LOVE God

At least once a year I make it a point for us to spend some time talking about the mission of the church. Mission is one of those words that gets used a lot in church. We have a missions committee and we support some people who work as missionaries. Often then, mission is understood as something which is sent forth from this place. In one sense this is true; mission is something which begins here but then moves from this place and is spread out into the world.

But mission is also something which provides intense focus. When someone is determined to complete a project, we sometimes say that person is on a mission to get that project done. We mean that there is focus and intent and purpose. Someone who is bent on a mission prioritizes time and resources towards achieving the goals they are after.

Other times we use the word mission to refer to some kind of event or operation which carries out an objective. The military sends troops out on an assigned mission to achieve some defined objective. NASA launches rockets into space on a mission of some kind—placing a satellite in orbit, or sending astronauts to the International Space Station; and they oversee the whole operation from Houston, the place where NASA has set up what they call “Mission Control.”

mission control - the church provides for us the guidance and support and information that launches us from this place into our daily lives with a defined and focused objective

That’s the frame I want to use for us to think over these next few weeks about the mission of the church; that this place sort of serves as a mission control. The church provides for us the guidance and support and information that launches us from this place into our daily lives with a defined and focused objective. And so, it is a good thing that at least once a year we pause to remind ourselves what we say about that defined focus and objective looks like for us here at Fellowship Church.

This church states our mission using three action words: love, grow, and serve. We say that Fellowship Church exists to love God, to grow meaningful relationships, and to serve local community. Today we are going to begin by talking about what it means for us to be people who focus on the mission of loving God.

1 John 2:3–11 NIV

3 We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. 4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. 7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. 9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. 10 Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. 11 But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.

Love for God

It seems both appropriate and challenging that the first item we name in our mission statement is love. It is appropriate because love is at the core of the gospel. God’s love is the source of his grace which brings us salvation and redemption through Christ. The most well-known Bible verse in the world is John 3:16 — “for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” We cannot even begin talking about our mission within the church unless we frame and center the focus of our activity around love. Of course we have to begin there.

At the same time, this is challenging because the word love and the idea of love is so broad and ambiguous and generic. Love can be a word we use to mean so many different things that ultimately it loses meaning. I often illustrate it this way; I say that I love my family—my wife and kids—and I also say that I love to eat pizza. But even though I use the word love to describe both of those things, they do not at all mean the same thing. The challenge, then, is to find how love gives us some kind of missional focus when it is a word that can be taken to mean so many different things. I suppose if I asked 20 people here to write down what it means that we love God, I would get back 20 different answers. That’s not very helpful for mission because it doesn’t provide a single focused direction and objective for us as people of God’s church.

Today, then, let’s focus this idea of what it means for us to be people who love God as part of our mission. Let’s focus this idea so that we are all on the same page with the same understanding of what that means and how it guides our lives as people sent out from this place on mission.

The letter of 1 John is a great place in the Bible for us to go because so much of this letter written by the apostle John is about love. I really could have taken all five chapters of 1 John as our reading today. If you are looking for something from the Bible to use as personal devotions this week, consider reading your way through the five chapters of 1 John as a follow up to our message today on love.

Look with me at the feature of what we read earlier from chapter 2. Verse 5 says,

1 John 2:5–6 NIV

5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

love for God is defined by a particular kind of action — obedience to the words of Jesus and living as Jesus did

What does it mean for us to be people who are guided by the mission of loving God? It does not mean that we simply have warm-fuzzy feelings about God. The kind of love that the Bible is talking about is more than something merely emotional. It is a love which is defined by a particular kind of action. In this case, John tells us that the way we love God is by obedience to the words of Jesus and living as Jesus did.

Alright, that needs a little further explanation. In many ways, I cannot possibly live like Jesus did. As much as I would love to, I cannot make water turn into wine. When I make wine, I have to start with grape juice. I cannot snap my fingers and make illness disappear. I cannot be an atoning sacrifice which takes away anyone else’s sin. In some ways, we can never live like Jesus did because we are not God. We do not come into this world with the same perfect righteousness that Jesus brought. We came into this world born with a sinful nature.

we live like Jesus did when we live in ways that love other people the way Jesus loves people

What does John mean then that we should live like Jesus did? Look at how John goes on to explain this in the following verses. He plays around with the metaphors of light and darkness. In verses 9-11 John tells us that loving our brothers and sisters is an expression of living in the light. In other words, we live like Jesus did when we live in ways that love other people the way Jesus loves people. John provides the contrast of this command by telling us that hatred for other people is living in darkness. When we fail to love other people, we fail to live like Jesus — we fail to obey his commands — we fail to love to God.

piety counts for nothing without love for other people

Our mission of loving God, then, focuses on loving other people the way Jesus loves other people. Let’s be clear about defining that. Anything that you may think about loving God through personal piety or correct moral behavior or right doctrinal belief leaves us short. Those are all good things, but they are steps in the process, not ends in themselves. A life of personal discipleship which pays attention to things like personal piety, moral behavior, and right doctrine are all means to an end; they are all meant to be part of a Christian life which builds and sanctifies us in order to love other people the way Jesus loves people. You can have piety and morals and doctrine, but if they do not work toward the objective of loving other people the way Jesus loves people, then all that counts for zero. It seems to me that John is pretty clear about that here—without love for others as Jesus loves others, we walk in darkness and the light is not in us.

Love for People

how do we love other people the way Jesus loves people?

Let’s wrap this up today by connecting some of the dots which help us put loving God into practice as part of our mission as a church. So far we have worked through this Bible passage to get past the first question. How do we love God? We love God by loving other people as Jesus loves people. Now comes the real question for the day. How do we love other people the way Jesus loves people?

there are some people in the world that we have a REALLY hard time loving

Before we can find an honest and helpful answer to this question, we absolutely need to make a confession. The confession is this: there are some people in the world that we have a REALLY hard time loving. We absolutely must begin there. The reason we must begin there is because the overwhelming arch of scripture points to this.

The entire story of Jonah in the Old Testament is meant to teach us one thing. In the book of Jonah, God spares the people of Nineveh from disaster. Jonah is unbelievably angry with God for not destroying Nineveh. And the book of Jonah ends with an open-ended question; God asks,

Jonah 4:11 NIV

11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

In the New Testament Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan in response to a Jewish lawyer who is trying to take the greatest commandment—love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself—and narrowly define who our neighbors are in order to include only those we want to love.

Elsewhere in the New Testament Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount,

Matthew 5:44–47 NIV

44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

priority focus in which we intentionally bend toward the people who we find to be the hardest to love

Loving other people the way Jesus loves people must have a priority focus in which we intentionally bend toward the people who we find to be the hardest to love. That leaves us with some tough homework. It may look a little different for each one of us. Maybe there is someone in your life who has wronged you or hurt you, and it has been a tremendous struggle to forgive that person so that you can love as Jesus loves. Maybe it is directed towards a group of people who—for whatever reason—you find threatening; and so we have created division between us which withholds love as Jesus loves. Maybe it’s not so much hatred for another person as complete indifference and apathy for them; and our lack of care tells us that we also show a lack of love.

love for God and love for others is connected

Any way you slice it, I think we can all agree that each one of us has some work to do in this area of our mission to love God by loving other people the way Jesus loves people. And this is precisely the place in which we need to be reminded that love for God and love for others is connected. We only need to read a few chapters ahead in the letter of 1 John to see this,

1 John 4:19 NIV

19 We love because he first loved us.

proximity to Jesus

It is God’s love for us which provides the source and strength of our love for him and for other people. John uses language of light and darkness to illustrate the way we live within the love of God. Author and pastor Louis Giglio talks about it this way. The sun shines during the day, and the moon shines at night. The sun is luminous, but the moon is not. Meaning this: the sun is a ball of burning hydrogen and helium which creates light. The moon is a ball of dirt; dirt cannot create light. However, even though the moon is not luminous, it can illuminate. That is, in the darkness of the night sky, the moon can reflect the light which comes from the sun. When you see a full moon shining in the night sky, it is not the moon’s light which you see; it is the light of the sun reflected off the moon.

The Bible tells us today to walk in the light. In order to do that, you and I need to remember that we are not luminous. We are not the source of light and we cannot create light. Bring this back to John’s original point in this passage. You and I are not the source of love and we cannot create love. Love comes from God. God is the source of love. God’s love for us and our love for God shows up then in this; you and I illuminate the love of God—we reflect God’s love in the way we love others.

We don’t always notice the moon on clear nights. Maybe that’s because it is not a full moon every single night. The moon goes through phases in which only a portion—or sometimes none at all—catch the light of the sun. You see, the intensity of the sun’s light reflecting off the moon depends entirely on one thing: proximity. The moon has to be in just the right place in the sky in order to catch the full reflection of the sun’s light and shine as a full moon. We tend to be much more likely to notice that. A bright full moon on a super clear night grabs our attention. But it all depends on the moon being in just the right place for that to happen—the moon’s proximity to the sun makes all the difference.

living in proximity to Jesus is what puts our lives in just the right place so that the light of Jesus reflects from us and shines into the darkness

Our mission to love God by loving other people as Jesus loves people follows the same principle. It all comes down to proximity to the Son—not s-u-n but S-o-n. Living in proximity to Jesus is what puts our lives in just the right place so that the light of Jesus reflects from us and shines into the darkness. We press into our mission as God’s people to love God by illuminating God’s love into a dark world.

If you need a place to start on mission today, begin with these two things. Identify whom it is in your life that is hardest for you to love as God loves them. And then align your life in proximity to Jesus in such a way that you cannot help but reflect the love of God into the lives of those people. Jesus tells the story this way,

John 15:5 NIV

5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

John 15:9–12 NIV

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Proximity to Jesus is always where we begin with our mission to love.