Advent 2022 — December 22

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. ⁸ The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God sent his one and only Son into the world in order that we may 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 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us and his love is perfected in us. ¹³ By this we know that we reside in him and he in us: that he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

1 John 4:7-14

Refresh & Restore Bible Study — May 18, 2023: When the Loving Kindness of God Our Savior Appears – Refresh & Restore | A JustKeithHarris.com Podcast

This is the May 18, 2023 episode of the Refresh & Restore Bible Study, provided by JustKeithHarris.com. You can find the written version of this, along with Scripture references and footnotes, at: https://justkeithharris.com/2023/05/17/refresh-restore-bible-study-may-18-2023/

1. Refresh & Restore Bible Study — May 18, 2023: When the Loving Kindness of God Our Savior Appears 49:01
2. Refresh & Restore Bible Study — May 11, 2023: Sufficient Grace 23:42
3. Refresh & Restore — December 29, 2022 (Behold the King) 30:18
4. Advent 2022 — The Story of Christmas 27:29
5. Advent 2022 — December 24 (Christmas Eve Reading for Our Kiddos) 06:04

“Love on Display”[1]
by David Platt

When the apostle John wants to point us to the love of God, he does so by highlighting the very truth that we celebrate at Christmas: “…the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.” That simple yet profound truth should give us confidence in God’s love.

One of the primary purposes of 1 John is to give genuine believers confidence that they have eternal life (1 John 5:13), and one of the primary ways John does this is by reminding us of the character of God and His saving work in Christ. Gratefully, our assurance is not ultimately based on our own obedience or faith, which is always imperfect, but rather on God’s sacrificial love.

The fact that God has demonstrated His love reassures us that Christmas is not merely wishful thinking or a blind hope. It is grounded in the reality that God Himself has come to dwell with us. As the old Christmas hymn says:

            Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see
            Hail the Incarnate Deity
            Pleased as man with men to dwell
            Jesus, our Emmanuel

God demonstrated His love through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and He did not wait for us to earn that love. He did it “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8). And if we received such love while we were sinners, how can we doubt that God will continue loving us now that we have been reconciled to Him (Romans 5:9-10)? Along with the apostle John, we should be able to testify with confidence that “the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:14).

[1] David Platt, Advent (Birmingham, AL: Radical, Inc., 2019), 36.