Agape-we are lavished with love. An advent sermon.
There are some truly magnificent things that can happen in a person’s life. I think of life itself, the meeting of those two cells that contain all the coded DNA required to form a fully-fledged human being, that turned out to be you, with your on average thirty-seven-trillion cells. Another magnificent thing is foundations of true friendship as you meet people for the first time, and you know that there will be or somehow is a bond between you. Something else I think that is great is the Earth, God’s creation; to look out on the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, I think of the times I have flown between islands in Fiji and looked down upon coral reefs alive with an abundance of life and colour, tiny little coloured fish or massive ones who are further up the food chain, or to gaze across the McKenzie Country to the Southern Alps, or to Ruapehu from the Desert Road and just take in the magnificence of the mountains the vastness, the life and the reflected light and the knowledge of the danger that could lurk below the surface of that ocean or in a freezing south-westerly blizzard in the high country, or even how cold the fast comes in the high country when the Sun sets. Then there’s love of a wife for her husband and vice versa or adults for children in their care that gives assurance and understanding, a union of understanding, the sort of love that gives more than it takes, that delights in the other persons company, words, imperfections and quirks. Perhaps to see God’ love for creation in the garden to follow the growth of a seed to maturity and the blooming, and development of more seed, of food and nourishment from a very small beginning.
These are magnificent things. These are things that I consider outstanding, splendid things, for some it may be different, they may understand and relate to God’s handy work in a different way. Magnificence for some is well written song or poem, the sound of a valley of bellbirds as they welcome the sun into the day, around Tawa it might be the song of a Grey Warbler or Tui, for car enthusiasts magnificence could be the sound of a finely tuned V8 purring onto a raceway after many hours in the workshop, while for others it may be the silence of a time alone - but in the presence God.
In Johns first letter.. This great apostle says this about something magnificant. 1 John 3:1-10.
3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,[a] we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.
So from that reading we see the role of The Father, and of Jesus in our salvation. The position the Father has put us in because of his great love, love we have been lavished with through Jesus Christ. The interesting thing is that often it is thought that we are the instrument of our own salvation. When in fact, it is God who made it possible, in doing so:
As the Father
A)
1) He bestows his love upon us (3:1a). It was a choice of the Father to give us His love and the word that is used in the NIV translation is that His love was lavished on us, this means he bestowed on us in generous or extravagant quantities His love! It gets me thinking of a cupcake lavished with icing.
2) That we might be called His own children (3:1b-2a). John goes as far as to say, ”And that is what we are!” As you know the doing of this was no easy feat for Jesus, God’s only Begotten Son. There’s also a little pointer in verse one that the world has not got the gist of this, as it has not got to grips with who God is. With being God’s children, we have an inheritance, an eternal inheritance.
3) There is also a mystery about eternity, in that John says, “what we will be has not been made known”. But now that we are His own Children one day we will be like God (3:2b–3). Where I think John is going here is towards us being perfected in resurrection at the end of the age, in Christ’s presence. A little like is described by Jude in the second to last verse of his letter, “presented faultless with exceeding joy.” God has lavished great love upon us though Jesus!
God as the Son, as Jesus, who was with God and was God in the beginning:
B)
Jesus
1) Died for our sins (3:4–5). At Christmas it is easy to leave Jesus, a cute and pudgy, or so he is depicted baby born to young parents as their first born in trying circumstances. But we should remember that before coming to God through Jesus none of us was spotless. Jesus came so that we could have freedom from sin and the guilt that comes with that sin. Shame that comes from guilt is an insidious thing that drags a person down. As John says in verse 8, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” The devil’s work is to kill, rob and destroy. Shame carried is destructive.
This about shame from the staff of Nicholls State University. “Shame is at the root of low self-esteem. People who feel shame, feel bad about who they are. This differs from feelings of guilt, which are related to thoughts, feelings, and actions. Those who experience the pain of shame, have negative erroneous beliefs about their inherent abilities and worth. Large doses of unhealthy guilt can cause one to feel shame and its negative effects.
Social abilities are impeded when one feels burdened by shame. A person may have a pattern of avoiding social interactions, which can lead to a lack of development of social skills. They may avoid intimacy with others and have only superficial relationships, which deteriorate in times of stress. Isolation and loneliness are serious consequences of shame. Self-condemning attitudes and negative self-talk reinforce the shame and ultimately lead to self-loathing and self-sabotaging behaviour.” http://www.nicholls.edu/counseling/newsletters/effects-of-shame-unhealthy-relationships/. (Sited 02/10/2012)
How great is the love of God for us that this is an issue that Jesus resolves.
From his devotion book Grace for the Moment, Max Lucado sums up Gods love this way:
“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.” 1 John 4:16.
The supreme surprise of God’s love? It has nothing to do with you. Others love you because of you, because your dimples dip when you smile or your rhetoric charms when you flirt. Some people love you because of you. Not God. He loves you because he is he. He loves you because he decides to. Self-generated, uncaused, and spontaneous, his constant-level love depends on his choice to give it….
At this time of the year, we acknowledge the love that God poured out on us in the person of Jesus. In the English language we have one word for love and depending on situations it can mean different things, for instance if I was to say I love chocolate it has a different meaning to my telling Rochelle, I love her, which has a different meaning again to her saying she loves putting up Christmas decorations, well at least I hope so. In the Greek language there’s a number of ways to say love, Biblical love and its definition always starts with God, not us, because he is love, it is his 'Holiness’ his character that defines love. God acts with ‘agape’ love towards the whole world even though it is undeserving, to save us from our sins. (ref; Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of The Old and New Testament. Zondervan, 2006.).
A thing to remember here also is that love can be though, for Jesus to give us his love completely was a costly, painful thing, he knows the death on the cross and I’m sure though resurrected, he suffered, remembers the torture of the lashes, the nails, the dislocation of his joints and drowning in his own fluids for humanity, as he set the whole human race free from what was ours to carry so that we did not have to carry the shame we were carrying before salvation. What a wonderous love he shows us. Sometimes as parents as those leading others loving is tough. No parent wants to disciple a child, but without correction-children remain incorrect. Our heavenly Father has given us understanding of our own need to seek correction when we are incorrect, that is love, and He has made it possible through Jesus.
How do we define such a love?
At Christmas we see this love come in the person, the little person, the infant Jesus. I’m going to pinch another of Max Lucado’s thoughts here, from the same book of devotions, he has some good insights, and this one is Moffatt paraphrased and expanded. It is that Jesus came into a world that had on room for him. No room in the inn, even before his birth people were turning him away, the author of life himself, sent away. His teachings were rejected by the very people who said they were His representatives at the temple, the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law. Then crucified, the world he loved, had no room for him and destroyed his physical being, or so they thought. However, every now and then, by individuals. Sometimes in masses of realisation and revival he is welcomed, the door to someone’s heart is opened and he is invited to stay and to that person Jesus says; “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” He promises and this is a lavish love promise that when we make room for him in our hearts, he, yes, God himself makes room for us in his house.
As I mentioned Biblical love, does not start with us it comes from God, the Greek have a word for this kind of love they define it as agape. This is this love that starts with God, it is not earned, it is the love that is given to an undeserving world, to undeserving people. Why, well John tells us, “Jesus came to destroy the devils work,” so that we may live free from shame. That we may know and approach God in his holiness through the curtain torn in two from the top, the symbol of Christ’s broken body.
Humanity received this agape, this love, the same love that is shared between the three persons of the Godhead. The love of God we come to understand with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. When God himself resides in us, that sacrificial love that is given for us in the Divine Man, Christ who carried out sin and shame and set us free on Calvery.
Jesus was born, into a world that rejected him but a world that so utterly needs to understand that he brought with him the love of the Father, undeserved but lavishly, generously, extravagantly, elaborately given so that all may be free. This agape, this lavish love compels us not just to look to the Christ child but all children of God, to all of Adam’s race and among them the lost the last and the least of humanity with the same love that was given to us undeservedly, and to give what God has given, to lavish his love on others unreservedly. There always opportunities to share the love of God.
We are loved lavishly, let us love lavishly in return, and pass that love onto others. This Christmas as we receive God’s love ourselves let us share the lavish love of God for there is plenty for all.
