What Matters Most

450 years ago to the day – on 16 October 1555 – two men were burned to death in the city centre of Oxford. Their names were Nicholas Ridley (from near here, and educated in Newcastle) and Hugh Latimer. They were both bishops at a time when most of the leaders of the church in England were denying the Christian faith. Most of them were teaching that for God to love you, you had to do certain things – or rather, have them done for you by a priest. Whereas Ridley and Latimer said: No. They said: God’s love isn’t attracted by anything we do; it’s totally undeserved. And it doesn’t come to us through any human priest, but directly through his Son, the Lord Jesus, dying for us on the cross. And because they wouldn’t deny that, they were put on trial by the church leadership, found guilty, and then burned to death.

And as the fire was lit, Latimer said this: “Be of good comfort, brother Ridley… for we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

Those two men were so gripped by God’s love for them that they were prepared to love God and the church and their contemporaries and future generations like us – whatever it cost.

Well tonight we start a sermon series for this 40 Days of Community. The aim of the 40 days is that we grow in love - for one another inside our church, and for the community around us. And we’re going to start by looking at a Bible passage which says that only if we are gripped by God’s love for us – as Ridley and Latimer were – will we love others. Or to put it another way, tonight’s Bible passage says: we won’t actually grow in love just by being told to love. We’ll only grow in love by growing in our grasp of God’s love for us. That’s where all loving begins, or as tonight’s title puts it, what matters most. So would you turn to 1 John 4.7.

Now since we’re jumping into the middle of this Bible book, let me say a quick word on what it’s about. I take it that it was written by the apostle John. And the issue John was tackling was: people saying they knew God, but denying Jesus. A group had broken away from the church, denied that Jesus was the Son of God or that his death had any purpose – and yet still claimed to be in relationship with God. So John’s readers needed some kind of test to sort out who was genuine. And the test John gave them was this: that people who really know God behave like God (although not perfectly). Now in fact he gave them several tests, but tonight’s passage majors on this one: people who really know God behave like him - in particular, love like him. So let’s pick it up at 1 John 4.7:

7Dear friends, let us love one another… (v7)

Now I said a moment ago that we won’t grow in love just by being told to. So you may be thinking, ‘But this part of the Bible does exactly that - it tells us to love.’ But if you read on and put it in context you’ll see that John tells Christians to love one another…


BECAUSE THAT IS OUR NEW NATURE (vv7-8)

Look down at vv7-8:

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (vv7-8)

So John is not saying, ‘Dear friends, what you must do is to try really hard to change yourselves into loving people.’ Because John knew human nature better than that. He knew that the human nature we’re all born with isn’t naturally loving. It’s naturally selfish, self-centred. And he knew that we can’t change our own natures. He’d been there when Jesus had said to Nicodemus, ‘You must be born again’ (see John 3.1-8) - ie, ‘You need God to do something to change you because something was so badly wrong with you the first time you were born.’

Babies appear in JPC at an amazing rate. And most Sundays, it seems, you have that conversation that goes, ‘Isn’t she lovely? What’s her name?’ And the slightly frosty answer is, ‘Jack is his name.’ And you try to rescue the situation by saying whose nose he’s got and so on. But imagine you said something like this: ‘Gosh, his ears look really funny; and his eyes are too close together; and his hair’s a complete mess. He could really do with being born again.’ It’s a deeply insulting thing to say.

And yet that is what Jesus says to us. ‘You must be born again.’ You need God to change your very nature because something was so badly wrong with you the first time you were born. And that change comes about when you realise that despite how sinful you are, despite how much you deserve God’s judgement on your sins, God is willing to forgive you through the death of the Lord Jesus, and have you back into relationship with him. And that’s what the Bible means by being born again – starting life over again in relationship with God and on the receiving end of his love. And that, says John, changes people. So have a look at v7 again:

7Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God [ie, ultimately if love goes out from me to others it’s because love has come into me from God. Read on in v7:]. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (vv7-8)

So he’s not saying, ‘Dear friends, what you must do is to try really hard to change yourselves into loving people.’ That would be ‘40 Days of Impossibility’. He was writing to readers whom he knew had been changed by God by that experience of his forgiveness and love. So when he said, ‘Love one another’ he was basically saying, ‘Be what you now are. Live in line with your new nature.’

I don’t know about you, but I find that non-Christian people often think that the Christian life is all about doing what you don’t really want to do, and not doing what you really do want to do. Which is why they so often think it must be frustrating and miserable. But that’s because they’re looking at it from the outside, from not yet being born again (and that may be you, here this evening). Whereas once you’re born again, although you continue to have sin knocking around in your spiritual system, in your heart of hearts, you basically do now want to do what God wants you to do, and not to do the things God doesn’t want you to do. Eg, you do now find you want to love others in a way you didn’t before. And the frustration isn’t having to love others (as if you didn’t really want to). The frustration is being so bad at it. The frustration is the selfishness and the lack of wisdom that’s still knocking around in our spiritual systems that gets in the way of our new desire to behave like God.

John Newton was the man who wrote that hymn, ‘Amazing Grace:

Amazing grace, how sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like me;I once was lost but now am found,Was blind but now I see.

He began life in the 1700’s as a slave-trader. He was a very violent man – towards both the slaves and the crew on his ships. On one occasion he planned to murder his captain (but didn’t). He also used the female slaves for pleasure. That was his early life, his pre-Christian life. And then he was born again. And albeit gradually, that experience of coming back into relationship with God changed him. Until, for example, by the end of his life he was working for the abolition of the slave trade. Here’s something he wrote looking back on his new birth:

“The union of a believer with Christ is so intimate… so powerful in influence, that it cannot be represented by any earthly simile. The Lord, by his Spirit, showed and confirmed his love and made himself known to me as he met me at the throne of grace… Wonderful are the effects when a crucified, glorious Saviour is presented by the power of the Spirit, in the light of the Word, to the eye of faith. This sight destroys the love of sin, heals the wounds of guilt, softens the hard heart and fills the soul with peace, love and joy; and makes obedience practical, desirable and pleasant. The knowledge of his love to me produced a return of love to him.” (quoted in Newton The Liberator, Pollock, p127)

That’s what Christianity is about. It’s about the experience of coming to know God, and then continuing to know God, as a loving heavenly Father - and being changed by that relationship. So one question 40 Days of Community will ask each of us is simply this: am I born again? Have I yet begun this relationship that matters most? And if not, the best use of 40 Days of Community we can make is not to try to change ourselves with 3-month-early New Year’s resolutions; but to find out how to start life over again in relationship with God. If that’s you, you could start tonight by picking up a copy of the booklet Why Jesus? from the Welcome Desk or in student supper. You could join one of our Christianity Explored groups – which are there to help people get clear on what a Christian is, and how to become one – again, do ask at the Welcome Desk or in student supper.

Now for those of us who are born again, 40 Days of Community will help us think practically about the ‘How to’s of love, eg, ‘How can I better love the members of my church small group?’ But above all, as we read the daily readings in the Better Together book, and as we study the weekly material in small groups, we need to look out for all the ways the Bible points us back to God’s love for us - because grasping that is what all our loving springs from.

Which begs the question: how can we know God loves us? Look down to the end of v8, which says:

… God is love.

But how do we know that? Especially when our feelings or circumstances seem to suggest the opposite. Well, John says we know God is love…


BECAUSE OF HOW GOD HAS LOVED US (vv9-10)

Look down to the end of v8 again:

God is love. [But how do I know that? Just by a leap of faith? Or is there something I can point to – however I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, however I’ve messed up – that shows me beyond doubt that he is loving - towards me? Yes, read on into v9:] 9This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (vv8-10)

What we can point to is: the death of his Son, the Lord Jesus, on the cross.

Now if you look at the end of v10 again (in the New International Version), where it says ‘he sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins’, there’s a little ‘c’ after ‘atoning sacrifice for’ and at the bottom of the page there’s a footnote marked ‘c’ which puts that in different words. If you look at the footnote it says that when he died on the cross, Jesus was

‘the one who would turn aside God’s wrath, taking away sins.’ (v10, NIV footnote)

So v10 is a reminder of two things. On the one hand, it’s a reminder of what God has against us. When we hear about atrocities in the news, like bombings – things at the ‘far end’ of the spectrum of sin - we feel a revulsion towards those who did it, and a desire for justice (‘I hope they catch the people who did that’). And our revulsion and desire for justice are just an imperfect image of God’s revulsion and desire for justice whenever he sees sin in our lives (and in God’s sight, bitter thoughts, for example, are on the same spectrum of sin as bombing - only with less far-reaching consequences). And ‘God’s wrath’ means his revulsion at all sin and his desire for justice.

And one man who had a real sense of God’s wrath was Martin Luther. He was another church reformer like Ridley and Latimer (he died 10 years before they did). He was so aware of everything God must have against him that he became a monk and joined a monastery and tried desperately to become good enough for God to love him. And he wrote this, looking back on that time of his life:

“My situation was that, although [I was] an impeccable monk [ie, he kept all the monastery rules – including getting up at 2am to pray], I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit [ie, attempts to be good] would [satisfy] him. Therefore I did not love [him, knowing him to be a just God, a God of wrath] but rather hated him and murmured against him.” (quoted in Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther, Bainton p65)

So Luther knew about God’s wrath – he knew what God has against us.

But on the other hand, v10 is a reminder of what God has done for us. According to v8, God is love as well as being just. And that moved him to find a way in which sins could be punished without the sinners who’d sinned them taking the punishment. And if you’re a believer you’ll know that that way was to take on himself his own judgement in the person of his Son when he died on the cross. That’s what that footnote means that says Jesus was:

the one who would turn aside God’s wrath, taking away sins. (v10, NIV footnote)

There are many illustrations of the cross. I’m going to use one that, like all illustrations, has its limitations – in this case, because it’s an impersonal one. But for the point it makes, it’s OK. If you walk around the side of this building, you’ll see a lightning conductor that runs from on top of the tower down to the ground. So that if a bolt of lightning were to head towards the tower, the conductor would take it and turn it away from the building, onto itself and down to earth, leaving the building safe.

And although it’s an impersonal illustration, it makes the point. Verse 10 says Jesus was ‘the one who would turn aside God’s wrath, taking away sins’. Ie, Jesus was our ‘conductor’ and took responsibility for our sins and the judgement for them was turned onto him and ‘earthed’ once and for all, leaving those of us who trust in him safe from judgement forever. So that if we trust in Jesus’ work on the cross for us, there is no condemnation hanging over us today - nor will there be tomorrow or next week or up until the day we die. That’s what Martin Luther suddenly grasped as he was reading the Bible. He wrote this:

“Night and day I pondered… Then I grasped that through grace and sheer mercy God [saves us from his judgement by faith in Jesus]. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors of Paradise…. If you have a true faith that Christ is your Saviour, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart… that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith: that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no [wrath] or ungraciousness [towards you].” (quoted in Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther, Bainton p65)

So that’s how we know God is loving towards us. That’s what we point ourselves to. Every day – however we’re feeling, whatever our circumstances, however we’re going as Christians – Jesus’ death for us says God loves and forgives us as we are – and goes on doing so, from the day he first brings us to trust in him, to the day he takes us to be with him beyond this life.

So if we are going to grow in love for one another and our community during these 40 Days and beyond, we’re going to need to grow in our grasp of God’s love for us shown at the cross. So let me make some suggestions. Will you find some way every day – perhaps in your personal Bible reading and prayer – of remembering that Jesus died for you? Perhaps start a list of verses on the cross and read one of them a day? Will you make the most of communion services here? The Lord meant us to use them to slow down and take in freshly what he’s done. Then will you make the most of the hymns and songs about the cross that we sing on Sundays – like the ones we’ve used tonight? Perhaps start a collection of hymns and songs on the cross by taking your service sheet home and cutting them out - so you can use them during the week. And if you’ve never read a book on the cross, will you aim to do so within the next year? You could ask at the bookstall at the back and get a suggestion of a book that would be the right level for you.

Now you may feel we’ve strayed from where we began in v7:

7Dear friends, let us love one another… (v7)

You may feel it hasn’t been very practical. It’s been lacking in ‘How to’s’. But unless I’ve misunderstood it, this passage is saying that the most practical thing you can do to grow in love for others is to discover or rediscover the love of God for you. Which brings us to a final, brief heading. John says love one another,


IN THE WAY GOD HAS LOVED US (v11)

Look at v11 to end with:

11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (v11)

Ie, dear friends, since God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another. So looking back to the way God love us at the cross, what way are we to love?

Well, we’re to love in a way that actually does something. You remember back at the end of v8 it says ‘God is love.’ But love isn’t real until it becomes action. So, v9, ‘This is how God showed his love among us…’: he actually did something for us. Love certainly feels, certainly pities, certainly sympathises. But to be real it has to do something for someone else. So how about making this question part of your 40 Days of Community and beyond: ‘What can I do for you?’ Just a silent question in our heads. As we mix with work colleagues or course mates or flat mates tomorrow we can think of them and ask ourselves, ‘What can I do for you?’ Or as we go to Focus tomorrow or on Tuesday, or to Home Group on Wednesday, or CYFA next Sunday, thinking about maybe just one member of the group, we can ask ourselves, ‘What can I do for you?’ Or picking up on needs as we listen to prayer requests people are sharing in the group… ‘What can I do for you?’

We’re to love in a way that actually does something. We’re also to love whoever – those we find lovable and those we don’t. That’s what John meant when he wrote in v10:

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us (v10)

Us loving God is always us loving in response to being loved, loving someone who’s done more for us than we’ll ever really grasp – at least this side of heaven. It’s something we should do – it’s what you’d expect. Whereas God loving us is the real benchmark of love – because that’s utterly unexpected and extraordinary, given the way we’ve behaved towards him. That’s loving the unlovable, loving people who ignore him, forget him, offend him, and who do all sorts of foolish and stupid things and end up in all sorts of messes.

And that’s the way we’re to love – loving whoever, however lovable or unlovable. Whereas the sin still knocking around in my system just wants to love the lovable, because it’s easier. But this calls us to love the people who are unrewarding to love, to forgive the people who’ve hurt us and to love people in a mess without condemning them for how they got there.

Love actually does something. Love loves whoever. And finally, love goes as far as it takes. For Jesus, that was the journey from heaven to earth and then all the way to death on a cross. And for us the principle is the same. Love goes as far as it takes. Whereas the sin still knocking around in my system just wants to love a little bit. So that when I ask, ‘How are you?’ at the back of church, or in our small group, I’m tempted not to want an answer that’ll get me involved in a long conversation or getting together later in the week, or offering some practical help or serious time, or whatever it is. The sin knocking around in me just wants to be superficially involved with other peoples’ lives. Whereas love goes as far as it takes.

11Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (v11)

In response to this part of God’s Word, as a prayer for yourself and the church, you could pray what Paul said he was praying for the Christians at Ephesus:

14For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3.14-21)