This is the message given on Sunday morning, May 9, 2021, in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish. The Bible verses used are 1 John 4:7-21.
God is
love. We say that all the time: God is love. And it’s true,
of course. But I think that sometimes we just say that because it’s
something to say. It’s a slogan. It’s still true, but we say it
without actually thinking about what it means. We say it without thinking
through all the implications of the statement that God is love.
In our reading for tonight, the
Apostle John says that God is love, too. But he goes on to deal with all
the implications of that statement. Let’s look at it.
He says that love comes from
God. If that’s true, that love comes from God, then without God there can
be no love. And John pretty much says that, too. He says that
everyone who loves knows God, and whoever does not love does not know
God. And so, that raises our first question: can someone who does
not know God, love?
Well, yes and no. I’m sure
there are atheists, people who don’t believe in God, who love their spouses and
their children and their parents. But that’s not really what John is
talking about when he’s talking about love. Remember, in Luke Six, Jesus
says, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” He
says everyone does that. Jesus’ command is that we love our enemies, that
we do good to them, that we lend to them without expecting to be paid
back. When John is talking about love, he is talking about the kind of
love God has--a complete, total, unconditional love. That’s the kind of
love you and I, as Christians, are supposed to have. And that’s the kind
of love that we can only have if we know God, because that kind of love comes
from God.
John then goes on to give the
ultimate example of how much God loves us. God loves us so much that he
sent the divine Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to die for us. Jesus
Christ, who was completely without sin, took the punishment that you and I
should get for our sins. He did that so that you and I could have the
chance for salvation and eternal life, if we just believe in Jesus as the
Savior. As John puts it, “This is love: not that we loved God, but
that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
That’s the kind of love you and I
are called to have for each other. Not that we can bring salvation to
anyone--only God can do that--but that we love totally and completely and
unconditionally, like God does. And there is only one way we can do
that--through God’s Holy Spirit living in us. That’s why someone who does
not believe in God cannot love in the way John is talking about here. If
we do not have God’s Holy Spirit living in us, we cannot love the way God
loves.
But even for those of us who do
believe in God, it’s still hard to love in that total, complete, unconditional
way. We cannot do it by ourselves. As John says, we can only do it
through God’s Holy Spirit living in us. But John says there’s one other
thing we need to do. We need to acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of
God. He says, “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God
lives in them and they in God.”
But we say, well, I have
acknowledged that Jesus is the Son of God. And I still don’t love in the
total, complete, unconditional way that God does. Why not?
Well, what does it mean to
acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God? Obviously, it means more than
just saying the words. They’re not a magic formula. When we
acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God, we need to really mean it. We
need to really believe it.
And we say, well, but I do. I
do mean it when I say Jesus is the Son of God. I really do believe
it. But I still struggle with this. Why?
And believe me, I struggle with it,
too. Why? Because what John is talking about here is not just a
commitment of the head. He’s not just talking about having an
intellectual belief that Jesus is the Son of God. John is talking about a
lifestyle. John is talking about acknowledging Jesus is the Son of God
with every action we take. With every word we say. With every
thought we think. Every aspect of our lives needs to acknowledge that
Jesus is the Son of God. This is not something we can do once and then
we’re done with it. It’s something we need to do every day. Every
hour. Every minute. Acknowledging that Jesus is the Son of God
needs to be something we do all the time.
And that’s what, so much of the
time, we fail at. We spend far too much of our time not acknowledging
that Jesus is the Son of God. In fact, we spend far too much of our time
not thinking about Jesus at all.
Let me ask you: how often,
during a normal day, do you think about Jesus? You’ll have to answer that
for yourself, but I know that for me that answer is “not nearly as often as I
should.” And it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s not that I
intentionally ignore Jesus. It’s just that, well, I get distracted.
I think about baseball. Or music. Or my work. And of course,
that last one I can justify to myself because I can say, well, my work is about
Jesus. Well, yeah, but preparing a sermon or preparing confirmation class
or doing the other things I do is not necessarily the same thing as acknowledging
that Jesus is the Son of God. It can be, if I bring the right attitude to
it, and sometimes I do. But far too often I don’t.
Now, I’m not saying we have to
consciously think about nothing but Jesus every minute of our lives. But
Jesus needs to be involved in all of it. And the thing is, it can be so
easy for us to kind of compartmentalize Jesus. We think about Jesus when
we’re in church. And maybe when we pray. And maybe if we do a daily
Bible reading or a daily devotion. And then--we get up, we go about our
business, and we leave Jesus behind. We don’t think about Jesus at all
until the next daily devotion, or the next Bible reading, or the next Sunday in
church. We go acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God while we’re doing those
“Jesus” things, but we don’t acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God the rest of
the time. And so we do not love totally and completely and
unconditionally. We do not love as God loves because we do not have God’s
Holy Spirit living in us. And we do not have God’s Holy Spirit living in
us because we are not acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God.
So, how do we move forward?
John tells us that, too. We move forward by constantly feeling God’s
love.
John says, “We know and rely on the
love God has for us.” And later, “We love because he first loved us.”
The key to acknowledging Jesus as
the Son of God all the time is feeling God’s love for us all the time.
And for me, that makes it a lot easier. Acknowledging Jesus as the Son of
God all the time sounds hard for me. I’m not sure I can do that.
I’m not even sure I want to. But feeling God’s love all the time?
That’s something I think I can do. And in fact, it’s something I want to
do. Who wouldn’t?
It’s not always easy, of course.
We all have times when things go wrong. And sometimes they’re important
things, dealing with ourselves or our loved ones. When things go
seriously wrong, it can be hard to feel God’s love.
But we can still do it, even in
those times. If we can take a step back, and get past our current
situation, we can think of all kinds of times we’ve felt God’s love. We
can think of all kinds of times God has been there for us and helped us through
whatever we were going through. We can know that, if God has been there
for us in the past, God will be there for us again. And we can be
confident that, if God’s love has been there for us before, God’s love is still
there for us. We can feel God’s love, even in those hard times.
God is love, and love comes from
God. If we feel God’s love, we will be able to acknowledge that Jesus is
the Son of God. If we acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God, we will have
God’s Holy Spirit living within us. And with the help of God’s Holy
Spirit we’ll be able to love like God loves: completely, totally, and
unconditionally. Then we will know how it feels to live in God, and have
God live in us. And once we have that feeling, we’ll never want to be
without it.
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