CHRISTMAS LOVE

#1 · December 21, 2009, 11:50 am

Quote from Forum Archives on December 21, 2009, 11:50 am
Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>
CHRISTMAS LOVE

December 20, 2009

Text: John 3:16-21

If I were as our Lord God ... and these vile people were as disobedient as they now be, I would knock the world in pieces. (Table Talk, CXI) So declared the 16^th century Christian reformer Martin Luther one time to a group of his students. While this sentiment sounds rather stark and harsh, it has many times echoed throughout the ages. Time and again, men and women have hung their heads and wondered how God can continue to tolerate a world so full of evil and immorality and outright hatred toward Him. It is, indeed, a wondrous thought, for if I had the sovereignty and power of our Lord God, perhaps I, too, would knock the world in pieces. Or, at least, seriously consider it.

But there is an element here that is missing: a distinctive element of one attribute of God's nature. God himself is love: a love that utterly breaks through our human conceptions of what love means and is; and runs out to lengths that sound incredible to our human ears, because no [human] could do it. (Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, v. 8, p. 510)

The important point that Luther was trying to get across to his students is that, left to our human devices, we would destroy the world. We would knock the world in pieces. We would do it from the position of a righteousness that tells us that evil and disobedience have no place in the face of holiness. And we would be right. But we would not be any different than those who are destroying the world for the purpose of greed, lust, exploitation, and outright disobedience. Regardless of motive, the world would still be knocked into pieces.

The primary and remarkable difference between God and the men and women He has created is that God is love; we are not. Because of this unfathomable divine love, God redeems the world instead of destroying it. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:17) God is in a relationship with His people through divine love - a love so distinct that it destroys the systems in which legalism and rationalism are used to try to define the relationship between God and humanity. To recognize that the central attribute of God is love makes it understandable, then, why love is the most sought after of all human emotions. It becomes equally understandable why love is so elusive to us whenever we do not place God first in our lives. But the most important element in this connection is not the mere statement that God is love, but the manner in which this love appears as characteristic for the Christian faith. Divine love active in Christ is that love which seeks sinful man and enters into communion with him. The distinctive mark of this love is that it creates a fellowship between God and man different from that based on reason and law. (Gustaf Aulen, The Faith of the Christian Church, p. 112) So remarks Gustaf Aulen, in his book The Faith of the Christian Church.

The nature of God appears to us not in the condemnation of the world, nor in some other spectacular and miraculous display of supreme power. The nature of God - Christmas love - appears to us in the manger. It is miraculous, we can be sure of that. The virgin birth, the Word become flesh, the announcement of the birth by angelic hosts, the recognition of the Messiah by foreign wise men - all of these events and more are miraculous. But they are much more than miracles; they are love. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Christmas love has come. Christmas love has been born into the world of men and women. And then God asks, What will you do with it? What will you do with my love? Many have answered, I will reject it. As John has written, Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

In fact, as John emphatically says in other parts of his gospel, the darkness will try to overcome the light. We find the earliest incident taking place after the birth of Jesus. King Herod, the ruler of the Israel realm of the Roman Empire, became furious at the announcement of the birth of a king of the Jews. Herod wanted to be a good ruler for the Jews; that was always his intent. But throughout his reign, he was despised by those he ruled. They hated him for many complicated reasons. One of the primary reasons was that he represented the foreign occupation of Rome, and no ruler received much sympathy as long as he cooperated with Rome. Herod feared losing his position. He grew impatient with obstinate subjects. Out of such attitudes, a darkness grew in Herod until it sought to extinguish the Light that had just come. From Matthew 2:16-18, we read, When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah fulfilled: A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

God sent His Son into the world not to condemn it, but to save it. Yet there is condemnation. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. (John 3:18) God has come to bring redemption, but even in the midst of love and redemption there is condemnation. All of us are free to choose the Light or reject the Light. Nicholas Berdyaev once wrote, Man is free to choose torment without God rather than happiness in God; he has a right to hell, as it were. (Freedom and the Spirit, p. 324)

The difference between being not condemned and condemned is wrapped up in the word believe ...whoever believes in him... Whoever believes... whoever does not believe. The belief that John refers to is not intellectual only. Oh, it is intellectual to be sure. A purpose of John's gospel was to refute some of the errant ideas that were beginning to appear about Jesus. John sought to correct the incorrect ideas. So there is a good deal of intellectualism in John.

But John makes it clear that belief is also moral in nature. That is, as Gods Word makes clear, belief, or faith, demands response. To illustrate, I found this interesting comment in one of my Bible dictionaries: The [opposite] to faith is not doubt [or disbelief] but disobedience. (Interpreter's, v. 8, p. 511) This is a significant depiction, for it is derived from Scripture. Look at John 3:36, where John the Baptist offers testimony about Jesus: He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him. (RSV) It does not take a leap of logic to understand that the obvious mark of disbelief is disobedience.

Yes, we must acknowledge belief in Jesus with our mind, but it must involve our willing surrender to Jesus as Lord. Look again at King Herod. He believed in the birth of a king of the Jews. He believed the Magi and probably the Old Testament prophecies. He was not ignorant of the faith of his people, but his belief led to the darkness of disobedience instead of the light of divine love. King Herod refused the gift of life, and his response proves it.

I had a hospital chaplain supervisor once who was fond of using John 15:15 in such a way that it applied to everyone, universally, regardless of the condition of their faith. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. The statement made by Jesus that we were friends and not servants appealed to this man, and he made it a cornerstone of his approach to ministry, with some good effects.

But placing Jesus' comforting words back into the context of the complete paragraph sheds a different light on what Jesus meant. Read from the six verses just prior to 15: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. And then verse 17: This is my command: Love each other.

Gods love is unconditional. That means that He entered our realm because He is love, not because we deserve such love. Christmas love is unconditional. There is not a person born who it does not extend to. But this same love must be accepted, responded to, believed in order for it to be effective in our lives. Jesus cannot pronounce everyone His friend because not everyone desires to be His friend. Not everyone desires to do what He commands. But for those who do, He welcomes us as friend.

Saint Catherine of Siena was asked by one of her nuns, How can I pay God back for all of his goodness to me? How can I give back to God some glory for all his kindness, his love, his mercy, his generosity? Catherine answered, It wont do you any good to do any more penances. It won't do you any good to build the great church, because God has the whole world as his sanctuary. It won't do you any good to add any more quiet time in prayer. But I tell you something which you can do to really pay God back for the love he gives you. Find someone as unlovable as you are, and give that person the kind of love that God has given you.

God loves His world - meaning the men, women, and children He created - so much that He sent His beloved Son to be the sacrifice for our sins in our place. At the same time, He loves us so much that He does not unilaterally impose His will upon our will. We must seek to accept, honor, and return Gods love through willful obedience. This is what we are reminded of each Christmas as we return once again to all the stories, both secular and spiritual, about loving mankind in this season. While it is heartwarming that people are generally nicer to one another at Christmas, it is meaningless without the gift of Gods Christmas love. Christmas without Christ is just another dark day of the year. Christmas with Christ is light, life, peace, love, and salvation.

John 3:21: But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. This is the meaning and nature of Christmas love.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

PO Box 515

179 W. Broadway

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

www.bhfirstbaptist.com
-- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org   

Posted by: bhfbc <bhfbc@...>

CHRISTMAS LOVE

December 20, 2009

Text: John 3:16-21

If I were as our Lord God ... and these vile people were as disobedient as they now be, I would knock the world in pieces. (Table Talk, CXI) So declared the 16^th century Christian reformer Martin Luther one time to a group of his students. While this sentiment sounds rather stark and harsh, it has many times echoed throughout the ages. Time and again, men and women have hung their heads and wondered how God can continue to tolerate a world so full of evil and immorality and outright hatred toward Him. It is, indeed, a wondrous thought, for if I had the sovereignty and power of our Lord God, perhaps I, too, would knock the world in pieces. Or, at least, seriously consider it.

But there is an element here that is missing: a distinctive element of one attribute of God's nature. God himself is love: a love that utterly breaks through our human conceptions of what love means and is; and runs out to lengths that sound incredible to our human ears, because no [human] could do it. (Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, v. 8, p. 510)

The important point that Luther was trying to get across to his students is that, left to our human devices, we would destroy the world. We would knock the world in pieces. We would do it from the position of a righteousness that tells us that evil and disobedience have no place in the face of holiness. And we would be right. But we would not be any different than those who are destroying the world for the purpose of greed, lust, exploitation, and outright disobedience. Regardless of motive, the world would still be knocked into pieces.

The primary and remarkable difference between God and the men and women He has created is that God is love; we are not. Because of this unfathomable divine love, God redeems the world instead of destroying it. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:17) God is in a relationship with His people through divine love - a love so distinct that it destroys the systems in which legalism and rationalism are used to try to define the relationship between God and humanity. To recognize that the central attribute of God is love makes it understandable, then, why love is the most sought after of all human emotions. It becomes equally understandable why love is so elusive to us whenever we do not place God first in our lives. But the most important element in this connection is not the mere statement that God is love, but the manner in which this love appears as characteristic for the Christian faith. Divine love active in Christ is that love which seeks sinful man and enters into communion with him. The distinctive mark of this love is that it creates a fellowship between God and man different from that based on reason and law. (Gustaf Aulen, The Faith of the Christian Church, p. 112) So remarks Gustaf Aulen, in his book The Faith of the Christian Church.

The nature of God appears to us not in the condemnation of the world, nor in some other spectacular and miraculous display of supreme power. The nature of God - Christmas love - appears to us in the manger. It is miraculous, we can be sure of that. The virgin birth, the Word become flesh, the announcement of the birth by angelic hosts, the recognition of the Messiah by foreign wise men - all of these events and more are miraculous. But they are much more than miracles; they are love. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Christmas love has come. Christmas love has been born into the world of men and women. And then God asks, What will you do with it? What will you do with my love? Many have answered, I will reject it. As John has written, Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

In fact, as John emphatically says in other parts of his gospel, the darkness will try to overcome the light. We find the earliest incident taking place after the birth of Jesus. King Herod, the ruler of the Israel realm of the Roman Empire, became furious at the announcement of the birth of a king of the Jews. Herod wanted to be a good ruler for the Jews; that was always his intent. But throughout his reign, he was despised by those he ruled. They hated him for many complicated reasons. One of the primary reasons was that he represented the foreign occupation of Rome, and no ruler received much sympathy as long as he cooperated with Rome. Herod feared losing his position. He grew impatient with obstinate subjects. Out of such attitudes, a darkness grew in Herod until it sought to extinguish the Light that had just come. From Matthew 2:16-18, we read, When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah fulfilled: A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

God sent His Son into the world not to condemn it, but to save it. Yet there is condemnation. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. (John 3:18) God has come to bring redemption, but even in the midst of love and redemption there is condemnation. All of us are free to choose the Light or reject the Light. Nicholas Berdyaev once wrote, Man is free to choose torment without God rather than happiness in God; he has a right to hell, as it were. (Freedom and the Spirit, p. 324)

The difference between being not condemned and condemned is wrapped up in the word believe ...whoever believes in him... Whoever believes... whoever does not believe. The belief that John refers to is not intellectual only. Oh, it is intellectual to be sure. A purpose of John's gospel was to refute some of the errant ideas that were beginning to appear about Jesus. John sought to correct the incorrect ideas. So there is a good deal of intellectualism in John.

But John makes it clear that belief is also moral in nature. That is, as Gods Word makes clear, belief, or faith, demands response. To illustrate, I found this interesting comment in one of my Bible dictionaries: The [opposite] to faith is not doubt [or disbelief] but disobedience. (Interpreter's, v. 8, p. 511) This is a significant depiction, for it is derived from Scripture. Look at John 3:36, where John the Baptist offers testimony about Jesus: He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him. (RSV) It does not take a leap of logic to understand that the obvious mark of disbelief is disobedience.

Yes, we must acknowledge belief in Jesus with our mind, but it must involve our willing surrender to Jesus as Lord. Look again at King Herod. He believed in the birth of a king of the Jews. He believed the Magi and probably the Old Testament prophecies. He was not ignorant of the faith of his people, but his belief led to the darkness of disobedience instead of the light of divine love. King Herod refused the gift of life, and his response proves it.

I had a hospital chaplain supervisor once who was fond of using John 15:15 in such a way that it applied to everyone, universally, regardless of the condition of their faith. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. The statement made by Jesus that we were friends and not servants appealed to this man, and he made it a cornerstone of his approach to ministry, with some good effects.

But placing Jesus' comforting words back into the context of the complete paragraph sheds a different light on what Jesus meant. Read from the six verses just prior to 15: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. And then verse 17: This is my command: Love each other.

Gods love is unconditional. That means that He entered our realm because He is love, not because we deserve such love. Christmas love is unconditional. There is not a person born who it does not extend to. But this same love must be accepted, responded to, believed in order for it to be effective in our lives. Jesus cannot pronounce everyone His friend because not everyone desires to be His friend. Not everyone desires to do what He commands. But for those who do, He welcomes us as friend.

Saint Catherine of Siena was asked by one of her nuns, How can I pay God back for all of his goodness to me? How can I give back to God some glory for all his kindness, his love, his mercy, his generosity? Catherine answered, It wont do you any good to do any more penances. It won't do you any good to build the great church, because God has the whole world as his sanctuary. It won't do you any good to add any more quiet time in prayer. But I tell you something which you can do to really pay God back for the love he gives you. Find someone as unlovable as you are, and give that person the kind of love that God has given you.

God loves His world - meaning the men, women, and children He created - so much that He sent His beloved Son to be the sacrifice for our sins in our place. At the same time, He loves us so much that He does not unilaterally impose His will upon our will. We must seek to accept, honor, and return Gods love through willful obedience. This is what we are reminded of each Christmas as we return once again to all the stories, both secular and spiritual, about loving mankind in this season. While it is heartwarming that people are generally nicer to one another at Christmas, it is meaningless without the gift of Gods Christmas love. Christmas without Christ is just another dark day of the year. Christmas with Christ is light, life, peace, love, and salvation.

John 3:21: But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. This is the meaning and nature of Christmas love.

Rev. Charles A. Layne

First Baptist Church

PO Box 515

179 W. Broadway

Bunker Hill, IN 46914

765-689-7987

bhfbc@bhfirstbaptist.com

http://www.bhfirstbaptist.com

-- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: abesermons-unsubscribe@welovegod.org