Love is …
1 John 4:16-21
June 22, 2025 anno Domini
269 years. That’s the years of marriage we’ve celebrated at Redeemer the last two Sundays. It doesn’t take much love to get married. Usually, lust contributes more than love. It requires much love to stay married. There is no person who will sin against you more than your wife or husband. There is no person who will need to forgive you more than your spouse.
St. John’s first letter could be called the love letter of Scripture. In today’s text Saint John tells us three things about love. 1) God is love. 2) Love drives out fear. 3) Love is physical, fleshly.
God is love. That little statement could compete for the most misused verse in the Bible. It fits on a bumper sticker, but most people who use the phrase define both God and love to their own liking. God is some big guy in the sky overlooking the whole world and He loves you so you can do whatever you want and when you die, if you want, you can go to a better place. That is not what the Holy Spirit means when He inspired Saint John to write, “God is love.”
You cannot separate God’s love from God’s Son or from God’s Son on the cross. A little earlier in this chapter Saint John writes, “In this the love of God is manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. This is love – that God the Father sent His Son into the world. Love is the Son of God becoming man and then being the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation means that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross appeased God’s wrath. By the shedding of Christ’s blood, God is no longer angry at us, but is favorable toward us. God loved us while He hated us for our sin. His love caused Him to do something to make us lovely in His eyes. He got rid of our sin and satisfied His justice that sinners must die. This then is the definition of love. God sends His Son into the world. Jesus of Nazareth takes all your sin, suffers His Father’s wrath and dies for you, in your place.
This love drives out all fear. If you’ve been attending our summer Bible study (and if you haven’t you should) you’ve been learning Satan’s lies. Every lie of Satan is meant to cause you fear, and every fear involves scarcity. The Devil causes you to measure your marriage. It takes too much sacrifice. It’s boring. Your life is lacking pleasure and excitement. He convinces you that your wife or husband doesn’t measure up to what you deserve. You look at everything your neighbor has, and you become discouraged that you’re missing out on all that joy. If the Devil can’t distract you with the scarcity of earthly pleasure he’ll damn you with your scarcity of righteousness before God. The greatest fear the Devil can instill is that God hates you and you will be damned to hell.
Another thing we’ve learned about the Devil this summer is that his lies always contain the truth. You should fear what God thinks of your sins. You should know that a single sin marks you guilty and deserving of hell. But you need not fear. Perfect love drives out fear, but here again it is God’s love, the love that compelled the Father to send His Son to be the propitiation for your sin. If God gives His only-begotten Son to save you, you don’t need to fear any scarcity. God’s love has taken care of the great robbers, the ones who leave you with nothing: sin, death, and hell. If He’s taken care of those, will you lack anything needful? You don’t need to worry that you don’t have all that your neighbor has. You don’t need to fear that you are not good enough to please God. What you need is to hear of His love. He has made you lovely in His eyes by loving you in His Son.
Love is physical. It is fleshly. In marriage it is important to say, “I love you,” but if you do not demonstrate that love by changing a diaper in the middle of the night or by rearranging the furniture for the 12th time, your love is shallow. You are loving in word without deed and that is no love at all.
God love us in Word and deed. This is love. God sent His Son into the world. This is love. The Son of God hung in His flesh on the cross bearing your sins. His flesh endured your hell. His life was given up for yours. He was laid in your tomb. God did not merely say, “I love you” he purchased our forgiveness with the flesh and blood of His Son. Martin Luther liked to call Jesus’ blood – the blood of love.
How is your love? Love is essential to the Christian. It is one of the greatest exercises of your faith. Christians love. If you don’t love than you must not believe God has loved you.
Love is not easy. Look at God’s love for you. He worked for thousands of years in carrying out His love for you. His Old Testament people had affair after affair with other gods. Then He sent His beloved, only-begotten Son into the flesh. He loved the whole world when He knew most of the world would hate Him and that His own Old Testament bride – the Israelites would reject Him. Jesus’ love for you cost Him popularity and earthly success. The only way for you to be lovely was to have your sin taken away. The only way for sin to be taken away was for Him to suffer, to go to hell, to die for you and your sins. He did that because He loved you.
Love will kill you, just ask Jesus. Ask the couples celebrating anniversaries. Marriage requires you to die to yourself and live for someone else – first your spouse, and then if God wills it your children. Marriage is a great exercise and test of faith. That also makes it a primary target of the Devil’s assaults.
One last mystery about love. Love is for your neighbor and your neighbor is the person nearest to you. God’s love is first and foremost for humanity, because humans are the nearest creature to God. We were created like God, in His image. God does not love sparrows like He loves you. He does not love mighty oak trees like He loves you. The Son of God became a man to love and save man. Think how much easier it would be for God to love a different creature than man. None of the other creatures sin.
That’s the mystery of love. It is hardest to love those nearest to you. Why? Because they sin against you more than anyone else. Your father loved his work or his hobbies more than you. You were the neglected middle child. Your parents gave all their attention to the first born or the baby of the family. Your husband has the same bothersome habits he had forty years ago. And it can be much worse – addiction, abuse, affairs. These are the tests God put before you. Will you love your neighbor, those nearest to you, as He has loved you? That is what love is and does. In the name of Jesus. Amen.