before the horse. There are some things we cannot do, some things we cannot accomplish, and some ways we cannot even think, until after salvation has taken place.
And we learned that love grows through fellowship with God. Last Sunday we talked about the well and the bucket. The closer you stand to the well, the easier it is to get water into the bucket. If we want our love to grow, the best thing we can do is get closer to God — because that is where love comes from. The Bible says God is love. So if we want our love to grow, it stands to reason we need to get close to the source of it.
Now the one point of our lesson this morning. Remember what it meant during Bible times when a teacher said a thing three times: it was not a maybe, it was permanent. So we are going to say our one point three times this morning, to signify that it is not a maybe. You can take it to the bank.
Love is the one thing we cannot afford to lose.
A church can keep its doctrine. A church can practice discipline. A church can be patient and remain in the faith. And that same church can still lose the one thing Jesus said would identify us as His disciples. And I want to throw this out plainly — it is possible that Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church could be an Ephesus church too. By that I mean yes, it could happen here. And it could happen to you and me.
The War That Never Stops
Before we talk about perfect love, let us be honest about why love is so hard. There is a spiritual war going on that never lets up, and that is one of the reasons love is so difficult to maintain.
“For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” — Galatians 5:17 (KJV)
Contention. Controversy. Conflict. And what is the result? So that ye cannot do the things that ye would. There is a war going on inside every one of us, every single minute of every single day, and there is no relief from it.
We have used this illustration before — the two dogs, the white one and the black one. There is an old story about two dogs fighting inside a man. One is good, one is bad. A young man asks his granddad, “Which dog wins?” And the grandfather answers, “The one you feed the most is the one that will win the battle.”
So the question this morning is which one are we feeding.
We feed the black dog when we indulge selfishness. When we entertain bitterness. When we rehearse the grievance — when somebody does us wrong and we keep replaying it in our minds and say, “Come here, bitterness. Come here, anger. Sit right down and be my best buddy.” When we actually enjoy those harsh, angry feelings toward whoever it was because of what they did to us. That is feeding the flesh, and the flesh gets stronger for it.
We feed the Spirit with prayer. With obedience to God’s Word. With fellowship among God’s people, with the Word, and with the worship of God. And the result of feeding the Spirit is that love grows. Remember, the Bible tells us God is love. So the closer we get to God, the more our love grows — and the more our love grows, the more we resemble the God who saved our soul.
This Is How God Says “I Love You”
“In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” — 1 John 4:9-10 (KJV)
That is what love is, and that is where it came from. That is its origin.
God’s love is sacrificial and God’s love is costly. He did not love us because we were warm and fuzzy like a teddy bear. He loved us when we were His enemies. Literally — He loved us while we still had the hammer in our hand, driving those spikes through Him on the cross. Somebody says, “But preacher, I was not there.” Oh yes you were. Your sins were there. You were represented there. And if you had been one of those Roman soldiers, you would have done exactly what those Roman soldiers did.
And that love cost Him His only begotten Son.
Now here is a picture of it. We do not typically run in circles where a man gets arrested and has to make bail, but it is all over the television. The idea is this: the preacher gets arrested for something. They put me in jail, and my trial is six months away. So that I do not have to sit in jail until the trial, they let me post bail — I can put up money and go home and wait for the trial.
But suppose the man in that jail has no money. No collateral. Nothing to put up as security. There is no way he can pay his own way out. He is going to have to rot there until his trial comes.
And then somebody walks in. Somebody with no obligation at all to help him. Somebody who is not in debt to him in any way. And that man pays the full bail out of his own pocket, at great personal cost — he sells his house, he sells his car, whatever it takes. And then he trades places with the prisoner. The prisoner walks free.
That is the gospel. And that is literally what propitiation means: a debt that is settled, a sentence that is satisfied, a price that is paid by Someone who did not owe it — Someone who would have been completely justified to walk on by and let whatever happens happen.
“Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” — 1 John 4:11 (KJV)
Now we are never asked to die for one another, and the odds are we never will be in that kind of situation. But what we are all asked to do is live for one another. We are asked to forgive. “But preacher, you do not know what he said or what he did.” It does not matter. Forgive. We are asked to protect, to sacrifice, to put others first. That is the reasonable response to what God has done for us.
If God has loved us like that — is it not reasonable that we love one another in a similar fashion, and not hold grudges?
What Perfect Love Actually Means
“Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” — 1 John 4:17-18 (KJV)
When John says perfect love casts out fear, most of us hear that phrase and think it means a love so complete and so flawless that it never feels any anxiousness at all. And then we look at ourselves and feel like a failure, because sometimes we still struggle with fear. Sometimes we still struggle with the unknown, and we get those little pangs of “oh my goodness.”
Does that mean we cannot have perfect love because we still feel a little anxiety?
John’s word for perfect here means love that has been brought to its goal. Love that has matured. Love that has completed its purpose.
Think of a halfback handed the football on his own twenty yard line, and he executes the play perfectly and runs it all the way down to the goal line. That was a perfect run. Now does that mean the halfback was sinless? Does it mean he never made a mistake on the football field? No. It means he accomplished the thing he was sent out there to accomplish.
That is what perfect love means. It does not mean sinless. It does not mean flawless. It does not mean without any fault. It means love that is growing toward its goal, fulfilling its intended design.
A wife is designed to fulfill a particular role. A husband is designed to fulfill a particular role. Parents the same way, and children the same way. You can be a perfect wife and still make mistakes. You can be a perfect husband, a perfect parent, a perfect child, and still make mistakes and still have some flaws. The idea of a perfect love is a love that is moving toward the goal it was designed to accomplish.
Think about a child that is growing. We have little ones among us. They are not complete adults yet, are they? You do not look at Wyatt or Claire and say, “There is something wrong with you — you are not a complete adult.” A healthy child is doing exactly what a child was designed to do. Growing. Learning. Maturing.
And a growing love in us as children of God has a noticeable effect. A growing love begins to crowd out fear. It makes those anxious moments of the unknown come less often and last a shorter time. Now we are only human, and none of that is going to disappear one hundred percent. We are in the flesh and there is nothing we can do about it. There is a war, and we cannot do the things we would like to do because our sinful flesh gets in the way.
But the cure for fear in our lives is growing in love — getting closer to God and letting His love crowd out those anxious feelings.
When I was little I was scared of the dark. Scared of the boogeyman, however you want to say it. And the cure for fear in my life as a child was to get as close to daddy as I possibly could. That took care of everything. The cure for the fear and the anxiety we carry as adults is the same thing: get as close to God as is humanly possible.
The Most Sobering Warning in the New Testament
Jesus writes a letter to the church at Ephesus, and He begins it with a compliment.
“I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.” — Revelation 2:2-3 (KJV)
Works, labor, patience. Now think about the staircase. Faith. Then virtue. Then knowledge, then temperance, then patience. And then you come to godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity. It looks to me like this church at Ephesus got stuck somewhere between patience and godliness. They got about halfway up the staircase and stopped.
There was a great deal of good that could be said about them. Good doctrine — they tested the teachers among them and rejected the false apostles. Good works — they were active, busy, productive. Good standards — they could not bear evil, and they held the line on teaching the truth. Endurance — patience under pressure, and they had not fainted.
Now one of the definitions of godliness is following God’s order — ordering our lives after God’s design. And if God is love, and we do all these other things correctly, but our life and our church and our attitude are not patterned after love, then we are stuck on that step.
That is exactly the point Jesus was making at Ephesus.
“Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.” — Revelation 2:4 (KJV)
Have you ever been in an older vehicle where the clutch starts slipping? Everything else about the car can be fine. Poor old Stacy has a wonderful car — still has it. The motor works. It is good looking. It has all the bells and whistles. It operates real good. Everything works except the transmission. And if the transmission does not work, all the rest of it is pointless. It serves no purpose.
That is the idea here. We can have everything that looks good on the outside, but if we do not have love, the transmission is worn out and we are not going anywhere.
And a transmission is one thing we really cannot afford to lose. You can change spark plugs yourself. You can put a fan belt on yourself. But a transmission is more than we can handle.
So the one point of our lesson this morning was this: love is the one thing we cannot afford to lose.
Here is another picture of Ephesus. Call it the trophy case without a family. Picture a house — the prettiest house you have ever seen from the outside. Impressive property. The lawn manicured. Everything looks wonderful. You step through the front door and you see trophies everywhere. Awards on every wall. Plaques, certificates, photographs of one achievement after another. The house is absolutely perfect in every way that you can see.
But the family was gone. The family was nowhere in sight.
Jesus did not say the church at Ephesus had lost their salvation. He did not say they had lost their doctrine or their teaching. He told them their clutch was slipping. They had lost their love — the very thing He said would identify His disciples to the world. The most important thing they had faded from a priority into a habit, into going through the motions, into a memory of what used to be.
Now there is nothing wrong with memories. You are on your phone or your computer and a little thing pops up — memories from several years ago. You look at it and you get a warm feeling, and everything is fine and dandy. Memories are good. But memories are not reality. That warm feeling you get looking at the memory is in the past. It is not reality.
Three Steps Back to the Light
“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.” — Revelation 2:5 (KJV)
Notice what God expects the memory to do. He says remember therefore — He expects this church’s memory to move her. To take her from where she is back to where she used to be. If your memories do not move you, then your memories may make you feel good, but they are basically worthless.
And notice what He threatens: the candlestick. What is the candlestick? It is the authority of a New Testament church to operate as a church in the eyes of God. It is the one thing that makes a church something more than a religious organization. Without God’s stamp of approval — and I am not trying to be narrow-minded or bigoted about this — if God does not approve of this group of people as being a church, then this group of people is not a church. God has to approve that.
A church without love is a candlestick without a flame. It is still there, but it is not giving any light. A church without love is a transmission put in neutral. It is a clutch that keeps slipping. It is gears that have been stripped. It makes a lot of noise and it goes nowhere.
But look at the three commands in verse five. Three steps that will get the clutch fixed. Three steps that put that transmission from neutral back into gear.
Remember. Think back. When did love stop being practiced and start being assumed? Does our memory move us, or does it just make us feel good? You see an old black and white picture from a long time ago, and it is nostalgic, and you get all these lovely feelings. But do we let that memory change anything? Do we say, “You know what, I am going to make my current life resemble that memory”? That is a memory that moves us. But if we look at it, feel warm for a moment, set it aside and go on exactly as we were, that memory did us no good at all. It is like the wind blowing and never raising a sail.
Repent. Turn around. Change directions. To repent does not mean just to feel bad about it — it means to actually change direction. Repentance is not remorse. Repentance is movement. And that is what the memory of the way it used to be was intended to produce in this church.
Do the first works. Go back to what love looked like when it was young and fresh and costly. Serve God. Forgive others. Give. Reach out. Put others first. Not because we feel like it, but because God commanded it. He said if you love me, keep my commandments — and that does not mean merely behaving properly. It means guarding and protecting. Obedience is not just good behavior; obedience is protecting what is important to God. And love, like obedience, is a choice.
A church that remembers, repents, and returns to love gets the candlestick back. The transmission is no longer in neutral. The transmission has been repaired.
And it is never too late to repent. I have heard people say, “Well, preacher, I have gone too far. I have done too much.” No. It is not possible to go too far. It is not possible to get past the reach of God’s love. Not possible.
The Final Measure
“We love him, because he first loved us.” — 1 John 4:19 (KJV)
Our love is our response to God’s love. He went first, and we follow.
“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” — 1 John 4:20 (KJV)
Love for God is proven by love for people. You cannot separate the two and say, “I love God, but I do not think a whole lot of you.”
And back at Ephesus, Jesus says it again: thou hast left thy first love. Leaving is a decision. When you leave, you get up and walk out. That church made a decision to leave something God says is important.
So love is something that can be lost. Let me be clear — we cannot lose our salvation. But we can lose the priority of love, and we can lose the passion of love.
Love is the evidence of salvation. Love is the proof of fellowship — if we are close to God, we have to have something in the bucket. You are not going to get close to God and keep an empty bucket. It will not happen.
Love is the measure of maturity. “I am mad at you and I do not think I am going to forgive you.” Does that sound mature, or does it sound like somebody who still needs to grow?
Love is the foundation of obedience. The reason we value what is important to God is because we love. If we do not value what is important to God, it means we do not love very well.
Love is the badge of discipleship. Now be careful here — a disciple is not merely somebody who is saved. A disciple is somebody who follows the teachings of Jesus, somebody who takes what Jesus teaches seriously. Love identifies those who follow the teachings of Jesus, because they value what Jesus values.
And love is the mark of a true church. It is the mark of a church with the transmission in gear instead of in neutral.
Love is not a program. There are churches filled with programs — a program for this group, a class for that group, and I suppose that is fine. But love cannot be defined by a program. Love is not a feeling, contrary to the way we have always been taught. Love is not a department of the ministry. Love is the thread that runs through everything God has called us to be and to do as a church.
The church at Ephesus did everything right except the one thing that mattered most. We need to be careful never to make that same mistake.
So for the third time this morning: love is the one thing we cannot afford to lose.
Closing
Before we leave the building this morning, one question at the end of this series.
Is there someone in our life right now — in this church, in our home, in our little circle of acquaintances — that we have been withholding love from? I am not talking about anything dramatic. I am not talking about defiance. Just quietly. Just unnoticeably. Just slowly letting that first love grow cold — the way a cube of ice melts in the cold days of winter, so gradually that you would never notice it happening.
If there is, then after hearing this message and going through this series, we know what to do. Remember. Repent. Do the first works.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
Think for a moment about what God has done for us. Think about His attitude toward us when we were at our worst. He did not withhold His love from us when we were at our worst. And the point is this: when this preacher is at his worst, you are not supposed to withhold your love from him. When you are at your worst, we are not supposed to withhold our love from you.
“Well, I will love you when you start deserving it.”
You are never going to deserve God’s love.
Scripture Used
Galatians 5:17 · 1 John 4:9-11 · 1 John 4:17-20 · Revelation 2:2-5 (all KJV)
Every lesson is kept on the Lessons page.
No comments:
Post a Comment