Let Love Be Found Among Us

The Lord has a way of bringing things together. I’m preparing to preach on 1 John 4:7-5:4 for Sunday evening. The key theme is ‘love one another’ which is intimately connected by John to the nature of God, who is love, to the gift of God, which is Christ, to the purpose of God for our lives that we display his love before one another, for one another.

Yesterday I read in the Times of a minister in our church comparing those who disagree with him to Nazi panzer divisions storming into France. Today I read in the Press and Journal another minister in our church calling those who disagree with her fundamentalist terrorists. (I've deliberately note included links to these offensive articles).

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Sisters and brothers, listen to yourselves. Is this what we have come to? Is there no way we can disagree with one another without also descending into name calling and insulting one another? For the avoidance of doubt ‘insulting one another’ is not close to the same as ‘love one another’.

I believe that God has revealed to us, in his word, that human sexuality is to be enjoyed and celebrated in celibacy or between one man and one woman within the covenant of marriage. I know that my believing this is offensive to those who disagree with me. But I too am offended when I hear my God and my Saviour condemned as a liar or a fool by those who seek to reject his revelation and dismiss his word. It is easy to be offended.
Given that holding any position in this debate will offend someone for whom Christ died, can we not agree with one another, because we love one another, that we will speak and act in a way that does not add to this offence? If we find ourselves unable to speak or act in support of what we believe to be a Godly, Christian position in a way that is loving and Godly perhaps the position we are speaking for is not Godly. If we are unwilling to speak or act in a way that is loving, for the sake of God, in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord we should be silent.

What we need today is not greater displays of offensive rhetoric, but greater displays of Christ like love.

Please, pray for the Church of Scotland, pray for all who speak on this sensitive and contentious matter, pray that in all we do and say the love of Christ would be seen and displayed among us.

The Jewel: God’s Free Love (1 John 4:7-12)

I wanted to post this week on the theme of the Cross of our Lord Jesus, which I often speak and think of as a great Jewel of unsurpassed beauty and worth which we can find in the pages of Scripture.

The Jewel
Diamonds are a girls best friend. There is a great jewel of unsurpassed worth lying before us in our New Testaments. Each year, every Easter we remember the cross of our Lord Jesus and yet few appreciate how precious and wonderful this work of Christ is.

Where do we begin?
To survey the wondrous cross, where do we begin? At the first Easter week? In Bethlehem’s stable? In the garden where Adam sinned? No, before this. “God so loved the world that he gave ...” (John 3:16)
The beginning of the formation of this great jewel is the free love of God for all peoples.

God’s free love
This free love of God is one of the themes of the passage, 1 John 4:7-21. God is love, but we ask, “Show me your love.”
Verses 9 and 10 – 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (ESV)
God displays his love in the cross of the Lord Jesus.
God’s love is free because there is no necessity compelling God to love us, to give his Son for us. He is free to love and to give.

Love one another
Knowing of the cross of the Lord Jesus we are to know that God loves us.
Knowing of God’s love for us, we are to tell others, for God also loves them.
Knowing God’s love we do not live in fear of the future, or the final judgment of God, because the Lord Jesus has died for us nothing can separate us from his love.Knowing God’s love for us we should love one another, sharing and displaying in our lives his great love for all peoples.

A display of love

I'm preparing a sermon for Sunday night on 1 John 3:11-24. In the midst of this section we read the following:

1 John 3:16-18 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

I've just written down for my sermon, 'Love is not a word to define, but a deed to do.'

In the death of the Lord Jesus on the cross God displays his love for us. The death of the Lord Jesus is self-giving, self-sacrificing, so that we might know the love of God for us Christ held back nothing of himself but gave everything for us.

This becomes for us the example we are to follow as we love one another, self-giving, self-sacrificing that God's love might be known by many in and through us.