Living In God

When I was a little girl going to Sunday School, and used to come home with questions, my mother was in kind of a dilemma. You see, she didn’t believe in God. She thought there was a lot of good stuff in the Bible, as long as you left God out of it. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” was worth keeping, and so was “a soft answer turneth away wrath,” and “in all things give thanks,” although she was a little shaky about who you were supposed to give thanks to. But topping the list was “God is love.”

“Who is God, Mom?” “God is love, dear,” my mother would reply, “When you love you are experiencing God.” And of course, this is true. It’s right here in the Apostle John’s first letter. God is love.

We learn in basic algebra that if A = B then B = A.

Does that work here, too? God is love. Does that make love God?

Sometimes. Sometimes we worship love instead of God. Sometimes love becomes an idol. In this culture idolatry-love encourages people to pursue maximum self-fulfillment; it tends to be romantic or sexual. But at other times, in other cultures, love was measured in terms of self-sacrifice. In those times love of country, or love of family, sometimes became idolatrous. Because, you see, love is one of the most elastic concepts we have, it can mean almost anything we want it to mean, and we can use it to excuse almost any kind of behavior in the book. Love is about attachment, love is about aspiration, love is about appetite, love is about admiration... love makes the world go ‘round... Love means never having to say you’re sorry... All you need is love. If you loved me you would... whatever. Love is a very frustrating concept to try to talk about.

Which is why I had more trouble trying to write this sermon than you would believe. Because we know what love is, right? We may not be able to define it in a single pithy sentence, but we know it when we see it, right? So it should be very easy to figure out what John is trying to tell us here, right?

Wrong.

Because all of us, when trying to define love, start with people. We start with human experience. Once upon a time my godchildren were joined in one of our regular Saturday afternoons at the pool by their friend Laura Rose, who didn’t know how to swim. Laura Rose is a brave, adventurous, confident little thing but this was just too much for her to handle. We put water wings on her arms and a swim ring around her tummy and my three showed her how much fun it was to jump in and bob around but she wouldn’t budge until her mother Susan got into the pool and invited and coaxed and reassured her for 15 minutes. Maybe more.

That’s a good illustration of love as trust.

“Perfect love casts out fear.” Because Laura Rose loved her mother, she trusted her, and jumped into the pool. But is that what it means? Who is it that has the perfect love? Laura Rose or her mother? Is it our perfect love for God that is supposed to cast out fear, or God’s perfect love for us? I know whose love I’d sooner trust; mine is exceedingly far from perfect. But John goes on to say in v.18 that “The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” So since that can’t refer to God, who is already perfect in love, it must mean us.

But wait a minute. John also says, in the same verse, that “fear has to do with punishment.” But that wasn’t what was going on in the pool between Laura Rose and her mother. Laura Rose’s fear had nothing to do with punishment. So maybe it wasn’t such a good illustration, after all.

But every illustration that I came up with had the same sort of problem. And I finally figured out what was wrong with the way I was going about it. I was starting with people. I was trying to explain God’s love in terms of human love, and it doesn’t work. Because every kind of human love pales in the light of God’s love. Even the most noble and selfless kind of human love is inadequate to define God’s love. Human love gives us glimpses of God’s love, yes. Human love introduces us to God’s love, yes. But in order to grow into a mature understanding of God, at some point we have to let go of human love and make a leap into God’s love.

Because human love and divine love are different.