Love, unconditional love, that’s what today’s scriptures are all about.
Elsewhere John writes that “God is Love”. There are four words in Greek that mean love. They mean a mother’s love, passionate love; friendship; and unconditional love respectively. But the kind of love that John is talking about is unconditional love or agape.
When you think about it, God’s loved has to be like that. Because everything He created, by definition, is imperfect compared to God. And so, God has to accept it as He created it, unconditionally, otherwise, if God rejected it, it would be eliminated, gone. Here John is telling us we need to love God the same way as He loves us.
Now on first thought, that sounds easy enough. God created me, I know that, I appreciate that He created me, so I love God unconditionally. But John is saying, “Wait a minute; it is not that easy”. First, he tells us that if we don’t love our brother, who we can see; then we cannot be loving God correctly. So the first question is- do we love our brothers- all of them? Then John says, the way you will know that you love God is if you keep His commandments. And His commandment is that we love our brothers- all of them- with unconditional love, agape love.
Now our brothers include our family, our friends, our coworkers, and our classmates. But they also include pedophiles, illegal aliens, homosexuals, politicians in the other party, and just to make it real, real, clear, the Alabama Football team are our brothers! Wow, what a tall order is that.
I think we have to understand that there is a difference between loving someone and liking what they do. We are asked to love as God does. So, we need to unconditionally love sinners, just like God does. We should always thank God that he loves us that way- because we are all sinners and each of us wants to be loved by God and be with Him forever in eternity. So does everyone else- including the Alabama football team and all people in those other groups I mentioned.
The secret to the apparent dilemma is twofold. First, God is the judge, and will administer eternal justice; and so we should leave the condemnation up to God. And if you listen carefully, that’s what the psalm is all about this morning.
And second, the way we can be sure that we project God’s attitude of love is to let God’s spirit do it for us. That is what the Gospel this morning is all about. It says very clearly that Jesus claims the scripture was fulfilled in the assembly’s hearing: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to…”. To do all those things he mentioned. Yes, indeed, that is what Jesus did to fulfill God’s will for Him, to love unconditionally even love those who caused him incredible suffering and death. Jesus called on and let the Spirit of God work through Him. Jesus didn’t react to those who confronted and persecuted him with his human emotions- with anger, judgment, scorn, sarcasm, and the like. Rather, He let the Spirit of God, who is love, guide His way.
We are all being called upon to do the same To let the Spirit of God dominate over our human emotions when dealing with the difficult people and situations in our lives and to love others as God loves us.
Tags: Uncondiitional Love