Learning to Love
(1 John 4: 7-21)
In case you haven’t noticed, I enjoy having baby Kai in our congregation on Sunday mornings and I really appreciate her mother for bringing her to worship with us, and worship she does. I really do think Kai gets a lot out of our services. Although she can’t speak yet, she can sing, loudly, making a joyful noise. She hears people in the congregation speaking out, usually during joys and concerns, so if she has something on her mind, she lets us know. At the end of the service, she sees us holding hands, so she holds hands with the person next to her. And recently she has started putting offering envelopes into the collection plate when Ted or Pat come to her because for some reason the guy up front really likes those envelopes. And she really likes our hospitality time as she gets to meet and greet her church family. She can tell by the looks on their faces that they really like her, and she likes them. She loves her mama, her daddy, her doting grandparents, and her extended family, but she is really learning to love her church family and, whether she realizes it or not, is becoming a valued member of the family of God, learning to love and sharing her love.
And this is where we pick up this morning, living and loving as Christ would have us live and love. Last week we learned that the Apostle John spoke about not loving with words or speech but with action and truth. This, he said, is how we will know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts in God’s presence. He goes on to say: Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love. He reminds us that the love of God was revealed to us through the sending of His only Son into the world so that we could learn to live through him. John says: This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins. What the Apostle is saying is that God’s love revealed in Jesus’ self-sacrifice, establishes the manner by which believers love each other. Our love for each other naturally follows from the love that God showed us by sending Jesus into the world as a living example of how we should unconditionally love one another, much like a small child.
The Apostle continues by saying: Dear friends, if God loved us this way, we also ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, God remains in us and his love is made perfect in us. What he is saying is that not only is the source of love from God, but the believers’ transformed capacity to love each other is born from God. And John tells us, that we remain in God and he in us because he has given us a measure of his Spirit. The Spirit lives within us, guiding us and shaping us as we live and interact with others in all sorts of situations and experiences both good and bad, positive and negative. John tells us that God is love, and that those who remain in love remain in God and God remains in them. This, he says, is how love has been perfected in us, so that we can have confidence on the Judgment Day, because we are exactly the same as God is in this world. Those who are reborn of God love rather than hate, tell the truth rather than lie, do not sin rather than engage in the works of the devil, and so on. We do the opposite of what a corrupt society does, expects, and condones because it is the right thing to do, and because of that we have no fear of the coming judgment. The person who is afraid has not been made perfect in love. John underscores this when he says: If anyone says, I love God, and hates a brother or sister, he is a liar, because the person who doesn’t love a brother or sister who can be seen can’t love God, who can’t be seen. This commandment we have from him: Those who claim to love God ought to love their brother and sister also. The so-called believer who claims a relationship with God but then hates another believer is a fraud.
Christians, true followers of the way of Jesus Christ, are able to practice love because God loved them first, not only to give them a new capacity to love others, but to reveal in Christ the right manner of loving others self-sacrificially as we learned last week by our action hero acts of service focusing on truth, justice, mercy, and compassion, and not just kind words or speech. And it’s the Holy Spirit who gives us the power to love; he lives in our hearts and makes us more and more like Christ. God’s love always involves a choice and an action, and our love should be like his. And it causes us to ask ourselves how well do we display our love for God in the choices we make and the actions we take?
This love that we have through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ explains why God creates. He creates because He loves. He creates people to love. It explains why God cares. He cares because he loves us, and he cares for sinful people wanting them to come to him. It explains why we are free to choose. God wants a loving response from us to the actions of others that might seem hateful, hurtful, or destructive. It explained why Christ died. He died because his love for us caused him to seek a solution to the problem of sin. And it explains why we receive eternal life. It’s God’s expression of love to us forever.
It’s easy to say we love God when that love doesn’t cost us anything more than weekly attendance at church. The real test of our love for God is how we treat the people right in front of us starting with our family members and fellow believers. We cannot truly love God while neglecting to love those who are created in his image regardless of how unlovable they may seem on the outside. Our job is to learn to love faithfully the people God has given us to love, whether there are two or two hundred of them. Whether they visit us once for clothing or a bowl of soup or live in one of the tiny homes in the very shadow of our church. And when God sees that we are ready to love others, he will send them to us. Yeah, I know it can be scary and unsettling but regardless of any reservations or doubts we may have, we don’t need to be afraid of the love commandment because God will provide us the strength to do what he asks of us.
Everyone believes that love is important, even non-believers believe that, but love is usually thought of as a feeling. In reality, love is a choice and an action as the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 when he said: Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth. Love puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
When we love one another, truly love one another, the invisible God reveals himself to others through us, and his love is made complete. This is how we learn to love, like a little baby who watches our every move, learning by our example of unconditional love in action.
Let us pray.
God of love, God of the love that never fails, God of the love that is patient and kind, teach us to love others as you have so unconditionally loved us. Move us by your Holy Spirit to put our love into action so that the unloved of this world wherever they may be can feel the warmth of your love that brings comfort and peace. Let us love those around us and as we learn how to better share your love with others send those who need to be loved as you would love them. By our experiences as we grow in Christ Jesus may we continue to learn to love and to share with others the gift of your love. In Jesus’ name, we pray, Amen.
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