Sermon 21st July 2013

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, concludes our study of the book of John. His sermon is based on the reading from 1 John 5 verses 13-21.

OK, it’s confession time – again! So: I almost lost all my hair this week. No, I wasn’t tempted to shave it off in this heat-wave; but I was on the verge of tearing it all out! At various points I thought that each of these items – starting with the suitcase – would be the way to start this final sermon in our series from 1 John. And we will come back to the suitcase, the Bible, and the slinky as we go through today. But I then made what I thought was a fatal mistake: I read through all the sermons that we have heard in this series – and thought that I was lost! How is it possible to sum up such a wide-ranging, diverse collection of teaching as we have had during these past 3 months?

As ever, though, a solution was at hand – eventually! All of these items can and must be put aside for now, and have their place taken by the words of a wise old farmer. He dryly observed that the most active animal in the farmyard is a chicken that has just had its head cut off! His point was that merely generating lots of activity is not necessarily a sign of life. And those are words that John himself might have written, I’d say. You see, just as he had done with his Gospel, when John reached the end of his letter he explained why he had written it. Here’s how it’s expressed in the Message version: “My purpose in writing is simply this: that you who believe in God’s Son will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life, the reality and not the illusion.”

My now-experienced eye tells me that statement could easily be made into a good tweet! But, as I hope regulars have come to expect by now, there is far more to this than that. Yes, there are significant, and practical, consequences to that statement of purpose from John. And that’s the relevance of the chicken observation, if you haven’t yet worked that out. I might instead have re-tweeted my recent quote from Nietzsche, which makes the same key point: “To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity’. For John, purpose was vital: first and foremost was God’s loving purpose in sending His Son to die, to offer life to all people. All activity must spring from that purpose, if it is to bring life.

Now John had witnessed, and experienced, this for himself, remember. As he wrote at the start of his letter: (NIV) “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.” And that is what prompted me to bring along my great-grandfather’s suitcase. Here’s something that has been around, has seen all sorts of life, and places: surely the Antiques Roadshow would place a great value on it? But nothing like as high as the value of this Bible, which contains this book that was written by an eye-witness to such literally universe-changing events.

So that’s how John began, with a clear statement about God’s loving purpose in Jesus. In what has followed he has then been equally clear about what our purpose is to be. As John also wrote at the start, in coming to believe this reality for ourselves, we, like John, must share it with as many others as possible. That makes God’s joy complete, and our own too. But that, of course, is only the beginning of it: each time that John has come back to God’s loving purpose in his letter, he has kept on showing more of God’s purpose for us. From start to finish, John has not ever let us forget that purpose is absolutely key.

Now it is true to say that John has expressed much of that in all sorts of ‘interesting’ ways. There have not been many weeks where if we had have tried to fill in the dots from John’s start point that we’d have landed up where he did, I’d suggest. And that’s not least true of today, in the way that this letter ends. But that’s why this slinky has made in into the case. As we’ve noted before, John didn’t write in straight lines. In these months we seem to have covered the same ground more than a few times. But it’s been more like a different point around the circle, I’d say. John has taken us on all sorts of circuitous adventures. They have at least potentially got us to new places, not just in our faith but in the breadth of our understanding of it, and in our living of it – in and for Him.

It’s obvious, then, that any attempt to summarise our learning from this letter would be doomed to failure. I’m not so foolish as even to try that, then. Instead, I will point you enthusiastically to our revamped website, where most of the sermons from this series are posted, in word and/or audio form. Each one is a full meal in its own right, as served up by the different chefs on the preaching team. What we have each tried to do is unpack how John has set out the practical consequence of God’s key purpose: sending his Son both as our Saviour, and also as our example. We have gone around these various circles with John; and the journey has been well worthwhile. It is also a journey that we can take time and again, as our faith-life develops.

So it may not often have been too linear a journey; but this is one that has moved us on, at least potentially: if we have ears to hear. Either way, John has brought to here, to this point of knowing, as he comes to his stopping place. It may not be a place where many of us would have chosen to have ended a letter, perhaps. But John clearly thinks that he has said enough for his first readers to be clear in, and about, their purpose. We do need to keep the context of this letter very much in mind, if we are to make proper sense of it today. So, as I explained at the start, John likely wrote this as a kind of covering letter, to go with the Gospel that bears his name. Some people who had read John’s account of Jesus’ life were making wrong use of it, and this was kind of a corrective for them. It was meant to help them to realise God’s purpose, and their own.

Clearly that wasn’t always happening back then, though. It may have pained John greatly, but it was still real. People who should, and could, have known better were choosing to close their ears to the truth and reality of God’s purpose. That may well have been the “sin that does lead to death” which John writes of here – an on-going refusal to believe this truth about Jesus that John had declared. Despite filling many pages on this topic, none of the commentators are sure about its meaning – which may reflect John’s own uncertainty. He is sure that there is sin that leads to death: but he doesn’t define it, or even say that we can’t pray for people who are in that place. We can and must pray for those who do sin, John says; and we must do so confidently, in a life-giving way.

Here is one practical consequence of us knowing that we have eternal life, John says. Again, it may not be the one that would spring immediately to our mind, perhaps. But here it is: now we can be bold and confident in approaching God in prayer. What we know now also is that God does hear us when we ask Him things. Note that this isn’t asking for what we want, though; but rather for what God wants. And if that does remind us of some other teaching on prayer, that might be because of who taught John to pray. It’s a handy reminder to have though; and one that’s entirely in keeping with the rest of John’s letter. Once again, it’s based on the example of Jesus himself: know what God’s purpose is, and choose that rather than our own, even at great cost.

And here’s another point on the slinky that we have visited a few times along the way. Sin matters to John, because sin matters to God, just as believing the right things matters. One very often leads to the other – either positively, or negatively. Believe the wrong things, and chances are that we’ll behave the wrong way. Believe the right things though, and chances are that we will then behave the right way – or at least try to; and there is help on offer with this, John reminds his readers. We won’t always get it right even then; but we can know this. We can know we belong to, and live in, the God who helps us to know who He is and what He’s like through His Son.

At the start of this series I quoted from the introduction to John’s 3 letters in the Message version. As we end it would be good to hear Eugene Peterson’s very helpful words again, I think. So: “The 2 most difficult things to get straight in life are love and God. More often than not, the mess people make of their lives can be traced to failure, or stupidity, or meanness in one or both these areas. The basic and biblical Christian conviction is that the two subjects are intricately related. If we want to deal with God the right way, we have to learn to love the right way. If we want to love the right way, we have to deal with God the right way. God and love can’t be separated.

“John’s letters provide wonderfully explicit direction in how this works. Jesus, the Messiah, is the focus: Jesus provides the full and true understanding of God; Jesus shows us the mature working-out of love. In Jesus, God and love are linked accurately, intricately and indissolubly.

“But there are always people around who don’t want to be pinned down to the God Jesus reveals, to the love Jesus reveals. They want to make up their own idea of God, make up their own style of love. John was pastor to a church (or churches) disrupted by some of these people. In his letters we see him re-establishing the original and organic unity of God and love that comes to focus and becomes available to us in Jesus Christ.”

Having reached the end of this series, we can say all that in the past tense, I’d hope. Since Easter this is what we have seen and heard, and also learned how to live better too. Our activity is meant to be of the kind that brings life, as is God’s purpose, rather than being of a headless-chicken variety. As John concludes – in the Message version again, “This Jesus is both True God and Real Life.” John has written this letter to help people like us, in all ages, to know the reality of this: to live in it; and to live it out. From start to finish John has packed his teaching full of practical advice and good examples of what that looks like in practice. Our challenge now is to take hold of those, and to live them out: loving choice by loving choice. This is eternal life, reality not illusion: it’s for living, and for sharing, at any cost. We are to follow the example of Jesus, who is the True God who gives Real Life. We are to do that by loving God and loving each other God’s way. And so let’s pray for His help to keep working on doing just that ...

Sermon 14th July

Today, our Honorary Assistant Minister, Gill Tayleur, continues our study of 1 John.  The reading is from 1 John 5 verses 1 to 12. 

WHAT WE BELIEVE REALLY MATTERS!

A young man new to the company was leaving the office late one evening when he found the Chief Executive standing in front of a shredder with a piece of paper in his hand. "Listen," said the Chief Executive, "this is a very sensitive and important document here, and my secretary has gone for the night. Can you make this thing work?"

"Certainly," said the young man. He turned the machine on, put the paper in, and pressed the start button. "Excellent!" said the Chief Executive as his paper disappeared inside the machine.  "I need just one copy."

Believing a shredder is a photocopier is not good. Sometimes, it really matters that what we believe is the truth.

In this morning’s reading from John’s first letter, John says that what we believe about God and his son Jesus, really matters. It REALLY MATTERS. John says there are 3 hugely important consequences of what we believe about Jesus. And that they are a matter of life and death – literally, life & death!

We need to consider them, but first a word about belief more generally. Or rather a word about doubt - because belief and doubt often go together. Jesus healed the son of the man who said “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!”

Tim Keller, minister of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, says in this very helpful book The Reason For God: “A faith without doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. [They’re the things that fight off infections!] People who blithely go through life too busy or too indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do, will find themselves defenceless against either the experience of tragedy, or the probing questions of a smart sceptic. A person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if they’ve failed over the years to listen patiently to their own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.”

It’s really important that those of us who are believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts, our own and our friends’ and neighbours’. We don’t have to be afraid of our doubts. We need to engage with them and us them to get to grips with what we believe and why.

So, what is it about Jesus that John thinks it’s so important to believe? And what are the consequences?

In verse 1 John says, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Messiah is a child of God.” In verse 5 he says, “Who can defeat the world? Only the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” And in verses 10 & 11, “Whoever believes in the Son of God has eternal life.”

The key belief John is putting forward is that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah or Christ.

In last week’s sermon, Cameron put together a summary of John’s letter tweet-style like this: “Christian faith grows directly out of & must directly express the belief that in Jesus the 1 true God has revealed himself 2b love incarnate.”

Jesus is the unique Son of God.

Let’s remind ourselves of the context of this letter. As Cameron explained when he introduced this letter to us, at the time John was writing, there were some false teachings around, some things people were saying about Jesus that weren’t true. In both John’s gospel and in this his first letter, John went to great lengths to tell the truth about Jesus clearly, as someone who had seen, heard, lived with and loved Jesus for years! John described himself as a first hand witness to the things Jesus said and did, and to who he was. John knew that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God in a unique way. Fully man and fully God, the Messiah, or Christ, the one sent by God to bring salvation to the world, to rescue it from sin and death.

But some people had messed with the message about Jesus and who he was as the Son of God, and put forward other ideas. The heresies Cameron mentioned when we started this sermon series were Gnosticism and Docetism. Gnostics taught that the material world was all bad, and the spiritual world all good, and so it would be impossible for a perfect God to take flesh as a man; so Gnostics didn’t believe Jesus was really the divine Son of God. Docetists believed that Jesus wasn’t really human, he only appeared to be so. And Cerinth and his followers believed that God’s divine nature descended on to the man Jesus only at his baptism and left him before his crucifixion.

It’s likely that some of the people who believed these false teachings had been part of the churches John was writing to, and had left to start their own breakaway movements. And those left behind, whom John was writing to now, needed reassurance. How could they be sure of what they believed about Jesus? What did John have to say; John, who personally knew so Jesus so well?

It was to people like this, that John wrote this letter, and he did indeed provide the reassurance they needed. He stated very clearly that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah or Christ. And in the passage we’ve just read, John gave 3 testimonies, or witnesses, to this truth: 3 things that all point to the truth that Jesus is uniquely the Son of God. He describes the 3 witnesses that testify as water, blood and the Spirit of truth.

Biblical scholars have different ideas about the significance of the water and the blood here. Some say John is referring to the water of baptism (indeed the Good News Version actually puts in the word baptism, although it’s not in the Greek). At Jesus’ baptism, a voice was heard from heaven saying “This is my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased.” So Jesus’ baptism points to his being the Son of God. (And John may have been refuting the false teaching of the Gnostics by referring to Jesus’ baptism.)

Other commentators say it wasn’t the waters of baptism, not least because John didn’t include any account of Jesus’ baptism in his gospel. Instead they say the water and the blood refer to events John did record, when water and blood flowed from Jesus’ side at the crucifixion, when a soldier pierced him to check he was dead. The water and blood showed he was indeed dead – and showed he really was a man. John is refuting the false teaching of the Docetists.

Either way John’s point is that in Jesus, God became man. Jesus was fully divine and fully human, and his life and death and resurrection all showed the truth of this, supported by his words and actions. 

Jesus lived the perfect life but took the sin and wrongdoing of the whole world on to himself as he died on the cross, so that we might be forgiven and live in relationship with God. Water and blood, symbols of cleansing, purification, and death, and the means by which we are reconciled to God. Saved from the consequences of our sin, the Messiah or Christ means the one who saves.

And the Holy Spirit enables us to see and understand this truth about Jesus and to respond in faith.

So John says there are these 3 witnesses who testify to the truth that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ or Messiah. But so what? Does it matter?

John says what we believe about Jesus REALLY MATTERS. He says there are 3 hugely important consequences of what we believe:

First he says that believing Jesus is the Son of God means we are a child of God. This refers to what Jesus called being born again, the moment or process in which we enter into a relationship with God as his forgiven, beloved, adopted child. We can call him Father, in a position of surrender and trust, secure that we’re accepted sons and daughters. Believing in Jesus as The Son of God enables us to become God’s children – and also as his children, our belief is strengthened as we grow in relating to him.

The second thing John says about believing Jesus is the Son of God, is that it means we

can defeat the world or win victory over the world by means of our faith or belief.

What is this victory? Preacher John Stott says, “It is won over the world, by which word John gathers up the sum of all the limited, transitory powers opposed to God which make obedience to him difficult. Sometimes these are moral pressures – the standards, outlook and preoccupations of a Godless secular society. Sometimes they are intellectual, heresy, and sometimes physical, persecution. But whatever form the world’s assault on the church may take, the victory is ours. The unshakeable conviction that the Jesus of history is the Christ/Messiah, in the sense in which the false teachers denied it, God become human in order to bring us salvation and life, enables us to triumph over the world. Confidence in the divine-human person of Jesus is the one weapon against which neither the error, nor the evil, nor the force of the world, can prevail.”

Do we want this victory? To be able to win our battles with the temptations, the addictions, the ways we mess up our lives? As children of God, we can expect to be growing in victory and freedom, bit by bit. That is the second real consequence of our belief in Jesus Christ.

And the third consequence of believing Jesus is the Son of God, is that we have eternal life. Verse 11 says God has given us eternal life, and this life has its source in his Son (Jeusus). Whoever has the Son has this life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

The next verse says more about this, and Cameron may want to pick up on it next week (or he may not), but for now I’ll just say that eternal life isn’t just living forever in what we might call heaven after we die. It’s living in relationship with God, living under his just, loving, gracious rule, now and for ever. It’s living as he has made us to live, to our full potential, by loving and obeying Him. That eternal life starts here and now! And the door to it is in belief in his Son Jesus, as an undeserved gift of His loving Father.

This message is what motivates us to live for God, here in London as much as in Chennai!

So, can you believe in Jesus as the Son of God?!

Can you not believe it?! Tim Keller again, points out that if we don’t believe one thing, we simply believe another – and it’s often equally unproveable. If we say we don’t believe that Jesus was uniquely the Son of God, we’re saying we believe he was lying when he claimed to be? Or that all the stuff written down about him is wrong? Those are unproveable beliefs too – and how does the evidence stack up each way?

Tim says, You may say, “To be honest, I have no beliefs about God one way or another. I simply feel no need for God and I am not interested in thinking about it.” Underneath that feeling is the very modern belief that the existence of God is a matter of indifference unless it impacts my emotional needs. You are betting your LIFE that no God exists who would hold you accountable for your beliefs and behaviour if you didn’t feel the need for him. That may be true or it may not be true, but, again, it’s a belief, in fact it’s quite a leap of faith!”

So, what do you believe about Jesus? If you want to explore further the evidence and the arguments, I highly recommend Tim Keller’s book The Reason For God. I confess I’ve not finished reading it yet, but what I have, I recommend as thought provoking, engaging and honest. (And Trevor has read it all and can recommend it!) An/or, read John’s gospel  itself, to hear what he had to say about Jesus.

Or if you want to talk about belief, or doubt, do speak with me or Cameron – you know where to find us. Or if you’re ready to take a new or next step of belief, or faith, and want to talk some more, we’d equally love to hear from you. A simple prayer is all that’s needed, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief” as a man said to Jesus.

 So the question for all of us this morning’s question is, What do you believe, about Jesus, about these matters of life and death?

And what are you going to do about it?

Sermon 7th July 2013

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker continues our look at the book of 1 John.  The reading is from 1John 4 verses 13-21.

No, I don’t either. Just as Adrian did last week, I too must confess that I don’t tweet – even though some people tell me that they’d quite like it if I did. But I do like a challenge! So when Adrian said that John, the writer of this letter, couldn’t express himself in less than the 140 characters of a tweet, I set out to prove that he could do that: very easily, and very well. And so, with the help of my favourite Bible commentator, I have not 1 but 2 potential tweets to offer you today. And either, or both, of them sum up the whole of John’s first letter – according to Tom Wright!

Now the first one does require a bit of modern-form communication, in terms of abbreviation and the like, to restrict it to exactly 140 characters. It then goes like this: “Christian faith grows directly out of & must directly express the belief that in Jesus the 1 true God has revealed himself 2b love incarnate”. That is, perhaps, rather more dense than your average tweet, so it’s worth reading it again ...

I think that’s very good and helpful, and so I plan to keep it in our minds throughout today. But maybe that doesn’t do it for you. So here, with 12 characters to spare, is my second proffered potential tweet: “Love incarnate must be the badge that the Christian community wears, as a sign not only of who they are but of who their God is.” Again, it’s excellent, and very helpful stuff, I’d say, if also still quite dense. Hear it again, then, as a fine summary of all that John has used rather more words in his letter to say. Also again, we’ll keep coming back to the content of this twee throughout. But first I want to add 2 more helpful potential tweets, whilst being on this contemporary roll.

These too are both quotes: but are neither from John, nor from Tom Wright. Their sources might just surprise you. I’m sure you’ll be happier to know that they are less dense, and are shorter too, at about 80 and 40 characters respectively. First is JK Rowling: “It is our choices ... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” And now it’s the turn of Friedrich Nietzsche, who once wrote: “To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.” Well, I’d certainly hope that anyone who’s been listening this series won’t fall prey to that commonest form of stupidity! We can’t say that Jesus’ friend and disciple John has ever let us forget what our purpose, what our calling, is. In his letter he has made it clear – over and over again – what it is. It is precisely about living out what we believe about who God is. And of course the way that we are to do that – as John has written (again and again) – is in the choices that we make.

Now today isn’t the occasion to try and summarise the whole of this letter. That’s what we’ll be doing in 2 weeks’ time, when this series concludes. But today’s passage simply won’t make sense unless we acknowledge it for what it is. Tom Wright says these verses are the high point of thought in 1 John; and surely nobody could argue with that. Everything that John has written so far has been another step along the road that has brought us to here. Everything that will follow it in this letter is the direct result of having arrived at this point. To summarise, then: in Jesus, God has revealed himself to be love incarnate, to be love. That must then be the badge that we wear, as individuals and as a community of God’s people. It is in the wearing of that badge, and in the making of those choices, that we show who we truly are. More importantly, it shows who God is, and what He is like; and that is our key purpose that we must never be stupid enough to forget.

Now John has tried very hard to make sure his readers can’t miss his point. To dip briefly back into the end of last week’s reading, there are no less than 27 uses of the root-word for ‘love’ in verses 7-21. Guess what this part of the letter is about then! But it’s crucial that we understand what John, what the Bible, means when they talk about love. As another of the commentators I read helpfully put it, the Bible teaches that God is love: not that love is God! And there really is a vast difference between those 2 statements. Just think of the last time that someone said to you, in whatever context, “If you really loved me you would – or wouldn’t ... ” Remember what came after that piece of attempted emotional extortion; and then contrast it with these words that you’re likely familiar with, if not necessary as they sound here, in the Message version:

“Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t strut,

Doesn’t have a swelled head,

Doesn’t force itself on others

Isn’t always “Me first”,

Doesn’t fly off the handle,

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.”

Yes, that is an extract from 1 Corinthians 13; and yes, that is what God’s love looks like – on the cross.

Here, as he has time and again throughout his letter, John points his readers to the cross. In verse 14 John (who saw all this with his own eyes, remember) testifies to the facts: that God “the Father sent His Son Jesus to be the Saviour of the world”. Whenever we want to know what God’s love looks like, what God’s love does, what God’s love makes possible, here is where to look John says – to the cross. This is a badge that we can wear with great pride, and great honour – as long as we remember that it doesn’t say too much about us! This is what God’s love is, and does; it’s not about what we deserve, or earn. But the amazing thing is that if, with God’s help, we do live out this same love then we live in God, and He lives in us, John assures us here!

There’s a key word that John uses in the Greek, which doesn’t always appear in English. The meaning of it is at least implied, but it needs saying out loud so that we don’t miss it. The word is ‘abide’, which may sound a bit old-fashioned but the concept is very current. We could say instead ‘make a home’, and we’d probably all know what that means. But it’s the implication of applying that idea to our relationship with God that is so staggering. It may be that we’d be quite content, we think, with us making our home in God. We’d probably be happy guests, letting Him look after us, and do all the work for us. But John writes about this very much as a mutual process, note: God wants to make His home in us too; and it may be that that is a matter of a rather different order!

Now of course there are huge positives to God abiding, or making His home, in us. John spells just some of those out here – though he does so with the kind of simplicity of faith that we may find breathtaking. I mean: can you face the Day of Judgment completely without fear because God has made His home in you by His Spirit?! And are you sure of the fact that He has done because it shows in your love for God and for all other people? Well, says John, that is the acid test for anyone who claims they love God: how are you at loving the people around you? Not to put too fine a point on it, anyone who fails the latter test by definition fails the former one. Don’t make yourself out to be a liar then, John says. If you love God, you love people too – or you don’t!

While we’re on that tricky subject, let’s not kid ourselves in any way about the reality of Godly loving. God’s kind of love must be expressed in deed because that is what God himself has modelled for us on the cross. As I’ve said before, love isn’t a concept, a nice idea: it is a verb, a doing word. God’s kind of love is for doing, both in big gestures of this sort that John has so often referred to in his letter. It is also just as much for doing in our everyday life: in each and every choice that we make: in what we say; in what we do; and in what we think, even. In all of those our purpose is to be to make God’s love perfect.

Well, there’s a challenge – once we’ve understood what it means, that is! Us? Make God’s love perfect? Whatever does John mean by that? Well, we need to return to that second potential tweet, I think: Love incarnate must be the badge that the Christian community wears, as a sign not only of who they are but of who their God is.” The only way that people are going to encounter God’s love is through those who love God. How does God show His love for you? Yes, we can read about it in the Bible; we have signs of it when we come to Communion. But in your everyday life do you not know God’s love not through the people around you? And are you not the main way that God shows His love for the people around you? it should be so, because John is saying here that this is indeed how God’s love works.

You see, as that first potential tweet put it, Christian faith grows directly out of & must directly express the belief that in Jesus the 1 true God has revealed himself 2b love incarnate. And that comes down to the choices that anyone who calls themselves a Christian makes: day in and day out; costly; difficult; selfless; gracious; giving; that is to say, loving choices; modelled on God’s own example in the person of His Son. Those are the choices that show who we truly are; what we truly believe; and how we are wise enough to keep on living out the purpose which God has given us: loving Him, and one another, because He first loved us. And so how better to end today than to listen again to John’s words, again from the Message version:

“This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him – and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Saviour of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.

God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day – our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life – fear of death, fear of judgment – is one not yet fully formed in love.

We, though, are going to love – love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.

If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.”

And so now let’s pray for God’s help to do just that, then ...