“The Ultimate Love”
John 3:14-21
By: Rev. Kenneth Emerson Sauer,
Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
This question was posed to a group of four-to-eight-year-olds: “What does love mean?”
The answers were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined…
“During my piano recital, I was on stage and scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.” …
… “Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.” …
“Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him home all day.” …
… “Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.”
In a world where the true meaning of love has been so misused, so misconstrued and so misunderstood…
….and, oh, so selfishly perverted…
…we can learn a lot about the true meaning of love from little children!
Through their humble, unpolluted, and honest eyes…children have little trouble seeing what is truly good and holding these things as the best of all virtues.
As adults, we often have a much harder time differentiating between what is truly good and what is truly evil.
I’m not trying to say that children are perfect.
We all know that isn’t true!
But Jesus did tell us, “unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
It is not difficult to receive love from a child.
All you really have to do is love them first…
…and they will love you back.
With adults, this is not so easy.
Just look what happens when we are shown the Ultimate Love…
…that is God sending His one and only Son into this world…
…not to condemn the world, but to save the world…
…way too many of us do not embrace, accept and believe in Him.
“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”
Jesus Christ is this Light. He is the Light of the world. He is God’s full expression of Love toward humankind….
….and yet….those who decide not to believe in Him---as the Scripture says actually “hate” Him and “will not come to” Him.
God’s will and purpose is to save all people.
But He does not force His will upon us.
We have free-will, and it is up to each one of us to determine how we will react to God’s gracious offer of salvation.
Yes, in a sense, it can be a grave and dangerous thing to be offered the gift of God’s grace…
…because it is up to us as to what we will do with it.
No one can just push past Christ or pretend not to see Him.
Each of us must stand, listen, make up our minds, and give some answer.
Either we accept and believe what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, or we harden our faces, look God squarely in the eyes and answer: “I will not!”
And when we do this, we pass judgement on ourselves; since, in seeing the love of God in Christ, we will have none of it, but instead choose sin over love—the animal over the spiritual, the world over God, our customary ways over the Christlikeness that we could have!
One of our Fore-Fathers of the Christian faith once wrote: “Man is free to choose torment without God rather than happiness in God; he has a right to hell, as it were.”
Our Gospel lesson for this morning does not beat around the bush.
Jesus tells it like it is.
He has come to save the world, “but whoever does not believe stands condemned.”
In our intellectualized and enlightened world many folks make excuses as to why they do not believe.
They may speak of having “honest doubt.”
But honest doubt is not necessarily honest at all!
More often than not, it does not come from intellectual perplexity—but simply from moral perversity and a refusal to see what we do not want to see.
Many of us do not like the Light, and would blow it out if we could!
Because when we are born of God through our conviction of sin and by a belief in the full sufficiency of Christ to forgive us of our sins, we are never, ever the same people that we were before!
God begins to form a new nature or a divine disposition in our hearts.
And this divine disposition lives in those of us who believe, and it grows in us daily as we seek God in prayer, Bible study, worship, and love for other human beings.
We find that an immediate and constant result of faith in Christ is power over sin…which grows and grows the longer we live in faith.
God begins removing the obstacles that get between us and our relationship with Him.
God begins to remove pride, selfishness, thoughtlessness, anger, impatience, and a lack of satisfaction with life.
And when God removes these obstacles or as John Wesley calls them, “diseases of the soul that continually generate false cravings within us and fill us with unhealthy appetites”….God replaces them with a genuine appetite for that which is of God.
We begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness…
…and when we hunger and thirst for righteousness…
…the world can not offer us anything that will satisfy us.
We certainly do get a whole new perspective on things when God changes the desires of our hearts!
Another result of faith in Christ is peace.
To those who believed in Him, Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.”
This peace that Jesus gives is the “peace of God which transcends all understanding.”
Even the most spiritual of people can’t find words to express this peace.
All the powers of earth and hell cannot take away this peace that comes from God.
Waves and storms beat upon it, but they cannot move it because it is founded upon the Rock.
Christ is able to give peace to the hearts and minds of the children of God—at all times and in all places….
…Whether we are in comfort or pain, in sickness or health, in plenty or in need….
…God’s children are happy in His peace.
As children of God we learn to be content under all conditions and circumstances.
We are able to give thanks to God through Jesus Christ, because we are assured that “whatever is, is best;”—it is God’s will concerning us.
In all the unpredictable changes of life…through the peace of Christ…our hearts are firm and secure in the Lord.
Love is the greatest gift that grows within us as a result of faith in Christ.
Because we are adopted children of God through faith in Christ, God has sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts “And by him we cry ‘Abba, Father.”
--Which is an expression of an especially close relationship with God…It’s like calling God “Daddy.”
We cry out to God for our daily bread, and for everything that we need, whether it’s for our souls or our bodies.
Our delight is in God.
He is the joy of our hearts,
our shield,
our great reward.
Everything we desire is toward Him…
…it is our “food” to do His will.
For the Children of God who are being changed from glory to glory to become more like Christ each day…
…as the David writes in Psalm 63: Our Souls will be satisfied as with the richest foods; with singing lips our mouths will praise God!
We must also understand that our love for God is love for our neighbors, for every soul that God has created…including our enemies!
In John chapter 15 Jesus says: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
This is the command written on the hearts of those who love God.
In 1st John Chapter 3 the Bible tells us: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”
If we feel as if we are willing to love other people this much and in this way, then we truly do love our neighbors!
“We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit….love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God, because God is love.”
And we can’t separate our love for God from our obedience to God.
As John Wesley concludes: “Obedience to God includes hungering and thirsting to do all kinds of good to all people, rejoicing to
‘spend and be spent’ for every human being. And genuine obedience means that we do not look for any repayment in this world, but only in the resurrection of the righteous.”
As those who believe in God’s One and Only Son, our entire lives are to become a ‘labor of love.’ Our life is to be a single continued obedience to God’s commands: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful;” “you shall be holy for I am holy;” “be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
…. “For God so loved the world…”
Let us Pray: We marvel today, Holy God, at how much You love us and we pray that the new life You have given us will continue to grow---taking us farther and farther from sin. If, and when we stray back into the darkness, Lord, point us again and again toward your Light, in whose name we pray. Amen.
