The Love of Christ for You

Grace, Mercy, and Peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ with great joy this morning we get to look at the Epistle lesson, a famous passage that emphasizes love, and since it is valentines day, it is good that we take a moment to remember on this day what it means here when the Bible talks about love. For St. John tells us that God is Love, we also know from John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (ESV)

Today on a day that is all about Love, that as children of God would want to know what that love truly is. For the love that is talked about here is different than the Love that we find in our world. For while the world professes Love it is not at all the Love that we find in Holy Scripture or the Love that God has for us.

Now when our world talks about Love, it often talks about a feeling of passion, or desire, so not at all the love that God talks about here. For if you think about the ads and various ways in which people talk about loving one another, its not all that godly. It isn’t about leading a sexual pure and decent life in what they say and do and husband and wife love and honor each other. To understand God’s love, you need to understand God’s love for man and how it is revealed in how God identifies Himself and through the work of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

God is our Father, and the love that He has for you is the love that a Father is to have for his children. Now this love is not the passionate feeling we hear talked about on the TV and Radio, it is a different type of love. It is a love that cares about the well-being of another. Even this has become a bit corrupted in our age, so much so that people are a bit surprised by what God’s love involves.

God’s love for us means that He does not accept the fact that we are just sinners, but rather His love seeks to change us. This is part of the reason that folks have trouble understanding how God can be loving and yet He tells them that what they are doing is wrong. Our world thinks that if you love someone that you will just let them be whoever they want to be, do whatever they want to do, how can you stop a person from being who they really are? This is one of the challenges that people have with understanding that God is a loving God, why doesn’t God just let them do what they want?

A Father does not want his children doing or embracing what is wrong or evil, and in his love wishes for his children to be good and do what’s right. Our world considers it kind or polite, that we don’t tell a person what what they are doing is wrong. Initially that was just strangers, or neighbors, but it has grown to mean that even parents cannot correct their children. How can we say that you love someone when they put themselves in danger, and you say nothing? Despite these ideas we still shout or try to help someone if they are in physical danger, but we will remain silent about their spiritual well-being?

God is love. When God saw us in our sins, in our corruption, and He turned to us a Father’s heart. A Father who wants the best for his children, not what His children think is best for them, for children don’t know that, they are led by their desires, and passions, they need correction and help to control those passions. This is why the book of Proverbs 13:24 Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

If we tried to use the definitions that our world uses, that our society uses, we cannot understand this chapter on love because it is doesn’t match what God is saying here. So looking here at v4, where it says that Love is patient and kind, it doesn’t mean permissive. For jump ahead to v6, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. The kindness has to do with gentleness. That doesn’t mean a person is a pushover. When a horse is gentled, you can’t just push the horse over, but that power is under control. Consider a Father who is patient and firm but gentle in what is right and wrong. He doesn’t jump right away to the rod, but saves that for when all other options are exhausted.

This love also doesn’t come from a place of one being better than another or just to be rude, but because God is earnestly seeking your benefit. Consider how great the Love is that God has for the world, that He would bear with you in your sins to bring you to repentance, not demanding that you change all at once and never mess up again or you would lose his love, but coming to us again and again to correct us where we are wrong that we might be saved.

This love does not insist on its own way, which is to say it is not self-seeking, it’s not all about me or my wants, it looks to the benefit of others. Christ was not seeking his own salvation when He went to the Cross, He went there for you. Even though you did not know Him, He did not resent you or was irritated with you, He sought your good.

The hymn for today my song is love unknown hits on that beautifully, love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be? That is what God in Christ did for you. Perhaps the most astonishing thing in this love that God has for you, is found in v7, Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (ESV)

Christ’s love for you began not while you were close to Him, but while you were His enemy. Imagine that on Valentine’s days giving valentines, not to those who love you, but who you despised you that you might win them over. That doesn’t make sense to the world. The world teaches us that we are to love those that love us, or like those that like us, those that think like us, that live like us, that are pleasing to us, but Jesus became like us, and took upon Himself our sin that we might become the righteousness of God.

That is what this love is about, this love is not about the passionate, romantic love we see on romantic comedies. This is a far deeper love than anything we have encountered, indeed we are incapable of it on our own. It goes against our nature, but being the children of God, He wants us to love others with the love with which he loved us.

This is a lot harder than the world thinks, they think love is just a feeling that is reserved for friends and family, and with a bit of grace for those that don’t like them. But consider the 10 Commandments, Honor your Father and Mother is easy when your parents are giving you permission to do what you want, or when in Government, the leaders are people you agree with, it is much harder when you disagree with them, the commandments are for those times when you would rather not love your neighbor. You aren’t to murder or hate the person who wrongs you, adultery is tempting when you aren’t happy with your marital situation be it single or married, the list goes on.

These are just the commandments that have to do with our fellow man, to say nothing of the commandments in relation to God. Which would have you listen to God and obey his voice, when you are doing that, it doesn’t vex, but when the call to repent comes, what then?

But you O Christian are called in love to bear, believe, hope, and endure all things for the sake of your neighbor. Why? for that is what Christ did for you because He loved you.

Hear the Word of God in Ephesians, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

Look there at the Cross of Christ, as we prepare for Lent, what did Jesus not endure for you that you might be saved? What was He unwilling to suffer that you might be forgiven? What motivated all of his actions was love, a love that was firm enough to call sin, sin, but to also seek your good and to change you from being a child of wrath that deserved nothing but punishment to being a child of God, His brother. Because while it would have been just to punish you, because he loved you, he showed you mercy, that’s also love.

So my brothers and sisters in Christ, this day, a day that is fixated on a shallow and cheap love, a love that extends only to those we like or find desirable rather let us love as God and Christ loved us. Let us show the world the Love with which God loved us, that we bring them out of sin and death, and to Jesus Christ their Lord. For there is no greater joy to be found than what we have in Christ. In Jesus name. Amen.