"I loved not yet, yet I loved to love.
        … I sought what I might love, in love with loving.”

—Augustine, Confessions

"Love is all you need.” —The Beatles

Sermon Summary: How can we know what love is? Does the love we have been given require anything of us? Come and consider God’s sacrificial love as we continue our study in 1 John.

Passage to Consider: 1 John 4:7–12; 15–19

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us.

Confession of Sin:

Eternal God, we confess that often we have failed

To be an obedient church:

We have not done your will;

We have broken your law;

We have rebelled against your love;

We have not loved our neighbors;

We have not heard the cry of the needy.

Forgive us, we pray.

Free us for joyful obedience.

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Song to Consider: