Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

“All you need is love” is a popular current philosophy for success in marriage, to live a long life, to maintain peace in the world, and to bring an end to war. But it is evident in our lives and throughout history that love is not so easy to define or to exercise.

 

People fight over what love is. For example: Is it loving to affirm same-sex marriages or is it loving to speak out against them? Is it loving to point out someone’s anger issues or parenting problems or lack of effort, or is it loving to keep quiet about such things and let people decide how to navigate these issues on their own? Is it loving to offer a means of death to someone who is suffering or is it loving to stay by them while they suffer for indeterminate periods of time?

 

People also struggle to maintain love in difficult circumstances, when they have been injured or wronged by someone else. How do you love when you are exhausted, hurt, or feeling overwhelmed? How do you love when your country is being bombed, your faith is condemned, when you are hungry from lack of food, or your ethnicity is ridiculed? “All you need is love,” but what is it and from whence does it come?

 

In his first Epistle, the Apostle and Evangelist St. John, who heard and recorded Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading for today, expounded on love, as the keeping of God’s commandments in response to His love extended to us.

 

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.

(1 John 5:1-3)

 

God defines love as the keeping of His commandments and He Himself is the source of love through His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. We look to Jesus in our struggle to keep the commandments, that is, to love one another, and Jesus has promised that we have been given a Helper. He told His disciples this on the night when He was betrayed, knowing that He would be crucified, rise from the dead and ascend into heaven from whence we still await His coming on the Last Day.

 

Jesus did not only know what was in store for Himself, He also knew what was in store for the disciples who could not go with Him immediately to the cross, resurrection, and ascension. He also knows what is in store for you, and the words which He spoke to His disciples on that night are also for you, that you may know what it means to love one another and where to find the strength to do that.

 

When we think of being loving toward others, we seem to default to treating them the way they want to be treated. That usually means that we will affirm whatever it is they do, whatever they believe, and whatever convictions they hold. Even if we know that those things are wrong and sinful and damaging, we will say that it is loving to let them do and think and hold to these sinful things anyway. We know that they are harmful and that they lead to eternal damnation but it is their immediate happiness and the avoidance of a conflict that we imagine is loving. This is not what Jesus told His disciples, including us.

 

Now Jesus does not say that it is loving to act against someone’s immediate happiness or to initiate conflict. Rather, happiness and conflict are the some time reactions to love extended. They have more to do with whether we are shown love in return than if we are being loving enough toward others. Jesus founds love on doing what is right, not on the loved one’s reaction to it.

 

To love is to keep the commandments. In our Gospel reading Jesus says, “If you love Me you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). The first three commandments instruct us on how to love God. “You shall have no other gods.... You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.... Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (Exodus 20). We love God by looking only to Him for all good, treasuring the name that He has given for us to use in prayer, and finding our rest in Him by taking time to hear His Word and receive His gifts.

 

It should not be hard to show that kind of love, because it is really all beneficial for us. When we love God by keeping these three commandments, we receive good from Him, we have access to call upon Him, and we are forgiven our sins, rescued from the wickedness in this world, and brought into His eternal life. This is because God Himself is love. The Father’s sending of the Son, and the Son’s obedient sacrifice for our sins, and the abiding gift of the Holy Spirit show us how giving God is toward us and all that He has done to have us as His own dearly beloved children.

 

When it comes to loving our neighbour we often make the error that we are to love them in the same way that we love God, by doing what they command, demand, or expect from us. But it cannot be that way because love does not arise from them as it arises from God. They are not holy, sinless, or the source of all grace and truth. When our love for others is based on how they would like us to affirm them, then our love is flawed. It does not have God, who is the essence of love, as its source.

 

God in His grace, mercy, and love has not just told us how to love Him, but also how to truly love others. It is also by keeping His commandments. The rest of the Ten Commandments instruct us in this love. “Honour your father and mother.... You shall not murder.... You shall not commit adultery.... You shall not steal.... You shall not give false testimony... You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour” (Exodus 20).

 

In contrast to loving God, which results in all kinds of loving benefits to us, our love for others done properly according to the Lord’s commandments, can often result in their displeasure and conflict which we really want to avoid. This is not because the acts of love as the Lord has defined them by His commandments are flawed in any way. It is simply because both we (as the lovers) and our neighbours (as those loved) are sinful people.

 

We don’t make things any better or any more loving by departing from the commandments of God which give only good and blessing for others. The commandments would give us a loving relationship with parents and care to protect the lives of those who are vulnerable, and protections for our marriages and possessions and reputations. Still this love is often rejected and spurned.

 

Jesus explained this sinful rejection of His love through the commandments by saying that the world cannot see Him, who is love. “Yet a little while and the world will see Me no more” (John 14:19). They had seen Him give sight to the blind, heal the lame, and raise the dead. They had heard Him preach the keeping of God’s commandments and freedom for those who are oppressed. But He was going to die, rise, and ascend into heaven, and without the walking example of His living love and His preaching of the truth, well as He put it earlier in the week, “the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12).

 

The danger was there also for the disciples who were with Him on this night. Without Jesus visibly present with them in the coming days and years, how would they be able to love one another? Jesus was able to rebuke them when they were losing that love: when they argued about who was the greatest, when they wanted to keep the children away, when they wanted to call down fire from heaven upon their enemies. How would they do with Jesus in the tomb or ascended out of their sight?

 

These are the conditions in which we live. The Lord Jesus, the greatest expression of the love of God in the flesh, is out of our sight. And in our society we see the love of many growing cold. While our love for God results in benefits from His response, our love for others is met with demands and accusations and even fury and ire. Our sinfulness caves in to these demands and we abandon God’s commandments as the true expression of love for others and just do whatever they demand or respond back with fury and ire of our own.

 

But for the continuing work of the saving Gospel of God’s love toward us and through us toward our neighbours, Jesus promised that in His absence from our sight we would have another Helper. “I will ask the Father and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth” (John 14:16-17). The Holy Spirit testifies through the Word of God to the love of the Father for His children through Jesus Christ the Son. In the absence of Jesus from our sight, the Holy Spirit keeps Him before our eyes. In the absence of the voice of Jesus in the world, the Holy Spirit keeps His Word in our ears.

 

The world reacts to the true love of God’s commandments with anger and conflict because they do not acknowledge the loving gift of God’s Spirit. They do not have the Holy Spirit active in love because they reject God’s Word. “The world cannot receive [Him] because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:17). Because the Holy Spirit is active when you hear the Word of God, He is active in you insofar as you hear God’s Word, that is, attending to preaching and the reading of the Bible.

 

With the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Helper, the Spirit of Truth, we see Jesus even though He has ascended out of our sight. We continue to see His gifts of mercy and compassion. We continue to hear His words of forgiveness and salvation. We see His sacrifice for our sins on the cross and His victorious resurrection from the dead. We see Him ascended into heaven and we wait for His coming as He promised.

 

The love of God remains with us because the Holy Spirit, active in the Word of God, helps us to keep Jesus in view. He helps us to see Jesus in the places where He promised to be. He helps us to see Jesus in water and bread and wine and to hear His voice from pastors and parents and friends. With the Holy Spirit we remain aware of God’s continuing love to us, received as we keep His commandments to trust in Him, call upon Him, and hear His consoling words of forgiveness and grace.

 

With the Holy Spirit we continue to return to the commandments in order to truly love one another. Jesus said, “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (14:21).