"God Is Love"
By Dr. Mickey Anders
South Elkhorn Christian Church
Lexington, Kentucky
February
8, 2009
Text: 1 John 4:7-21
Pastor, Dr. Philip McLarty, tells the following story about his first pastorate:
"When I first entered the ministry in 1971, I was
appointed
to serve as the student pastor of the Prosper Methodist Church in
Prosper,
Texas, just north of Dallas. The church sat high on a ridge that ran
from north
to south through the center of town. It was a large Romanesque
structure with a
lofty, peaked roof rising above the tree line, majestic steps leading
up from
the street, and twin columns flanking the entrance. Inside, the pews
were
arranged in a semi-circular pattern with the focal point being the
pulpit, and,
high above the pulpit, there was a massive arch with the words
emblazoned in
gold, “God is Love.” Somehow, having that inscription above
me when I preached
gave me confidence that, no matter how far short of the mark I might
fall, the
folks would never fail to get the essential message of the gospel, that
God is
love and, as such, loves us unconditionally and invites us to love each
other
in return." (1) Every church would do well to put those words, "God
is love," high and lifted up in the center of all they do.
When we ask the question, "What is God like?" we can get a variety of answers. The philosophical theologian will answer with terms like self-determining, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, immutable, infinite, transcendent, and holy. I am certain that all of those are grounded in good reasoning, but I am afraid they are not very helpful to most of us.
But when we turn to the Bible to ask the question,
"What is God like?" the best answer is given in our text for today -
"God is love." In fact, our
text makes this statement twice, in verse 8 and again in verse 16 -
"God
is love." I believe this is such an
important statement about God that it is worth our time to spend a
whole sermon
exploring its meaning.
First of all, we must say that the opposite of this phrase is not true. Love is not God. We cannot turn the sentence around without watering down the meaning too much. Ours is a society in which the word "love" gets thrown around a lot.
Tom T. Hall wrote a clever song which said, "I love little baby ducks, old pick-up trucks, slow-moving trains, and rain. I love little country streams, sleep without dreams, Sunday school in May, And
I love you too."
I find it interesting that love for little baby ducks is equated
with
love for that special someone. The song
cries out that we need more than one word for love.
Almost every song on the radio has something to do with love, so we are prone to think we are experts in the subject, but our ideas of love are actually very shallow.
I remember hearing a silly poem in college that I wish I could forget. It said,
Love is such a funny thing;
It's very like a lizard.
It twirls around your heart
And nibbles at your gizzard.
-
Anonymous
If you listen carefully to the many love songs on the radio, you will find the words not much improved from that silly poem. Then we are tempted to elevate our notions of love and conclude that love is God.
But we should be very clear that it is not our
understanding
of love that defines God. Rather it is
God's action toward us that defines real love.
God's love is radically different and radically better than what
often
passes for love in our society. Verse 7
says it plainly, "Love is from God."
God's love is so different from our usual understanding that we have to assign a new word to it. One of C. S. Lewis' more famous books was entitled The Four Loves. In it, he explained that one word for love is clearly not enough to explain the complexity of the subject. Using the various Greek words for love, he speaks first about storge, which is a general affection for one another. Next he talks about philia, which is friendship, or as the city of Philadelphia is known, "brotherly love." Then comes eros, which is that special state of those who are "in love." But finally, he talks about God's kind of love using the Greek word agape. This Lewis identifies as the divine energy that brought humans into the world and offers them redemption through Jesus Christ. Others would define the word as "divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, and thoughtful love."
Agape is an unconditional love directed towards
one's
neighbor which is not dependent on any lovable qualities that the
object of
love possesses. Agape is the love that brings forth caring regardless
of
circumstance. Lewis recognizes this as the greatest of loves, and sees
it as a
specifically Christian virtue.
The author of 1 John would say that the kind of love designated by the term gift-love is rooted in the historical life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Verse 9-10 says, "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."
Perhaps the pivotal verse in our understanding of
divine
love is the verse that we all memorized as children, John 3:16. I can never get away from the King James
Version of that verse, which says, "For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him may not
perish but
have everlasting life."
John 3:16 tells us that God makes the first move. "For God so loved..." God does not wait for people to come asking for love. God makes the first move. Luke 19:10 says, "For the Son of Man came to see out and to save the lost."
John 3:16 tells us that God loves everybody. "For God so loved the
world..." God's love is not
selective. God does not love citizens of
the United States more than God loves the citizens of Afghanistan. God loves everybody. 1
Timothy 2:3-4 says, "....God our
Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge
of the
truth."
Romans 5:8 tells us that God's love is unconditional: "But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." God does not say, "I will love you if you prove that you deserve my love and are worthy of it. I will love you if you first become law-abiding, God-fearing, respectable people." God does not even say, "I will love you if you first repent of your sins and believe."
Jesus was a friend not only of the moral,
religious and
socially acceptable people of his day, but also of the political
revolutionaries like the Zealots, dishonest business people like the
tax
collectors, the immoral like the woman caught in adultery, and social
outcasts
like the Samaritans. Jesus commanded us
to love our enemies, not just our friends, because that is exactly what
God
does.
2 Corinthians 5:19 says, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us."
God's love is self-giving. "For God so loved the
world
that he gave his only begotten son..."
God's love is a costly, self-giving love.
God's love is renewing. God's love is not a sentimental, permissive love that allows or encourages us to passively settle down in our sinfulness with a complacent attitude. God does not leave us as we are. God's love is a love that enables and empowers us to become different people. Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect."
Finally, I would say that God's love is not
coercive. In another of C. S. Lewis'
famous books
called The Screwtape Letters, he describes a superior demon named
Screwtape
counseling his nephew, Wormword, on the nature of God and the
how-to’s of
excellent tempting. Screwtape makes this remarkable statement about how
God is
available to humans: "Merely to override a human will…would be
for God
useless. God cannot ravish. God can only woo.”
The second thing we must know is that God is not hate. Perhaps equally important for our understanding of God is the verse after John 3:16, which we usually do not memorize, but should. "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."
Many people stumble over this idea that God is
love because
some problematic passages in the Old Testament.
Some people try to over-simplify the first testament by saying
that the
God of the Old Testament was a God of vengeance, not a God of love. They suggest that the God of the Old
Testament is a God of righteous anger, whereas the God of the New
Testament is
a God of tender love.
This idea is not new. It was Marcion who lived from 85-160, who first suggested it, and his ideas have been proclaimed as wrong ever since. Like many of our contemporaries, Marcion would throw out the first part of the Bible and claim only portions of the New Testament.
Some of the harshness we see is simply discipline. There are times that God is a tough-love kind of parent. God's love disciplines. Proverbs 3:12 says, "for the Lord reproves the one he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights." But God judges in order to help, not to pay back, get even, seek retribution, and wipe out. Even God's justice is a function of God's love.
In fact, the first testament is filled with images of a loving God. The Hebrew word hesed is often equated with the Greek term agape. When Miles Cloverdale translated the Bible in 1535, he could not find a convenient word which translated this term used so often in the Old Testament. Finally, he came up with a beautiful term which captures the meaning - lovingkindness, which is the term many of us learned in the King James Version.
Verses from the Psalms and Jeremiah say,
Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy
lovingkindnesses... For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes... How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! ...Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy
lovingkindness... Thou shewest
lovingkindness unto thousands... (Psalm
25.6, Psalm 26.3, Psalm 36.7, Psalm 51.1, Jeremiah 32.18)
The Old Testament speaks just as strongly of God's
self-giving and forgiving love as does the New Testament, and the New
Testament
speaks just as strongly of God's demanding and punishing justice as
does the
Old Testament.
We must remember that God is not sometimes loving and sometimes unloving. God is love; God is not hate. This should be a guiding principle for our interpretation and understanding of the Bible. There are many difficult passages, but for me, I understand the passages that confirm that God is love; I do not understand the passages that show God as different from that.
It seems that anti-religious books are very
popular right
now. Richard Dawkins wrote one called
The God Delusion. In all of those kinds
of books, the authors pick up on every unlovely aspect of God in the
Bible and
amplify it. When they are finished
painting God, we find a being that most of us would not recognize. We wouldn't love that kind of God either.
In fact, we often have a choice about which scriptures we will focus on. We can choose to believe that women should not speak in church or choose to believe the Phoebe was a minister in the church alongside Paul. We can choose to believe that Judas hanged himself or we can choose to believe that Judas threw himself off a cliff. We can choose to believe that God is hate or we can choose to believe that God is love. I choose love. And I hope you do too.
Remember, love is not God.
God is not hate. God is love.
Endnotes:
1) http://www.lectionary.org/Sermons/McLarty/NT_Other/1John%204.7-21,%20TheSource.htm, Retrieved 2/7/2009.
2) Many of the theological ideas in this sermon came from Christian Doctrine by Shirley Guthrie.