If We Love

It is not just the businessperson that practices the exercise of weighing costs and benefits.  Don’t toddlers get pitches from their parents, such as, if they take three bites of their dinner, dessert will be served? I seem to remember that kind of leverage: “If we take a bath now, without a fuss we can have ten minutes of play and an extra book before bedtime.” My children were exposed to such bargaining early on. At that time of night, with my fatigue level, I was desperate. It was my attempt at parenting; for my kids, it was sport.

From those toddler years and all through life we are weighing costs, risks and benefits for all kinds of things. The premise in such decisions is that the elements involved are possible, they are things we can choose. When we are challenged to do something—when we are weighing whether we want to do it—presumably it is something we can do by choice. It is in that vein that I looked at the classic portion of John’s first letter which is our Epistle lesson this Sunday. John is challenging his flock to love. Let’s look through these passages:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  —1 John 4:7-9

Look at how in urging his community to love, and in elucidating on the nature of love, John addresses them as the “beloved”. He beckons them to love one another, asserting that love is from God. It is a gift for us to open, experience and share. He suggests with this that to love is to involve yourself with the intrinsic nature of God. It is available as a choice, which solidly connects a person with God, because God is Love. The stated benefit is that to choose to love is to be born of and to know God. We learn that God sent this possibility in a new measure and ultimate quality by sending the Son into the world. Sending the Son meant that followers live through the Son, indeed, live in the love that comes with the Son of God. Again, the benefit of choosing to love is to be born of God and to know God.

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the [expiation, propitiation or] atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.  —1 John 4:10-12

In this portion we are taught that we do not initiate this prospect of love, but we respond to the love shown to us. So, one of our choices is to take up this love as the center of our purpose. The core reality of God for human experience is love; it is made available to us. This proposes that when Christ showed love by his sin-removing death and resurrection, we had the chance to join ourselves with this love. We can’t draw God with a pencil, or reliably describe many features of God, but we can experience God by loving others. What is the benefit implicit? Choosing to love one another is to realize that God lives in us. It is God’s way of perfecting love in is. Perfection is not in our frame of possibility, but God can work perfection into us; God can operate in a sanctifying way within us.

The whole passage we hear on Sunday will go on from here, explaining how confessing Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior sent into the world, brings about God’s abiding presence in us and our experience of “abiding in God”. The Spirit of God dwells within us, therefore, we abide in love. Love tosses fear away from us. When fear is cast out, love is all the more possible. A lot of our animosity toward ourselves, other people, our circumstances and life itself is rooted in fear. God gives us the chance to root down into the soil of love.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.  —1 John 4:18-21

Our faith is not our Nanny telling us to play nice, or a parent, telling us to be good. It is a chance to let the intrinsic quality of God to operate within us. Love is the gift of God offered. It is the choice we have for how to live. Believing, we will truly be able to say, “Yes, God is in me, love abides in me and I abide in love. Love is a choice; the critical question concerns how we enact it. We must manifest love in how we think, by what we do and in the ways we respond to others. You take charge of that in your life, and the Holy Spirit will help make it happen in a deliberate way. Let’s finish by reminding ourselves again of verse twelve from above. In this way, we acknowledge the cost and the benefit of a life of love. Believing it, enacting it, we will certainly know love is worth it:

“If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”  —1 John 4:12