In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that
God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through
him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent
his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved
us, we ought also to love one another. (1 John 4.9-11)
In the Christian calendar, in the cycle of the
Christian Year, the essential message of the Holy Scriptures - God's word
to us - is set before us in an orderly and supremely logical way. As we
follow the appointed lessons Sunday by Sunday, as we meditate upon them,
as we open our minds and hearts to understand the pattern and meaning of
them, we find ourselves led, step by step, to a deeper and clearer perception
of Christian truth, and a firmer sense of our Christian privileges and
duties. Although we've heard these Scripture lessons over and over again,
year after year, always there is something new in them, something which
speaks freshly and sharply to our condition, something which illuminates
our understanding, something which moves our wills, something which challenges
the way we live our lives.
Today, on the First Sunday after Trinity, the Epistle lesson offers
us first a kind of summary of what the Christian Year has been about up
to this point. The message is very simple and direct: "in this was manifested
the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son
into the world, that we might live through him." That really sums up all
we have been celebrating throughout the first half of the Church Year,
from Advent to Trinity Sunday: the showing forth of God's love in Jesus
Christ. We have celebrated the love that takes our human nature, transforms
it, and elevates it to a new spiritual life, making us sons of God by adoption
and grace. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us,
and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
O Love, how deep, how broad, how high
That God, the Son of God, should take
Our mortal form for mortal's sake.
(15th Century Latin hymn trans. by Benjamin Webb)
This, you see, has been the point of all our celebrations: that we should
see, that we should catch a glimpse of the manifest love of God, and be
refreshed and elevated, "reborn," by that vision of what God, in Christ,
has done.
"No one has seen God at any time." For the natural man, God is the great
unknown, the great beyond, the mysterious principle of all existence, which
finds some sort of recognition in all the world's religions. To know God
in that way, as the infinite power ruling the cosmos, is a noble knowledge,
certainly. But to know God as love is something much more, and far different. To know that the eternal principle moving and governing all things is the
divine love is a transforming knowledge. To know that God is love is to
see everything with new eyes. It is to see "a new heaven and new earth."
(Revelation 21.1) It is to be spiritually "reborn," as Jesus said to Nicodemus
in last Sunday's Gospel lesson. (John3.7) It is to be saved from fear and
hopelessness.
That belief, that recognition of God's infinite, all-encompassing love,
is the very ground of our salvation. "Hereby we know love, because he laid
down his life for us." (1 John 3.16) The fact that we know love is the
ground of our salvation. In love, he gave himself for us. And it is our
destiny and vocation to be transformed by that love, to realize it and
fulfil it in our lives. That is St. John's second point in today's Epistle
less on: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." That is our introduction to the long season of Sundays after Trinity. The
Scripture lessons for today and for the following Sundays are to be a kind
of education in the practice of Christian love. The love of God in us is
manifest in our love for one another, in our active good will. It is love
which is not just feeling or superficial emotion, not just "in word and
in tongue," but rather it is love which is "in deed and in truth." (1 John
3.18) Without that active good will, without the deeds of love, our love
of God is clearly false: "if a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother,
he is a liar."
The story of Lazarus and the rich man, in today's Gospel lesson, illustrates
exactly that point. What does it mean that the rich man is in hell? It
is not some arbitrary punishment visited upon him from outside; it is simply
the description of the parched, tormented soul which has rejected the love
of God. That is what hell is: nothing more, and nothing less than the practical
denial of God's love.
To love one another, in the sense in which the Scripture means it, is
to will the eternal good of one another, to will the eternal good of one
another, and to act practically in terms of that will. But how can we do
it? Our own needs, affections and preferences, our own fears, keep getting
in the way of it. So needful of good ourselves, we can hardly see our neighbours
good and will it. But "perfect love," says St. John, "casteth out fear." The basis, the starting point, is God's love for us. "We have known and
believed the love that God hath to us." "Herein is our love made perfect." It is our knowledge of God's love for us that enables us to love, that
is, to will the good of one another. It is the knowledge that we are loved,
however unworthy we may be, at the very heart of our being, which frees
us from our own needs and fears. So we must grow in the knowledge of that
love.
Finally, St. John speaks of love in terms of commandment; and that,
perhaps, seems a strange way of putting it. How can love be commanded?
We're used to thinking of love as something spontaneous, something that
somehow just happens: one "falls in love." What sense does it make to command
it?
But St. John's approach is more realistic than conventional modern notions
about the spontaneity of love. Our loves do not "just happen." They belong
to a character formed by a long process of training and habit-making. And
that process always begins with commandment and obedience. Just as our
natural life begins with obedience to parents and teachers, so our life
in Christ begins with our obedience to God's word. There is, certainly,
a spiritual maturity, when our loves are spontaneously right. That is the
condition we call "sanctity" or holiness. But our beginning and our growth
are in obedience to commandment. "And this commandment have we from him,
that he who loveth God love his brother also."
Amen. +
