"Knowing God By Loving God" Easter 5 May 14, 2006

(First read the text for this sermon: 1 John 4:7-21)

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Think of all that would be transformed – if followers of Jesus the Christ simply lived according to that verse from First John! What if all the leaders in this nation and around the world, who profess to follow Jesus the Christ, lived according to this verse? How many wars would not be started? How much money would be directed to providing food for the hungry? The world itself would be transformed!

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Think of this: If followers of Jesus the Christ simply lived according to that verse from First John, how many church fights would end? How many denominations would become cooperative, rather than competitive?

Each person’s religious practice is transformed too, when we who follow Jesus the Christ simply live by that verse. How often are you motivated by what you should do? What you ought to do? What you’d feel guilty about, if you didn’t do it? Think of all those negative motivations – transformed! – by living according to the love described in these verses from First John. [E]veryone who loves is born of God and knows God. Love as the motivation for religious practice! And, through that practice, knowing God by loving God!

Knowing God by loving God. This is transformational stuff. This is every bit as mystical as the text we sang for the first hymn, and the text from Julian of Norwich that’s printed in the bulletin this morning for Mother’s Day. Could it be that the author of First John is correct: that we do not come to know God by accumulating facts about God; but that we come to know God by loving God? What if it’s not “Christian education,” (in the sense that there are Christian SOLs that need to be mastered), but that we receive Christian formation throughout our lives from the Holy Spirit, through loving God?

Think of this. When you love someone, you yearn for your beloved. You have a longing for your beloved. You endure separations if you have to, but you want to be where your loved one is! Love means a desire for union with your beloved (which is why sex is a sacred gift from God, since love comes from God). Here’s the point: You come to know who your beloved is through loving him or her!

It is the same with God. Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Think, for instance, of how that transforms worship for you, when you are here because you yearn for God, because you long for God, because you desire unity with God, and you seek that during worship. When that is the case, worship is not something you fit in, if your calendar allows for it. Instead, worship each sabbath becomes a necessity for you because you long for God in love! Daily prayer becomes necessary, because you desire God so deeply each day.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Conversely, the author of First John writes: Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. And then: 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.

All of this is God’s initiative, you see! It doesn’t depend on us! God has loved us first, and primarily through Jesus. We read, In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

What if all who follow Jesus the Christ loved God as much as God loves us? Simply put, the world would be transformed – because others see God when we love! Here is what the author of First John writes: No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

What explains the tragedy of those who call themselves Christians who do not display such love? Perhaps it’s because all of this is so terrifying! It’s so much easier to be judgmental! There’s so much less ambiguity in creating straight edges between “right” and “wrong” – when you know that you’re right and the other person is wrong; and when our political leaders know that our country is “good,” and it’s other countries who comprise “the axis of evil.” Love does not allow for such doctrinaire distinctions. It is hard to be doctrinaire, for instance, about the “evil” of homosexuality – when someone you love turns out to be gay.

Think of how the world would be transformed – if all who follow Jesus the Christ showed who God is, through their love. Make no mistake: the Biblical teaching on love is not sentimental. It’s not the same warm fuzziness of a Hallmark card. Anyone who has dealt with someone who is abusive, or who has been part of a family system with an alcoholic, knows that God’s love is tough love, when that’s what it takes to move someone to health.

This morning’s text, and the entire Bible witnesses to love that moves us towards health, and openness to God, and the joy of union with God. Love that is from God is not manipulative, or smothering, or competitive. Love that is from God is freeing.

Security and confidence and delight are all rooted in love because we are secure and confident and joyful in God’s salvation. Listen to verses from First John: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 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.

God yearns for us. God longs for us. God desires union with us. All of that is because God loves us.

When God forms us by that love, we respond by yearning and longing for God. Deeply and profoundly in love, we do not want to be separated from God! And that love motivates our work each day. And so, here’s what we read in the passage: We love because [God] 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.

The teaching ends up in the form of a commandment! But it can’t be a matter of “shoulds,” and “oughts,” and guilt. How can you command someone to love?

In love, it’s what we want to do. It’s what we’re drawn to do. We are drawn to act on behalf of the hungry, on behalf of any who are in need – those we are sitting beside right now, those who are total strangers – because we love them. We have received that love from God. And in that love, we know God!

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.


Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia