Love? What's Love Got to Do With It?
Notes
Transcript
Seven Things Non-Christians Say About Christians
Seven Things Non-Christians Say About Christians
7. I wish a Christian would take me to his or her church.
7. I wish a Christian would take me to his or her church.
6. Some Christians try to act like they have no problems.
6. Some Christians try to act like they have no problems.
5. I wish I could learn to be a better husband/wife/dad/mom, etc., from a Christian.
5. I wish I could learn to be a better husband/wife/dad/mom, etc., from a Christian.
4. I don’t see much difference in the way Christians live compared to others.
4. I don’t see much difference in the way Christians live compared to others.
3. I would like to learn about the Bible from a Christian.
3. I would like to learn about the Bible from a Christian.
2. I would like to develop a friendship with a Christian.
2. I would like to develop a friendship with a Christian.
And the #1 thing that non-Christians say about Christians:
1. Christians are against more things than they are for.
1. Christians are against more things than they are for.
According to Thom Rainer, the author of the 2020 article, “What Non-Christians Really Think About Christians,” from whence these statements came, “only 5 percent of non Christians are antagonistic toward Christians.” It seems like we are spending more time arguing with other Christians than we are arguing with non-Christians. How many of you can testify to that statement?
Did you also notice that, of the seven statements, four of them expressed a desire for a positive interaction, even a relationship, with a Christian? Is it possible that we have been sold a bill of goods by Satan in an effort to keep us from doing what we have been called and equipped to do; “make disciples…?”
In his Concordia Commentary: John 1:1-7:1, William C. Weinrich wrote the following regarding how he came to desire to write it: “what Ignatius helped me to see in John was the centrality of the crucified Jesus. This may seem evident and superficial. Yet the martyrological perspective of Ignatius allowed me to see—now also by way of John’s Gospel—that the crucified Jesus is not only an instrument unto salvation and eternal life but is also himself the substance and form of the Christian life which is redeemed and so from God and of God, that is, eternal life.”
William C. Weinrich, John 1:1–7:1, ed. Dean O. Wenthe and Curtis P. Giese, Concordia Commentary (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2015), xiv.
The substance and form of the Christian life is clearly declared in today’s Gospel reading. Our Christian faith is only real, and our testimony only is true if it abides in Christ, and if it does so, it is because, as St. Paul wrote in Galatians 5:6 (ESV) For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
Love for the Lord, and love for one another: this is the fuel that energizes, even as it is the Holy Spirit who is the fire that ignites, our Christian life. A “faith” that contains no love is not faith in Christ, it is faith in a philosophy, and in fact, is no faith at all. The rise of pietism was the human response to the appearance of dead orthodoxy, but even that fell short because it’s focus was on the problem rather than upon the solution.
9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
The Word of the Lord undergirds the reality of all that is. The psalmist writes in Psalm 29:4 that:
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
He goes on to say,
8 The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; The Lord shakes the Wilderness of Kadesh. 9 The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth, And strips the forests bare; And in His temple everyone says, “Glory!”
The power of God’s declaration both destroys, and produces. It destroys that which is temporal, and brings forth that which is eternal. Jesus has told the disciples what will take place that night and over the next three days. He has told them what is to come in the Missio Dei - the Sending of God - and the role that they will play of reflecting His life by their fruitfulness. He now tells them that it is by the love of God that they will, in fact, fulfill His will. Not only that they can do so; they will do so! In so doing, they will discover the joy that eludes both the sinner and the self-righteous, the joy of the Lord.
11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
The world knows of this word, “joy,” but only in part. Mirriam - Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines it as 1 a: the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires: DELIGHT
Inc Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2003).
Joy in its fulness can only be experienced in the Kingdom of God. One bible encyclopedia includes, in its description:
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised B. Joy Not of This World
It is this joy that characterizes the kingdom of God—a kingdom, Jesus said, that is not of this world (Jn. 18:36). In this connection Paul says: “For the kingdom of God does not mean food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). It is the Holy Spirit who is the source of this joy (Gal. 5:22; 1 Thess. 1:6; cf. Acts 13:52; Rom. 15:13), and this joy is, on the one hand, joy in the hope of our inheritance (Rom. 5:2; 12:12; cf. Rom. 15:13) and, on the other hand, joy in suffering.
This is the joy that Jesus knew, such that it overcame all that the devil threw at Him:
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
As the old Gospel song declares, “This joy that I have - the world didn’t give it to me.... The world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away!” This joy is the fruit of our transformation from slaves and enemies to sons and friends.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
All that the lusts of the world desires but cannot have, all that satan offers but cannot give, can be found in these words. We struggle to know the riches of this promise, because it is unlike anything that we have experienced under the sun. It does not come with earthly success and achievement, fame and adulation, or fortune and economic security. People experience all of these things and yet joy eludes them. People indulge every and all of their whims, yet it eludes them. They look for it in flesh - based marriages, and then try to capture it in disappointing divorces.
The love of God - the love that, first of all, is born in us by the Holy Spirit as He works through the preached Word to bring us to life in Christ and sustains that life in Divine Service. That love then flows through us as we are empowered to love our neighbor - the one whom God places in our paths in order that we might serve them from the table of the Lord - not the table of fellowship, the Lord’s Supper, but the table that God prepares in the presence of our enemies, the table that is filled with love, joy, peace, goodness, faithfulness, kindness, and self-control. The table that has wisdom and encouragement. The table of the fullness of joy that we have in Christ. At that table, we share in Christ’s joy, we rejoice to share in His sufferings, to bear in our bodies, the marks of the Lord Jesus, to be, for our neighbor, even when our neighbor does not recognize the need that makes him or her our neighbor, doesn’t feel the wounds and bruises that the devil has left as his calling card.
It is this love that is the fruit of our being in Christ.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
You cannot “fake it until you make it” because it cannot be humanly made. It is a divine gift, freely given to God’s children. It is received by those who “taste and see that the Lord is good.” It is the fruit of faith. It is because of this that Isaiah can say:
17 no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.”
Jesus didn’t just offer it to them that night, He bequeathed it to them as their inheritance, and through each generation, the church has passed that inheritance on to its children. It is now our turn to pass it on to the next generation as well take hold to what our Lord spoke to His disciples on the day that He returned to His Father, and our Father, in heaven:
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Another old song declares, “I get joy when I think about what He’s done for me.” As we remember our baptism, as we receive the gift of absolution, the free and full pardon for our sins purchased by Christ’s death and resurrection, as we share in the bread of life and the cup of fellowship, the Lord’s Body and Blood, and as we experience “the mutual conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters,” gifts all, from the hand of our God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
You want to know what love is? That’s love, my friends, “that’s love.”
And may the peace of God, that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.