1 John 4:16

1 John 4:16

The Soul Dwelling in God.

These words embody one of the manifold aspects of the Christian ideal. They suggest the inwardness and exaltation of the Christian life.

I. The love dwelling in which is one with dwelling in God is not any love; it is not all that passes by the name of love; it is that love only which has been poured forth in Christ for the salvation of the world. There rises overhead and around the Christian soul the vision, the thought and memory, of the love of God in Christ. It is a real home for the spirit, a real dwelling-place for thought. It is joy, strength, and new life to let the feelings of the heart flock to it.

II. The love in which in this way the soul finds a home is much more than an object of thought: it is life, power, law as well; it is the life that stirs at the heart of Providence, the power that causes all things to work together for good, the unseen law behind events which Christian faith searches for, and in which at last, in sunshine and cloud, it rests.

III. It is not enough to know that a soul, by meditation and trust, can dwell in love; how should its dwelling in love be at the same time a dwelling in God? The love is really God manifest; the love which is a wall of fire around us is nothing other than God. He that dwells in love dwells in that which is the life of God; he has come into a world whose sunlight is Divine, where Divine paths open before the feet, where Divine love breathes in the air and fills the hollows of life as a sea.

IV. The life we are called to imitate was the fulfilment of this very ideal. Christ dwelt in God. His earthly, human life was, so to speak, a life immersed in the life of God. It is to no unrealised ideal, therefore, that we are pointed when we are called to dwell in God.

V. The elements in Christ's life which reveal this dwelling of the soul in God are present, however dimly, in all Christian life. They are (1) insight and (2) power.

VI. The soul who is dwelling in love is, up to the measure of his indwelling, already in possession of the future. The blessedness which awaits us in the future is but the unfolding of the present life of the soul.

A. Macleod, Days of Heaven upon Earth, p. 240.

The Love of God in the Atonement.

I. The mission of Christ to redeem and save mankind is not indeed here for the first time connected with the love of the Triune God. It is uniformly in Scripture traced up to that principle as its supreme ultimate source. The Saviour's Passion is always declared to be a demonstration of the Father's charity to man, and the apprehension of it by faith is everywhere bound up with the shedding abroad of that love by the Holy Ghost in the heart. But the peculiarity of our text, the last revelation on the subject, is that these three are brought together in the most impressive and affecting manner. The Persons of the Holy Trinity shed their distinct mediatorial glory on the work of our salvation.

II. "We love Him because He first loved us." By constantly keeping alive in our hearts the memorials of Christ's dying charity, celebrating there an eternal sacrament, we must nourish our love to the God of all grace. There is no duty more binding, none that we so much forget. Here is the secret of all spiritual strength. "The love of Christ constraineth us," suppressing every alien affection and growing by its own internal constraining influence. The true Christian lives, and moves, and has his being in love, the love awakened by redemption.

III. God's love is the agent of our holiness, and makes us perfect in love. It is, in the administration of the Spirit, the energy that carries us onward to perfection; and all the glory is His. Thus the indwelling presence of the Spirit proves its power; the God of atoning charity perfects the operation of His love within us. It accomplishes all His will; it strengthens obedience unto perfection; it expels every sinful affection, rendering entire the consecration of the heart; and it raises the new nature to a full conformity to Christ and preparation for heaven.

W. B. Pope, Sermons and Charges, p. 193.

References: 1 John 4:16 . G. Gilfillan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 4; W. M. Statham, Ibid., vol. xi., p. 248; H. Goodwin, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 329; S. Leathes, Ibid., vol. ii., p. 80; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 253. 1 John 4:16-18 . C. Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons, p. 341. 1 John 4:17 . J. M. Neale, Sermons to Children, p. 148; Homilist, 2nd series, vol. iv., p. 358.