Ecclesiastes...Pastor Phil Strong

Part 21

7-17-11                                    

Text: 1 John 4:7-21

● When it comes to love, the dictionary is of little help. Webster’s defines “love” as, ‘benevolent concern for the good of another; strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; a warm attachment; or ‘holding one’s opponent scoreless in tennis’.

 Admittedly, a bit ‘uninspiring’; it’s not the stuff of great works of art or poetry.

● The clear thrust of John’s letter, as well as the underlying and supporting theme of the entire NT, is that God is love and we are the be-loved of God.

            There’s nothing more central to who we are; nothing which makes us more alive- makes us more fully human, than loving and being loved.

● But, love doesn’t work, we have concluded. We’re skeptical; we’re cynical. It’s too fickle; it’s too fragile. Something’s happened to question the validity and sincerity of such a declaration. We’ve heard it before. The people who were supposed to love us didn’t.

We aren’t secure in it (“Mean it?”) We’re suspicious of it. We speak in terms of “falling in love” or, the Righteous Brothers sang about someone having “lost that lovin’ feelin’… now it’s gone, gone, gone; whoooa!

It’s the only thing in our culture that hasn’t entered the discussion about “sustainability”, yet it’s the one thing we can’t live without.

● But, somewhere along the journey, we have exchanged the innocence and wonder of being loved by God for more sophisticated strategies of getting back into God’s good graces--- proving to him that we are loveable.

            Innocence: is defined as “the state of unknowing”. It’s why, as kids, we were so full of life… we didn’t know any better!

● As I discovered, there does come a time when running around in tights with a bath towel wrapped around your neck, pretending to be “Batman” is no longer appropriate, but, Jesus never seemed to equate maturity with forfeiting “childlikeness”. We are never to “outgrow love; never be “too big to be loved”. As adults, we shouldn’t know ‘any better’ either.

The call to love has a “qualifier”; it is always prefaced by God’s, “As I have loved you.”

It is the love of God, as portrayed and embodied in the life and person of Jesus, which becomes the “benchmark” or “standard” against which all other “love-claims” are measured.

 “What does he see in me?”

“Agape” is like nothing we have ever seen before. It must come to us as “revelation”---as “mystery”: something which, to present, had yet to be revealed and understood.

Agape, God-love, is a radical re-orientation of reality.

            Left to ourselves and our own imaginations, most of what we believe to be true about God will be flawed. Left to ourselves and our own conscience, most of what we conclude to be true about ourselves is incomplete.

This God-love (“agape”) is a love that is…

… designed specifically for the other’s sake.

… an irrevocable “being with” the other.

… a love that is without condition (no pre-requisites).

… a love that is ‘unprovoked’ [no one can ever say, “God loves me because ____”.]

… a “disinterested” love--- expecting nothing in return. It doesn’t require a reaction, but invites a response.

… a love that knows disappointment, but not regret for having loved.

… a love that is awakened by a sense of value; because we assess it as valuable, it becomes precious to us.

● Most importantly, it is a quality of love that is determined by the character of the “lover”; it always accentuates the quality of love being demonstrated which, in turn, transforms the “beloved”.

Augustine said, “In loving me, you made me loveable”.

But, it’s hard to “be-loved”. We know too much.

“beloved” (Gr)- favorite; worthy of love

God makes you feel as if you are “exclusive”.

As simplistic as it may sound, your life will be dramatically impacted by and oriented around the confessions that you make.

confess- (Gr.) ‘agree with; to concede to the truth of something; to say the same thing as’.

● God wants us to say the same thing he is saying. He wants us to agree with him and, in so doing, let that persuade us to believe what we will never fully understand.

“Who told you that?” Some of the first words of God we have on record (Genesis 3).

            That question was prompted by the disconnect that humanity felt as a result of experiencing something other than God and his love for them. They became, for the first time, more “self-conscious” than God-conscious”. Something in them ‘died’, just as promised.

● Remember when your kids came home in tears and confidently declared something like, “I look stupid in these braces”, or, “My eyes are too close together”, or “My forehead is too big”.

Do you remember the pain that your heart felt as you listened to your children rehearse such things about themselves? Your response? To hold them; identify the source (“He’s a punk, honey!”); secure them in love.

So, we hear God query…

“Who told you that you weren’t enough? Who told you that you’d never succeed at anything? Who told you that you were unattractive? Who told you that you’d never be a good mother? Who told you that your marriage would never last? Who told you that you were unloveable?  Who told you that you weren’t smart enough? Who told you that you were too young? Too old? Who told you that you could find life apart from me? Who told you that?”

1 John 3 “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are”.

How could John write with such confidence? How did he know?

1 John 1“… heard, seen, touched…” They had a full-on sensory, tactile experience of the love of God as embodied in Jesus (“So that you can experience it, too”).

If faith is the evidence of things ‘not seen’, then love is the ‘unseen made visible/detectable’.

We are called, in faith, to believe what we cannot see; but, that same faith calls us to lovingly respond to all that we can see as an identifiable expression of such faith (Hebrews 11).

This is the proof of love; the litmus test of our experience of God: that we love ‘the other’.

“Is your faith making you more loving?”

● If what is forming and informing our lives is not resulting (gradually, but definably) in tangible expressions of love toward others, it is, at the very least, “flawed” and, at the very worst, “sacrilege” [def: ‘a violation of what is sacred (robbing it of its ‘God-ness’; gross irreverance’].

“God is love.” How does he validate such a claim of authenticity? How does he extend it to a broken and disoriented world? Through us.

            “No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12)

● In essence, no one should ever be able to walk away from a significant encounter with us and make that claim.

Complete this thought: “If I really knew (experiential interaction) the lavish love of God, maybe I could stop trying to find love in _________.”

If we really knew “love”, the deep, profound, heart-satisfying love of God, we wouldn’t spend so much time pursuing something which won’t satisfy us and won’t pursue us.

Love is always person-al, never nameless or faceless. Love is always definable, never abstract. Love is always intentional, never merely sentimental. Love is always dynamic, never motionless. Love is always transformational, never status-quo. Love alters us. You can’t follow Jesus and stay the same: that’s a hopeful promise, not a threat!