"Good Verses God" What's the difference

May 3 2015    5^th Sunday of Easter

1 John 7-21, Psalm 22P VU 746 parts 3&4, John 15: 1-8

Something that I would like you to take notice of this morning is that this passage from 1 John starts out asking us to love each other, the writer says “Dear Friends let us love one another.”    It doesn't start out with a request for us to love God first, then to love our neighbour”, why?  Isn't that what we have been taught?  Of course it is but John wants us to see something different about love. God doesn't want us to give Him back the gift of love.   No, he wants us to share the gift of love which has been bestowed unto us.  In other words we don’t give it back, we pay it forward.     I believe that many of us uphold the misconception that we are to hold on to God's love for ourselves.   Let me try and explain it this way:  Using the concept to pay it forward, you do not give back to the giver, you simply pass the gift on.   According to our teachings God is Love and because we were created in love we already have God’s gift built in our genetic make-up.  We need to love!!   Folks, we, you and I are the beloved and we are all fruit of that love.  In other words you have already received God’s love.   God is love and God’s love has already come to you.  Because you have free will, you do have the ability to reject this love and accept a worldly interpretation of love.  Worldly love is sometimes distorted, by religions, by the entertainment industry, advertisements, the media and the distortions are governed by our human nature which thrives on ego, self-gratification and self-fulfilment.    

One of the unique qualities of God’s love is this, there is no payback.  You don’t pay it back.  You pay it forward and if you have accepted it, the fruit of this love produces in you expressions of great gratitude and thankfulness, as you humbly surrender yourself to this extraordinary outrageous love.  Then you feel called to preform acts of sharing, of caring, and of compassion towards yourself and others.  It is through these expressions of God’s love that we begin to understand the true concept of peace, joy and a hope for tomorrow.  

I need us to stop and think about this for a moment folks, John tells us that  “God is Love” if John is right, then without God we would not know what pure love is.  Pure love is not a feeling, pure love manifests itself within an action and its fruit is peace, joy and hope.  

God’s love is not a feeling, but our human nature wants us to believe it is. Therefore there is nothing I can add to it to make it better, nothing I can do to increase its potency.  God’s love is not something you feel but manifests itself in something you do.   For instance, whether the act of compassion you offer is small or large, it makes no difference, YOU HAVE LOVED.    Whether you give a little or give a lot, the amount makes no difference, YOU HAVE LOVED.   Are you beginning to understand where John is coming from folks?    All we are instructed to do is to share this gift of God’s perfect love that we have already been bless with, by paying it forward not by paying the giver back.  When I do for you and you do for me we know this is GOOD and we think we feel and receive love, but this is not God’s love.  Let me try and explain it this way:  Any GOOD act has two O’s in it.  One O is for you and the other O is for me.  I do for you and you do for me and this is GOOD.   That is love from a human perspective.   Any GOD act has only one “O” in it.  This O is for the other, there is no O for me in this action why?  Because I am the beloved, I have already  received it, and my humility makes me secure in it.   

I believe there is one ingredient that makes this love perfect?   It is when the action of love is unconditional, free from any expectation or condition, so there is no need for payback.   This love does not flowing from you, but through you and calls you to share this love one to another.   Now here is the difficult part.  You are to share this love not just with the people you like or the people who like you, it is to be shared with the one who hurt you, the one who rejects you, the one who betrays you, and miss used you.   Let us remember that Jesus shows us this outrageous love from the Cross.  This love does not flowing from you, but through you as you surrendered your will to him.  This love is a love without payback.  You do not have to do anything to gain it, there is no GOOD behaviour or amount of GOOD works that can secure it for you either.  It is simply yours free and clear when you accept that you are the beloved.     

The worldly teaching of love that is governed by our human nature is problematic in itself as many of us have already found out, with its hidden conditions, expectation and required paybacks.   This flaw comes from our ego, pride, or self-centredness and on its own, does not have the power to sustain us in love.  On the other hand God’s love is perfect, powered by surrender, forgiveness, humility, gratitude and thankfulness, giving us the fuel to sustain God’s love even unto eternity.   

 John, the writer is telling us that God’s love, borne of God insists that those who claim to know God must, and I repeat, must share this love one to another.  Otherwise you do not know your God. 

The challenge for us is to take an honest inventory of the love we offer to our spouses, our children, a neighbour or a stranger.   Do we reflect God’s perfect love or is our love tainted with obligations, expectations or hidden conditions.   Many feel that God’s love is impossible to attain, but folks remember, reaching out to attain it, strengthens your Spiritual nature and this nature sees your efforts and turns failure into opportunity.  Remain faithful, keep reaching and eventually you will succeed.  You will know joy peace and hope.

John is telling us that because God so loved us and we are to keep attempting to love one another in the same way.   In doing so we imitate the love of Jesus, the one God sent as a human example and an expression of that love.  This love became flesh and dwell among us in human form.  John 14: 7  {NIV} Now that you have known me,” Jesus said to them, “you will know my Father also, and from now on you do know him and you have seen him.”  Jesus is God’s love in human form.  Being this, His love must be the way, the truth and the life, it must be the way to the Father.   Let us pray    

Listen to this Song:  "There is Hope for Tomorrow"