Doing your part
This week is on 1 John 4:7-12:
This is a season of ritualistic gift-giving and obligatory gathering, for a lot of people. It's an important season, but it's also a kind of counterfeit of the real love and gift-giving demonstrated by Jesus, whose birthday we nominally celebrate. Jesus shared his life out of love. God sacrificed Jesus out of love. Not just because we were on his list. Not just because that's just what God does. It's easy to brush off his huge gift to us by taking it for granted. It's not like government money. This act is personal, and the donor is consciously willing.
I'm lucky to love my extended family, so gift-giving is not difficult for me. And I enjoy spending time with them, so it's a difficult journey I make eagerly, not a dreaded annual obligation like the Bethlehem Census. Even though Jesus' sacrifice was for us corporately, I like to think there was a personal aspect to it as well, sort of an acknowledgement that he'd like to have Lou (or you) to hang out with in eternity, without having to talk over the screaming in the lake of fire. There's an element of ritual in being the sacrifice, but there's a mindful element as well, like a conscious decision that whatever Jesus went through would be worth it.
As Jesus' family, we're to follow in his footsteps by loving one another. What do other people need? What would they like? What can we do for them? These aren't laws. These are what come from loving your neighbors enough not to "mind your own business." It's a side-effect of pursuing a relationship, and of being vulnerable with one another. How do you know what someone might need if you don't know them well enough to know their needs in the first place? And how do you eagerly want to help them if you don't love them first? We need to move past obligation and into love.
It's easy for us to love God, because of how much he's done for us. It's hard for us to love others, who might even have done more bad than good for us. How do you love someone who costs you something? That's the question Jesus knows the answer to. As God loved us, he enables us to love others. Ask for more of that. If you can say that God is love, you can understand how important the ability to love selflessly is to our faith. Everything stems from that. Given the choice between love and obedience, love wins out. It's that important. True obedience is merely a byproduct of love. Obedience by itself is nothing but dead legalism, fulfilling obligations because they are obligations. Without love, it means nothing. Obedience on its own comes from our own effort. It burns out. It's inflexible. It punches out at 5pm. Love is eternal and tireless.
If you're finding your Christian life is a bit on the dead side, or that you don't like doing stuff that you know is right, ask for more love. If you find your life a bit on the self-centered side, ask for more love. If you want to really get closer to God, and to really understand where he's coming from, ask for more love. The gospel starts with "God so loved the world" not "Jesus so obeyed the father" or "Jesus so whipped Satan" or any of the other things we concentrate on first. If you're looking for how to follow Jesus' path, love is the fuel that will get you there.
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
This is a season of ritualistic gift-giving and obligatory gathering, for a lot of people. It's an important season, but it's also a kind of counterfeit of the real love and gift-giving demonstrated by Jesus, whose birthday we nominally celebrate. Jesus shared his life out of love. God sacrificed Jesus out of love. Not just because we were on his list. Not just because that's just what God does. It's easy to brush off his huge gift to us by taking it for granted. It's not like government money. This act is personal, and the donor is consciously willing.
I'm lucky to love my extended family, so gift-giving is not difficult for me. And I enjoy spending time with them, so it's a difficult journey I make eagerly, not a dreaded annual obligation like the Bethlehem Census. Even though Jesus' sacrifice was for us corporately, I like to think there was a personal aspect to it as well, sort of an acknowledgement that he'd like to have Lou (or you) to hang out with in eternity, without having to talk over the screaming in the lake of fire. There's an element of ritual in being the sacrifice, but there's a mindful element as well, like a conscious decision that whatever Jesus went through would be worth it.
As Jesus' family, we're to follow in his footsteps by loving one another. What do other people need? What would they like? What can we do for them? These aren't laws. These are what come from loving your neighbors enough not to "mind your own business." It's a side-effect of pursuing a relationship, and of being vulnerable with one another. How do you know what someone might need if you don't know them well enough to know their needs in the first place? And how do you eagerly want to help them if you don't love them first? We need to move past obligation and into love.
It's easy for us to love God, because of how much he's done for us. It's hard for us to love others, who might even have done more bad than good for us. How do you love someone who costs you something? That's the question Jesus knows the answer to. As God loved us, he enables us to love others. Ask for more of that. If you can say that God is love, you can understand how important the ability to love selflessly is to our faith. Everything stems from that. Given the choice between love and obedience, love wins out. It's that important. True obedience is merely a byproduct of love. Obedience by itself is nothing but dead legalism, fulfilling obligations because they are obligations. Without love, it means nothing. Obedience on its own comes from our own effort. It burns out. It's inflexible. It punches out at 5pm. Love is eternal and tireless.
If you're finding your Christian life is a bit on the dead side, or that you don't like doing stuff that you know is right, ask for more love. If you find your life a bit on the self-centered side, ask for more love. If you want to really get closer to God, and to really understand where he's coming from, ask for more love. The gospel starts with "God so loved the world" not "Jesus so obeyed the father" or "Jesus so whipped Satan" or any of the other things we concentrate on first. If you're looking for how to follow Jesus' path, love is the fuel that will get you there.
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