Getting Started
Think of a time when someone showed you unexpected, undeserved kindness. How did it change the way you related to that person? Did it change how you treated others around you?
Read the Word
In the message this week, Ps Ric Burrell from Strong Nation Church took us to one of the most concentrated passages on the love of God in all of Scripture. Read it slowly and let it settle.
1 John 4:7-19
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement: in this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.
This passage is not simply an encouragement to be more loving. It is a theological argument: the source, shape and direction of all genuine love traces back to God’s prior act of love towards us. If we miss that, we miss everything.
Going Deeper
The apostle John wrote his first letter to a community wrestling with confusion about who Jesus really was and whether God could truly be known. His answer is not primarily an argument — it is a declaration: God is love. This is one of the most precise statements about God’s nature in the entire Bible. John does not simply say God is loving. He says love is what God is.
The Greek word used throughout this passage is agape — a love defined not by feeling or attraction, but by deliberate, self-giving action toward another. It is the love that moves toward the unworthy, the unready and the undeserving. John’s entire argument rests on the sequence in verse 10: not that we loved God, but that he loved us. This order matters enormously. Our love is always a response, never the origin.
Ric drew attention to John’s pattern throughout his gospel of calling himself “the one whom Jesus loved.” Far from being arrogance, this reflects something John had grasped that the others were still working out — that to be loved by Jesus was not an achievement but a given. It was the ground he stood on. And it transformed everything about how he saw himself, how he related to others, and how he ran (faster than Peter) toward an empty tomb with expectant hope rather than dread.
Ric structured the message around four movements, each flowing from God’s love as the source:
- He loved us, therefore he created us. Psalm 139 pictures God knitting each person together with intention and delight. We were not accidents of biology. We were the deliberate work of a loving God who wanted a family to love.
- He loved us, therefore he saved us. Romans 5:8 makes clear that Christ died for us while we were still sinners — not once we had improved enough to deserve it. The cross is not merely a display of suffering; it is the most concentrated display of love in history.
- He loved us, therefore he adopted us. In the Greco-Roman world, adopted children were considered closer than biological children because they were chosen on purpose. Romans 8:15 uses the Aramaic word Abba — likely the very word Jesus himself used — to describe how we may now address God. Not as servants seeking an audience, but as children walking through the door of their Father’s house.
- He loved us, therefore he sent us. God’s love is not meant to stop with us. John 20:21 and Matthew 28:19 frame the mission of the church as an overflow of being loved. We go because we have received something worth sharing, not because we are trying to earn our place.
Verse 18 adds a crucial pastoral word: perfect love drives out fear. Fear and love cannot ultimately coexist in the same heart. Fear assumes we must earn our standing. Love knows it has already been given. The more deeply we know ourselves loved, the less fear has to work with.
Discussion
- Verse 10 says this is love: “not that we loved God, but that he loved us.” Why does the order matter? What goes wrong spiritually when we reverse it and make our love for God the starting point?
- Ric pointed to John’s habit of calling himself “the one whom Jesus loved” and suggested this was not arrogance but a deep theological conviction. What is the difference between those two things, and how do we cultivate the same kind of settled confidence in God’s love?
- The passage says “perfect love drives out fear.” What kinds of fear are most present in your life right now, and how does understanding God’s love speak directly to those fears?
- Ric drew a sharp distinction between serving God as a servant and serving because you know you are a child. Does that distinction land for you? In practice, how does it actually change the way someone serves in a church or loves a difficult person?
- Ric quoted C.S. Lewis: “Religion is man’s pursuit of God, but Christianity is God’s pursuit of man.” How has that shown up in your own story? Where did God find you?
- Verse 12 says God’s love is “made complete” in us when we love one another. What does it look like in this specific community to be the place where God’s love becomes visible and tangible to people who don’t yet know him?
Living It Out
- Receive before you give. This week, set aside five minutes each morning to sit quietly and simply receive God’s love — not to pray a list, but to let the truth of 1 John 4:19 (“we love because he first loved us”) settle into your heart before the day begins. Notice whether it changes how you treat the people you encounter.
- Identify a fear and bring it to the text. Write down one fear that has been sitting on your shoulders lately. Then write out 1 John 4:18 and Romans 8:15 alongside it. Spend some time in prayer asking God to make his love more real than the fear.
- Let someone know they are loved. Think of one person — inside or outside the church — who may not feel seen or valued. Do one concrete thing this week to show them they matter: a message, a meal, a conversation, a prayer offered with them in the room.
Prayer
Close by inviting someone to pray, using 1 John 4:19 as the starting point: thank God that he moved first, that his love is not earned but given, and ask him to make that love so real in each person that it naturally spills over into the way they love others this week. Pray especially for anyone carrying fear, and for the church to be a place where God’s love becomes visible to the community around it.
Leader Notes
Timing: The Getting Started question can run long if the group is warm and talkative — keep it to two or three minutes. Going Deeper is dense; read it aloud slowly rather than expecting everyone to absorb it silently. Budget at least twelve minutes for Discussion and resist the urge to rush past questions 3 and 4, which are where the most honest conversation tends to happen.
Likely sticking points: The distinction Ric draws between being a servant and being a child may initially feel uncomfortable for people who have built their identity around faithful service. Acknowledge the genuine goodness of serving while helping the group sit with the question of why they serve. The goal is not to devalue service but to relocate its source.
Question 3 (fear): This question may surface real pain — anxiety, chronic worry, difficult circumstances. Be ready to slow down, listen well, and not rush to fix or theologise over someone’s honest answer. If appropriate, offer to pray for specific fears before moving on. Ric’s mention in the sermon of financial pressure, sickness, and family strain reflects the real context many in the room are likely carrying.
Question 5 (God’s pursuit): This can be a natural opening for someone who is still exploring faith. If a visitor or newer believer is in the group, frame it as an open invitation to share their story without pressure.
The adoption theme: If the idea of God as Father carries painful associations for anyone because of difficult experiences with their own father, acknowledge this briefly and gently. The point is not that God is like our earthly fathers, but that the relationship he offers is everything a perfect father would give — and more.
