First Sunday after Trinity, 1999
Text: I John 4:7ff
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
“The Greatest Love”
A
few years ago, there was a very popular song being played by all the pop radio
stations— played all the time by the pop radio stations to the point that practically
played it to death. It was the song by Whitney Houston entitled “The Greatest
Love.” Remember it? I used to work in a grocery store and we’d have the radio
playing all day. So it was almost guaranteed that I would hear that song at
least four times a day. I got so sick of that song. But I’ve got to admit that
when it first came out I actually kind of like it. It has a decent tune, and of
course Whitney Houston at least had an amazing voice. And you know she learned
to sing that way by growing up singing in Baptist church choir. So when she
came out with this song, I had a hopeful expectation of what she might be
singing about when she sang of “the greatest love of all.” Of course, then I actually listened to the
lyrics. And I must say, I was somewhat shocked to discover what she was
actually saying in this song:, “learning to love
yourself, it is the greatest love of
all.”
Now
I’m sorry, but that’s just a blasphemous statement. It simply is not true. It
is a reversal of the truth, for what did Jesus say? Jesus said the greatest
commandment of all is that we love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and
strength; and second, that we love our neighbors as ourselves, and that these
two commandments summarize everything God expects of us.
But
notice that the commandments are to love God and others. There is no
commandment to love yourself. Search the Scriptures;
you won’t find it. Why? Because it is assumed. It
assumed that you already love yourself. Jesus said, ‘love your neighbor as yourself.”
He couldn’t very well command us to love others as much as we love ourselves if
it wasn’t assumed that we love ourselves to begin with. The problem we fallen
human beings have is not that we love ourselves too little; it is that we love
ourselves so excessively that we make ourselves our own idols. The problem is, we find it extremely difficult to love others, or even God
Himself, even half as much as we love ourselves. Think about it: if this wasn’t
our basic problem, why would God have to command us to love? It is not our
natural tendency to love. In fact, it is, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism,
our natural tendency to hate God and our neighbors. Think how different the
world would be if everyone in it loved God and their neighbors as much as they loved themselves (not to
mention more than they love themselves as Christ commands). Would there we any
wars? Would there be any 911s? Would there be any abortions or other murders?
No. It is not our natural tendency to
love. But if we are able to love God
above all else, and our neighbors equally with ourselves it is only because God
has worked in us a new supernatural
impulse. It is only because we have been born of God, says
This
leads me to the next point which is this: that even
our love of God and of others is still not the greatest love of all. There
remains a greater. If any of us have known God in even the smallest degree, we
know that the greatest love is God’s love in Jesus Christ. That is the greatest
love of all.
And
how great is that love? Can we even begin to fathom its depths? John said, “God
is Love.” The implication is that for us to know the depths of God’s love, we
would have to have the capacity to know the depths of God’s being, something
that as creatures is completely beyond us. But we can at least begin to know what it means that God is
love.
You
know, in the modern church this truth that God is love has been pushed so far
forward as to practically eclipse all of the other attributes of God we find
revealed in the Scriptures. The love of God is so emphasized as to make it
practically meaningless. We do a huge disservice to God, a huge disservice to
our own appreciation for the magnitude of His love, when we de-value things
like His justice, His holiness, and His wrath. In other words, we will never
come to know the greatness of His love, unless we know that God is not only
Love; He is also Holiness, and His is also Justice.
Think
back to that very scary situation a few years back when that little boy fell into
the gorilla pit at the zoo. Do you remember how so many people became
completely enamored with Koko, the female gorilla,
simply because she didn’t hurt the little boy, but treated him with unexpected gentleness. And you can probably remember how people in the
media tried to turn this into moral lesson, that we should all learn from Koko to be more kind. But the reason why people were so
caught up by the gentleness of this gorilla was that they all knew how fierce
she could have been. They were awed at her kindness because they could all
imagine the horror of what she could have done if she wanted to. But they
wouldn’t have had the least bit of awe if they knew that Koko
would never hurt a fly. Take away the knowledge of her power and her
fierceness, and you take away the sense of awe and wonder at her tenderness.
And this is the way it is with God, as well. When we de-fang God, when we strip
Him in our minds of his power and his fiery indignation against sin, we lose
that sense of awe and wonder when He deals with us in love instead of wrath.
Now
I don’t want you to go home saying that today Fr. Jerry compared God to an ape.
It’s just an analogy, and perhaps not a very good one. But the point is that we
can never really begin to know the greatness of God’s love for us until we
first recognize that God is holy and
righteous and has the just right to damn everyone of us to hell for our wicked
rebellion against him, for the exalting self-love over love for Him. That He doesn’t damn us, that
He instead sent his son into the world to take the place of the damned - now
that is a love that is truly awe-inspiring. That’s a love so powerful that it
can even transform our self-centered hearts so that we begin to love God and
others more than we love ourselves.
Unless
we see an image of the cross when we contemplate the love of God, we haven’t
yet come to know the greatest love of all. Unless we realize that God is so
righteous and so just that he could never let sin go unpunished, but that he
made Christ to be sin for us, we don’t yet know what it means that God is love.
Do
you realize that, if you are in Jesus Christ by faith, God loves you right now
as much as He ever will? If you are in Christ, you don’t have to work for God’s
love; you have it entirely already to the full, because God’s justice was fully
satisfied in His Son on the cross. You have God’s love, because Christ got your
justice.
Sometimes
God allows us to have a profound sense of his love to us. I can remember a
night back in college when I was staying up very late to study for my Christian
doctrine class. And I was reading a book on the doctrine of the atonement, the
doctrine that Christ’s death completely atones for or covers our sins. And as I
read about how, while we were God enemies, he reconciled us to himself through
the death of Christ, it suddenly struck me like it had never struck me before
that, if that were really true, if God really loved us so much while we
were still his enemies that he poured out all his wrath for our sin upon his
own son, then what could we possibly have to fear? If we don’t have to fear the
wrath of God, what could there possibly be on this earth to cause us to be
afraid? And that scripture passage immediately came to mind, “If God is for us,
who could be against us?” Think of it. If God love us, we truly have nothing to
fear, and this is just as John said: “Perfect
love casteth out all fear.”
But
now what do we do with the love of God once we have it? If we’ve really come to
know the love of God through faith in Jesus Christ, how ought that to affect
our lives?
The key to loving others lies in an ever more vivid realization that God loves
us - we who are so unlovely, so undeserving of his love. And so to know God’s
love is truly to be humbled. If we enter into the presence of God with all our
shame and guilt and find that what we meet is not the fire and brimstone of his
terrible wrath, but a cross, and the one hanging from the cross saying to us:
“I absolve you: your sins are forgiven,” then how could it be possible for us
not to love and forgive one another. Even if a brother or a sister has
grievously offended against you, could they ever owe a greater debt to you than
you owe to God? Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one
another.”
What
is the greatest love of all? “Not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and
sent his Son to be the propitiation for out sins.” That is the greatest love of
all.
May
God continue to work in us that supernatural ability that we may truly know and
share the greatest love of all. +