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Message Summary
In the third message of a series on love and marriage, Pastor Phillip Santillan asks what John teaches about love and how it should reorient our beliefs. Whatever model of marriage we grew up with, he says, we all carry flawed expectations about love that leave us disappointed. Culture increasingly treats marriage as irrelevant or boring, as if the only options were single and lonely or married and lame. Many now settle for cohabitation, which Phil argues the data show is not working.
He has two reasons for the series. With so many voices on social media and podcasts shaping how people view relationships, he wants followers of Jesus ready to speak the gospel into broken models of relationship. He also invites anyone, of any faith background, to test their beliefs against Scripture. Earlier weeks showed that God gives a spouse to complement rather than complete us, and that living out God’s mission matters more than relationship status.
John, one of Jesus’ closest friends and the disciple Jesus loved, is a credible witness. In verse 7, he writes that everyone who loves has been born of God, which Phil explains means only those born of God can have this love (John 1). Applying a sermon or a marriage book may improve a relationship, but experiencing love as God intended requires new birth, a gift of the Holy Spirit. God is love, and the love John means is agape, an unconditional love that depends on the character of the lover, not the performance of the beloved. God showed it by sending his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, though Phil finds nothing in himself that deserves it. Because God loves us for who he is, our value rests on his character.
The application follows in verses 11–12: if God loved us this way, we must love one another. Love defined by the value of the one loved will never be what it should be. Phil shows a worn, one-eyed stuffed duck from his childhood. No one would take it for free, yet it was never loved because it was valuable; it became valuable because it was loved. After almost twenty years of marriage, Phil says neither spouse fully deserves the love they receive, so marriage pictures the gospel. Inspired by Tim Keller, he describes that gospel: we are more sinful than we want to admit, yet more loved and accepted in Christ than we can imagine. God uses marriage not to make people complete but to make them reflect the gospel.
Conflict will tear a couple apart if love rests on the perceived value of the other person, as the world defines love. But if we take 1 John 4 to heart and let theology, not just psychology, shape our decisions, agape love can become the lens through which spouses see each other, which Phil calls the only guarantee a marriage will weather life’s storms. It requires a decision to love despite feelings, performance, fears and failures, and growth as disciples, loving one another as God loves us.