God’s love and ours
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. We know that we live in him and he in us,
because 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 him and he 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 him. In this way,
love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of
judgement, because in this world we are like him. 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 been made perfect in love.
We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,”
yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother,
whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us
this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
1 John 4:7-21
May God bless to us the
reading of his Holy Word now and forever.
Let us pray:
Father – thank you for your
word. Speak to us now as we unpack what it means for you to love us so much –
may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing and
acceptable to you.
Amen.
God is love.
God loves you.
Jesus loves me this I know,
because the Bible tells me so…
Words that we have, I hope,
been told all our lives. Words that get spoken over and over. Words that I
think at times have become cheap, and have at times been used to mock
Christianity.
And yet this is where the
heart of our faith lies. This is the crux – the pivotal point – the place where
it began and the place where it holds together.
Our world was created in
love.
God reached out to Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob, revealing himself as the God who loves.
And we know that God so
loved the world – that he gave His one and only Son, so that we might believe
and have eternal life.
We know that Jesus, His
Son, time and again says words like –
As
the Father has loved me,
so have I loved you. Now
remain in my love.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down
one’s life for one’s friends.
And while it begins with
God’s love, the command that we are left with is,
You must love the Lord your God with all your
heart and all your soul and all your strength, and love your neighbour as
yourself.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Paul dedicates an entire chapter in his First
letter to the Corinthians – a chapter that is known and quoted often;
“If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a
resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all
mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it
is not proud. 5 It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres.
8 Love never fails.
...And
now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But
the greatest of these is love.”
Love
is the basis for our faith and our hope.
But what is this love? What
does it mean to say God loves us or we are to love God or love each other?
I love chocolate. I was
invited to a braai and responded that I’d love to. I also love my family. There
are girls who write of their undying love for band members on placards at
concerts in the hope that they’re noticed.
We also have situations
today where people use the word love but use it to control and manipulate and
abuse.
In a world where the
meaning of love has in many ways been lost we need to unpack what John means in
writing that God is love.
Our reading opens with
these words:
“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.”
Love – true love is a God
thing. The foundation of love is in God Himself. This is one of the beauties of
the Trinity. God within Himself is a community of love – and so all that comes
out from that relationship is love. God
is the source and the definition of love. God is love. God loves as the sun
shines: love expresses who God is.
And while this may sound
abstract it is actually very tangible. God expresses his love in giving. He
shows his love in sending Jesus. Jesus lived a life of love – he touched
lepers, spoke with women, played with children. He ate in the houses of rich
and poor. He rebuked injustice, turned the tables on greed and washed the feet
of rough fishermen. And in the end, he died for love. You have probably heard
the saying that it wasn’t nails that held Jesus to the cross, it was his love
for you and me that did. He loves me so much that he didn’t want to spend
eternity without me. And so he died for me. And for you.
This love extends to the
fact that he prays for us now – continuously at the right hand of the Father.
This love extends to the gift of His Spirit – who lives continually in us and
with us.
How do I know God’s love? I
read of it in His word. I believe in the truth of the cross. I experience it
through His Spirit.
This is a real thing.
God’s love is a truth more
basic and reliable than the ground we walk on and the air we breathe.
And it’s so important to
realise that because God IS love, that does not depend on our initiative or on
our worthiness. We don’t have to reach out to God or even believe in God in
order to be loved. We don’t have to clean up our act before God can love us. We
don’t have to measure up to some standard in order to be lovable. No, God
showers love on us whether we deserve it or not. And if we were honest with
ourselves who of us could ever deserve such amazing, immeasurable love?
And this is something we
struggle to fully grasp, I struggle to truly grasp. We are consistently told
and taught and bombarded with messages saying that it’s all about what you
deserve, or earn, or achieve that give you worth. And yet God’s love has
nothing to do with that at all. There is a parable that Jesus tells where a
land owner goes out in the morning to find workers for his field, and finding
some he agrees that if they work for him that he pays them a denarius – a gold
coin. He goes out later and finds more, again in the afternoon finds more men,
and simply tells them he’ll pay them what is right. He again goes and finds
more men waiting around in the early evening and invites them to work too. At
the end of the day he pays the men starting with those who had only worked one
hour, and he pays them a denarius, and he pays the same right up until those
who had been working all day. Those who had come first then complain against
this owner, but he replies, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own
money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’”
Our world cannot understand
such generosity or such love because it isn’t of this world, it’s of God.
God is the source of love.
What then is our response?
It is twofold.
Firstly we learn to abide
in His love.
We need to know ourselves
as beloved and as secure in His love. We need to be able to draw strength and
comfort and confidence from the fact that His love for us is unchanging.
The phrase Jesus uses to
describe this – is “remain in me”. He says in John 15, just before he leaves
the disciples,
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I
in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my
love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have
obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so
that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
In other translations the
word “abide” is used. And interestingly it’s the same word used when Jesus
says, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms, or mansions” – the word here
is actually “abiding places” and when he talks about the Holy Spirit dwelling
with us, he is also speaking here about abiding.
Abiding or remaining can
also be then the places where we are most deeply at home. Be at home in my
love. Be secure and comfortable in it. Surround yourself with it. Know it deep
in your soul, in the place from where all your decisions and emotions come from.
And remain in it.
Our reading today then is
saying the more fully and completely we know God, the more the immense reality
of God’s love dawns on us. When we open ourselves to the warmth and light of
God’s love, we will find that even our deepest, darkest secrets and the ugliest
parts of ourselves are not beyond God’s reach. Nothing in us is so broken or so
filthy that God is unwilling or unable to touch it and transform it. God
embraces us as we are, loves us as we are, and works in us to make us clean and
whole and new. Understanding then that we are upheld, surrounded and enfolded by
such love, we reach the line that tells us – that perfect love drives out all
fear because we have no doubt that whatever may come, even death itself – will
come into a space that is already occupied by God’s love – so we do not need to
be afraid. We can at all times approach our Father in confidence and in love.
The second call then is to
overflow into others.
In verse 19 we read
We love because he first loved us.
Note carefully how this
reads. There is no ‘should’ or ‘must’ written in this line. As one of the
commentators writes
“It is not "we ought to love because he first loved
us" as if God's love were the ground for a new imperative. It is "we can love because he first loved us."
God's love is the ground for a new possibility.
While any human analogy falls
short it’s like a child who grows up knowing love, is thus able to give love
and affection, while a child who has known only apathy or rejection responds
with fear and suspicion and withdrawal.
We have known a love that
is undeserved and generous and merciful.
Thus we are able to give
love that is undeserved and generous and merciful.
In all the commands we
receive it always starts with God. In the passage we started earlier in John
15, the vine and the branches – it is because the branches stay attached to the
vine that they bear fruit – that they are able to show love. Branches don’t
force themselves to bear fruit… it’s not something they can create from
themselves – it happens naturally because they remain attached. Jesus says in
this section;
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater
love has no one that this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
As he finishes washing His
disciples feet he says – As I have done
to you, so you do to others.
Even the great commandments
begin with loving God, and then loving others.
As I have loved you – so
you too must love one another.
“We love because he first loved us.”
And something struck me as
incredible as I read our passage and this is the thought I want to leave with
you this morning. There is a line in verse 17 after saying that when we live in
love we live in God and God lives in us… it then says we have confidence
“because in this world we are like him”
When we love one another,
we represent God to the world. Not because we are all powerful or all knowing.
But by allowing the love that God has showered on us to overflow, we make this divine
love real and visible in the ordinary lives of ordinary people. God invites us
to let Jesus live in us, so that through us Jesus can continue to welcome
outcasts and touch untouchables and heal the broken. When God’s unimaginable,
limitless love comes alive in us, we become the real presence of God in the
world.
The world sees God in us.
We love, to see God at work.
And so when people wonder
where God is, or why God seems distant or silent… remember that he lives in
you, and His love flows through you. When the believers at Antioch, our theme
passage in Acts tells us, were called Christians. It’s because they were being
Jesus to the world. Little Christs.
We have the incredible opportunity to be the
same.
I pray that you go into
this week holding in your head and your heart the wonder of this love. That you
will learn to abide, to make yourself at home in His love. And that you will
overflow, that it will spill over simply because a love this amazing cannot be
contained.
And that through this – when
people see us – they will see God, because we will be like Him.
Let us pray.
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