Communicating Christ's Love.

Well, we're currently in a sermon series on the letters from John. That's 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John, which are letters written by John. So today we're continuing in that. We're going to be in First John chapter 4, but before we go there I want to talk about words. I like words. I'm a words person.

When I was little, my teacher said I talked too much. I just like to say I enjoy words. Vocabulary, lexicon. It's important to be able to express yourself. And today I want to talk about how words are difficult sometimes and they mean different things to different people.

My parents. My mom was born and raised in Puerto Rico. My dad was born and raised in New York City. And when they met, my mom didn't speak any English. She had been out of Puerto Rico for all of two months, whereas my dad had grown up his whole life in New York City. So he spoke a lot of English, had broken Spanish. My mom only spoke Spanish. And they dated like that. They got married, and they were still like that. From their first date to their wedding day was 11 months. They moved at the speed of light, and they didn't learn their languages very well in that time frame.

There's this story that my mom has never lived down. My dad tells everybody this story. It's like a joke in our family. If someone's on your nerves or bothering you, to say, I'm going to give you a cookie. And you're like, why would you say that? Well, because in Puerto Rico, "te voy a meter una galleta" means I'm going to backhand you. But galleta translates to cookie.

So my dad and my mom were newlyweds, and my dad was getting on her nerves, and she was trying to speak English, so she said, I'm going to give you a cookie. And it didn't mean the same thing. It was the right word, but it did not mean the same thing. Words mean different things in different contexts, to different people, because words are complicated.

I think there's this one word in the church lexicon, the church vocabulary, and really in everything, because this word isn't just one thing, but we're going to talk about it in the context of church. That's the same thing. We're saying galleta when we really mean cookie, and it's the same word, but it means two completely different things. And I think that word is love. We've been talking about love a lot in the past couple of weeks because John talks about love a lot.

I'm about to read this passage, and it says love a lot, okay? So it's going to be 1 John chapter 4, verses 7 through 21.

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. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us. He has given us of his spirit and we have seen and testified that the Father has sent his son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they 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 them. This is how love is made complete among us, so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment. In this world, we are like Jesus. 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 made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God, yet hates a brother or sister, is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

1 John 4:7-21

John writes the word love or some iteration of it 29 times in 14 verses. Anytime a biblical writer repeats a word with this type of frequency, we need to take note. This is significant. Repetition in scripture matters immensely, and there's plenty of repetition here.

Love as our fundamental need

When it comes to love and what is love and all these different things, I think it's important to understand that love, a fundamental desire of our humanity, a fundamental need of our humanity, is that we define love really early in life. How we define love today is going to be based in our presuppositions, and what our presuppositions are rooted in. We presuppose what love means based on how we've been loved. We presuppose love based on our own capacity to love.

I think it's why a lot of times we talk about how, as humans, we understand love in a transactional way. It's the ability to give and receive love. We understand love in the context of a feeling. It's that lovey-dovey, mushy, warm feeling in your chest. It's the tearjerker in the movie. It's the way the dad plays with the daughter that makes you be like, oh, how cute. It's the rom-com. It's all those things.

We have the ability, and what the scripture is telling us is to presuppose that God is love. But when we say that, we can presuppose what God is love means based on how we understand and define that love. So we say God is love, and that can be a really watered-down sentence. That can be really simple and easy, like yeah sure, God is love, because we understand that. But the most important observation about love in this passage comes from the declaration that God is love.

God is love is an ontological statement. Ontology is how you define the nature of a being, what makes up a being. This is an ontological statement about what makes God, God. By saying that God is love, John teaches us that God's love for us flows from his character. In the same way that God is good and God does good, God is love and God does love. We are creatures that sometimes love. God never ceases to be loving, because if he did, he would cease to be God. What makes God God is that he is love. His nature of love demands his outpouring of love.

And as I was reading this, it was just really interesting to me, because in reality, this declaration of God being love is ultimately a declaration of what the gospel is. We are incredibly self-centered people, and we tend to approach scripture like it's a revelation of us. We look for ourselves in the story and in the characters, and we're always trying to find a way to stick ourselves in the middle of scripture. But scripture is the revelation of God. So the gospel is not about what God did for you. The gospel is telling you something about who God is. What Jesus did on the cross is a revelation of who Jesus is. The gospel is about Jesus.

The gospel impacts us more than literally anything else. It is what he did for you, but it's about God.

God is love

God is love, and John not only tells us that here in his letter, he also tells it to us in his gospel in John 3:16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him.

John 3:16

God is love, and the gospel is the evidence of what has always been true. And in that, as we read this and continue in that passage, he talks about God. This is how we know love, that God loved us, not that we loved God. God's love takes initiative in seeking a relationship with us, even at great cost to himself. Even from the beginning of scripture, when we begin to see prophecies of Jesus coming, nobody asked for a messiah that would die on the cross. It was God's plan to initiate, pursuing, seeking, and saving us.

This story of the gospel is not that God came and saved me and I'm good. It's that love itself, perfect, holy, unmatched, definitive love, loved you, and now you can and must love others. God goes first. That's what makes it holy and perfect love. This love is not in any way dependent on us and our ability to either initiate or reciprocate. God's love pursues us. This love is a gift that we get to receive. We just get to be God's beloved, and we get to learn how to love him in return, and that's beautiful.

I listened to this podcast a couple of weeks ago, probably a couple of months ago to be honest. I don't know. I listen to a lot of podcasts. And as I was writing this, I thought about what one of the women in the podcast was saying. She had just written a book, so they were asking about her book. In it, one of the chapter titles is "I Didn't Love My Husband When I Married Him."

So they were asking her about that, because that's a kind of bold statement. And this is what she said. She said, well, I didn't love my husband. I loved how he made me feel. I just didn't know that at the time. I had to learn how to love my husband, and I'll spend the rest of my life doing just that.

And something that I've seen over and over again is we just don't know what to do with God's love. And we talk about, well, what does that mean. How do I love God, especially because we do have a transactional understanding of love. So how do I love someone I have nothing to offer him. Well, my love language is acts of service. Well, all the service in the world doesn't change or impact God's love. And all the work, like how do I love a being that doesn't need me, that doesn't need anything from me. Well, I think there's this grace, and we get to spend the rest of our lives learning how to do that. And there's not a pressure of, well, I'm a good Christian, I'm a bad Christian. You're a person learning to. You are a finite being learning to love an infinite being. These are two different playing fields, and you get to spend the rest of your life learning to love God.

The love command

A really blatant way, put in scripture, and it's better because it's not easy to do, is: to love God is to love others. Almost every time God says to love God, it's followed with what John refers to as the love command. To love others. This love is a gift, but it is also a duty. The love command is not an optional extra. It's not a level we at some point achieve. It is the only appropriate response to being loved by God. Out of being loved by God, we have a duty and a command to love others.

I think in the same way we say, well, how do I love God, it's kind of the same conversation. Okay, well, how do I love others like Jesus. I'm not Jesus. And how do I do this. And it feels really impossible. And I agree, it feels really impossible. And I don't really have like a step-by-step formula of like, this is how you love others like Jesus. I just know that it's not impossible, because I've seen it. And because I've been loved by people in such a way that points me to divinity.

I know that it is possible to love people like Jesus because of my now old boss. I guess I don't work for him anymore. I've watched that man, my doctor, come in and love people in such a way that is undeniably Christ-like. To serve people, not out of duty and must and mandate, but because he views people with the honor and dignity of being Christ's creation, and he loves them as such. I know that it is possible to love like Christ because I've been loved by others like Christ, and I can look to them and believe that that's worth emulating.

The love command is twofold. It is both ontological. It's based in who God is. God is love. The love command is also experiential. God sent his son. God's character mandates God's behavior. And so as we become more like God, those who are loved by God, this is how it's known that we have knowledge of Christ. Our ability to love others is indicative of our knowledge of Christ. In being loved by God and transformed to be more like him, we then love like him and treat others and love others like him.

As you continue in the passage, it says perfect love casts out fear. And I want to stay on that track. When we look at what scripture says, it's a revelation of God, not of us. And I think when we read perfect love casts out fear, we have a temptation and an inclination in all of our American-ness, in all of our individualized culture, to see that love casts out fear, and that means that we have to live in a little peaceful bubble. But the point of love casting out fear is so that we would step outside of ourselves and bring love elsewhere.

The statement that perfect love casts out fear is not followed up with something mushy-gushy. The statement, perfect love casts out all fear, is followed up with, we love because he first loves us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. Perfect love casts out all fear. The perfect love of God enables us to bring heaven to earth. The perfect love of God enables us to look like Jesus in our communities and to love others. God's character is our safety. God's nature being love makes him safe and secure for us. And we can step out. We can bring heaven to earth. We can show people who Jesus is because of his perfect love for us.

Let heaven come

Just today, kind of as I was before service looking through my message and kind of prepping it, I thought of the Lord's Prayer. And I was thinking really similarly to how sometimes we take the Lord's Prayer to mean Jesus like, just help me be on earth as clean-cut and impossible until I get to go to heaven. Right. Don't let me be tempted into sin. Come feed me. And we make it about how can I just get to heaven and how can I make this go quickly. And we do the same thing when we talk about love.

God is love. Yay, I'm loved. And you are. You're so loved. Hallelujah, beloved. You are. You're so loved. But if being loved by love itself does not propel you to love others, then you have missed it. In the same way when we pray the Lord's Prayer and we say things like, let heaven come, we're not calling out for an easier life here. We're calling out for Jesus to be made known here.

How is Jesus supposed to be made known? Through his church. And that is you. And that is me. The point of being loved by love itself is that love might overflow. And that there might be an abundance of love that drives out fear. To love people in such a way that reflects Christ, that the way you love someone drives out their anxiety, that the way you love someone drives out their worry. To be such a presence of peace because of the love in you is to bring it. It is to answer the prayer. It is to answer the cry of let your kingdom come and your will be done. His will is that we might love as he first loved us.

Receiving and reflecting God's love

I'm going to invite you guys to stand up on your feet. I have three little things I'd like for you to do, but I really want you to do them. So maybe just write down the headers, and then you can go home and do them in your quiet time.

The first one is honestly really simple. I think the first step in trying to figure out that we're in a loving union and a loving relationship with God is to learn to just receive God's love. This is how we stop that transactional understanding in our mind, is to just say, Lord, I receive your love for me. Receive God's love and rest in God's love.

The second thing I want to do, which is something I did as I was preparing this message, is to reflect on where you've seen others love in such a way that points you to Jesus. How have you seen this lived out? What are some real examples and real ways? Who has loved you in such a way that reminded you of the cross? Is there someone who models this well? Maybe to you, maybe it's the way you see them love others. And I want to challenge you to tell them this week. To honor them. And tell them, hey, I see Jesus in the way you love me. I see Jesus in the way you love others. And honor them for that.

I don't think we realize the power and exhortation and encouraging the body. Loving others well is hard. Jesus loved us through sacrifice. Exhorting others and saying, hey, I see how you love others and it points me to Jesus. And lastly, I want you to think and pray how you can live out God's love for others. How did God design you uniquely in such a way that you could reflect a special part of his love for others? Are you the inviter? Can you invite someone that really hasn't been at any of the group functions this week and include them? Are you a baker? Can you make some cookies for someone? Can you be a listening ear? Whatever it is, however the Lord prompts you, this week just be consistently looking and praying for an opportunity to love like Jesus.

Closing prayer

I'm going to pray for us, and then we're going to do a little worship. And in that worship, my prayer would be that we would look to Jesus instead of looking for ourselves in how we bring forth the gospel.

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you so much that you are love, that you love us in such a way that is completely incomparable to anything else. You are divine and set apart and different, and all of that love, all of who you are, is for your people. We are your beloved. You're the object of your affection. Lord, I pray that we might be open and humbled by your love. And as we receive your love for us, that it might overflow, and that anything that might stop it, distract us, or make us pause or want to hold it back, Lord, that it would be moved aside, and that we would willingly, joyously love the world around us.

Jesus, we thank you for being who you are, that you're true to your word, you're true to your character, that you are not a man that you should lie. You're loving and you're faithful. Jesus, we thank you, and it's in your holy name I pray. Amen.