Sublime Love

The Paeon of Love – 1 John 7-21
1st Sunday after Trinity, 2010

Rev. Stephen E. Stults
St. Barnabas Anglican Church

As you know, we are now entering into the longest season of the Church year, Trinity. We have just completed the last of the major feast days of the Church year, Trinity Sunday, in which we celebrated one of the key mysteries of the Christian faith, the makeup of the eternal Godhead itself.

We know that Trinity is meant to be a “season of sanctification.” In other words, the Trinity season is meant to be a long, restful season of reflection, learning and growth in the Christian faith. It purposefully echoes the time of year where both growth (summer) and harvest (fall) occur. We are to grow in the faith and also harvest some spiritual fruit during this church season.

Today it is for our collective pleasure and mutual edification that 1 John 4 appears as the Epistle for the day. It is St. John’s great proclamation of love, God’s love for us. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the most moving and even most spiritually provocative passages in the N.T. It’s been said that one cannot read 1 St. John 4 without having some sort of spiritual awakening or stirring. Maybe that sounds a bit superstitious, as if the Word of God were some sort of magic talisman or charm-bringer. Nevertheless, it is true.

In my own case, I was in an EYC meeting in our parish church in Hendersonville, TN when we were studying this passage. Upon reading it and meditating upon it with the group, I, in the words of John Wesley, “felt my spirit strangely warmed” and actually felt, for the first time in my life, the presence of the Holy Spirit. It was uplifting, lightening, and almost estatic. I knew that there was Someone in my life that I had not felt before.

How can this particular passage of Scripture have such incredible power? How can it evoke such a response from a soul? To answer that, one would need a year or more just to do it justice and we have just a few brief minutes! Nonetheless, let us consider just a few points to make this passage meaningful, while we embark upon our Trinity-tide journey in holiness.

Perhaps this entire lesson from Scripture can be boiled down to one question that it brings forth, namely, what is the quality of Love? Is this quality nebulous or is it material? Finally, is it genuine, or just merely feigned? Put another way, how real is this love?

We can answer this is in the words of St. John himself, as he tells us: (1Jo 4:7-8) “ Beloved, let us love one another:” So far, so good. Here we have a simple admonishment to love one another. This is excellent, but why? The answer is simple and begins to show us the quality of love, as John, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, says: “..for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” Restating this: Love is of God. Every one that loves is born of God and knows Him. The reverse is also true: he that does not love is not of God and does not know Him. This is rather straight-forward. It begins to illustrate the nature of love, according to St. John.

Then, John tells us one of the sweetest, most sublime statements in the entire New Testament: “God is love.” God is love. We now have our first hint of the quality of love. It is God’s most endearing attribute and the one with which He most closely identifies. It is an amazing statement when one truly considers its ramifications.

First, seen through the eyes of faith, it tells us that the quality of love is absolute. If God chooses to say, through His Holy Word, that this is His absolute attribute, it is truly amazing. Note that John did not say, “God is power.” He did not say, “God is Omnipotence”, or “God is Wisdom”, or “God is all-seeing.” Of course, we believe that God has all of these attributes. No, instead he said, “God is Love.” This assigns to Love a status that is paramount and central to God’s entire Being. Thinking logically, what does this say about the quality of Love? Without totally overstating our case, it says a lot.

Now, let us dispense with the modern inversion of this statement, “Love is God”; for this is not what the Scripture says. It is not the same thing at all. Sometimes, it is tempting, perhaps, to make this inversion, the seemingly logical statement that goes something like this:”Since God is Love, then it must follow that Love is God.” Perhaps one way to defeat this line of thought is simply to say: “Since God made everything, everything must be God.” Aside from being patently illogical, it is also contrary to the Christian concept of God. Unlike Budhism, or even Zen, where there is no real, objective knowledge of God, aside from an amorphous sense of the One in all things, our God is a clearly identifiable Being with attributes and characteristics. In fact, He has clearly identified Himself as a Being existing in three Persons. He is wholly other from his Creation, yet he is near to it because of his quality of transcendence. That is, because of the Holy Ghost, He is ever near us. St. John tells us that if a man love God and confess Him, He will “dwell” with that person and that person will dwell with Him. This is about as close as it gets.

One commentator has suggested that if Love is God, then love would be our chief goal, not God. It would be our chief aim and center of all our efforts. How woeful is our execution of that goal in this world if this be the case! The behavior of mankind belies this thought. Rather than believing love is God, it is similar to our view of Him vis-à-vis His Creation. God is not his Creation, but yet he made it. In a similar vein, Love is not God, but yet God is the source of all love. He is the font, the ever-flowing source of pure love in all its forms.

Earlier, we asked if this love is real or nebulous. That is, is the love of God a real, material thing or just a wonderful emotion upon which to reflect? St. John goes from the ethereal and abstract to the real and material to answer this question. He tells us, 1 John 4:14 “And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” This is real, it is demonstrable, and it is concrete. God did not just wish the World a good day, or think fond, loving thoughts about it, but instead He sent his only-begotten, most beloved Son to save it! Also, we know that this salvation did not come without a price, for in the mysterious, yet infinite justice of God, only a spotless, perfect Sacrifice would suffice for this purpose. This Sacrifice was real; it was painful, bloody and tortuous. Here is the love of God made real, in that He actually did this, a concrete act. St. John says: “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.”

In an added note of emphasis, John puts a sharper point on the reality of God’s love by noting that His love was not solicited by Man. Instead, John notes, “We love him, because he first loved us.” Thus, God is the source of love, He is the performer of it, and He will be our destination in love forever.
God’s love for us takes on another wonderful aspect as we read, “Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.”

What is the source of our boldness? How can we be bold when the rest of the world will tremble with fear on that awful, final Day of Judgment? Simply this: 1 John 4:18 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” This boldness, this perfection in love is in direct contrast to the fearful, quivering Adam from Genesis 3, cowering in the bushes, hiding from God. When we are perfected in the love of God, we will be confident in God’s Love. This confidence will be made manifest on the Last Day.

Thus, the end and sum of this lesson is that the love of God has the quality of permanence. It has the quality of absolute certainty. We can totally rely on it and we can even be bold in it.
Thus, we will approach the Throne of Judgment not with shame, but with confidence. Not with fear, but love and acceptance, not ill will, but joy. Not isolation, but eternal fellowship with God. This is what God wills for us. Through God’s perfect and all-loving Will, we will live in the heavenly Garden with Him, but this time without sin, without fear and without shame.

1Jo 4:10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.



Amen.