Tag: love of God

A Beautiful View of Jesus, Matthew 17:1-9 (Sunday Before Lent, The Transfiguration, Year A)

Matthew 17:1-9

A year into marriage – and it will be our silver wedding anniversary this year – my wife Debbie and I decided we fancied a walking holiday in the Snowdonia region of Wales. We booked a room in a B & B near the village of Beddgelert, and looked forward to joining the hordes walking up Mount Snowdon.

View from the Summit: Mount Snowdon by James E Petts on Flickr. CC 2.0.

It didn’t work out like that. Not long before going, we discovered Debbie was expecting our first child. Our vigorous walking holiday became a sedate one. We never got up Mount Snowdon.

Jesus, however, went up mountains quite regularly during his ministry. And every time Matthew’s Gospel records him doing so, something significant – revelatory, even – happens. In the last couple of weeks, you may have had readings from the Sermon on the Mount – his great description of what repentant living in the kingdom of God looks like. At the very end of Matthew after the Resurrection, Jesus sends his disciples up a mountain in Galilee, where he gives the Great Commission to disciple the whole world.

And here he is in today’s reading, going up a mountain again. We traditionally refer to the ‘Mount of Transfiguration.’ We expect a significant revelation of Jesus. And boy, do we get that. What is revealed about Jesus at the Mount of Transfiguration?

Here are four things the Transfiguration shows us about Jesus[1]:

Firstly, the glory of Jesus:

Jesus meets Moses and Elijah. Both of them had history of profound spiritual experiences on mountains. Moses received the Ten Commandments and his face glowed with the glory of God. Elijah saw God give him a mighty victory over the pagan prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.

But here, only Jesus is transfigured. Moses isn’t. Nor is Elijah. However great they were in Israel’s history, they are not equal with Jesus. Only he shows the dazzling glory of God on his face and his clothes.

The message is clear. Jesus is supreme to all other religious leaders and heroes. He is not just another teacher. Nor is he merely a prophet, as Islam would say. He is so much more. He is Lord.

The natural consequence of this is that Jesus is as worthy of worship as the Father. He manifests the very glory of God.

Peter gets it all wrong. Perhaps he is tongue-tied in the presence of surpassing greatness, a bit like any of us would be when we meet someone famous and all our plans to ask intelligent questions disappear as our legs go to jelly and so do our brains. He says the daftest thing when he wants to build three shelters, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus. Yet again, he has missed the point.

It’s not enough to like Jesus or even admire him. The Transfiguration tells us that he is worthy of our worship – not merely an hour of our time on a Sunday, but the allegiance of our lives.

This morning, we take Holy Communion together. In our tradition, we call that a ‘sacrament.’ Now ‘sacrament’ is an interesting word. It is not a word from Scripture. Rather, it derives from a Latin word ‘sacramentum’, which was the oath of allegiance that a Roman soldier made to the Emperor. May our initial response to the glory of Jesus this morning be in renewing our sacramentum, our oath of allegiance to him, at the Lord’s Table.

Secondly, the words of Jesus:

Just to underline what Peter should have learned from only Jesus being transfigured, the divine voice from the bright cloud says,

‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’ (Verse 5)

As good Jews, Peter, James, and John had it imprinted on their memory that when Moses went up Mount Sinai he received the Law of God. Now, as they are up this other mountain, they learn that Jesus is not simply the recipient of God’s words, he is the giver of them. Jesus is, and he gives, the Word of God.

This is the logical consequence of the first point. If the glory of Jesus tells us about his supremacy and we offer our worship and allegiance, then that involves heeding what he says. It is not for us to treat the teaching of Jesus as merely interesting or optional: what he says, goes. It is the Word of God.

Some of us like to sit in judgment on what we read in the Scriptures – like when Field Marshal Montgomery read the Old Testament lesson at Matins one morning and began, ‘And the Lord said unto Moses – and in my opinion quite rightly’! Others of us like to analyse the words and enjoy coming up with clever theories or explanations, but then do nothing. That won’t do either.

Of course, we will struggle with some of the difficult sayings of Jesus. We may need to understand certain nuances, or their historical background to make sense of them. But in the end, what we need to embrace as Christians is that Jesus and the Scriptures are for life, not just Sundays. One of the things coming in our forthcoming circuit-wide Lent preaching series will be a challenge to study and meditate on the Scriptures more. This would be a good time to embrace that discipline.

Thirdly, the compassion of Jesus:

It would be easy after what we have just been thinking about to assume that everything Jesus says and requires of us is challenging and maybe severe. But following on immediately from the words, ‘Listen to him,’ Jesus does in fact speak to Peter, James, and John. Hear verses 6 to 8 again:

6 When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified. 7 But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

Get up. Don’t be afraid. Even after the overwhelming glory that comes upon Jesus. Even after the summons to listen to him. Who is this Jesus whose glory tells of his supremacy, and whose Father tells us he is and he speaks the Word of God? Is he some severe authoritarian?

No. The Jesus who is Lord is full of love, mercy, and compassion. He reaches out in kindness to his people. He is the giver of dignity to those who are bowed down. Like the Psalmist says of the Lord in Psalm 3:3,

You are the One who lifts my head high.

This is how Jesus reigns. He was God’s agent in creation, where we were made in God’s image. However much we have marred that image by our sin, he is now remaking us in the divine image. He is making us more like him. And he does that with love and care for each of us.

If we are worried about giving our allegiance to Jesus and following his Word, here is what we need to remember about him. His yoke is easy and his burden is light[2] and we find our rest in him.

This is who we are called to follow. This is who is speaking to us. Whatever has laid us low, be they fears about God or the wounds of life, he invites us to get up and leave our fears with him. We are safe in his divine presence.

Fourthly and finally, the suffering of Jesus:

9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, ‘Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’

For all the glory of Jesus, for all his authority as the Word of God, and for all his love, his next destination is Jerusalem and the Cross.

Suddenly, it feels like everything has changed. We have gone from the retina-searing brilliance of the Transfiguration to three hours of darkness on a hill.

But maybe nothing has changed. Maybe the Cross will reveal the same truths about Jesus, just in startlingly different ways. For though the world may think the Cross will be his shame, it will be his glory. The world may think he is condemned at the Cross and in one sense he is, but it will also be his enthronement.

And in the silence of God at Calvary, Jesus himself will speak his word. Seven last words from the Cross. Still, the Word of God will go out into the world, even from One suffering a cruel death. He will say, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,’ and that word will be fulfilled as forgiveness pours out with his blood.

And do we see there the Jesus who in love lifts people up? Why, yes we do. For one thing, the forgiveness we have just spoken about does that. For another, he will lift up the penitent thief next to him by assuring him, ‘I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise.’ Moreover, he lifts up both his mother and the Belovèd Disciple as he addresses them from the Cross: ‘Mother, here is your son. Son, here is your mother.’

Nowhere more do we see Jesus lifting people up and showing love than at Golgotha. As the Welsh Revival hymn puts it,

Here is love, vast as the ocean,
lovingkindness as the flood,
when the Prince of life, our ransom,
shed for us his precious blood.
Who his love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing his praise?
He can never be forgotten
throughout heaven’s eternal days.[3]

Conclusion

We began by talking about mountains. Sometimes, when you go up a mountain you get to see the most magnificent view. I recall seeing the powerful sight of the snow and the ski slopes when I went up the Jungfrau in Switzerland.

Here, as we have ascended the Mount of Transfiguration, I hope we gained the beautiful view of Jesus. We have taken in his majestic glory, his identity as the Word of God, and his compassionate love. Then we have seen that all of these will be recapitulated at the Cross.

I’ll finish not with the words of an old hymn but of a modern worship song, because they seem to capture these thoughts:

You are beautiful beyond description
Too marvelous for words
Too wonderful for comprehension
Like nothing ever seen or heard
Who can grasp Your infinite wisdom?
Who can fathom the depth of Your love?
You are beautiful beyond description
Majesty, enthroned above[4]

[1] These are influenced by Craig Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, pp 436-41.

[2] Matthew 11:30

[3] William Rees (1802-83); translated by William Edwards (1848-1929).

[4] ‘I Stand In Awe’, Music and words by Mark Altrogge. © 1986 Sovereign Grace Praise/BMI (adm. by Integrity Music). Sovereign Grace Music, a division of Sovereign Grace Churches. All rights reserved. CCLI: #23914.

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Video Teaching: First Principles of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 5:6-17)

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

In my O-Level Physics class there once came an occasion where our teacher set us a problem for homework that none of us could solve. When my parents saw me struggling with it my Dad decided to write a letter to the teacher, asking him why he had set homework that none of the pupils could do.

In response to that letter the teacher phoned my Dad. He explained that all we needed to do to solve the problem was go back to the first principles we had learned in that topic.

When I heard that, I learned an important life lesson. Always go back to the first principles.

There is something of ‘first principles’ in our reading from 2 Corinthians. It’s a strange selection of verses in the Lectionary – but hey, what’s new there? But even despite that and the fact that we’re reading these verses out of context, we can pick up on some first principles. Because like my old Physics teacher, the Apostle Paul also always went back to first principles.

So today we are going to think about some of the First Principles of the Gospel. What are the first principles Paul talks about here, and how do they affect the way we live?

Number one first principle is that we live by faith, not sight.

Paul tells us that in the life to come we shall be at home with the Lord and shall see him, but right now we are away from home and do not see him, so we have to live by faith, trusting in the God whom we do not yet see. But when we do see him, he will call us to account for all that we have done while away from home (verses 6-10).

What does that mean for us? To live by faith means that we trust that even though we don’t yet see God, one day we shall. And in the meantime, we are to live as those who know we shall see God one day. That’s what living by faith is here: trusting that we shall meet God face to face in the life to come, and letting that reality direct the way we live now. The Gospel promise of meeting God face to face one day is meant to change us on this day.

So for one thing, living by faith means that we consider our attitudes and our actions now. Would we act the way we do if we had to live our every moment before the visible face of God? How does the fact that we shall one day see him face to face affect how we live today? What would we be happy doing in that knowledge? What would make us ashamed?

For another thing, we know that the Lord has entrusted us with resources, gifts, and talents in this life. So another part of living by faith is to consider how we use these things. From the abundance of creation to our natural talents, how would we use these if we were doing so before the face of God? How would we use our brain, our artistic abilities, our work skills, our homes and gardens, our possessions? The answers to questions like these will show how much we are living by faith – or not, as the case may be.

We often restrict the expression ‘living by faith’ to those Christians who have to trust God to supply their financial needs. I have no quarrel with that: I have had to do that at times. But Paul tells us to expand our vision of living by faith, because he tells us here that all Christians live by faith. How are we going to live now, knowing that we shall one day see God face to face?

Number two first principle is that Christ’s love compels us.

Paul talks about the love of Christ being a compelling motive in the Christian life, and he links it to his death on the Cross. If you hadn’t heard the whole reading but were just hearing his letter read out in public for the first time you might have thought that the link from the love of Christ to the Cross was going to be the forgiveness of our sins through the Cross. But it isn’t.

Of course, it’s true that Christ’s love brings us forgiveness through the Cross, but Paul makes a different point here. His punchline comes in verse 15:

15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

Christ’s love compels us, because his example shows us that we are to live for Jesus and for others, not primarily for ourselves.

That’s why a church that gets hung up on just wanting the things that the members themselves like is an unhealthy church: it’s not modelled on Christ’s love.

In fact, were I to choose a church to be part of based on my own preferences it almost certainly wouldn’t be the Methodist Church. There are so many things in Methodism that I find tedious, frustrating, or annoying. But God called me to serve here. He loves me in Jesus, and calls me to return that love in the context of Methodism.

You may know the famous comment of Archbishop William Temple, when he said that the church is the only institution that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members. It’s not a perfect statement, but it does capture some of this idea: Christ’s love means we live for him and for others.

Each and every one of us needs to be asking ourselves, how am I imitating the love of Jesus by serving him and serving others?

Number three first principle is the new creation.

16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!

Following Jesus makes us treat people differently, says Paul. But it’s that final verse where I need to give you this week’s episode of Bible Trivia.

‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,’ said many older translations. Some newer translations say, ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.’ That’s bit different.

So which is it? Is it that the convert is a new creation? Or is it that conversion promises the general new creation of all things?

If you go back to the Greek you’ll see why we have this problem. It’s ambiguous. A literal translation would be, ‘If anyone is in Christ – new creation!’ For us English speakers there are missing words. To translate it into English, we have to add words. Whether we opt for ‘the person is a new creation’ (favoured by those Christians who emphasise personal conversion) or ‘there is a new creation’ (favoured by those who care about the environment and social justice) depends largely on our existing theological preferences.

But what if the words ‘If anyone is in Christ – new creation!’ are deliberately ambiguous and cover both of these possibilities? I think both are true biblically.

When we are united with Christ, God makes us new by his Spirit, and starts a work of holiness and healing in us that will not be complete until glory. He calls us to co-operate with his Holy Spirit in this work.

But our union with Christ also shows God’s project to make the whole creation new, just as he makes us new. He is not content to leave the world as it is and calls us to join with his Spirit in the renewal of all things.

So he will send us into the world both to call people to conversion and to make a social difference.

Therefore, if any of us prefers personal piety to social justice, we have sold the Gospel short. And if any of us is willing to campaign for social justice but not seek personal conversion and holiness, then we too have diluted the Gospel.

To sum up, the three Gospel first principles we’ve looked at today all lead to transformed lives and transformed society. When we live by faith, not by sight, we live as if we were doing so in the presence of God, and that surely changes our actions and our priorities.

Christ’s love compels us through the Cross to live for him and for others, rather than for ourselves.

And the new creation is both personal with our conversion and our journey of holiness but also social as we anticipate God making all things new.

Each of us needs to ask: in what way is the Gospel changing me? And in what ways am I serving the kinds of change God longs to see in his world, as a result of the Gospel?

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Sixth Sunday of Easter: Responding To God’s Love

John 15:9-17

Welcome to Part Two. No, there hasn’t been an advertising break, although I can do nothing about the adverts which YouTube runs on these videos, all of which are beyond my control, and none of which benefits me financially.

No, this is Part Two of the ‘I am the Vine’ passage in John 15. Last week we looked at what Jesus said about our relationship with him, particularly with reference to being pruned branches and remaining in him by listening and obeying.

This week we focus in more closely on that ‘remaining’, specifically because in these verses Jesus expands ‘remain in me’ to ‘remain in my love’, which we do in response to his love, which in turn comes from the Father’s love for him. We’re going to look at our love for Christ and our love for one another, but before we get to those two points, let’s just dwell on the fact that the love we show is a response to Christ’s love for us.

John’s Gospel here is very similar to the First Letter of John, where we read, ‘We love, because he first loved us’ (1 John 4:19). God’s love in Christ comes first, to the extent that the Apostle Paul said, ‘While we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8). Does that amaze you? God in Christ loved us while we were still sinners. We were loved by the Almighty when we were the most unworthy of that love. Always that love of God’s comes first.

The Gospel question, then, is something like this: you are loved – how are you going to respond? If we fail to respond, then we cannot receive the wonderful offer of God’s love and remain outside it, potentially for eternity. But if we do respond, then we respond as sinners who are dearly loved. All our response to such love is a ‘thank you’ for it.

To put it another way, the love we are called to show does not earn us the love of God. It does not make us worthy. We shall never be worthy of ourselves. We cannot rely on saying, ‘Look, Lord, at how good and loving I am. I deserve your love.’ Whatever the best of our life is, we cannot offer something that matches up to God’s love in Christ. Rather than giving anything, we hold out empty hands to receive his love. Then, when we have received the gift of that wonderful love in the forgiveness of our sins, in his power to live a new life, and in his reorientation of our lives towards his kingdom, we show love for God and for others as gratitude, as a sign that we have received his love.

So how are we going to respond in gratitude to God’s love in Christ? As I said, there are two ways: loving God and loving others. Now is the time to explore them both a little more.

Firstly, loving God. Let’s boil this down mainly to one verse, namely verse 10:

10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 

It’s simple, isn’t it? The way we love God is by keeping his commands.

Now you may think that’s simple to state but less simple to justify or to live. What kind of love is so one-sided that one party needs to obey the other? Haven’t we done away with such concepts of love, for example where a bride no longer promises to obey her husband in the marriage service?

This is to assume that all love is mutual between two equals. But that is a mistake. Would we say that of the love between a parent and a young child? We would expect that the parent loved the child sacrificially in time, attention, energy, money, and so many other ways. We would not expect the child to be able to match that. But we would normally expect a child to follow the instructions and wishes of a loving parent.

That gives us a clue here. We shall never be equals with God. Creatures are not on the same plane as their Creator. We are sinners, God is holy. Our knowledge is far more limited.

I could go on, but the essential point is that God ranks far above us. There is nothing unreasonable in Jesus saying, ‘If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love’.

And obeying Christ out of love makes for an interesting test of our actions and our attitudes. When I resist what I know to be the command of Jesus and choose to do something else, I am saying, I prefer my will to yours, Jesus. It’s a case of ‘My will be done,’ not ‘Thy will be done.’ When I put it in those terms I realise how wrong my actions are. They aren’t just a moment of weakness, they are a moment of defiance. No wonder God takes them seriously.

But having noticed that, let’s be positive. We want to show gratitude for God’s great love for us in Christ, love that went to the Cross. What he has done for us is so wonderful and so stunning that we want to show our gratitude. We do that by obeying him.

Think of it like this – although it might seem trivial in comparison to the Cross. Have you ever had someone do something marvellous for you, whether it’s one particular act or some sustained actions over time? You may have thought, how can I show my gratitude? So you ask their spouse, is there something they particularly like? Armed with the answer, you go out and buy that. You want to please them in the way you show how grateful you are. When you see their reaction to your gift, it brings joy to you as well as them.

I think that’s why Jesus goes on to say,

11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 

The sequence is something like this. God loves us, especially by Jesus dying for us. We are so grateful for such love that, in the words of Paul in Ephesians, we ‘find out what pleases the Lord’ (Ephesians 5:10). When we do that, it brings joy to Jesus and that reverberates in us.

How can each of us bring joy to God today by obeying his commands?

Secondly, loving others. Jesus goes on to say:

12 My command is this: love each other as I have loved you.

The snag is, how has Jesus loved us? The answer, of course, is by going to the Cross. So it’s not surprising that he then says,

13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Jesus goes on to explain that he calls us friends, and so it is us for whom he lays down his life. Therefore – and here’s the challenging bit – he calls us to imitate his love, even to that limit, if necessary. Not that we can die for the sins of the world, of course, but we may need to lay down our lives for the well-being of our friends.

Just to say that causes a sharp intake of breath for me, I don’t know about you.

That said, we do recognise this in other ways. I think if one of my children was about to be run over by a car and there was no alternative, I would as a parent risk my own life to save theirs. That’s what love does.

Maybe one of the differences here, then, is that we just haven’t had relationships with our fellow Christians that are as close as a loving family. We may say they are our brothers and sisters in the faith, and we may refer to the church sometimes as a ‘family’, but to be honest, these are just words. We are more of a social club than a closely-knit family of believing disciples.

God’s love for us in Jesus is meant to bind us so closely to him that we love to obey him, and so closely to one another that we would give up our lives for one another if that were required.

Well has it been said that you can choose your friends but not your family, but that doesn’t really extend to the church. We can’t choose who our friends and family in the church are at all!

If we were gathered together in a church building I would at this point invite you to look around at your fellow friends of Jesus, your brothers and sisters in Christ, and I would ask you to consider for which of them you would be willing to lay down your life.

When we reflect on those we would love to the point of death and those we wouldn’t it’s a searing test of how near or far we are from Jesus’ concept of his kingdom community.

So it’s worth considering what would need to change for us to be the family or the band of friends where we do love each other so much because of Jesus that nothing would be too much for us. What needs to change in my heart? In your heart? Where is it that we haven’t yet apprehended ‘how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ’ (Ephesians 3:18)?

Do you remember how, according to the church leader Tertullian it was said of the early believers ‘See how these Christians love one another’? Wow! Don’t you think that means they had an incredible grip on how much Jesus loved them first?

What would the world say if we had a similar sense of how much we were loved by God in Christ?

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Fourth Sunday of Easter: The Good Shepherd

This week we consider the famous ‘Good Shepherd’ passage. Why think about this in the Easter season? Because Jesus references his death and resurrection, and what flows from them.

John 10:11-18

As many of you know, my plans for university at the normal age of eighteen were interrupted by the sudden onset of serious neck pain. One evening, sitting in a prayer meeting, I gravitated towards the armchair most likely to give me some support and relief – one that elderly people usually sat in.

A lovely member of that group called Peggy saw my pain and quoted the words with which today’s reading began: ‘I am the Good Shepherd,’ and led a prayer for me. So I know first-hand the comfort this passage brings to people.

Yet what I’ve discovered over the years is that these comforting words are also challenging words. So today we’re going to meditate on both the comforting and challenging messages of these verses.

The first thing to observe is how Jesus teaches here about his divinity. Right from the opening words, ‘I am’, we have a claim to divinity. Those two words may be unremarkable in English, but you may recall that God revealed himself to Moses as ‘I am’. There are then seven ‘I am’ sayings in John’s Gospel, and what we don’t see in English is one particular feature of the Greek. If you wanted to say ‘I am’ in the ordinary sense in Greek, you just needed to say ‘Am.’ But adding in ‘I’, the personal pronoun, gives it added emphasis that echo the Old Testament notion of God as ‘I am.’ In the ‘I am’ sayings, the Greek uses that emphatic ‘I am’ rather than simply ‘Am.’

This claim to divinity is bolstered by the title ‘Shepherd’. Of itself it isn’t necessarily a divine title, because the rulers of Israel were commanded by God to shepherd the people[i]. However, the rulers were given the title ‘Shepherd’ as derivative from the Lord, under whom they served. The ultimate ‘Shepherd of Israel’ was God himself[ii]. This was also deeply personal, most famously in Psalm 23, ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd.’

Therefore when Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd, he is taking on for himself a title that ultimately belongs to God himself. Combined with emphatically saying ‘I am,’ Jesus is making it abundantly clear that he claims divine status for himself.

All very interesting, you may think, but what does it mean for us and what did it mean for the first hearers? Quite simply, if Jesus is divine, then we owe him our allegiance. It’s hinted at later in the passage when Jesus is talking about ‘other sheep that are not of this sheepfold’ (verse 16). He says, ‘They too shall listen to my voice and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.’

So the other sheep are listening, but not them only: Jesus said, ‘They too will listen to my voice.’ His assumption is that not only will the other sheep listen, they will listen, because the original sheep are listening intently in the first place.

And for all who act as under-shepherds in the church among God’s people today, we are therefore not only to listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd for ourselves but also obey that voice and furthermore encourage or urge those in our care to obey his will.

The second observation in Jesus’ teaching here is his love:

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (Verse 11b)

17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.’

Note all those references to Jesus laying down his life. Risking one’s life is honourable and to be applauded, but to lay down one’s life demands more. When we risk our lives, we put ourselves in harm’s way and we may be killed or maimed, or we may survive unscathed. But in laying down one’s life, death is certain. He will die, and he will do so voluntarily. He is not a political protestor who happens to get caught and executed, but one who willingly presents himself. He could have prevented it, but he doesn’t.

The word ‘love’ is not explicitly used for these actions, but when the good shepherd is contrasted with the hired hand who will run off with his wages rather than protect the flock from danger it’s clear that Jesus is in this for love, not money.

For reasons that Jesus doesn’t explain here (we must go elsewhere in the New Testament for answers) the protection of the flock from harm can only be achieved by the sacrificial love of the Shepherd.

So the Lord himself is willing to put himself in harm’s way for the sake of those who will be saved.

What sort of response does that call for from us? For one, surely it leads us to a sense of wonder and worship that God in Christ has done this for us. How can we not ‘sing the wondrous story’?

For another, remembering that the life of Jesus is a model for us, we know from this that he calls us to love in sacrificial ways, too. Many of our Christian sisters and brothers around the world still lay down their lives for their faith. While that seems far less likely for us and I pray such trials never come our way, should not each one of us ask what we have sacrificed out of love for Jesus and love for his people?

None of us can give up our lives for the salvation of the world, but we are called to love because Jesus has shown love. Christian disciples respond to God’s love in Christ by showing that we are in this for what we can give, not what we can get. That’s what distinguishes shepherds from hired hands.

What am I giving up out of love for Jesus and his people? Can I answer that question?

My third observation is that Jesus teaches us here about his mission:

16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.

Here Jesus looks beyond the sheep in the immediate courtyard. These are not secret believers in other religions, as if all religions are valid ways of coming to God, because the second part about ‘one flock and one shepherd’ rules that out. This is about the mission to the Gentiles that will take place after the Ascension and Pentecost.[iii]

The sacrificial love of the divine Shepherd is such that he wants to draw all into his flock. His death is the effective way to bring all who will respond to follow him. Not only does he know those who are already part of his flock, he knows all people, and so he calls them, inviting them to recognise his voice and follow what he says.

And the relevance for us is this. While sometimes Jesus reaches out to people in unusual, direct ways – for instance, I’ve heard accounts of him appearing in dreams to people and calling them to follow him – mostly he works through human intermediaries, who are empowered by his Spirit. And you know who that means. Us.

Therefore, when we accept the call to join the flock of Christ and tune into his voice as the way to know how to live, part of that includes the fact that he speaks to us about sharing the news of his self-giving love with the world.

That doesn’t mean we all go knocking on doors. It doesn’t mean that quiet people have to become loud. Nor does it mean that we all have to know all the answers to all the objections to our faith (although a bit more studying of our faith by many of us would surely do no harm).

But it does mean that we all have a privilege and an obligation to be bearers of Christ’s good news to the world in our words and our deeds. It is a wonderful story we have to tell of a God who was so concerned about the alienation between him and his creation that he took the pain of reconciliation entirely upon himself.

Some of us will find it easier to talk about Jesus than others. But if we are not so fluent with our words and start to get nervous at the thought of talking about our faith, we might want to reflect on Who it is we are talking about and what it is he did for us. Does the cost of our nerves stack up against the price Jesus paid on the Cross?

[i] See, for example, 2 Samuel 7:7, 1 Chronicles 17:6

[ii] See, for example, Genesis 49:24, Psalm 80:1, Jeremiah 31:10, Ezekiel 34:1.

[iii] https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-the-good-shepherd-leads-his-sheep-in-john-10/

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Sermon: God’s Love And Ours

1 John 4:7-21

 

The other night I was talking with a friend of mine. He had seen somebody write something controversial on my Facebook page. My friend said, “As far as I’m concerned, if it’s not in the Bible, it’s wrong.”

To which I said, “Well, then, you’d better take your trousers off, because trousers are not in the Bible.”

It was one of my more subtle pieces of Theology, I’m sure you’ll agree. But my friend didn’t strip off.

Another word that isn’t the Bible is ‘Trinity’. Jehovah’s Witnesses will delight in telling you that. But the data that leads to the doctrine of the Trinity is all in the Bible, and that is why I believe in it.

To say that may make you nervous. Not a sermon on the Trinity! Has Trinity Sunday been secretly moved to November?

 

No. This is just to say that on a day when our theme is ‘God’s Love And Our Love’ (and hence why every hymn today features the love of God), we’re going to think firstly about God’s love. And in thinking about God’s love, we end up thinking about the Trinity. There’s nothing difficult coming here, just this thought: our passage makes one of the most basic statements in the whole Bible about God. John says, ‘God is love’ (verse 16). God’s very nature is love. How could that be true before creation? Only if it were possible for God to share and express love within God. There, within the Trinity, is love. The Father loves the Son and the Spirit. The Son loves the Father and the Spirit. The Spirit loves the Father and the Son. God is love.

If you accept that, then here is the next thought. Love between people (or beings) needs to go beyond them. The love that a couple or a family shares needs to be extended beyond their boundaries. If they only keep love between themselves, it is no longer love, it is mutual selfishness.

 

The example I usually give is this. When I prepare a couple for marriage and I take them through the things they need to consider about their relationship, I ask them how the love they share can be a gift to others. The most common expression of this is if they are able to have children. But (unless they are one of the increasing number of couples who have had children prior to marriage) they do not know whether they will be able to have children or not. So I ask them where they will extend their love. Is there something in the community they can do as a couple? Most couples understand that just staying cooped up together is unhealthy.

In a similar way, ask now about the statement ‘God is love’. Can God simply keep love within God? Or does God need to extend love? I would say, ‘yes’. The love that is within God as Trinity extends in the act of love we call creation. God’s inner nature of love is first expressed outwardly in creation. God’s love exploded in creation.

But it doesn’t stop there. John gives us a specific example of God’s love, namely the birth and death of Jesus:

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. 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. (Verses 9-10)

We experience God’s love in the birth of Jesus, who came in humility, poverty and obscurity to bring us life. We experience God’s love in his giving up Jesus even to the Cross for us, so that our sins might be forgiven. We need never think God is indifferent to us, because he has come to us in Jesus and even died for us.

 

Think for a moment about the news items regarding St Paul’s Cathedral and the Occupy LSX protestors’ camp. You will have seen in the week that eventually the Dean of St Paul’s resigned, due to the sustained criticism of the cathedral’s apparent hostility to the demonstrators. After the Dean resigned, the Bishop of London and some of the remaining cathedral staff went to visit the protestors. To my astonishment, one news report said it was the first time they had met. We do not have to worry about that with God. Not only has he met us in the birth and death of Jesus, he continues to meet us in the gift of the Holy Spirit. As John puts it in verse 13,

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

So that is our first and fundamental point: God is love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That comes before everything else. It has to be the basis of our responses, due to the way John starts this section:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God (verse 7a).

Hence our second thought is that we love in response to God’s love. As John puts it in verse 19:

We love because he first loved us.

God loves first; we love in response. That is always the order. If we get that wrong, our whole spiritual life shrivels up. If we think that our duty of love comes first, then faith becomes a list of dos and don’ts, it is all about oughts and musts. When we fall into that trap, there are only two possible destinations for the end of our journey: one is pride and the other is condemnation. We shall end up in ugly pride, because we shall delude ourselves that it’s all about us, look at our achievements! We shall be quite happy to draw all the attention to ourselves and perhaps fail to notice that we are deflecting it away from God. Indeed, God will be reduced to no more than Santa’s Little Helper.

 

The other destination when we put our acts of love before God’s love for us is, as I said, condemnation. We shall become only too aware of our failings. We shall know we get nowhere near God’s standards, and quite probably we shall fall a long way short of our own personal expectations. We shall have a hard time believing God can forgive us, and a difficult task in forgiving ourselves.

Pride and condemnation are pretty unattractive options, don’t you think? But if you put things the right way round, both of them are dealt with. Pride is crucified, and condemnation is healed. When we remember that ‘we love, because God first loved us’, then we see that the spiritual life is not one of relentless rule-keeping, but a life of gratitude. Everything the Christian does is a grateful response to the God of love. I do not seek to lead a holy life, because that is what will earn me enough brownie points with God. I seek to lead a holy life, because I want to please the Lord who loves me. It is similar in some ways to the healthiest of human relationships. When you know that someone wants to spend their life with you, it brings out gratitude. We seek to please them, not because that will make us love them – they already do – rather, we want to please them because they already love us.

There is a small way in which we mark that in the pattern of our Sunday worship. I always place the offering fairly late in the service, and normally after the ministry of the Word, where we have read the Scriptures and heard them expounded in the sermon. The offering only comes in the light of that. We have heard God speak to us through the Bible and an interpretation of it. Now, having heard of his love, we respond by offering our gifts as a sign of offering our very selves in thankfulness that God loves us.

We then carry that pattern out into daily life. All of life is like the saying of grace before a meal. God has given us good things, especially in Jesus. We are truly thankful. This time tomorrow, our lives will be a benediction in response to God’s goodness and love.

Finally, I want to fill out what a life of responsive love looks like, according to John. Near the end of the reading, John gives a couple of examples of what ‘We love, because God first loved us’ means in everyday Christian living.

One is that we have a great sense of security:

Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. 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. (Verses 17-18)

 

If God loves us in the way I’ve described – in creation, in the Cross and in the gift of the Spirit – if he loves us to that extent – and if we respond by welcoming that love into our lives and responding in gratitude, then what have we to fear, asks John? Certainly we have no need to fear a God who loves that extravagantly. It is not that God’s love is sentimental or slushy. Rather, because God’s love is so generous, outrageous even and sacrificial, one who goes to that extent in love is not about to withdraw it on the hoof. We shall certainly fail in our response of love, but God is faithful. So we can be bold in the face of judgement, and unafraid of punishment from God, because his love has been lavished on us and we have drunk it in.

As I said earlier, all the hymns today feature the love of God. One that didn’t make the final five but which easily could have done would have been ‘And can it be’. Imagine singing those lines Charles Wesley wrote, based not on 1 John 4 but on Romans 8:

No condemnation now I dread,
Jesus and all in him is mine.
Alive in him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine.
Bold I approach the eternal throne,
And claim the crown through Christ my own.

This is the inheritance of the one who knows God loves her or him. Whatever life throws at us, we live without paralysing fear of God, because we know we are accepted and loved beyond measure.

And that leads us to the other sign of living a life of responsive love. Because we are secure in God’s reckless love, we can live dangerously. In particular, we can give ourselves in love to our brothers and sisters.

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. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (Verses 20-21)

If God is for us, what is the worst that can happen to us? We can be rejected by human beings, but never by God. So we set out on the adventure of responsive love that not only responds directly to God in the language of worship, we also show responsive love by letting the love of God that has filled us overflow from us to others. If we have heard and received good news, how can we keep it to ourselves?

Or put it another way: when you first learn how to saw a piece of wood, you are taught to cut along the grain. Cutting across the grain is hard work. Therefore, since God made all of creation in love, it is cutting with the grain to love our brothers and sisters as God has loved us. There will be voices that tell us this is not the natural thing to do, but in God’s eyes they are tempting you to cut across the grain. It is not the way he made things to be.

 

There is a wonderful story in the Old Testament about a group of Israelite lepers who discover that the enemy army besieging their city has surprisingly fled. They go from tent to tent, plundering much-needed goods.

Eventually, one of the lepers says, what we are doing is not good. This is a day of good news! We should go to the city and tell everyone what we have found.

That is the position we are in when we love, because God first loved us. God has led us to discover the most wonderful treasure and the most vital gifts for true living. How can we not love our brothers and sisters by sharing our discovery, by letting God’s love spill over from our lives and flood the lives of others?

Truly, today is a day of good news.

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