At one level it is hardly high theology.  I imagine most people in most churches could complete the sentence: “Love one . . . ?”  But sometimes the love that we settle for is less than the distinguishing characteristic of God Himself.  Sometimes the love that we share in church is not qualitatively different than the love we might experience at the Rotary Club, or the Golf Club, or the knitting circle.  Call it love if you like, but perhaps it would be better described as cordiality, politeness, niceness.

I wonder if you have experienced cordiality when you needed love?  Perhaps fears from job insecurity, or the hurt of broken relationship.  If you dare to share something that isn’t superficial, only to receive cordiality in return, it can really hurt.  Plastic niceness never feels life-giving.  Hurting in a community marked by plastic cordiality can be a terribly lonely experience.

In his epistle, John keeps reiterating the importance of genuinely loving one another, in line with how God has loved us.  He writes of the Father loving us and sending His Son as a sacrifice for our sin.  He writes of the Son laying down His life for us.  He writes of the Father giving not only His Son, but also His Spirit to assure us of our union with Him.  The love of God is so essential to who God is that he twice writes that God is love.

With God Himself as the definition of love, not only in His Trinitarian fellowship, but in His self-giving, self-sacrificing love toward the undeserving, John urges his readers to continue to love one another.

After one of these calls, in 3:11, he zeroes in on the murder of Abel way back in Genesis 4.  He ties that to the hatred his readers would feel from the world.  Why the connection?  Because love is not only central to who God is, but also it was central to how we were created.  The Fall in Genesis 3 did not simply lead to some lawlessness on an otherwise neutral or positive planet.  The Fall turned God’s love-driven creation into an upside-down world of self-love and competitive hatred of others.  Adam and Eve used fig leaves to try to hide their shame and fear, but their son went all out and murdered his brother in a competitive rage.

So in a hate-filled competitive world saturated, steeped and soaked in the vinegar of self-love, how can sinners like us even know what love is?  “By this we know love, that Jesus laid down his life for us.”  The cross not only addressed the wrath that we deserved, it also functioned as a wake-up call to us in our self-obsession.  We have seen the purest and most potent demonstration of true love, God’s love, and our hearts that were dead toward God have thus been made alive!

John immediately follows the description of Christ’s love with a reminder that we ought to therefore lay down our lives for our brothers.  It makes sense.  If that kind of self-sacrificial love defines our God, then it should define those who respond to it and are united to Him in a mutually abiding relationship.

In theory, I am onboard.  Yes, indeed: loved like that, I should now love like that.

But . . . two problems.

First, although loved like that, I still seem to be soaked to the core in self-love, so that plastic niceness seems to be all I can muster in my efforts to love others while continuing to prioritise protecting myself.  I think that is part of the reason church exposure is not always as life-giving as it should be.  Nearer the end of the fourth chapter, John addresses the role of the Spirit who gradually transforms our fearful hearts by God’s perfect love.

Second, in theory I am fine with laying down my life for my Christian brothers and sisters.  I’m not quite so keen to turn theory into experience.  Don’t miss where John goes immediately in 3:17.

After calling believers to lay down their lives, he immediately becomes eminently practical.  He doesn’t just, or even primarily, mean substitutionary and vicarious martyrdom.  He also means laying down possessiveness to provide for each other.  He means practical love, not just theoretical talk.

Pondering that kind of practical laying down, I thought about five possible practical means of loving one another . . .

1. Laying down possessiveness to give away our time, resources and energy for the good of another.
2. Laying down prideful masks to show vulnerability and weakness to support another.
3. Laying down position on the pecking order, to esteem and celebrate the way God made others.
4. Laying down personal preferences, to prefer the interests and needs of another.
5. Laying down past pains and our record of wrongs, to release from grudges and lingering debts that maintain distance from another.

This past week our family suffered a heart-breaking loss.  I praise God for a community of believers who have laid down so much to love us and care for us.  Plastic niceness and cordiality would have been crushing.  In the midst of grief, to be genuinely loved by brothers and sisters in Christ is indescribably life giving.

The post Life-Giving Love first appeared on Cor Deo.

But, as I enjoyed the innocence of my son, I started to ponder the reality that I don’t think much differently.  Instead my thoughts aren’t communicated out loud so directly, they’re a whole lot sadder, no less ironic, and far more deadly. They go something like this, “I’m the weakman, and I can do anything!”  While, I might not consciously include the “weakman” part of the sentence, it’s there nevertheless.

Why do I say this? Well, when fear, false-humility, etc. begin to bear fruit in my life, I know my thoughts have been abiding in the silly notion that I can do anything on my own.  That I, as an individual, can direct my own steps and I have no need of anyone else. Yet the fear that comes from this pride is rooted in something false.

One of the warning signs that anyone is living in the lie of Satan (that God can’t be trusted, and I’m my own god) is their internal conversation.  If you find that your self-talk is a single voice, odds are its self-concerned and self-protective. Your thoughts are rooted in the lie “I can do anything” while protecting yourself from your inability to do so.  This often manifests itself in constantly comparing yourself to others, “I’m better than…” or “I’m not as good as… ” These comparisons can lead to perfectionism, panic-induced paralysis, or prodigal licentiousness. The differing behaviors are only symptoms of the same disease, someone’s habitual value that they are God.

Let’s return to my son’s insightful declaration. It’s essential to abide in the reality that we can do nothing on our own – that God is God, and we are not.  Now our flesh will immediately make this statement primarily about power.  I don’t think it is, however.  It’s a love issue. It’s a trust issue. These are intimate companions, but for the sake of clarity let’s talk about each one separately.

When living in the lie we believe that we’re not loveable, and that God doesn’t really love us. The truth, however, is that God does loves us and therefore we, the unloveable, are made lovely.  This love is not some cheap, fluffy, marshmallow love given to us from a transcendent distance.  No, its the God who stoops down to give us life in his Son, and to give us his Spirit who testifies to this by pouring God’s love into our hearts.   When we respond to him with love, he abides in us and we in him.  And as our triune God is an other-centered communion with an eternal conversation between the Father and Son by their Spirit, it should be no surprise we should start to converse with him by his Spirit.  Our internal conversation becomes a true conversation with our Father and our Bridegroom.   It is a conversation based upon the delight that God is God and I’m not, and my God loves me unfailingly.

We, however, don’t trust this enough.  I find that in 1 John 4:16 we miss the full-stop after “the love that God has for us.”  We tend to do the Step Toe On the Pedal and roll by that God loves us onto what we need to do next, i.e. prove that we are lovers of God.  When we do this, we tend to read in 1 John that it’s our responsibility to love our brother and to love God.  Now I wouldn’t want to give the impression that these aren’t important, they’re vital to John’s epistle.  Yet, John doesn’t see these as a responsibility we have to force ourselves to do, rather he emphatically states we respond in love because God first loved us.  If we don’t abide and dwell in the goodness of our God who is love, we can’t help but make love a responsibility because we trust the statement “I can do anything on my own” rather than “I’m deeply loved, and I can do nothing on my own.”

When we wholeheartedly trust that God is for us we’ll begin to hear another voice in our internal conversation.  The voice will direct our gaze onto God’s beauty. The Spirit will bear his fruit.  And we’ll discover a desire to give ourselves away to others in the way God gave himself to us.

Here the internal conversation changes from being self-concerned, self-protective, or even self-determined.  Rather we’ll depend on God for all things we do. We’ll constantly ask God to join us in our daily activities. We’ll ask God for help in every circumstance, difficult or easy.  We’ll confidently take risks knowing that our identity isn’t wrapped up in our performance or others’ opinions, but upon God’s testimony of us, the God who’s walking with us.   The possibilities are endless when our focus is upon the glorious love of the Trinity, which is manifested in Jesus depending on the Father for everything while fearlessly giving himself away.

I’m thankful my son was right, with one major addition, in Christ I am the strongman, and I can do nothing without him.  Let us confidently depend on Him, even in our internal conversation.

The post Superhero? first appeared on Cor Deo.