Introduction
God is love. It’s one of the unique claims of the Jewish / Christian tradition. Other religions have teach various truths about god. That he created, that he is just, that he is eternal. But only in the Jewish / Christian tradition do we have God is love. You look at the gods of ancient Greece, who fought battles with humans as pawns. There was a godess of love, but it was an errotic kind of love and she was just as caprious as the other Greek gods. Or there is the God of the Greek philosophers who was so far removed the our world, that he didn’t care or interact with it at all. Or Allah and his justice. In Hinduism there is shiva the destoryer and other creative gods. But the Bible is alone in claiming that God is love.
I mention these others to just remind us, what an amazing thing it is to say that God is love. Sometimes it can loose it meaning. Or we can think of it as a kind of axiom of religion. God is love. It is not. It is the greatest revelation of all time. The fact that the almighty, the one who created us and who constantly upholds the universe, keeps it going and rules it, is love. God cares for each one of us. If you remember one thing about the sermon, remember God is love.
God’s love is not opposed to his justice
But what does this mean? What do we mean when we say God is love? How does this fit with our other pictures of God? With God as just and holy. I recently saw an entitled “David didn’t love Goliath to death”. This article was talking about the necessity of military action, from a Christian point of view. But it reflects a skewed but common view of what love is about. It has a wishy washy view of love, which is about toleration of all, not speaking out against anything and live and let live with evil. It’s the kind of thinking that sees God’s justice and anger as opposed to his love, rather than an integral part of his love. In the words of Graham Kendricks the cross is where wrath and mercy meet. This is a false view of the world, where the cross is the only place where the love of God and the justice or anger of God meet. The anger and justice of God always meet the love of God, since it is from the love of God that God’s anger and justice come.
If you had a kid who was being kicked around by other children or abused by an adult. Would you not get upset? Would you not get angry? Would you not cry out for justice? Justice, anger stemming from love. Well OK, if God feels like that why does he stop it, any parent who saw his child being mistreated would step in, why doesn’t God. Well, I can’t give a complete answer here, I’ve given partial answers before and will do again. But lets consider this one idea, its not complete but it’ll give you an idea.
Let’s image you had another kid, who despite your best efforts grows up to be a bit nasty, a drug dealer. How do you react, the first time you find heroin in his bag, do you turn him over to the police, no you love him. You try to reason with him, to get him to stop. Most would even protect him from the police for a while. But then you begin to see the lives ruined, the people you see turning up desperate for a fix, the people who end up dead. Most would come to the point, where they say no more. I still love you but I can’t let you continue. But what if it goes further if he reaches the stage where he has a disagreement with his brother and sets out with a gun, to kill him. At this point if anything is stopping you calling the police it is not love.
God’s justice and anger are like this. Too often Christians have thought of God’s justice, righteousness or holiness to be like a list of arbitray rules that God drew up that we just have to learn and keep on the right side of. OK, we understand the meaning for some of them, don’t kill, but when you say law, you think list of rules. We almost see it as a kind of straight jacket for God, where there is this external standard that he must abide by and that he has to punish the most minor infraction, there is no leanience, he has to punish. This is completely at odds with the Biblical picture of a loving, forgiving God. The rules are there to guide is in love, to stop us hurting each other. God doesn’t want to punish any more than a loving parent wants to punish there kid, they want them to change. It’s God love for his creatures, for us, that means he is for justice. He hates to see people exploited, misused, ill treated, stolen from, killed. This is why God wants justice for people, because he loves them. This is why God is angry at sin, because he is angry at people he loves being badly treated. It’s not because God has drawn up a list and people step over the line that God is angry at. He’s angry because his creatures are being hurt. In the same way that you would get angry if your child was mistreated or abused. God is angry when all humans are mistreated and abused.
That’s why repentance is necessary for salvation. Salavation is not the arbitrary, sign on the dotted line and you get a get out of hell free card and entry to heaven. It’s about living as the kind of people that God wants. It’s about loving each other. The resurrection and to live in the presence of Jesus is not so much a reward as it is the eternal expression of that love. It’s the place where people who have renounces selfishness and want to love others and God completely have their desires fulfilled, where we all get to live in peace and love. God is not being arbitrary about keeping people out. He says if you don’t want this, if you are not willing to live by love, you cannot enter because you will not participate. Hell is not so much punishment as separation from God and humanity left to its own devices without God. Love is the goal of Christianity not heaven. That is why it is so important that we love now. We need to show ourselves to be the people that wants to love God and others. OK, sometimes we need help, which God is only too willing to provide. But we need to show we want to love. That is the key to Christianity. Becoming a Christian is not so much about the past, although forgiving the past is essential, but about what sort of person we want to be in the future. This is why repentance is at the heart of Christianity and why there is no forgiveness without it.
How should we act
So how should we act? What difference does God is love make to us. Well John makes the point several times that because God is love, we should love. Both as a natural consequence of the fact that we are God’s followers and should act like him and because God is love means that he wants everyone to love each other. In the same way that a parent wants here children to get along and love each other, because they love their children. But to do this, we have to remember that it is God’s love, that includes justice not other definitions of love that we might have.
Love is not a warm fuzzy feeling, it is not a feeling, it is a decision. There is an emotional component that may or may not be attached but if you think that when God tells you to love your enemies he means have a warm fuzzy feeling towards them and then you are mistaken. Love means actions. Love is defined in the way we think about others, but also in the way we act towards them. When John talks about he who claims to love God must love his brother. He was not talking about what feelings they had towards one another, he was talking about how they acted towards one another. He was essentially arguing how can you claim to love God and yet be at each others throats. The kind of love that God talks about is not the kind of love that says you love someone but the only reason people know this is because you have said it. It should be evident from your actions.
Again, just like God’s love this doesn’t mean you approve of all their actions or that you do nothing to stop actions you disagree with. The fact is David did kill Goliath. The fact is Joshua did kill the Canaanite. The fact is Elijah killed the priests of Baal. These are all extreme situations but they all get the point over. The fact that God is love, does not stop God acting for justice, nor should it stop us. But it does mean that we value all and that when we act, we act from love, a desire for justice for others, not out of vengeance or because we’d prefer things to be uncomfortable and complicated for someone else rather than us.
John Wesley defined holiness in a way consistent with this, but probably at the very bottom of the list of ways most people would understand the word. For John Wesley, holiness was perfect love. Thus, as God’s holiness and love are not in tension but the same thing, so our holiness and our love must be the same thing. We have a tendency within the holiness tradition to mark holiness by the observation of rules or standards, like not buying on a Sunday (we dealt with why I disagree with this stance a few weeks ago), not going to cinemas, not doing this or not doing that, so of which are wrong and some of which are right. But for John Wesley, the mark of holiness was not to be found in obedience to rules or lists, but in perfect love. He talked about this in a way that we can achieve it. Not with out hardwork and submitting to the Holy Spirit, but it is achievable. Not in the sense of flawless perfection, never making mistakes and never acting in any way that God would disapprove of. None of us can manage that before we die. But in the sense of being completely motivated by love. Love of God and neighbour. To be no sense of fighting with our inner selfishness as to whether to act in a given situation, but to always be motivated by love.
Now I hate to use me as example here because it might sound like I’m claiming something I’m not. I don’t claim that in every situation I face, I always act with perfect love, yet. But by the same token there are a lot of situations that I do but I don’t always get them right. For example, the other weekend I was at my brother’s wedding giving best man speech. The trouble is in a best man’s speech your supposed to make fun of and humiliate the groom to a certain extent. But I can’t do that, its really just not in me to be cruel, or at least to be cruel with pre-meditation. In this sense I’m making progress on this road to perfect love. Yet, this doesn’t stop me be rude, brusk, ignorant, condescending, dismissive or seemingly unaware of trampling on others feelings. Some of you will have encountered all of these, but I hope not to many. What I mean is, while working for love, I can still get carried away with a discussion, I can still be completely unaware of the effect I’m having on someone else. But it does mean I don’t deliberately set out to do those things. I’m not saying those things don’t need to be worked on, they do. But they are not from wrong motives. But by the same token, just because I operate from love, doesn’t mean I will never offend deliberately (sometimes because I believe in truth, I will stand up for it even if I know it will offend some people), it doesn’t mean I won’t point out sin, it doesn’t mean I won’t have standards and beliefs and stick by them even if others disagree, it doesn’t mean I won’t make truth claims and it doesn’t mean I’ll put with anything from anybody when I think their actions hurt the church. But it does mean that by and large and granting that I haven’t got there yet, that I will act from love. The other things need work.
But if we really want to understand how this love works in practice then we are going to have to leave 1 John behind and look to one of the most well known chapters in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13. This mornings sermon is basically an introduction to a series on 1 Corinthians 13 and what it means to love. So let’s see the setting of 1 Corinthians 13 and where we begin from. BTW, I have no idea how long this series is going to run for, I guess as long as it takes me to go through 1 Corinthians 13. As I’ve been known to cover more than 1 chapter in a single sermon, that shouldn’t take too long. But I believe that this chapter stands at the heart of what it means to be a Christian.
Introduction to 1 Corinthians 13
The thing that initially strikes me about this chapter is why is it read at weddings. It is not talking about romantic love. In fact in Greek there is more than one word which we translate as love in English. The word in Greek for this chapter is completely different to the Greek word for romantic love. You should know the Greek word for romantic love, eros, from which we get erotic and all the words related to it. The word the NT uses for love, is agape and to be honest we mostly have to define it by the NT as its not used much elsewhere. Love, the selfless sacrifice that values others as more important than yourself and there comfort and well being above your own. That which motivated Jesus to become human and die for us. But on the other hand, 1 Corinthians 13 is appropriate for weddings because it does teach you how to make a marriage work, if couples stuck to these things then there would be no divorce. It teaches us how to live with others in general. It’s vital when two people are sharing a house and their lives. It’s also vital in the church. It’s also vital in our community and neighbourhood. Just think how many problems would be resolved if people lived like this. If people act like this, then yes, there will be mistakes where you act from love, but do the wrong thing but if others are acting from love, they will be understood and forgiven and relationships will not suffer. But the problem is you can’t act for anyone else but yourself. Its up to each one to live like this even if others don’t.
But the context of 1 Corinthians 13, is the superiority of love. Paul has been dealing with those within the church who think that they where more spiritual than those around them because they had certain gifts that others lacked. Paul wants to say this is complete rubbish, the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to all and gifts are not the mark of Spirituality, love is. There are some churches which still need to hear this argument, because they value certain gifts as showing a certain level of Spirituality. But in general that’s not a problem we have, I think. Instead we, might replace it with other things, like correct theology. Now you’ll never hear me say theology is unimportant, it determines our view of God and ultimately our actions but theology is not the mark of spirituality. Other’s look at Spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, giving and others as the mark of spirituality. But none of these are the mark, not to say they are not important for a Christian to do. But the mark of Spirituality is love.
I have known people who had claimed great insight into the Bible, who put great value on correct doctrine, who made sure they used the right version of the Bible, who made sure everyone was properly dressed and behaved well in services, but who quite honestly had no love. They would rather a woman not come to church than for her to come and not have a hat on. That might be acceptable to a system of holiness that draws up a list of standards and expects people to keep to them. But it is completely unacceptable to a view of holiness as perfect love. 1 Corinthians 13 says if you don’t have love you are nothing, no matter what else you have.
We’ll see over the next few sermons, what this loves means. But if you think it means taking the soft option and just generally being nice, then you will learn something in the next few weeks. Love is hard. We’ll see what it means to express and live this love daily, amongst people who do not have this love and don’t even want it. Paul is not off on some airy fairy planet describing an ideal paradise and wouldn’t it all be nice if everyone could act like this. He is giving the Corinthians and us practical advice about how to live for God in the real world. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, far from it. But it is not hypothetical, idealised or exaggerated. This is how we are supposed to live in a fallen, sinful, real world.
