Moving Toward a God of Love
The title of this series is “Life with a God of Love.” As we meditate on the words of John, we’re being led through a series of spiraling reflections toward the great affirmations in the 4th chapter that “God is Love!” (4:8, 16).
John wants us to grasp not just a slogan, but an insight into all reality.
This is the heart of everything.
It’s why there is a world, why we’re here,
why we have hope and confidence even in the midst of a pandemic,
why the irrationality of so much that we humans do in the world is not the final verdict on reality.
Why the world and our lives can have hope, beauty, creativity, nobility, justice. Why we keep seeking all these things.
John knows that his readers in the 1st century certainly felt the hostility of the world around them in the Roman empire.
That most of the world did not share their faith, their hope, their love.
He knows that there was then (and now) a great urge to move toward pessimism. Toward cynicism. Just look around. Everything’s messed up. We had Caligula, we had Nero. Now we’re under the thumb of Domitian. It just gets worse and worse.
But John wants to call them back to see more clearly the message of the gospel, the announcement of what God has done in Jesus in all its beauty and depth.
The way it unites both the highest spirituality – God is light and no darkness –
and the most concrete physicality – the blood of Jesus in his crucifixion.
That’s where he started.
It doesn’t look away from the brokenness and sin of us humans. Every one of us.
But it sees that God takes on that problem in Jesus in a way that surprising and that never gives up on us even when we fail.
That this work is not just aimed at you and me but as the deep sin of the whole world.
John’s very clear that God’s work in us is a process. John loves verbs like walking, holding on, abiding. Especially abiding.
We abide in what Jesus said right from the start about love and transformation.
It works. We find ourselves participating in God’s life
Walking in God’s light.
Abiding in God’s love.
We live the full range of life. Receiving life as little children, Acting as responsible adults, growing as young people finding new strength.
We little humans actually become children of the God of the Universe. Living toward a future that is beyond our imagination because it is in God’s creative hands, a creation of his unlimited love.
Too good to be true? Absolutely! But true? John says, Yes, indeed!
That’s why John emphasizes that what he’s talking about is a challenging learning process. He talks about how unexpected things become clearly manifest, how we come to know, come to understand, recognize things. How we learn to see and experience “truth,” “reality” not within the cynicism created by imperial power but in the reality of the Love of God that pervades all that exists.
Doing What’s Wrong; Doing What’s Right
John tells us that that cynicism that says we’re trapped in what’s fundamentally wrong, in sin, and you just go with it because it’s the only way to success in this world.
That’s slander about human life from the slanderer (diabolos). It’s not true.
It doesn’t fill you with joy in this life and it blows away instantly with death.
Right now you can live a life that fills you with joy now and that is as unending as the very life of God.
