MMMMM - Loving Because God Loved Us

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Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community

Good Morning!

In all of our services yesterday, the idea of genuine faith came out. So yesterday morning, Dom & Guy led us through 1 John 4, where John tells us that if we claim to follow Jesus but don't love other Christians, we are lying (v20-21). Genuine faith loves other Christians.

The same theme came out in the evening, when I was preaching on the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18:9-14. The Pharisee has almost everything going for him spiritually – he knows lots about God, lives a life that is pretty good by human standards, gives generously to those in need and remembers to say thank you to God. And yet it's the wicked tax collector who walks away right with God because the Pharisee has got so into living rightly for God that he has forgotten that he needs to come to God on his knees – that he can't earn God's love but still needs to ask for God's mercy.

Both passages too talk about how we get right with God. The tax collector's answered prayer is "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner." The word for "have mercy" means "to cover over" or "to forgive because the price has been paid". He's asking God to cover over his wrong deeds, and that can only happen because Jesus has taken the punishment that he deserves. So the tax collector is covered by Jesus' clothes of righteousness and so comes into God's presence, but Jesus takes the tax collector's clothes of sinfulness and so goes to the cross. The Pharisee keeps on wearing his own clothes because he sees they are much better than the tax collector's, but he forgets that they still aren't good enough to be acceptable in God's sight.

In 1 John 4, our love for others is motivated by God's love for us. The same word is used for "have mercy" from Luke 18. Some old versions translate it as "propitiation" - the idea that the punishment that we deserve is carried by Jesus, so that was are covered by his righteousness and our sins are forgiven.

This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, as sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice (a propitiation) for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No-one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John 4:10-12)

One of the really encouraging things about being at St Jude's is the way that we're often so good at loving each other. And John says we should be encouraged by that – if we're truly loving other Christians, then it's a sign that we're in the right place with God because we've understood and responded to what he has done for us, so his love is made complete in us as it transforms us.

Keep on loving each other, just as God loved us!

God bless,

John

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