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What Do You Love?

ADVENT 2025 – Part 4

December 21, 2025

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:7-12

Because of the arrival of Jesus:

1. Love is visible

     This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

     1 John 4:9

     In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

     John 1:4

     But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of

     water welling up to eternal life.”

     John 4:14

     The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

     John 10:10

     “Divine love is characterized as an outgoing, other regarding concern that is unmotivated by the object's worth and

     spontaneously extends to all, especially the undeserved.”

     - Dr. Donald Bloesch

2. Love is defined

     This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

     1 John 4:10

      ¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have

     eternal life. ¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

     John 3:16-17

     For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

     Luke 19:10

     This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

     1 John 4:10

      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. 

     1 John 4:9-10 ESV

      ⁵ The arrogant cannot stand
         in your presence.
     You hate all who do wrong;
      ⁶     you destroy those who tell lies.
     The bloodthirsty and deceitful
         you, Lord, detest.

     Psalm 5:5-6

3. Love is active

      ⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows

     God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

     1 John 4:7-8

     As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.

     John 17:18

      ¹³ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

      ¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
         and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

      ¹⁵ When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and       see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

      ¹⁶ So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they had seen

     him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed         at what the shepherds said to them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her

     heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which

     were just as they had been told.

     Luke 2:13-20