[Jesus said,] “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15 ESV)
What does it mean to love the Lord? That’s really the question at the heart of all three readings for today. Paul describes the Athenians as being religious in every way–but then points out the shortcomings of their religion and calls them all to repent and believe in Christ. Peter describes the life of the Christian as being one with a ready answer for the hope that is in you and one lived under the grace of baptism. And Jesus tells us flat out that to love Him is to keep His commandments.
This brings an instant question to mind. Aren’t you saved by grace through faith, not by works? You are indeed. But the fruit of that salvation is living in the commandments, living according to God’s desires. God’s Word does not teach a cheap grace, a grace which lets you off the hook and frees you to be libertine in your lifestyle, doing whatever your hands find to do, whether good or evil. No, you are called to show your love for Jesus by keeping His commandments. Keeping Him first.
What are His commandments? You need to know this, not so that you can somehow wiggle out of keeping His law, but so that you know what He would have you do, how He would have you be. His commandments are quite simple, and yet so difficult! His commandments are two fold: to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your might, and to love your neighbour as yourself; indeed, as Jesus would further explain, that you are to love one another in the same way as Jesus Himself has loved you.
Don’t get thinking that Jesus simply means you are to be nice to others all the time. That’s not how Jesus showed love. He showed love by holding onto the truth of the Word firmly against all those who would substitute their own ideas or ideals for the plain truth of God’s Word. Love involves knowing how to say no when no is the right thing to say. Love involves self-discipline, self-denial. Love involves heartache and pain and sacrifice. Love which does not involve any of these sorts of things is not the sort of love which Jesus wants you to have for Him and for each other.
Part of the problem, when it comes to considering your love for God, is that we use the word “love” in so many ways in English. C.S. Lewis once wrote a book called “The Four Loves” in which he tried to disentangle some of the ways in which this word is used. When I say that I love God it is a different kind of love than my love for my wife, which is different than my love for my daughter, which is different than the love I have for the members of this congregation. They all have certain similar elements, they all have certain unique characteristics, but they are all differing in nature and type. In Greek there are different words for the different types of love—agapé, eros, storgé, philos. All of them have differing realms of application. Agapé is the self-sacrificing love, the love which is of divine origin. Eros is the physical desire-love, that desire which rightly exists between husband and wife (although a healthy marriage certainly consists of more than that type of love!). Storgé love is the kind of love that a mother or father has for a child, a need-love, an affection. Philos is brotherly love, a love which is strongly supportive of one’s fellow human beings.
But the love which Christ has for you is the truest form of love, agapé love, the self-sacrificing, self-giving love. Love which comes ultimately from God alone, and love which, in the words of 1 Corinthians 13, “is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a ESV)
If you love me with that kind of love, Jesus says, you will keep my commandments. And suddenly the whole problem becomes clear. We’re lousy at loving that way. We aren’t very good at putting God and others ahead of our own desires or interests. We’re not good at sacrificing ourselves so that our neighbour or friend, let alone our enemy, can get ahead. We’re lousy at loving like Jesus does, and as such, we’re also lousy at keeping His commandments the way He would have us do. Just consider an average day in your life, the number of times you harbour an angry thought against your neighbour, or put something ahead of God on your list of priorities.
We aren’t good at loving in God’s way because it is not natural to us. What is natural is eros and storgé and even philos to some extent. You can naturally deal with the need-love and affection and friendship and physical-desire love. Those are things which just make sense. But to put the interests of others ahead of your own, without any mind to the good you might or should receive back—that’s just not natural. It’s not natural because your natures have been turned away from where they should be pointed. When Adam and Eve were first created, they were naked and had no shame, for their focus was not on themselves but on God and on the creation God had given them to watch over and take care of. Then under the temptation from the ancient serpent, the devil, their focus shifted off of God and onto themselves—a shift which has remained in place down through the centuries and millennia, a shift which even to this day persists. See how a young child demands and craves attention on himself or herself. That’s the basic human desire. Through struggle and effort you can channel some of your attention elsewhere, but in general most people do things most of the time in order to further themselves in some way.
That sense of self-desire, of wanting that spotlight shined onto you and your wants—that’s sin. Sin in its most basic form. “You shall be as God”, promised the tempter, and to this day we want to be the gods of our own domains, lords over all we see and do.
And where there is sin, there is no chance for agapé love to exist. None at all. It doesn’t, and can’t register because there is no will to empower it. But that is why Jesus hasn’t left you to work on your love on your own, but has given you a Helper, the Holy Spirit. The world cannot receive this Spirit because only those who have faith can. Yet this faith itself is a gift of God’s grace, not a product or result of anything in you, but a pure, unmerited gift.
It is the work of the Holy Spirit through God’s Word and through the Sacraments which gives you the type of love and the ability to carry out what Jesus desires of you. We call this work of the Spirit the work of sanctification—being made holy.
The Spirit works through the Word, as Romans 10:17 (ESV)says: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of Christ.” Where there is faith, there the Holy Spirit is present, as Romans 8:10 (ESV) says: “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” When you come to church and hear God’s Word, the Holy Spirit is working in you to strengthen and increase your faith. When you spend time in studying God’s Word, the Holy Spirit is there, opening your heart and mind to His will.
The Spirit works through Baptism, as Peter proclaimed after his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2: “And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.’” (Acts 2:38-39 ESV) Baptism works forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, as Peter also notes in our epistle for today in the simple words of 1 Peter 3:21 (ESV)—“Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The Spirit connects you to Christ in your Baptism and gives you eternal life through Jesus’ resurrection.
The Spirit works through the Lord’s Supper, for where the Word of God is, there the Spirit is, and it is this Word of Christ which makes the Lord’s Supper the meal of Christ’s own body and blood which gives you forgiveness of sins. It is no mere symbol or representation, but the real body and blood of Christ you receive in, with, and under the bread and wine. As you receive Christ’s body and blood in faith, recognizing the body, you receive all the gifts which the Holy Spirit gives along with this body and blood—forgiveness, life, and salvation.
And it is the work of the Spirit through these means that give you the ability to love your Lord and keep His commandments. Apart from the Spirit, you are dead in sin. With the Spirit, you are alive in Christ. Apart from the Spirit, you are unable to love God and your neighbour in the way you ought. With the Spirit, you are able to love God and your neighbour and serve them in a God-pleasing way.
With the Spirit, you receive the full promise which Jesus has made for all those who love Him, all those who have been called by the Gospel, enlightened with His gifts, sanctified and kept in the one true faith: “Because I live, you also will live.” You have been promised life, a life which, like that of our Lord Jesus, does not end with the grave but which continues in the resurrection unto eternity. And in the resurrection you will know that Jesus is in the Father, that you are in Him, and that He is in us, or, as the apostle Paul noted in 1 Corinthians 15:28, “that God may be all in all.”
For now, you are here on this earth to serve our Lord Jesus with your lives, not out of a sense of obligation but as a response of love, true love, from hearts which have been cleansed from sin and made new in the blood of Jesus, shed for you on the Cross. You are here in order to love Jesus and love one another the way He loved us. You need to be in the Word, to remain in the grace of Christ and in the blessings of His forgiveness, in order that you can live that love you have been given to live. For as Jesus says, “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” (John 14:21 ESV)
May Jesus manifest Himself unto all of us when our last hour comes! In His name. Amen.
Last updated May 2008 by the webmaster.