Nothing is more consequential in our lives than the notion of God we hold. This is what steers the ship. Our idea of God will always call the shots. I meet so many people, Christians and non-Christian alike, who imagine a toxic vision of God. The New Testament scholar, Tom Wright, tells a funny story about his time as a chaplain at Oxford and Cambridge. He would often meet with each first-year student to welcome them to the college. Most, he ways, were happy to see him but would sometimes remark, a bit embarrassed, "You won't be seeing much of me. I don't believe in God." Wright would often respond, "O, that's interesting. Which god do you not believe in?" The student would often be surprised and sputter off a few phrases like "old man in the sky, ready to smite at a moments notice, and sends good people to heaven and bad people to hell." And Wright would smile warmly and reply, "O good. I don't believe in that god either."
In the comedic movie Zorba the Greek, Zorba says, “I think of God as being exactly like me . . . only bigger, stronger, crazier.” Here are some of the gods that you shouldn't believe in:
- Angry and wrathful – This God demands obedience and if you get out-of-line, watch out!. He is the God who smites with abusive love.
- The “deadbeat dad” – This God remains distant, uninvolved and silent. This is a God who fails to love.
- Doting Grandpa – This God believes that everything we do is fine with him. This is a God with foolish love who refuses to love others.
- Santa Jesus – we only have to bother with him once per year and be good for goodness sake. This God loves us only if . . . we do right. [SING] “You’d better watch out! You’d better not cry. You’d better not pout I’m telling you why. Jesus Christ is coming to town!”
In contrast to all of these images 1 John 4:7-21, teaches us two things: 1) that God’s essence is love – no ifs, ands, or buts, (v 8, 16); and 2) that God is love in-person.
1. God is love – no ifs, ands, or buts.
No ifs – 1 John offers no conditions for God’s love; there are no borders, boundaries, no small print exemptions, no smuggled in howevers. Because God is love and is always and forever God’s self – not if you are good, or if you are Christian, or if you’re legal, or if you’re American. To say that “God is love” means that God can’t be anything but loving. Trying to create or offer such conditions is like to trying to tell someone, “When you jump into the ocean you will only get this wet.”
No ands – The “and” is when we say that God is both love and something else like justice or holiness or wrath. It’s a more subtle response which puts love in competition with something else or seeks to hem love in with another competing concern. The problem with such a position is that it imagines that love and say justice are mutually distinct and at odds. But Jesus illustrates the opposite. The God who offers grace – underserved favor is being just. Jesus who forgives, refuses to follow elements of the law (John 8, for example) is not being unjust. The love of Jesus is justice. George MacDonald writes: “I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing; without justice to the full there can be no mercy, and without mercy to the full there can be no justice.” Martin Luther King said it this way “justice is love correcting everything that stands in the way of love.” So Justice is not a cold, detached application of rules, but rather a loving act aimed at restoring broken people and systems so that love can flourish. It frames justice as restorative rather than punitive. All of the characteristics of God dance to the same music of love, redemption and reconciliation. If any idea about God, no matter how good or just or holy, doesn’t make sense of unqualified love, it is not of God.
No buts.
Does Jesus say, “God so loved the word BUT . . .” (John 3:16). Did John say, “God is love BUT . . . (1 John 4:18, 16)? No! God’s love is unconditional. God loves us before we loved God (1 John 4:11, 19). Christ died for us even when were powerless and ungodly, Paul says (Romans 5:6-8) God even reconciled us to himself while were still hostile toward God (Romans 5:10). Our failures, our sin, our stubbornness, our hard-heartedness cannot annul God’s love, grace, forgiveness, or belonging. The NIV translators of 1 John do something that I find a bit frustrating. They take a word from the Greek and in their effort to make it contemporary unfortunately make it mundane. They translate Ἀγαπητοί (the first word in vss. 7 & 11) as “friend.” Ἀγαπητοί, however, literally means “beloved.” Its root is agape - love. It’s the first word in our passage this morning, the first word spoken in John’s soliloquy on “love,” and the first word one needs to hear in order to understand welcome rightly. The order is everything. Before you do anything, you are “beloved.” Before you are asked to believe anything, you are “beloved.” Before you repent, before you are transformed – you are “beloved” without a “but.”
On Friday I was in a meeting with a number of pastors and the Salem-Keizer School Superintendent, Andrea Casteñada, who is absolutely fabulous. We were meeting with her to show our support and to dream about ways that we as churches can help support teachers and students. She spoke about the many challenges that the district is facing but then said, “It’s no all bad. There are also so many good things happening.” She then told a story about a graduation in which a student was coming forward with no accolades, or rewards – no stoll or lei or medals. But as he walked across the stage a big, booming voice yelled out from the back of the auditorium with such pride: “That’s my kid!” Friends, think - God loves you like that – not if you behave, and you succeed, or but don’t screw up. No, think, God loves you – no ifs, ands, or buts.
2. God is love in-person.
The phrase in-person is a Covid phrase. As the virus ravaged the world, we sought to meet virtually, on zoom, but longed to be together in a different way. Sure Zoom was really helpful but it wasn’t in-person - it didn't have the same connection, warmth, or feeling. Likewise, God’s love is isn’t virtual. Listen again to John and think: 9 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. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:9-10) When thinking about God we always begin with Jesus. Jesus is our guide for talk of God. God is Christlike and in him is no unChristlikeness. Jesus is the clearest expression of God's love and our clearest model for how to express love.
While thinking Christian should always have us humbled by what we can say about God, it nevertheless unabashedly wants to assert that whatever we might say should always look and sound like Jesus. When the NT wants to describe the love of God, “reveal” the love of God, “demonstrate” the love of God it consistently wants to tell the story of Jesus. Jesus was God incarnate, fully divine and fully human, which is to say love in a real-life human body and that means expressing the feelings of God and the actions of God. There is certain talk these days, among some evangelicals, who want to insist that love is an action and not a feeling. On the one hand, that is an important corrective. Love does demand action – always. But the love of God was action through a real flesh and blood person – Jesus. And Jesus was not some Messiah Robot. When his dear friend Lazarus died – he wept (John 11:35), when he encounters someone suffering from hearing loss or is badgered by Pharisees demanding a sign – he offers a deep sigh (Mark 7:34; 8:12). He will get angry at disciples who try and keep children away from him (Mark 10:13-16) and one of the most common phrases said of Jesus was that he was “moved with compassion” or “filled with compassion” (Mark 1:41; Matthew 9:36, 14:14, 15:32, 20:34). The word compassion is derived from the Greek word ‘splagchnizomai,’ which means to be moved in one’s bowels or guts. The word viscerally illustrates the deep emotional response that one experiences towards another person’s suffering. Any vision of God that removes real feelings of love is not God. Any description of God in which God refuses to practice empathy is not worthy of the God who comes as Jesus Christ – in person.
So to recap: God is love unconditionally, Right? Right. We know who God is and what love is by looking at Jesus. Right? Right. And Jesus expressed love as feeling AND action, an attitude that forgave enemies and an action of dying on the cross. We learned last week looking at Philippians 2 that he offered blessing, encouragement, comfort and tenderness, by emptying himself, serving others, and dying on a cross. That’s God – that’s love – that’s supposed to be us – be love.
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