⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. ¹³ This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ¹⁷ This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

–1 John 4.7-21 (NIV)

¹⁶ [Jesus] went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. ²¹ He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

³¹ Then he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath he taught the people. ³² They were amazed at his teaching, because his words had authority. ³³ In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an impure spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, ³⁴ “Go away! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” ³⁵ “Be quiet!” Jesus said sternly. “Come out of him!” Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him. ³⁶ All the people were amazed and said to each other, “What words these are! With authority and power he gives orders to impure spirits and they come out!” ³⁷ And the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area.

–Luke 4.16-21, 31-37 (NIV)

My apology to the Beatles. In today’s Epistle lesson, John continues to flesh out what he told us in yesterday’s lesson. Here he focuses on what it means to love. He is essentially telling us this: If you are worried about your relationship with God, if you wonder whether God really loves you and if your present and future are secure with him, look at whether you love as God loves you. Why is this? Because love originates and comes from God. We have the ability to love only because we have God’s Holy Spirit living in us and empowering us to live as he calls us to live. If you claim to love God but your actions as a whole–I am not talking about the times on occasion where we all slip up or fall short because we are, well, human and broken–are inconsistent with that claim, you are simply a liar and you have reason to be worried about your future. As we have seen many times before, a saving faith in Jesus always manifests itself in action and here John tells us the litmus test we must use to assess the validity of our faith is whether we love, and how much we do so.

John also reminds us that we are to be like Jesus while living in this world. As we have seen before, Jesus was (and is) the Messiah his people did not (and do not) expect. As the above passages from Luke make clear, the kind of Messiah Jesus had in mind was radically different from the popular expectations of people from his day (and ours). They had expected Messiah to come as a conquering hero, in power and great glory. They expected a Messiah who could wave his hand and suddenly and miraculously make everything right (have you ever had this expectation of God when you prayed to him for something hard?).

But as the Gospels make clear, Jesus had a different idea about the nature of power and glory. Power and glory were to be found in loving service to others, in service and humility, not pomp, power, or prestige. This, then, is how we are to be like Jesus and when we do so, we can have confidence that we are manifesting the same kind of love he showed others, a love that will inevitably turn heads and make people ask us, as the did Jesus, “Why are you doing that? On whose authority? This isn’t what we expected and we are not particularly sure we like it.”

Here is a total package for living, one that ensures meaning and purpose for the living of our mortal days and for the sure and certain hope for enjoying a living future with the Source and Author of all life that not even our physical death can sever. We have the promise of God’s Spirit in us to transform us and make us into the people God created us to be. There will be opposition and outright hostility toward us when we follow Jesus because our standards are his standards, not the world’s, and the powers and principalities who run this world are not happy with this.

But take heart and hope because the powers and principalities do not have the final say. They have already been defeated. God has already initiated his New Creation when he raised Jesus from the dead. He calls each of us to follow Jesus and be agents of his New Creation. If you have not already done so and are willing to take the chance, you will find this Kingdom work to be the hardest thing you ever will come to love because not only will you find meaning and fulfillment in your own life, you will bring Christ’s healing and transformative love to others who need it as desperately as you do. And you will find that no matter who you are or what you can (or cannot) bring to the table, God can and will use you to advance his Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. Talk about the opportunity of a lifetime!

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!