God is Love

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

May 10, 2009

Text: First John 4: 7-21

That which John says about God cannot be said about anyone else. “God is love.”  We mortals are sometimes loving, sometimes self-centered, sometimes kind, sometimes cruel, sometimes faithful, and sometimes unfaithful. And though John Wesley always wanted us Methodists to strive to be completely loving in all our intentions, the truth is that he had more trouble with those who thought they had attained such love--- than from those (such as himself) who knew their incompleteness.

When John uses the three words, “God is love,” he is making a claim that is overarching. He is not simply saying that God is loving in nature but that God is love---agape love, sacrificial love that gives without requiring a return to sustain it.

“God’s loving is not just one of God’s activities, alongside creating, ruling, judging…..but ‘all God’s activity is loving activity. If God creates, it is in love; if God rules, it is in love; if God judges, God judges in love.’” (C.H Dodd, The Johannine Epistles, page 110; quoted in Victor Paul Furnish, The Love Commandment in the New Testament, page 154.)

How do we know this to be true? Good question. For when it comes to God, “That which nothing greater can be conceived,” (Anselm?) how can we know God’s nature, since God is hidden (beyond our knowing as other subjects are) by God’s very nature?

John’s answer is that it is only through God’s acting in love that God is known, and in no other way. “God’s decisive act of love for us was the sending of his Son who ‘laid down his life for us.’” (Furnish, page 154)

In our own experience by analogy, we truly know another person most genuinely by their actions.

When we believe, we trust that God is love as revealed by God’s faithful action on our behalf as we have experienced it. We “throw our hearts over the fence” (in Adam Jones’ mother’s descriptive phrase). We reside, we live, we dwell, we abide in this truth: that God is love. And our lives begin to be transformed.

We are prone to go through life, and to relate to God, in fear. We live as if before a judge, who must, someday, pronounce sentence on us for our sins. Some price will have to be paid, and we will be bankrupt. Or we fear that God is capricious, like the gods of the ancients, for whom we are just objects for their amusement----as a cat plays with the second mouse, after eating the first!

Lord knows, we always have much to confess; and so often we can make no sense of the twists and turns of our lives.

Nevertheless, John tells us, “God is love.” Therefore, relate to God as if God is always love. When you feel God’s critique of you, know that it is a critique in love. “God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”

When you cannot make any sense of the hand you have been dealt, believe that God is walking with you and your very life is eternally secure in his keeping.

In another’s words,  “the heart of the universe…..is a pulse of mercy with infinite passion….” (William Self, Feasting on the Word, page 469)

And it will never be enough for us to be passive recipients of this love, for in believing in God, God’s Spirit abides in your heart and mind and we will be moved to love others.

What does God’s love look like when it is manifested in our love of others?

The manifestations may be as various as our creativity and stamina is various. But I believe this sisterly and brotherly love ( as practiced especially with those closest to us) is faithful friendship over time.

 Loving is steadfastly standing with a friend and helping them endure and thrive. And our most helpful friends are those who tell us the truth with love, not always what we want to hear, but what we must hear in order to do better, to grow. And the glow of God’s spirit living in us is evident when we love like this even when it costs us greatly and when the love is not or cannot be returned.

Loving for us means forgiveness of those who have sinned against us, even those who have done so while we have been faithful. And in the family of Christ, “there is not room for those who nurse grudges, seek revenge, assume intellectual superiority, or are careless with the feelings of others.” (Self)

My New Testament teacher, Dr. Furnish has given me the most lasting insight into the nature of this love. “It is not that [our love for one another] should be ‘like’ the divine love. Rather, the love expressed among [us] is to be the extension, the completion---the ‘perfection’---of God’s own love….God’s love for us and our love for one another are two segments of one grand continuum of love. This is the meaning of the statement, ‘We love, because [God] first loved us.’” (Furnish)

Though we are inclined to believe that love is a scarce commodity, we can discover that the more we love the more love is multiplied. Carl Sandburg, in the poem, “Love is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely,”wrote :

“you put [love] away for a keen keeping
 and you find it to be a hoarding
 and you give it away and yet it stays hoarded….” (page 11 in Honey and Salt)

“Our love is in training. We must learn day by day to love in the way of Christ until we love perfectly in eternity.” (Burgess, Lectionary Commentary.)

We may be tempted to expect that the path to mature love is always onward and upward. But it is more likely that growth in love is three steps forward, two steps back. With St Paul, we struggle with principalities and powers, not just with flesh and blood. You and I know that growth in love is not a cake-walk. We have to unlearn so much that has wounded us, and causes us to wound others. It is like dying and being raised to newness of life. It is like being born again, with all of the risk and pain of that experience.

“Perfect love casts out fear,” John says. Well, our love is not perfect. It is God’s love, received in faith, living in us, that casts out fear----fear of God. Awe and reverence are descriptive always for the “pure, unbounded love” of God. (Charles Wesley) But cringing fear is not appropriate once we have tasted the steadfast love of God for us.

And we are not saved by how well we love at any one time but by faith alone. “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling…..” We practice love not out of fear of punishment but out of love for God and for God’s coming kingdom.

Will you believe that God is love? For you, just as you are and as you can be? Will you trust God?

Will you yield to God’s Spirit, let God abide in you? Will you confess with all your heart that Jesus is God’s Son, the Savior of the world, so that you might live through him and in him?

Will you tap into the love of God and extend God’s own action by persistent loving actions for others. Will you be a true friend in a world in which so many are so lonely and fearful?

 “Come down, O love divine, seek thou this soul of mine, and visit it with thine own ardor glowing; O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear, and kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn, til earthly passions turn to dust and ashes in its heat consuming; and let thy glorious light shine ever on my sight, and clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long, shall far outpass the power of human telling; for none can guess the grace, til Love create a place wherein the Holy Spirit makes a dwelling.”

(Bianco of Siena, 15th century; translated by Richard F. Littledale, 1867, alt; hymn 475 in UMH)

For further reading:

Victor Paul Furnish, The Love Commandment in the New Testament, 1972.

Daniel Day Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Love.

Luke Timothy Johnson, Living Jesus.

Frederick Buechner, “Love,” a sermon on cassette tape, from First Presbyterian Church of San Angelo, Texas.