Love Came Down at Christmas

Love Came Down at Christmas

1 John 4:7-12

            “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”

            John gives us these words in the third chapter of his first letter.  The entire letter is a love fest.  The word love pops up every few verses.  God loves us.  We ought to love God.  We demonstrate our love for God by loving others.  I once had a minister friend tell me that John’s version of the gospel was difficult to preach on a frequent basis because all he talked about was love.

            And yet, what else motivated God’s decision to send Jesus to earth?  What other emotion could we claim as the basis for the incarnation?  Compassion?  Perhaps: but isn’t compassion motivated by love?  Certainly not sympathy.  Sympathy doesn’t carry enough emotional weight for such an auspicious event.  Not anger, for obvious reasons.  Pity?  I don’t believe God would send the Messiah to such a horrific end out of pity.  It had to be love—love for all of humankind, certainly, but more specifically, love for each of us individually.  “In this the love of God was made manifest among us,” says John (4:9), “that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”

            John learned the height and depth of God’s love from Jesus.  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  You remember—John 3:16. Jesus didn’t stop there, but went on to say, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  How could anyone love more than that?  How could anyone demonstrate love more fully?

            We don’t know how old Jesus was when he became self-aware—that is, when he knew who he was and why he was here?  He showed evidence of self-knowledge at the age of 12, Luke tells us, when his parents found him in the temple with the teachers.  We can be pretty sure he didn’t have this self-awareness as a tiny baby lying in a manger.  There are legends of Jesus’ early years that don’t ring true because of the level of self-awareness they require to be true.

            What we do know is that by the time he began his public ministry he knew who he was, what his purpose was on earth, and what his end would be.  All of this was secondary to the single most important characteristic of Jesus’ life and ministry—self-giving love.

            John tells us that God is love (4:8).  He tells us in the prologue to his gospel (1:18) that no one has ever seen God, then repeats these words in this letter (4:12).  He makes it clear that those who saw Jesus saw God, for Jesus was God in human form—God, walking, talking, healing, reconciling, shaping, molding—loving.

            But John says something more, something important for those who call themselves Christians.  In 4:12, John says, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

            There you have it!  Here is the end product of God’s love for humankind.  God is love.  God sent Jesus out of love to show us what love looked like and to teach us how to love.  If we love one another we become demonstrators of God’s love.  We can’t be love without showing love, and we can’t claim to love God unless we love those around us with the same love God does.

            “Little children,” John says (3:18), “let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.” 

This is how God loves. 

This is how Jesus loves.

 Can we love any differently?”