God Is Love
THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
The Rev. Dcn. Jason VanBorssum
The passages of Scripture appointed as the Epistles for Trinitytide aid the Church in her spiritual growth. The fancy theological term for this is “sanctification.” Having received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Church and all her members are to grow and mature in the Spirit. The Epistles which we read throughout Trinitytide – which lasts for the entire second half of the Liturgical Year – call us to the life of Christian virtue. The rhythm of the Church Year is both holy and logical: we grow in spiritual maturity, individually and collectively, during Trinitytide (which, by the way, explains why green is the liturgical color of this season!). In Trinitytide, the Church is exhorted to mature in the Spirit, to live the Christian life and be the Church. Trinitytide is sometimes called “Ordinary Time.” I think we can all agree that so far, 2020 has been far from ordinary! What is even less ordinary, though, in this benighted age of discord, strife, and idolatrous, ideological secularism is to demonstrate Christian virtue. But that is precisely what we are instructed to do.
The communicable attributes of God are those traits of God which human beings can also possess, albeit in a finite way. For example, some of God’s communicable attributes include: love; the ability to create (but not ex nihilo); reason and intellect; compassion and mercy, &c. The incommunicable attributes of God are those Divine traits which human beings cannot possess and which we cannot share with God. For example: God is omnipotent, omniscient, unchanging, pre-existing and self-existing, &c. Human beings are finite, not infinite; we are sinful, not perfectly flawless. Human beings are capable of love, but cannot fully love as God loves, nor are we love itself as today’s Epistle teaches (ὁ θεòς ἀγάπη ἐστίν).
While we can possess and perform some of God’s attributes, we can only do so very imperfectly and incompletely. These attributes of God affirm, support, and illuminate the creedal doctrine of creation. God is Sovereign, we are not. But with the help of the Holy Spirit, in and through Christ, we can aspire and grow to more fully reflect the communicable attributes of God. And Trinitytide is the green, vibrant, growing season for it.
The Epistle appointed for this morning is one of the most beautiful and powerful passages in all of the New Testament. Saint John, writing in his capacity as an Apostle Bishop, summarizes the most fundamental truth of God revealed to humankind in and through the life and salvific death of Jesus Christ: God. Is. Love. Twice in this passage John tells us “God is love.” We may ask what’s the motivation here? What is John’s point? It is covenantal theology at its most fundamental: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God.” In fact, he says, this is the test that you’ve been born of God: “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God.” Why? “For God is love.” St. Augustine explained the Holy Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son. We can perhaps begin to comprehend the mystery of the Holy Trinity this way: God the Father gives God the Son a kiss, the Son receives the kiss of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the kiss itself.
So, how can we show that we’re of God? That we live, and move, and have our being in this “love matrix?” Or to put it the other way around, if we say we are from God how can we exhibit the most important of God’s communicable attributes – showing His sort of love to others? Unfortunately, the English language is limited and inadequate to fully express John’s text. Our word “love” is a word that covers a whole range of meanings. We use the same word to describe our deep feelings for our life partner (“I love my wife”) and our fondness for impulse items merchandized in the check-out line of the grocery store (“I love Kit-Kats!”).
The Greek of the New Testament is more precise. There were 4 different words in Greek that were used for love: family love - στοργή - that kind of instinctual love you might have for your parents or your children; social love, brotherly love - φιλία - the sort of love you have for your group of best friends; sexual love and attraction - eρος - the sort of love you have for a spouse or a boyfriend or girlfriend. Isn’t it telling that eρος is the only Greek word for love that most people recognize these days? That says a lot about how our so-called “enlightened” culture has twisted the idea of love. Finally, there was ἀγάπη love, the highest form of love, selfless, pure, sacrificial, all-encompassing, not subject to whims and vagarious passions. This is the love that God has for man and the love that we are to have for God – and one another. This is the kind of love that proves the theological truth that all dogs go to heaven. 😊
The great Rabbi Abraham Twerski once explained the difference between selfish love and the kind of love that John talks about. He recounts a story of an encounter in a small village in Eastern Europe between the community’s rabbi and a young man enjoying his lunch. “Young man, why are you eating that fish?’ The young man says, “Because I LOVE fish.” “Ah I see. You love the fish. Is that why you took it out of the water and killed it and boiled it? Don’t tell me you love the fish. You love yourself, and because the fish tastes good to you, therefore you took it out of the water and killed it and boiled it and ate it.”
So much of what we call “love” is fish love. A young couple falls in love. What does to “fall in love” mean very often? That means that a man saw in this woman someone who he felt could provide him with all of his physical and emotional needs, and she felt in this man somebody she feels that can provide for her. But each one is looking out for their own needs. It’s not love for the other. The other person becomes a vehicle for self-gratification. Too much of what is called “love” is “fish love.” An external love is not based on what I’m going to get but on what I’m going to give. We make a mistake in thinking that we give to those whom we love. In reality, the truth is that we love those to whom we give. If I give something to you, I have invested myself in you. Since self-love is a given, everybody loves themselves, now that part of me has become in you, there’s part of me in you that I love. This is what is meant in Scripture by “abiding love.” True love is a love of giving, not a love of receiving.
Why did the NT authors choose the term ἀγάπη when they wanted to describe Christian love? What was wrong with the other words for love? There is nothing wrong with loving your family, or your social group or your spouse. So why don’t those particular words accurately describe God’s love? When we use one of those first three words, we are describing a love that’s essentially grounded in ourselves. Family love loves those who are of the same flesh and blood. Social love loves those who are of the same social grouping. Both have the virtue of cementing relationships in those groups, and ensuring the groups remain strong. So, both are basically aimed at self-preservation. Eros, sexual love, by the same token, is biased towards satisfying the desires of the lover. It can be a demanding, craving, hungry love; a love born out of the need of the lover. On the other hand, ἀγάπη love contains the idea of selflessness rather than selfishness. It’s a generous, altruistic, sacrificial love born out of the need of the loved one. In short, where Eros wants to take, ἀγάπη chooses to give.
The chief model for this type of love is God himself. John says: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. This is how God showed his love among us.” How? By serenading us, by offering us roses and chocolates? Nope. “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.”
Notice the nature of this love. There is no sense that God loves in response to our love for Him. Rather, as Paul reminds us, it was while we were still enemies of God that Christ died for us. So it wasn’t that we loved God. Far from it. We were totally opposed to Him. So much so that when His Son appeared on earth there were only a handful of people who accepted Him for who He was. The rest rejected Him out of hand. Even when He had performed miracles among them, fed them and healed them and raised them from the dead, all they could do in the end was to cry out for His execution. And yet He willingly submitted to suffering and death so those very people could be forgiven. His love was freely given to undeserving sinners. God’s love is a love that knows no limit.
Well then, says John, if you have been born of God, if you’re one who’s experienced this ἀγάπη love of God, what are you gonna do with that? We can respond to this sort of love by loving others the same way. This is more than just a human response to Divine love. John says two important things here, one in v12 and the other in v19 about our response of love. In v12 we hear that the result of loving others the way God loves us has huge repercussions for the world. John says it’s true no one has ever seen God, but if we love one another then God dwells in us and His love is made complete in us. So, as they look at us what will they see? They will see a little bit of what God is like. Just as Jesus was the incarnate image of God, so we too can be images of God, if God’s love dwells in us.
John again repeats his statement that God is love. Why? Because he wants to remind us that living in love is living in God. And there are two implications of this that he wants us to understand: first, the corollary of true love is a lack of fear. “There is no fear in love, but true love drives out fear.” I think many people are afraid of coming to church because they are afraid of having their lives exposed to God’s scrutiny. Which is quite ironic since we know that all hearts are open to God, all our desires are known by God, and none of our secrets are hidden from His sight. We cannot hide from Him! Additionally, the reason many people try to hide from God is because their experience with Christians has been that they have felt judgment and even cruelty rather than loving acceptance. God loves us as we are, with no exceptions. But God loves us so much that He wants us to be transformed. Acceptance is not synonymous with being complacent with the sinful status quo.
This is the other side of us being the image of God. If we don’t treat them the way God would they get the wrong message. Too often people have felt the condemnation by God’s people for their way of life rather than experiencing the grace of God. Wouldn’t it make a difference if every time they had come across a Christian, they’d experienced the love and forgiveness, the acceptance, that God offers them? Not the acceptance of their way of life perhaps, but acceptance of themselves as people made in God’s image, people for whom Christ died.
The other side of the coin is a bit tougher. John admonishes “Be careful! Don’t claim to love God, if deep in your heart you’re really harboring hatred for someone else.” The two are incompatible and diametrically opposed. You cannot love God at the same time as hating another person. This is a very difficult teaching. Truth can be difficult to hear, difficult to bear, and difficult to model. How often do you hear people talk about someone who’s hurt them in some way and whom they just can’t forgive. They might say they don’t hate them, but in the end, it adds up to the same thing.
Think about what you’re saying when you say you can’t forgive someone. Aren’t you saying, their guilt remains? Aren’t you saying they deserve to be punished? In terms of God’s response to sin, doesn’t that mean they deserve to die? And isn’t that the same as hating someone? Ultimately to desire their death? To desire the justice we believe that they deserve? But what does God say? Doesn’t God say, “You deserve death, but I offer you mercy, life?” Doesn’t God say, “Of my great love for you I offer forgiveness for all your sins, even for putting my Son to death on a cross?” Doesn’t He say: “This is love, not that you loved me but that I loved you and sent my only Son to be the atoning sacrifice for your sins?”
If we’re followers of this God, how can we harbor any desire for vengeance, any desire for personal retribution in our hearts? Rather, if we love God, we’ll also love our brother or sister and desire only that they too experience God’s love and favor. This doesn’t come naturally. It only happens as God’s Holy Spirit works in our hearts to change us. So, we should be praying that God would change us to be more like Him: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
Here’s the second important thing that John teaches us. In v19 he says, “We love because He first loved us.” Now too often I think we understand that as being a command to love in response to God’s love. He did us this great favor, so we’ve got to do Him a favor in return. But let me suggest that there’s another way of looking at it. Let me suggest that John is reminding us that the starting point for our love is God’s act of love towards us. Think about what was achieved on the Cross. God achieved the forgiveness of our sins. But He also made it possible for us to be made new. To have our hearts of stone changed to hearts of flesh. So, the result of what God has done for us in His love, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through the infilling of His Holy Spirit, is that we can now love with the ἀγάπη of God.
Let’s pray that the nature of our life together and our witness to the world around us might be characterized by the way we love one another. Not “fish love” but the ἀγάπη love that reflects the very nature of the Holy Trinity and the living, vibrant season of Trinity-tide. Amen.
