Ecclesiastes...Pastor Phil Strong

Part 20

7-10-11                                    

Text: 1 John 4:7-21

1 John 4:10 “This is real love: [stop: grammatically, the ‘colon’ (:) signals that what you are about to read is an explanation of the previous statement. It is like a “door” and it invites us to continue through] 

John offers it in this fashion because of the many misrepresentations being offered, especially in our “Wikipedia world”, where defining the ‘truth’ (essence) of something is left merely to our own opinions and experiences] not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sin”

● Nobody I know would deny that love is the most desirable way to live, but so few have been the recipients of and participants in such “other-centered” devotion as portrayed by God in the life of Jesus.

            But, it is what we were made for. It’s why we are so dissatisfied with anything else, and why we are so desperate for it that we are so easily “duped” into thinking that every expression of love is the real thing.

● We remain “idealistic” when it comes to love, knowing that every expression and every experience of love is somehow “irregular” and cannot be offered as “whole/complete”. If you look close enough, you can identify the flaws.

● Interestingly, John puts the discussion of love in the context of atonement. We want to somehow disconnect talk of God’s love with atonement, but it can clearly only be understood within that context: within the framework of our inconsistency; against the dark backdrop of human failure and stubbornness.

Real love is always only definable through atonement.

Jesus believed and acted upon (2) vital points, both of which are critical components of the story:

            1) He believed that the good Creator-God had intended from the beginning to address the problems evil in creation through the nation of Israel.

            That although this act of rescue and restoration would come through the Jews, its impact and effect would reach to the entire world [John 4:22 “… salvation is from the Jews…” ]

            2) Jesus believed that this act would be accomplished through the nation of Israel experiencing a defining moment in which she would be forgiven of her sins, freed to cross into a new life and become the means through which God would, at last, set things right.

● In this consideration, we meet this big theological concept known as “atonement”. But, to use that word is to find yourself in a story which has decidedly Jewish roots.

            In the Hebrew, the word is multi-faceted: ‘to cover over, to cleanse, to make reconciliation, to forgive, to cancel a debt, to pardon’.

● In a word, then, “atonement” is…

… every movement of God toward his creation motivated by his purpose of setting things right.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.”

● One of the pictures that Paul offers is of a ‘law court setting’ with God as the Judge and humanity as the guilty party.

condemned… (alienated, enslaved, depraved- not worthless, just helpless to remedy the situation on our own) one of the many-faceted understandings of atonement.

● As best as I can tell, there is only one solution for removing the offense standing between the (2) parties: “forgiveness”--- it’s our only way out.

You slap me, I slap you; you take my coat, I take yours… it’s “Vaudeville”.  At some point, someone must exercise their freedom and bring the cycle to a screeching halt.

In order for us to realize the depth of its impact, sin must be understood as a ‘relational term’, not a ‘legislative term’.

Sin, as simply certain actions/behaviors, trivializes it and fails to capture the enormity of the human dilemma.

Sin is who we are in light of who we were created to be.

            The “falling short” (Romans 3:23) is universal failure to realize God’s dream of “shalom”; the failure to become who we were meant to be and experience the kind of life we were meant to live. It says that our pursuit of life apart from God does not take us far enough.

Not only are we confronted with the  sin itself, but the guilt, or the ‘sin- stain’--- the residue left on our lives.

It’s the present reminder that causes us to continue to rehearse what went wrong.

At some point, truth simply must be assimilated in order to be experienced.

At some point, you must simply learn to “live in love” (1 John 4:16): it’s the atmosphere, the locale of life. It’s what names us, identifies us, moves us. Not like an idea or a slogan on the locker-room wall that we jump up and slap on our way out to the field, but a reality in which we function.

Living in love demands a lot of “soul talk”. A lot of meditation/mumbling (‘meditate’ in Psalm 1: he “delights” in it because he “meditates” on it).

God is not content for us to just “go our separate ways”.

Love continues to make room for the other; continues to hold out hope of “shalom”.

Forgiveness itself is a form of suffering, but it accomplishes what hatred and retaliation could not: a change of relationship between victim and perpetrator.

When I forgive, I not only suffer the consequences of being violated, I suppress my desire to exact revenge [remember, there’s no such thing as ‘getting even’].

Sin disrupts relationship and results in various expressions of disorder. Forgiveness removes those obstacles and “frees us up” to love.

It means that nothing is obstructing my path to you; nothing obstructing my view of you.

Love doesn’t ensure the elimination of sin among us; it simply ensures that we won’t use it as an excuse to not be with each other; to withhold love from one another. We won’t condone it, but we won’t be surprised by it, either.

Atonement was never offered simply as a ritual to be performed, but a lifestyle to be adopted.

            The goal of atonement: the restoration of relationships with God, one another and the world which makes possible a community of people living out shalom.

Atonement is about much more than “unconditional love”.

To say that God loves you despite your brokenness is only partially true. God is not interested in forming some “co-dependent” relationship with you where his grace actually enables your continued foolishness.

But, to say that God will not be content until you are whole and is committed to staying with you through the process, is only partially true. To say that God loves you despite your brokenness and longs to transform you so that you might embody his healing, restorative love to a broken world… that’s the truth. The NT identifies it as “fellowship”.

This atoning activity of God, in Jesus, was not something that he needed to first accomplish in order that he might love you. Rather, it was something he initiated because he loved you.

In order for us to rely on love, it has to have met with resistance… and survived.

The new covenant is eternal, because it is based on love and ‘love never fails’.