Text: 1 John 4:13-21<\/p>\n
Grace,
\nmercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus
\nChrist. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes
\nfrom the Epistle which was read earlier.<\/p>\n
One
\nof the things that have Christians discussing is the Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic
\ntext. Gnosticism\u2019s basic tenet was that
\nthe spiritual is good while the physical is bad. Some Gnostics concluded that
\nas long as you sang the \u201cHallelujahs\u201d and \u201cAmens\u201d on your spiritual side on
\nSunday morning, it didn\u2019t matter what you did with your body on Saturday night
\nor in your life during the rest of the week. One of John\u2019s emphases in this letter is to stress that God has redeemed
\nus body and soul. If God\u2019s love has
\nsanctified our hearts, that love will radiate into our lives as well. If He has graciously led us to faith and a
\nchange of heart, our outward lives will also be changed, and good works will
\nnaturally follow and showcase that love. This shoots a hole through the Gnostics way of thought and brings us to
\nthe key concept of our text: love. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The \n This \n While This Text: 1 John 4:13-21 Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Epistle which was read earlier. One of the things that have Christians discussing is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9016],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nword \u201clove\u201d is used fourteen <\/em>times in our text. It is also used thirteen times in the
\nprevious six verses and five times in the following three verses. In English, unfortunately, we are stuck with
\none word which covers three distinctly different Greek words: \u1f00\u03b3\u03ac\u03c0\u03b7<\/span>, <\/span>\u03c6\u03b9\u03bb\u03af\u03b1<\/span>, and \u1f14\u03c1\u03c9\u03c2<\/span>. The
\nword used exclusively in our text is \u1f00\u03b3\u03ac\u03c0\u03b7<\/span>. This
\nis divine love. This is self-sacrificing
\nlove. This is love which compels me to
\ndo what is best for you, even though it is inconvenient or painful for me.<\/p>\n
\nlove from God the Father is not a love that is contingent on what you do in
\nreturn. This is true love, given freely
\nfrom God to everyone. \u201cFor God so loved the world that he gave his
\none and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have
\neternal life.\u201d<\/em> Notice that John
\ndoesn\u2019t say that God loved the important people. He doesn\u2019t say that God loved the poor
\npeople. He doesn\u2019t say that God loved
\nthe people of the US. John says that God loved the world, every
\nperson in the world, regardless of race, age, class, geographic location. God loves the world because we are created in
\nHis image and likeness.<\/p>\n
\nthe love of God is given to all who believe, John writes, \u201cIf anyone
\nacknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.\u201d<\/em> The
\nNIV uses the word \u201cacknowledges\u201d but the word that is found in the Greek is
\n\u201cconfession.\u201d Each week, we make our
\nconfession of faith each week in the words of the creeds of the Church. We make our own confession; we acknowledge
\nthat Jesus is the Son of God. Acknowledgement is one of the outward signs that God\u2019s love is alive and
\nwell in the heart of the Christian.
\n
We know the love God
\nhas for us. \u201cWe have known and still
\nknow; we have believed and still believe.\u201d We saw the love of God at the incarnation and birth of Christ in the
\nmanger. We saw the love of God in
\nChrist\u2019s teaching and we saw the love of God on the cross and in the
\nresurrection. All of this John says a
\nfew verses before our text: \u201c<\/em>Whoever
\ndoes not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He
\nsent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nconcept of remaining in each other could be compared to an electrical
\ncircuit. As long as we are plugged into
\nthe Source of love and power, we have love and power. We\u2019re like wires. Wires are cold, dead, lifeless objects. By themselves, they won\u2019t run your microwave
\nor heat the oven or light the lamp. But
\nwhen you hook a wire up to a power source, it becomes alive. It glows. It gives warmth. You can run your
\nappliances off it because it has the power and energy of the source flowing
\nthrough it. It is a modern version of
\nthe Vine and the branches. We are
\nconnected to God by His love for us, through His Son, Jesus Christ.
\n
For
\na summary of our text, one need only look at verse 19: \u201cWe love because he
\nfirst loved us.\u201d<\/em> It specifies the love which has been
\nspoken of. It is the overriding love
\nwhich comes from the Source, God\u2019s self-sacrificing love for us. It is not our piety, our love, our
\ndedication, or our commitment. It is
\nabout Jesus and His love, His dedication, and His commitment to us. We know from all of Scripture that love for
\nGod must be with the total heart, soul, and mind. We know too that this love must exceed the
\nlove for relatives and spouse. Therefore,
\nit has been observed that love for God is essentially faith and trust in His
\nWord.
\n
Faith
\nand trust in His Word comes from hearing the Word of God preached and by receiving
\nthe Lord\u2019s body and blood. There we see
\nlove extended to its fullest: by His sacrificial death and life-giving
\nSacrament.
\n
The
\nlove of God defeats fear. \u201cThere is
\nno fear in love. But perfect love drives
\nout fear, because fear has to do with punishment.\u201d<\/em> We do fear when we begin
\nto trust in ourselves. But help is only
\nand always solely in God Himself. That’s
\nthe point of verse 19. We have no fear
\nbecause fear has to do with punishment. Punishment
\nhas already been dealt with through Jesus Christ. He took on death that was meant for us upon
\nHimself. Death has been destroyed
\nbecause of the love of God; love that sent His Son to death so that we might
\nhave life.
\n
Though
\nChrist has defeated death for us, there is still a death for us. One chapter earlier, John talks about loving
\nand hating our brother. \u201cWe know that we have passed from death to
\nlife, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer,
\nand you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.\u201d<\/em> This again he addresses at the end of our
\ntext. \u201cIf anyone says, \u201cI love God,\u201d
\nyet hates his brother, he is a liar. For
\nanyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom
\nhe has not seen. And he has given us
\nthis command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.\u201d<\/em>
This
\nis powerful language! A person
\nwho says he can love God and simultaneously hate his brother is worshiping his
\nown fictitious god. The energy of God\u2019s
\nlove, which is constantly flowing through us directly from the Source, will
\nbear positive fruit whenever it touches another person. If our brother comes into contact with us and
\nfeels no warmth or light, he knows that something is dead somewhere along the
\nline. We have never seen the Source with
\nour own eyes, but we can see the objects of the Source\u2019s love, our
\nfellowman. If His love flows out to
\nthem, and our love is His love, then we must love too. It is a command from Him. The love for God and love for brother are
\ninseparable. They stand or fall
\ntogether.
\n
This
\ncomes from what Jesus says in Matthew regarding the greatest commandment: \u201c\u2018Love the Lord your God with all your heart
\nand with all your soul and with all your mind.\u2019 <\/sup>This is the first and greatest
\ncommandment. And the second is like it:
\n\u2018Love your neighbor as yourself.\u2019\u201d<\/em> The one commandment cannot be without the other, for the Law of God is a
\nunit, His will is only one. To
\ntransgress the precept regarding brotherly love is to transgress the
\ncommandment to love God.
\n
God
\nsent His Son in the flesh because He loves, because He wants us to remain in
\nHim until the Day of Judgment, where all believers will be united with Christ
\nfor eternity. The love of God casts out
\nour fears because death has been defeated and we are made alive. Finally, we are left with the love of God
\nwhich has touched us so that our love touches others. What is this love? It is the love of God the Father, who sent
\nHis Son, Jesus Christ, into the world, to redeem a lost and condemned people
\nand to make them His beloved children. In Jesus\u2019 name. Amen.
Now
\nthe peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
\nChrist Jesus. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"