God is Love
First United Presbyterian Church
“God is Love”
Rev. Amy Morgan
April 29, 2018
Psalm 22:25-31
25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. May your hearts live forever!
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
28 For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.
29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.
1 John 4:7-21
7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.
15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.
16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.
19 We love because he first loved us.
20 Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.
21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
Ancient Greek has at least seven different words for love. Different words to describe love that is physical and passionate, love that is friendly and affectionate, love that is mature and longstanding, and love that is young and playful. There are distinct words for the love a parent has for a child, love between brothers and sisters, and the love of self.
And so, while on the surface it seems that the statement “God is love,” should be simple and easy to understand, we, in fact have great difficulty coming to terms with these three little words in English. We only have one word to describe every possible concept of love. And so to say, “God is love,” is to state as great a mystery as any other we might ponder.
But the 1st letter of John is not inviting us to ponder the mystery of God. This is a message about “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands,” as it says in the very first verse of the first chapter of this letter. The writer of 1st John is not concerned with esoteric concepts or unfathomable mysteries. He is writing about what is real and perceivable to the senses. And so, for the writer of this letter, love is not a concept, known abstractly. Love is an action, lived concretely.
And so it is important for us to know just exactly what kind of love God is. From all the references in this letter, and elsewhere, to God as a parent and us as children of God, we might assume the Greek word used here is storge, the love a parent has for a child. But no, that’s not it. This letter emphasizes the love we ought to have for one another, as brothers and sisters, so perhaps the Greek word used here is phileo, brotherly love. That word is found many times throughout the letters of the New Testament, but again, that’s not the word used here to define God.
The definition of God as love is not some brilliant epiphany or logical reasoning developed by the writer of this letter. “God is love” is a statement of God’s self-definition, what God has revealed to be real and true about God. And so the only kind of love that could possibly be is agape love, love that is self-giving, unconditional, and radically inclusive.
God is the love that created the awe-inspiring vastness of the universe and the amazing and invisible power of the atom. God is the love that chose a people to be a blessing to all the earth, though they were nothing special and not especially good. God is the love that revealed a law to order a blessed life for God’s people. God is the love that set aside divinity to enter into the history of that people, and all people. God is the love that healed, taught, befriended, and blessed. God is the love that died for the love of us. And God is the love that devoured death for the love of us. God is the love that continues to welcome the stranger, eat with outcasts and sinners, destroy barriers between people, and make a way for peace in places of conflict and violence. God is agape love, the very definition of it.
And that is such bad news.
I know that sounds crazy, but 1 John doesn’t just say “God is agape” isn’t that great? No. The writer starts by saying we have to love one another. If we don’t love one another, we don’t know God.
And he uses that agape love word. We’re not just supposed to love one another in an affectionate, brotherly way. Not in an endearing, parental fashion. Not even in a fun, playful way. No, we have to agape love each other. We have to love each other selflessly, without condition or exclusion.
And some of you wonderful people may think, “well, of course. Agape love is the highest Christian virtue and that’s all we do all day is think about how we can love people that way.” I don’t know who you are, and I won’t ask you to raise your hands because the rest of us will probably not love you with agape love, we’ll silently judge you for being better than the rest of us.
Because that’s what we really do most of the time, isn’t it? I mean, I hope at least some of you are better people than I am, but even so, agape love is a tall order. Agape love means that instead of seething at the people who don’t pick up after their dogs in public places, I have to love them – radically and selflessly. It means that instead of hating all the haters posting vitriolic garbage on Facebook, I have to love them – radically and selflessly. It means that instead of losing my mind and ranting about people who are bad at their jobs, I have to love them – radically and selflessly.
And I am not good at this. And neither are most people I interact with most days. We are not a society that practices agape love with any perceptible regularity.
Which is why I am so glad that the writer of 1st John does not introduce us to this disturbing news – that God is agape love and in order to know God at all we have to love each other this way – until the 4th chapter of this letter. Because before we can handle this news, we have to hear what this letter has to say about sin.
Before the writer lays this load on us, he tells us that “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” and that “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Now that we can work with. If we spend enough time poking around our own lives, we’ll find plenty of sin, plenty of times we’ve failed to exhibit God’s agape love. “But,” this letter assures us “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
Wonderful. We can admit our failure to love others the way God loves us, and we are cleansed and made righteous by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We can all breathe a big sigh of relief.
Except. The letter goes on to say that “No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him…The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.” Bam! We are right back at loving our brothers and sisters. Agape loving our brothers and sisters.
The theology of this letter is not at all systematic, but it does return again and again to the necessity of loving one another. And so, with each fresh pronouncement of this fact, our anxiety grows as we consider the multitude of ways we manage to forsake this high calling.
Which is why 1st John reminds us that There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. If we are fearful and anxious that we are not living up to God’s standard of love, we are missing the point entirely. The writer expects us to have “boldness on the day of judgement,” to be confident of God’s love for us, because God’s perfect love perfects our imperfect love. The great preacher William Sloan Coffin said, “love doesn’t seek value, it creates it. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value.” We cannot be worthy of love, God’s or anyone else’s. The nature of love is that it conveys worth. And so if we have experienced – heard and seen and touched – that agape love of God, we aren’t afraid of our shortcomings and our failures.
Instead, we are filled with dignity and meaning and sufficiency. We know that we are enough. Not because of anything we could possibly do or feel. Not because we’ve earned God’s love by being good enough or nice enough or even loving enough. God’s love casts out our fears and self-doubt and tells us that we are beloved, we are precious, we are enough. Intrinsically, and without qualification. God’s love has no conditions.
And so, even though it may not be our natural inclination, “we love because God first loved us.” Human love is always derivative of God’s love. Love is not an ideal we attain, a possession we acquire. It is a relationship – with God and with every one of our human brothers and sisters.
Jean Vanier, the founder of the L’Arche Communities where people of all abilities live together intentionally, said that “to love someone is to show them their beauty, their worth, and their importance.” That is precisely what God does for us. And that is what we strive to do for each other as followers of Jesus Christ.
Thank the Lord, God’s love is not dependent on the degree to which I am successful at doing this. I’m much better at pointing out people’s flaws than showing them their beauty. I’m much more skilled at elevating myself at someone else’s expense than I am at showing them their worth. I’m much more apt to ignore someone than to show them their importance.
But when I am open, and receptive, and aware of God’s love for me; when someone shows me my beauty, my worth, my importance; when I am called “beloved” by God or by a brother or sister: I can’t help myself. Love for others overflows from the love I have received.
We can’t try to love. We can’t work at it. We can’t fake it till we make it. It doesn’t work that way.
If we want to love God, we must love our brothers and sisters, this letter says. And the only way to do that is to be loved by God. To be open, receptive, and aware of that love. To believe and trust in that love. To abide in that love.
We may only have one word for love. But it is enough. Enough for us to know that we are loved. Enough for us to love others. Because love is not a word, or a concept, or an ideal. Love is a relationship, a practice, and a truth. Love is something we live and follow and believe.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God…and God is love. Amen.
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