1 John 4:20-21
The love of God has dirt under its fingernails. Contrary to popular opinion, love, properly understood, is not an ephemeral emotion floating in the atmosphere just above treeline. Christian love builds callouses on its fingers and feet. Love does things. It motivates us, teaches us what is good and what is destructive for the the human life. It is - or it becomes - the love of God among us.
John is thoroughly earthy in his commands to love. Though he talks about love a lot he is far from what we would call a romantic. Christian love is intensely practical, intentional, and often difficult. If we say we love God and hate a neighbor we are lying about loving God. It doesn't matter how often we say we love God, how sincerely we mean it when we say it, or how many people believe us when we say it, if we hate a single human soul we are lying about our love for God. It is a high bar, but the love of God is utterly incompatible with hatred for people. In fact, the more we grow in the love of God the clearer love and hate become to us: we love people and hate the junk that destroys their souls. We learn to hate sin just as God does. In fact, God loves every soul so much, he deeply hates the sin that separates them from him and destroys their lives.
Every human deserves to know the love of God and Christians need to do the loving. This world with all its promises of liberty and tolerance will never reproduce the power of the love of God, so it needs to be the people of God who show it. People need to be loved.
These people we live with, get to know, build relationships with, all need to be loved. The people we create families and communities with, the people who become our life-long friends need to be loved. Even those who take more from us that they give need God's love. The people we find difficult, annoying, arrogant, simple-minded, myopic, dangerous, or plain-old cruel need to be loved.
After all, this is how God did it.
Instead of loving us from afar and casting his affections our way hoping we might feel some of it or comprehend some fraction of it, he came here. He became flesh and the life and love of God was manifest in our midst in a man who got dirt under his fingernails and blisters on his feet. He walked the dusty roads of Galilee, feasted with friends and laughed in the company of people who befriended him. He wept at the death of a friend. He endured the fickle crowds who followed him as long as he had bread to give them at the end of the sermon. He endured the years-long persecution of the religious leadership of his people. His friends ran from his aid, denied, and betrayed him. In this flesh he felt every ounce of pain in the flogging and the hammering of the nails. In this flesh, the love of God died to save difficult, rebellious, stiff-necked, dangerous, and plain-old evil people.
We need to love people. God did.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Believing and Behaving Disciples
1 John 4:15-16
John is known as 'the apostle of love' and for good reason. In his first epistle his concentration on the love of God is obvious if not overwhelming. But what can be lost in this love language is his concern that believers also confess the truth about Jesus Christ. There were false teachers coming through the church who were teaching new things about Christ, which, if believed, would separate disciples from the truth and the fellowship of the body of Christ. John desperately wanted his congregation to hold to the truth in Jesus Christ and to love as he did with a unique and unquenchable fervor. Both are needed for our faith, but we are often tempted to take up either one and drop the other.
One common mistake in the Christian faith is to hold to the truths of Christ without their implications reaching our behavior. We believe; we don't behave. There are times when this is a cold faith. What we believe is reduced to formulae, to precisely worded statements of doctrine that must be adhered to under threat of inquisition. We come to Christ as a set of doctrines to be held to (and to hold others to) instead as coming to a Person - the Person who lived, died and rose again. Things like 'grace' become just terms and ideas instead of lifestyles and gifts of relationship. And as such, we lose too much.
Sometimes this is a fiery and fervent mistake. When Christ is reduced to statements of belief it becomes easy to recognize the impostors. It becomes easy to vet the undesirables, throw out a pastor, split a church, or leave the fold altogether. All because we had Christ down pat and they did not agree. Zeal without knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The other mistake may be a reaction to the first, but is just as wrong-headed. Down this path we take a journey of deeds, intentions, and emotions. The faith becomes a matter of what we do, how often we do it, how well-intentioned we are when we do it, and how fervently we reject the other mistake. Who needs doctrines and creeds that do nothing but divide? Here, we do not play those power games or exclude other deed-doers over minutiae. We want people who will live lives of love to their fellow human beings, nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
With all its good intentions this temptation leaves the front door open to any and every definition of "love" and eventually of Christ himself. After all, we are not going to divide and conquer over those kinds of things. In this way, though the deed is done (or at least is intended to be done), the truth of the person of Christ gets left by the roadside like the spare luggage we should not have packed in the first place.
John, however, shows us the better way. Christians confess and love. Disciples of Jesus Christ know and believe in the true Christ and love their brothers and sisters as Christ loved them. The believer with the robust and meaningful faith believes and behaves. It turns out that whoever confesses that Jesus is the Christ, came in the flesh, and died as the propitiation for our sins abides in him. And, not surprisingly, whoever loves as he loves abides in him and he abides in them. This is the better way.
John is known as 'the apostle of love' and for good reason. In his first epistle his concentration on the love of God is obvious if not overwhelming. But what can be lost in this love language is his concern that believers also confess the truth about Jesus Christ. There were false teachers coming through the church who were teaching new things about Christ, which, if believed, would separate disciples from the truth and the fellowship of the body of Christ. John desperately wanted his congregation to hold to the truth in Jesus Christ and to love as he did with a unique and unquenchable fervor. Both are needed for our faith, but we are often tempted to take up either one and drop the other.
One common mistake in the Christian faith is to hold to the truths of Christ without their implications reaching our behavior. We believe; we don't behave. There are times when this is a cold faith. What we believe is reduced to formulae, to precisely worded statements of doctrine that must be adhered to under threat of inquisition. We come to Christ as a set of doctrines to be held to (and to hold others to) instead as coming to a Person - the Person who lived, died and rose again. Things like 'grace' become just terms and ideas instead of lifestyles and gifts of relationship. And as such, we lose too much.
Sometimes this is a fiery and fervent mistake. When Christ is reduced to statements of belief it becomes easy to recognize the impostors. It becomes easy to vet the undesirables, throw out a pastor, split a church, or leave the fold altogether. All because we had Christ down pat and they did not agree. Zeal without knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The other mistake may be a reaction to the first, but is just as wrong-headed. Down this path we take a journey of deeds, intentions, and emotions. The faith becomes a matter of what we do, how often we do it, how well-intentioned we are when we do it, and how fervently we reject the other mistake. Who needs doctrines and creeds that do nothing but divide? Here, we do not play those power games or exclude other deed-doers over minutiae. We want people who will live lives of love to their fellow human beings, nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
With all its good intentions this temptation leaves the front door open to any and every definition of "love" and eventually of Christ himself. After all, we are not going to divide and conquer over those kinds of things. In this way, though the deed is done (or at least is intended to be done), the truth of the person of Christ gets left by the roadside like the spare luggage we should not have packed in the first place.
John, however, shows us the better way. Christians confess and love. Disciples of Jesus Christ know and believe in the true Christ and love their brothers and sisters as Christ loved them. The believer with the robust and meaningful faith believes and behaves. It turns out that whoever confesses that Jesus is the Christ, came in the flesh, and died as the propitiation for our sins abides in him. And, not surprisingly, whoever loves as he loves abides in him and he abides in them. This is the better way.
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