Lenten
Midweek II: “Love Is from God”
March
19, 2025
Text: 1 John 4:7-10
Love
is both a noun and a verb. And as a
noun, it is not first of all a what, but a who. “God is love” (1 John 4:8; ESV). Love is not simply one out of many of God’s
attributes. An attribute is a trait or
characteristic of God (a thing that describes Him), and love certainly is
that. But it’s more. Love is His essence. It’s who He is. God is His attributes. So, a noun.
God is love.
And
then, a verb. Love is God’s activity
for us, and for our salvation. It is the
sending of His beloved Son. It is the
divine sacrificial giving of the only-begotten Son of God into death on the
cross for our sins, and the sins of the whole world, that we might have eternal
life.
Needless
to say, the two go together, the noun and the verb. If God is love, He loves. And He loves, because that is who He is. And tonight, I’d like to say a word about
each of these things.
God
is love within Himself... Here we are
marveling at the mystery that is the Holy Trinity… that God is One, and yet, He
is Three. Three Persons: Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. Each fully God. It is not the case that there are three parts
of God. Yet distinct from each
other. The Father is not the Son, the
Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father. And yet, They are one divine essence. Three in One.
One in Three. That is the meaning
of the words “Trinity” and “Triune,” by the way. We are not to rationally comprehend this
mystery. We must not attempt to
mathematically solve it. Our efforts to
illustrate it are usually heretical. Indeed,
sorry Patrick, that includes the shamrock, which would be the heresy of partialism
(as we all know from the Lutheran Satire video). We are simply to believe the mystery as God
reveals it… to confess it… to praise it… to praise Him.
But
that God is a community of Three Persons within Himself gives us some idea of
what it means that He is love. The
Persons of the Holy Trinity are in an eternal state of love with One Another. The Father loves the Son. “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am
well pleased,” the Father declares at Jesus’ Baptism (Matt. 3:17), and
again at His Transfiguration (17:5). The
Son loves the Father. “I do as the
Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father,”
Jesus says to His disciples (John 14:31) on the way to Gethsemane, on the way
to His arrest, trial, and crucifixion (Oh, more on that in a moment… the
verb!). The Father and the Son love the
Spirit, and the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, such that the Spirit is
ever and always glorifying the Son, and taking what is the Son’s, what the Son
has received from the Father, and declaring it to you (sometime read Jesus’
discussion on the work of the Holy Spirit in John 16). St. Augustine, though careful not to diminish
the full Personhood of the Spirit, can even speak of the Spirit as the very
love that is between Father and Son.
Perfect love. That is what there
is between the Persons of the Trinity.
And
that love within begets love without.
Now we’re really transitioning to the verb, because the noun-love always
becomes the verb-love. Love is not an
emotion, regardless of how we misuse the word in our parlance. It’s a doing.
It’s an outpouring.
When
a man and a woman love each other very much (yes, this is THAT talk!), and
hopefully are married (they should be for what I’m talking about), what
is often the fruit of that love? A
child. God designed it that way. And that is actually a reflection of the love
within God Himself. Because, what does
the eternal love within God do at the dawn of time? Create.
And all of creation has a focus, and that is Man. Man is the beloved God creates to be the
beneficiary and receiver of His love, and all the rest of creation is for Man. That, incidentally, is not an argument for
exploiting creation. It is an argument
for stewarding it, as precious, as a gift.
It’s all for us. It’s all for our
good. We are to have dominion over it,
which is to say, care for it, use it as God intended, tend the Garden. It is this great relationship of love. As parents do all that a child needs, and
provide all the things a child needs, because they love the child their love
has generated, so it is with God.
Now,
you know what happened. Adam and Eve,
our first parents, rejected that love in eating the forbidden fruit, and now
all of creation is fallen, and we, their children, are fallen. And in justice, God should have damned the
whole enterprise to hell. But why
doesn’t He? What is His problem? He loves us.
So what does love (the noun) do (the verb)? He sends His Son.
“In
this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son
into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). That’s what John writes. Or, as we all know it from our Holy Gospel, “God
so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him
should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). He does it to be the propitiation for
our sins (v. 10). Now, that is a
sixty-million dollar word worth knowing.
It means the Sacrifice of Atonement, the Sacrifice that satisfies God’s
perfect justice, the Sacrifice that makes things right between us sinners and
God. And the Greek word for propitiation
actually refers to the Mercy Seat on the Ark of the Covenant (we’ve been
talking a lot about that at our Bible Study).
The Mercy Seat… The Throne of God, where He is present for and with
His people, seated between the cherubim.
The covering on which the High Priest puts the blood of sacrifice
on the Day of Atonement, so that God does not punish the people for their sins,
but rather, forgives them. And remains with
them, and for them, as their God, who loves them.
Jesus
Christ on the cross. That is the
Sacrifice of Atonement. That is
love. “God shows his love for us in
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” Paul says (Rom.
5:8). Not because we deserved it. Not because we’d do any better if we had a
reset, a second chance. Not because of
anything within us. Not even because we
love Him (sin, after all, is anti-love… It is rejection of God. It is hatred toward Him). But because He is love. So He loves us. So He redeems us. “In this is love, not that we have loved
God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”
(1 John 4:10).
Now,
St. John begins our Epistle reading with a very significant word: “Beloved,”
he calls us (v. 7). That is not just a
term of endearment (and it isn’t when I use it, either). It is an address to those who are filled up
to the overflowing with God’s love in Christ Jesus… those upon whom the love of
God has been poured out in the Means of Grace, the Word and Sacraments. You, in other words. You, who have been born of God
(baptized). You, who know
God… that is, believe in Him (the word for know here means faith). Because you are beloved, what will
necessarily result? What necessarily
happens when you are filled with the love of God? Love one another. If you know God, who is love, and
loves you, that is what you’ll do. One
Church Father (a guy named Isaac the Syrian) says that to be loved by God, and
as a result, to love one another with that love, is to breathe, already in
this life, the air of the Resurrection.[1] Inhale (God’s love), exhale (breathe out His
love on others). Isn’t that
marvelous? To not love is to hold your
breath, and that will result in death (that is, the loss of faith, the loss of
life in Christ). To oppose love with
selfishness, hatred, or contempt, is to breathe the poisoned air of the fall…
the curse! Don’t do that. Breathe deeply of God’s love for you in
Christ. Word and Sacraments. The Resurrection air. Receive it.
Take it in. Then exhale it by
loving your neighbor. Be swallowed up
into the noun. Then do the verb. More on that in the coming weeks. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Ancient Christian
Commentary on Scripture: New Testament XI: James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude,
Gerald Bray, Ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000) p. 213.
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