Back to Love “God is love; because God is in us, we are called to love.”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. David McMaster
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Text: 1 John 4:7-21
It's been quite a week. Last Sunday, there was a sermon on love. On Thursday, cards of love were given and received and restaurants were packed as Valentines peered across candlelit tables into each other's eyes. On Friday, here at the church, we were greatly spoiled by some of the tremendous musical talent present in our choir in the concert, Songs of Love and Passion. It seems that I cannot let this week end without getting back to the theme of love one more time.
I remember about 20 years ago, the associate minister of the church I was attending entered the pulpit on a Sunday evening, announced his text, and then apologized. He said that he had been surprised in the morning service when the senior minister preached a sermon on the same text; unbeknownst to both of them, they had decided to speak on the same text on the same day and neither of them used the prayer book or lectionary that lists prescribed readings for the day. The associate minister told the congregation, as he continued, “God must really be trying to teach you something from this verse.”
It is certainly true that repetition helps drive a point home. The New Testament writers knew that as well as anyone and some of them used repetition as a literary device to emphasize an important teaching. John, no less than others, used repetition to get across the important themes. One such theme was the importance of love in the Christian life. In his first letter, he had already shared that he was giving them a commandment that is both old and new: They were to love one another. (2:7 ff.) He had already asked them to love at sacrificial levels; they should be ready to lay down their lives for one another and help one another in times of need. (3:16-18) Again in Chapter 4, he returns to this theme that is mentioned so often by the New Testament writers.
When someone teaches as explicitly on a subject as John does in his epistle, one must assume that a problem had occurred and needed to be addressed. Scholars have long noted that John writes as a loving pastor seeking to help a struggling Church find the right path. He writes in the closing years of the first century and some think that the Church, although it was still very much a missionary movement, was already suffering from fatigue and the problem of the amount of time that had elapsed. More than few years had passed since Christ had first been preached and there were those who had been associated with the Church for many years. There were some second, even third generation Christians and it is suggested that for some, perhaps, the thrill of the first days and of new discovery had passed away. The initial glory, the splendour that was felt about the Faith, the radiance that had been seen on peoples' faces as they had encountered Christ had faded. Christianity had become a thing of habit - half-hearted, nominal. As one New Testament scholar put it, “The flame of devotion had become a flicker and the Church was facing struggles that had the potential to douse the fire altogether.” (cf. Rev. 2:4)
One of the struggles was with one another. There were times when animosities surfaced. John doesn't get into the details, but we know of such struggles in Corinth some 40 years earlier. In 1 Corinthians, Paul mentions that believers were taking sides, squabbling over who was converted and baptized by the best evangelist. He writes of incest, and of believers filing lawsuits against one another. 1 Corinthians tells us, among other things, that the early Church, as it reached into the gentile world, was a very human environment and in John's community, one of the issues was that there was not always love.
I recall coming face to face with this sort of thing in a church that I served some years ago. One night at a mid-week Bible study, some things were said about disunity in the church. I was surprised when grievances were aired and embarrassed that this had occurred in the presence of a couple new to our church and our study. I was sure that the new couple would not want to get involved in a church in conflict, so I quickly changed the subject. Later, I asked all those who had been a part of the congregation for 10 years or more to speak with me after.
We went into another room. Quietly, I told them that I had sensed hostility during the study and didn't think that we should air those things in front of new folk. “What is the problem?” I asked. Wrong question! Whereas I was expecting some academic, arms-length discussion of some simple misunderstanding that we could work out, I encountered individuals lashing out at one another. One person let out a stream of past hurts and accusations he had encountered. He named names! Others questioned his view of things and hit back with hurts they had experienced. Words went back and forth. The room seemed filled with animosity; these people were not getting along and had not been for years. I began to realize that my ministry at that church was going to be an uphill battle. It lacked love.
Harry Emerson Fosdick, former minister of the famous Riverside Church in New York City, used to speak of how religion was morally ambiguous. In some lives it can refresh and fructify the moral soil of a person's life, in others it can bring flood and ruin. In a sermon titled, What is Our Religion Doing to our Characters? he speaks of how some of the worst characters in history as well as some of the best have been motivated by religion. “Although it has been anything but,” he says, “the Christian record should have been a symphony played upon the theme of the 13th chapter of First Corinthians.” True Christianity should be marked by love, and 1 John 4 has some very important things to say to us about love.
The first thing that jumps out at us from this passage is the great statement, “God is love.” (vv.8, 16) “God is love.”
There is a story told about the great Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon noticed one day a weather vane on the roof of a farm building. The weather vane bore the words, “God is love.” “Do you think God's love is as changeable as that weather vane?” he asked the farmer. The farmer smiled and replied, “You miss the point, sir; those words are on the weather vane because no matter which way the wind is blowing, God is still love.”
“God is love.” There is great truth here. It is a statement that describes not only an abstract theological point, but also a fundamental aspect of God's character. Love exists in the very “essence” of God. Love exudes from God's being. God's activities are marked with love. It was in love that God created us. It is in love that God sustains us. It is in love that God cares for and interacts with his creation. It was and is in love that God brought redemption and eternal life. God did not need to do these things but he did them because his very character is love. “God is love.”
Then John focuses our attention on the incarnational and redemptive aspects of God's love when he writes,
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. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. (vv.9, 10)
Thus, the second thing we can take from this passage is that the greatest revelation of the love of God is in his incarnation and the atoning sacrifice. In order to give human beings the opportunity of eternal life, a great, almighty, holy God took upon himself human flesh (4:1-6) in all its weakness in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The divine Son humbled himself. As the Apostle Paul puts it,
He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in our likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Phil.2:7 f.)
God's love was a deep love, a vast love, a love that would see his only son bear the wounds inflicted on him by his creation and then offer a full and free pardon. In the passion of the Christ the words that are written for us in John's Gospel are fulfilled: “Greater love has no man than this, than that he lay down his life for his friends.” (Jn.15:13)
I am always moved by an example of that kind of love that came out of a concentration camp. Late in July 1941, a man escaped from Auschwitz. To the anger of the commandant, the escapee was never caught. He dragged the men from Barracks 14 and made them stand in the hot sun all day. In the evening, he passed sentence - screaming at the top of his lungs that 10 would die in the starvation bunker for the one who had escaped. There was a great sigh at the punishment. Anything was better than the starvation bunker. The gallows, a bullet in the head, even the gas chambers - anything was better. With no water or food, the prisoners' throats turned to paper, their brains to fire; their inner parts shrivelled up.
As the camp commandant went around picking individuals, one of the chosen groaned, “O, my poor wife! My poor children! What will they do?” The 10 were quickly separated from the others, but just then there was a commotion in the ranks. A prisoner came forward calling for the commandant. It was a Polish priest, Maximillian Kolbe. He said softly to the commandant, “I would like to die in place of one of the men you condemned.” “Fine!” said the commandant, in one of his weaker moments, and Kolbe took the place of the man who bemoaned what might happen to his wife and family.
The story of Kolbe's leadership in the starvation bunker as he and the other nine waited for death is nothing short of amazing. Ultimately, Kolbe gave his life for another. He took his lead from his Lord. In Kolbe we see a small glimpse of God's love. He did it for one; Christ did it for many on a cross at Golgotha. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…”
So first, “God is love,” and second, God has revealed his love in his Son, Jesus Christ to bring about redemption. The third thing we can take from this passage is John's assertion that because God is love, God's people ought to love one another. (v.11ff.) He has said it now several times in the epistle, and the logical structure at this point is not always clear, but there are several arguments used to exhort the community to love.
He talks about how God has taken the first step and initiated love, thus we ought to love in return. (10, 19) He speaks of how love working in and through us gives us assurance that God is indeed in us and this gives boldness on the day of judgement. (vv.16 ff.) He asks those who do not exhibit love how they can claim to love God, whom they have not seen, while they cannot love their brothers and sisters whom they have seen. (v.20) He even speaks again of love as a commandment. (4:21; 3:23) But there is one argument that I want to highlight briefly.
John's most important word to us, in a practical sense, is this: He is speaking as one who has the Spirit of God in him (vv.13) and was an eyewitness to the events surrounding Jesus. (1:1-4; 4:14) With this authority, he says that God abides in anyone who confesses that Jesus is the Son of God. With the same authority, he adds that those who abide in love abide in God and God in them. A few verses earlier, he had said that “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” The flipside is, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (vv.7, 8) John's words are thus a word of assurance and a word of warning. They are assuring in the sense that love is a sign that a person is a true Christian, that God is truly at work in that person. They are a warning in that a person's failure to love suggests, perhaps, that the person does not know God as well as he/she should. Those who have God in them will love, because God is love and love issues forth from God; if he is in us, we exhibit love.
I witnessed a tremendous example, the positive here, of God's love working through people in another church I served. During the years of Communist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, a couple escaped from behind the iron curtain. They were church people, and they managed to get out with their son and daughter. It was a dramatic escape, a tremendous story, but after months of searching for a country to take them they finally arrived in Canada with nothing. They had limited English skills, no Canadian work experience and no income. As the weeks went by, they faithfully attended our Methodist Church. People began to feel sorry for them, to help them. They supplied grocery baskets and other things but they wondered how they might help them more. It was not a large church - 120 in attendance - and the congregation had decided to take on a second pastor, which made finances tight. However, together they decided that they would secretly help the couple. They approached a company in town that did work similar to that which the man of the house had done in the Soviet Union and asked them if they would take him on. At first the company balked, but when the church indicated that it would fund his job for a year, the personnel people were so impressed that they gave in. It was to be a secret. Mikael was never to know and it has remained unknown to the family ever since (I've changed a few details here to keep it that way). God's people made some sacrifices and Mikael got his foothold in the Canadian employment system. He had a chance to work and support his family while they all learned English. God's love was at work and people filled with God's Spirit were showing a very practical love to a family in need. (That family have since blessed the church.)
God is love and because God is in us, we are called to love like that church did; to love as God has loved us. We are called to love even when it is costly; even when it is difficult to do so. In the coming weeks and months, we have a wonderful opportunity as a church to show that same love to a refugee family from Rwanda, which we have agreed to support. This family will need so much from us as they orient themselves to a new country and way of life. That will be one opportunity to show God at work in this congregation. But beyond that, as the season of Lent continues, we may wish to think as individuals about how the love of God ought to work out in our daily lives. How will the love of God in us help our relationships with our spouses, children, siblings, parents, in-laws, difficult co-workers? How do you think that will work out in our relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ? How will that work out when we are opposed, ridiculed, maligned for stances we take? Friends, we are called to love for that is how God has dealt with us … in love.