“Love is Not a Concept”
1 John 4:7-21
Last week I finished reading a best-selling novel written by Barbara Kingsolver called “Demon Copperhead.”
It’s set in the mountains of Southern Appalachia and starts when the protagonist, a boy named Damon who comes to be called Demon is born.
Born to a single teenage drug-addicted mother in a single-wide trailer he starts out with the cards stacked against him.
After his mother dies of an overdose, he finds himself in the foster care system at age eleven.
Many of the foster care parents were only concerned with getting a monthly check for being a foster parent and didn’t care a bit about the children.
Demon ended up doing almost slave labor on a farm, working in a trash dump fronted for a meth lab, and trying to survive on his own despite the cruelty of his foster parents.
Clair started reading the book immediately after I finished it, and I remarked to her how I can’t imagine growing up without the sense of security and stability which comes from having caring, responsible parents where you never have to question your worth nor fear for your security.
I don’t know if I could have survived without that, and yet that is the reality of so many children and adults in this world.
What would it feel like never to have been loved, not even by a mom and dad?
How could you cope?
How could you, yourself, even know what love is without having experienced it?
(pause)
In our Scripture passage for this morning, John talks about the love of God, which is so different from what many people experience in our world.
It’s a love so unique that the early Christians took an old colorless Greek word that was hardly used and adopted it—giving it new and rich meaning.
That word is agape, it’s love that gives without expecting a return, sacrificially.
It is unconditional and exists even when we don’t do anything to deserve it.
And it’s a love that searches for us like a shepherd looking for a lost sheep and a woman searching for a priceless coin.
It’s a love that cares for us beyond imagination, it’s a love that yearns for us and won’t rest until we are found.
And when it finds us and wraps its arms around us, it throws a party so big that everyone around—even the angels in heaven—are invited to celebrate.
The Bible tells us that this Agape Love, this searching, yearning, unconditional love, is non-other than God Himself—the Creator of the Universe and all that is in it.
And when we come to experience this amazing love for ourselves, it changes us, it takes hold of us, and it won’t let us go—even though, in our lost and sinful state, we often try and run away from it.
But once we have experienced it, try as we might, we can’t get away.
Once God is allowed to get His loving arms around us, He never gives up His embrace.
We can turn away from Him, but He never turns from us.
John has been embraced by this love, transformed by this love, and filled with this love.
And so, he is able to write with great confidence, “Love comes from God…
…This is how God showed his love among us: He send his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him…
…we love because he first loved us.”
It almost seems too good to be true.
In this vast and often ugly and cruel world, where people do such awful things to one another and where terrible calamities strike, could it be true?
Could it be real?
Is it really possible to live in this love and this love in us to the point where we can “know and rely on the love God has for us”?
Could it be true?
Is it possible?
Sometimes it is easier to feel unloveable than loved.
I’ve shared the following story with you before, but it begs to be repeated.
One day in college, I was walking across campus when I happened along an older woman who was in one of my classes and attended the same campus Bible study as I.
We got to talking, and when we did, the topic turned to God and heaven and hell.
The woman surprised me when she said, “I believe in Jesus, and I believe in heaven, and it will be a wonderful place, but I won’t be there.”
When I asked why she felt this way, her answer was, “I’m not good enough.”
It turns out that as a young girl her father sexually abused her and repeatedly told her by his words and his actions that she was no good, that she was unloveable, that no one would ever love her, she didn’t measure up.
And she believed him.
Eventually, she married a man who treated her just as her father had.
“I believe in Jesus and I believe in heaven, but I won’t be there; I’m not good enough.”
None of us are good enough, that’s the point.
But God loves us despite ourselves and, you know what, God must think we are good enough—important enough—He proved it, by coming to die for us!
Again, John writes, “This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”
Skye Jethani tells about holding a series of meetings with college-aged students.
The topics ranged across the spectrum—doctrine, hell, dating—but every conversation had three rules:
1. Be honest
2. Be gracious
3. Be present
One night the students wanted to talk about habitual sins.
And although they all struggled with various things, they all agreed on one thing, and it was often through tears: God was extremely disappointed with them.
This was what they were all completely sure about.
After listening to their stories, Jethani asked, “How many of you were raised in a Christian home?”
They all raised their hands.
Shaking his head, Jethani said, “You’ve all spent eighteen or twenty years in church,
You’ve been taught the Bible since the time you were little, and you attend Christian colleges, but not one of you said that in the midst of your sin God still loves you.”
(pause)
Can I ask you this morning: Do you believe, even in the midst of your sin, that God still loves you?
Do I?
John teaches, as does the rest of the New Testament, that nothing in us is so broken or so filthy that God is unwilling or unable to embrace us, love us as we are and where we are, and work in us to make us clean, whole and new.
(pause)
Love is the universal hunger in human hearts.
In the play, Oliver, the young orphan, sings, “Where O where is Love?”
And so many in our world can sing the same sad song.
Maybe you can as well.
Someone noticed this graffiti on a bathroom wall: “Love is all I want.”
Isn’t this what we all want—what we all need?
“God is love,” John writes in verse 16.
How does he know this?
Not by imagining it or philosophizing about it but by looking at Jesus and experiencing a relationship with Him.
“We have seen and testify,” John writes, as he points back across the decades since Jesus lived, died, and rose again, bringing up memories still fresh enough in this early community of eyewitnesses.
Some of those eyewitnesses stood at the foot of the cross and watched Jesus suffer and die.
Some helped prepare Jesus’ body for burial, seeing firsthand the wounds caused by sin but met with love.
Some doubted, only to have those doubts transformed by the presence of a love that cannot and never will die.
How about you?
Have you been transformed by the presence of a love that cannot die, or are you still waiting for it to happen?
In John 3:16 Jesus tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
And right before this, Jesus invites Nicodemus to be born again or born from above.
And from the rest of Scripture, we know that this new birth comes by grace through faith.
It is a gift of God.
And John, in our passage for this morning, tells us that “Everyone who loves has been born of God.”
Believing and loving are marks of the new birth.
As is transformation.
“My son called,” a father recalls.
Through years of drug abuse, Scott, his son had stolen from his family,
manipulated them, and failed them.
His father admits that it had been a relief not to hear from him for two years.
“Scott told me he'd been through a rehabilitation program a year and a half ago that provided something no other had offered,” the father relates.
"I met Jesus Christ. I've been forgiven for my past. I want to ask you and Mom to forgive me, too."
He said he was now helping other addicts get straightened out.
Scott’s father admits, “I was torn between hope and cynicism.
The well-groomed, bright-eyed young man who arrived at the airport looked like a stranger.
In the days that followed, Scott told how, in the midst of drug withdrawal, he'd seen a vision of Jesus Christ on the cross and cried out to him for help.”
That experience had led him to a church. "I asked Jesus to be my Lord," he explained, "and my life hasn't been the same since."
Scott’s father continues, “The change in Scott was too dramatic for my wife and me to ignore.
Today, Jesus has given us the same new life he gave our prodigal son.”
“We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the savior of the world.” John writes.
“This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.”
In John Chapter 3, Jesus says, “Flesh gives birth to flesh and Spirit gives birth to Spirit.
You should not be surprised by my words that you must be born again.”
But born again to do what?
Born again to know we are loved, to know that God is not extremely disappointed with us after all.
And born again to live lives of love, so that others may come to know they are loved as well.
Someone once said, “Love is not a concept, known abstractly.
It is an action, lived concretely.”
And this is never more true than when we are intentionally living lives of sacrificial, agape love not only for those who love us, but for everyone—even people who are hard to love.
When I think of the times I have been rebellious, and when I think back on so much of my past, I can think, “I must have been hard to love.”
But God loved me anyway.
God love me anyway.
God loved me anyway.
Let’s all close our eyes and go to God in a time of silent prayer and meditation.
Think about the mistakes you have made.
Think about the times you have been ugly to other people—even the people who have loved you the most.
Think of the habitual sins you have committed and still commit.
Think about it.
Now, keep your eyes closed and listen to these words: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins...
…and so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love.
Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment because in this world, we are like him.
There is no fear in love.
But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.
The one who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
Let us pray:
Almighty God, You have loved us and searched for us when we were far from you and not even thinking about You.
You have found us, wrapped Your arms around us and claimed us as Your own.
We accept Your love, Your forgiveness and the new life You offer us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Lord we pray, perfect us in love.
In Jesus’ name and for His sake we pray.
Amen.
