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Eternal Love

Preached at St. Barnabas Church, Bellville, TX

First Sunday after Trinity, 2009

by The Rev. Stephen E. Stults

I John 4:16  And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love;
and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

As you know, we are now entering into the longest season of the Church year, Trinity. We have just completed the last of the major feast days of the Church year, Trinity Sunday, in which we celebrated one of the key mysteries of the Christian faith, the makeup of the eternal Godhead itself. In this long season of reflection and rest, it is the first great lesson we encounter.

In the Epistle for today, St. John reminds us of the next and perhaps greatest lesson of all: the lesson of love. He tells us, ”Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

This is one of those profoundly simple, yet devilishly difficult instructions for Christians to carry out. It is very easy to say, but absent the overflowing grace of God in our hearts, completely impossible to accomplish. It is very similar to the person who says, “I just love people; it but it’s this person or that person I just can’t stand.” It’s that pseudo-love that many people claim to have towards you or me until we oppose them or inconvenience them. Then, quite a different type of sentiment emerges. It’s a lesson that I am learning daily, now that I have a longer commute again, one that takes me into the heart of rush hour! I’m rediscovering how challenging it is to not only love my fellow man, but just remain civil as I encounter the vagaries of Houston traffic.

Seriously, that is what we are called to do, even as St. John tells us, ”He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (1 John 4:8). If we do not exhibit love for our fellow man, we are showing that we don’t know God! What a terrible thought! Yet, as a cautionary note, the type of love St. John is speaking about is not necessarily the warm, fuzzy, gushy, type of love one tends to equate with the word. Instead, the word used is agapaw {ag-ap-ah'-o}, meaning “to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly; to be well pleased, to be contented.” Thus, we are exhorted, even commanded to love “one another,” especially those of the household of faith.

Why, beloved, is this exhortation directed to us? Why is it that love and the commandment to love one another plays such a central role in the direction to us as Christians? St. John builds an argument for doing so thus: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10-11). This, of course, is the central idea; the “golden nugget” of Christianity, that God the Father loved us so much that He sent His Son to us. Yet, is this enough that we should love one another? Perhaps not, until the Beloved Disciple says this: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” Thus, we should reciprocate God’s love for us by not only loving Him, but also showing our love for God by loving our fellow man.

Perhaps the point is this: God’s Love for us is so overwhelming, so magnificent, so ebullient, that we, if we are attuned to His Grace, should be absolutely filled with it. The sense of God’s love for us should overtake us and be our guiding principle and chief awareness, filling us to the very brim. Once again, this is extremely difficult, because we are constantly fighting our fallen nature and the spiritual forces arrayed against us. We are indeed waging a spiritual war against the world, the flesh, and the Devil.

Of course, we see the failure of love around the world, that is, the failure of even Christians to practice the vaunted love many of us profess. I don’t need to weary you with the well-known failures of that expression, so often seen. One example, however, will more than suffice to illustrate this. I recently had a long conversation with a woman, now a fervent and spirit-filled Christian, who had a long period of “wandering in the wilderness” due to the uncharity of her fellow Christians. It seems that she had a rather rambunctious son, aged 12, who was then active in the church youth group. Being a pre-teen and naturally being full of, well, vigor, he ran into various conflicts with the church leadership. This reached a climax at a church youth summer camp, where he and several other youngsters were left unsupervised for a period of time. This particular boy evidently had a problem with another boy, who subsequently hit him with a pillowcase filled with flashlights! After a chase, the original boy struck his assailant in the face while being pinned on his back. One would think, perhaps, that this was unfortunate but not earth-shattering. Boys will be boys, especially energetic and sometimes obnoxious 12-year olds. Well, it seems that the boy’s parents threatened to sue the church unless some action was taken. The church, frightened because they knew these boys had been left unsupervised and thus they would be potentially liable, responded by kicking the boy out of the youth group! His mother confronted the church leadership by asking them why they were booting her out of the church; they responded that they were not expelling the family from the church; they were merely forbidding the boy to be in the youth group. As you and I know, it virtually equates to the same thing. Later, the boy, bewildered by the obvious “disconnect” between words and actions asked, “Mom, where is the forgiveness?”

As a result, the mother and the boy left the church and their faith. She returned after about 10 years. The boy, now a man, never has. He is still bitter and unchurched. One would think that, perhaps with a little charity and Christian love, this issue could have been resolved. There was, in fact, little difference between this group’s actions and a secular organization, in the way they embraced a secular solution rather than applying Christian principles to the situation.

What’s even more amazing about this particular episode is that it illustrates how little has changed in two thousand years. We recall St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6:6: "But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.” Is it any wonder that the intelligent, so-called enlightened, worldly man looks at Christianity and according to C.S. Lewis, “will have none of it”?

The greatest challenge for us as Christians is to live in this world, yet not be of it. We’ve all heard this all of our adult Christian lives. Yet, using this story as an example, it is true. Our constant mission is to express Christ’s love for the world and for each other, while not allowing the world’s values to infect and influence us, especially in the Church. If we do not do this, we are in danger of invalidating who we are and what we stand for. Once again, St. John says: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?  And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:20-21).

This is the one of the most pure, most “unvarnished” Christian instructions I’ve ever heard. Plainly said, “If you say that you love God, whom you have never seen, yet you hate your brother, Christian or not, whom you see every day, you are a liar.” That, to my mind, is straight talk, plain and convicting. I don’t know about you, but when I read this and then consider the nastiness of my interior thoughts towards my fellow man, I feel ashamed. Frankly, I’m ashamed that I don’t, or can’t, express true Christian love to everyone that I meet. I’m ashamed at my reactions when someone offends me or doesn’t act the way I would have them act. I’m just plain ashamed that I can’t be more Christ-like to the world at large.

Well, St. John has an answer for that, too. He tells us that we have known and believed God’s love for us. God is love, and he that dwells in love, dwells in God and God in him. Thus, if we believe, truly believe that God loves us, we will live in that love and let it empower us through our earthly life. As we believe this with every fiber of our being, we will love even ourselves. Not self indulgent, spoiled brat-type of love, but true, Christ-like love for ourselves. Maybe the formula goes something like this: God’s love for me makes me love myself, which means I can love others as well. Stated another way, God’s love for me through Jesus Christ makes me totally OK in His eyes. This makes me totally OK in my own eyes. Thus, my neighbor is OK too. Despite what he does or says to me, I am able to love him through Christ and only through Christ.

We also are to have boldness. St. John here specifically mentions boldness in the Day of Judgment. This is absolutely wonderful. We should not fear our judgment, but instead of fear, we should allow ourselves to be perfected in love. In those wonderful words of 1 John 4:17-18: “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

One may also surmise that our boldness should pertain to our earthly experience as well. That is, we are to love our fellow man with boldness. We should not be afraid or timid or reticent. Rather, let us love largely because God loves us largely. We should not have fear, but love and acceptance. Not ill will, but joy. Not bitter isolation, but eternal fellowship with God. This is what God wills for us. Through God’s perfect and all-loving Will, we will live in the heavenly Garden with Him, but without sin, without fear and without shame.

God’s love is infectious and contagious. It spreads from one person to the next. Thus, beloved, pray God that you and I, all of us, can be “carriers” of this wonderful condition, now and for ever.

"And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him" (I John 4:16)

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN

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