1 John 4:7-12 • The Gift of a Priest
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
In this Christmas season, we've been talking about how Christ in the manger comes as a gift from God, but even as a gift fulfilling the offices that God intended, that He would come to us as a king, as a prophet, and as unlikely as it may seem today, even the child in the manger came as a priest.
The Apostle John discusses that, 1 John, 1 John, chapter 4, verses 7 through 12, as the understanding of what Jesus would do, not only show the love of God for us, but to enable that love to be expressed is shown to us. 1 John, chapter 4, verses 7 through 12, John writes, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God."
Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be their propitiation, that means an atoning sacrifice, sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. How do you make the love of God manifest so that in us it becomes completed, known to others?
You know, for over a thousand years, whenever the Lord's Supper was celebrated, the priest, the minister stood between the people and the elements representing the provision and the presence of Christ.
But then in the Reformation, as there was that great celebration, renewal of an understanding of the grace of God, whereby through faith alone in Jesus, our sins are separated as far as the east is from the west, the message changed a bit. If there's really by faith nothing between us and God, then no one, and nothing should stand between God and His people. And so without any rule being written, the minister changed positions. As if to say, the privilege of any priest is to close the distance between God and humanity, to get people near to God.
And so what happens in communion is that we say nothing separates anymore between you and your Redeemer. And if you see it that way, you understand how Christ in the manger is a form of communion, that what happened was God was closing the distance so that there would be nothing between us and Himself in the person of His Son. And when that child was in the manger, he was a priest child by His presence, closing the distance between humanity and God.
What difference should it make for us? I thought of that reading the words of a young mother recently, and she said what difference it made. I remember the first time this concept moved from a fact in my head to being a truth in my heart.
At a candlelight service when Christmas Eve as the congregation sang "Silent Night," I looked over at my children. I watched the candlelight flicker across their chubby little faces. I guess moms can say chubby little faces.
My heart ached.
I so deeply love these children.
I wonder what that night so long ago must have been like for the heavenly Father as He watched His only Son struggle to be born into a world that would reject Him and hurt Him and kill Him.
The Son was as close to the Father as a child whose dad scoops Him up and holds Him close to His heart. Their love was perfect and pure.
When the Father sent His only Son away from the security of His own heart to a world that wasn't safe, it was as though God had reached into His very being and plucked out of His heart the love He had for us by sending Jesus.
Why would God do this?
Because He aches for us.
Because He wants to pull us close to His heart to hold us nestled against His own chest. There is a place in the eternal heart of God for you near His heart. He sent His Son to come and find you and to bring you home to close the distance between you and God.
How is that made plain in the Scriptures? It's made plain as even the Apostle John is reminding us in this passage that what God did was He was teaching us to love one another on the example of what Christ had done. He simply reminds us as saying you need to love one another that whatever love you're going to express rightly comes from God.
Why is that important? As you read verse 7, you just think how all this begins as a command that sounds so simple and is so hard.
God let us love one another.
Now you can hear that from God like a parent shaking his finger at you. Love one another.
The way we talk to our children on the way to grandma's and we are absolutely frustrated with the poking and the fighting in the back seat. And so finally we say, I don't care who started it.
You stop poking one another and you hug one another because we're going to tell grandmother that we are a family that loves each other.
Well you may fool grandma, but it's harder to fool God.
And so when he says love one another, he tells us where the love that is needed for those who sin against one another, where that love comes from.
Verse 7, "Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God." Now that's just the expression of a gift at Christmas time, right? Whatever this love is that is good for us, it comes from God as a gift. But then the verse continues, "And whoever loves has been born of God." As though whatever this love is that we're supposed to be expressing is supernatural.
That unless you have been born of God, not just of the flesh, not just naturally, but if something supernatural hasn't happened to you, whereby you've been born of God as though you were born again in some way, that this love of God can't be known in you.
And so you are born of God in such a way that you actually know God.
Now the end of verse 7 we just read right past until we think of what it means. Love is from God, whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
You know enough, most of you, about biblical language that when you get to that word "no," it's not just talking about head knowledge. It's not just talking about facts that we glean. We will get together with our families, lots of us, at Christmas time, and it may be that some of you will be visited by a daughter in a troubled marriage.
And everyone will smile, and everyone will eat well and open gifts and laugh a lot.
But it may be that when that daughter goes home, her dad may say, "I know my daughter.
And she's not happy."
It may be that if the meal is always at Grandma and Grandpa's house, if Grandpa is in the hospital this year, that even as the kids are going home with their kids, a son may say of his mother, who served the Christmas feast just like always in the home that looks like it always did.
I know my mom, and she was thinking about other things.
It's that knowledge that is about intimacy, about relationship that is deeper than just head knowledge. And that becomes so important when the apostle's saying, "Not only does one who has such love that comes from God know God, but the counter," verse 8, "Anyone who does not love does not know God."
If whatever is the special love, the supernatural love that we are supposed to have for an hour is not existent in you, you can say all you want in the church, you can sing all the Christmas, you don't really know God because He says, "God is love," verse 8, right at the end.
It's at the end of our English translations, it's certainly not the end of the apostle's thought. God is love. If that's who God is, if you're not showing, if it's not part of you, you don't really have a relationship with Him. And there's a certain weightiness in that that we might try to alleviate in the phrase, "God is love." You know, we do the law of reciprocity, right? God is love, therefore love is God. And love is God is something you can almost put as a motto on a perfume commercial at Christmas time.
Love is God. You know, we're supposed to have at this point the couples with heaving chests on the beach at sunset with the orchestra swelling and the final words, "Love is God."
Or maybe for another generation, it's words out of the princess bride in the wedding scene.
"Love is a beautiful thing."
And we say it out of sentiment and out of feel good. But what God is doing is saying, "This love, which is from Him and in fact is Him, is so important that you have to understand its very nature because it communicates who God is. It's in you. It begins to characterize you too."
And God expresses this love first as a love of a generous heart, verse 9, "In this the love of God was made manifest, made known among us, that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him." God's love, whatever this love of God that actually is the very essence of God coming to us is a generous heart toward people.
So that God would send His Son, one who was dear to Him, into a world that we might live, have life through Him, not through our own accomplishment or doing.
And the significance of that is captured by the writer Jim Dennison who says, "The birth of Christ highlights the difference between Christianity and other world religions.
Other religions offer us various ways to climb to God or gods or whatever they believe is our ultimate destiny. Buddhists strive to follow the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path.
Muslims observe the five pillars of Islam. Hindus seek to advance through multiple reincarnations by practicing ascetic rituals and good deeds and of course an observant Jew will seek to observe all 613 of the laws of the Old Testament.
At Christmas by contrast, God climbed down to us. Jesus' birth to lowly peasants in a dirty stable prefigured His ministry to come touching
lepers going to demoniacs initiating relationships with enemies like Samaritans and Gentiles like you and like me. It was God coming close at the sacrifice of His own glory, at the sacrifice of His own comfort. And it's that understanding of how generous was His heart for people who could not make God climb down, did not even deserve God's climbing down that really begins to express the essence of this generous heart that is God.
What does that generous heart look like? I think of the writing of Auburn Sandstrom, a writer who begins her story on a night that was the opposite of Christmas.
On Christmas the Christ child reveals God near.
On that wretched night of her so long ago, her child revealed a God who was distant.
She writes of that night this way, "I'm curled up in a fetal position on a filthy carpet in a cluttered apartment.
I'm in horrible withdrawal from a drug that I've been addicted to for years.
In my hand I have a little dilapidated piece of paper that I keep folding and unfolding with a phone number on it.
I've never been in a more dark or desperate place.
My husband was out running the street to try to secure the stuff that we needed, and I knew that if he succeeded, he would not share.
If I could have, I would have jumped out of my skin and run into the streets, but right behind me, sleeping, was my baby boy.
I wasn't going to get mother of the year at age 29.
I'd been raised in privilege, private schools, rich parents, I had a master's degree.
But then I met a man, a poet. I was 24, he was 40, and I was in love. He was so exciting. The way he looked, the way he talked, the way he looked at the world, it was beautiful
for a while until he introduced me to one of his friends who introduced us to the drug
that would addict us both.
I tried to transform my life. I tried to climb out of the hole that we were in, but instead found myself driving down the highway at 90 miles per hour with my poet, and a car full of alcohol and drug paraphernalia,
and a baby boy in the backseat.
I realized at that moment that I had to do something or I was going to lose my child.
I even considered calling the number on the piece of paper that my mother had given me, saying, "This is a Christian counselor.
Since you won't talk to anyone else, maybe sometime you could talk to him."
I was in such a desperate state, emaciated, covered with bruises.
I punched in the numbers. I heard the phone pick up. I hear a man say, "Hello," and I say, "Hi." I got this number from my mother.
Do you think you could maybe talk to me?
And I heard him shuffling in bed like he was pulling the sheets around and sitting up and I heard a radio snap off, and then he just became very present.
Yes, yes, tell me what's going on.
I hadn't told anybody, including myself, the truth for a long, long time, but I told him I wasn't feeling so good. I was scared and that I might have a drug problem.
I said I wouldn't want him to say anything bad about my husband, but he has hit me a few times.
And there was a time when he pushed me and my baby out into the cold and slammed the door behind us.
And at the time we were going 60 miles an hour down the highway and he tried to push us out of the car, but I love him, so don't say anything bad about him.
And he did not.
He did not judge me.
He just sat with me and was present and listened and there was such a kindness and gentleness he would say, "Tell me more."
And oh, that must have hurt.
I made that call at two in the morning and he stayed with me all night until the sun rose.
By that time I was feeling calm, like I could splash some water on my face and maybe do this day.
And I said, "Listen, I really appreciate you and what you've done for me. Aren't you supposed to be telling me about some Bible verses that I should read because that would be okay and I'd do it if you said."
He laughed and said, "Well, I'm glad this is helpful." And I replied, "No, no, I'm really grateful.
You're so good at this.
How long have you been a Christian counselor?" And he said, "Okay, Auburn, I've been trying to avoid this and before I answer, I want you to promise not to hang up that number that your mom gave you on that piece of paper."
That's not the number that you dialed. You dialed a wrong number.
Auburn continues, "I did not hang up.
I never learned his name.
But the next day I experienced something I have heard called the peace that passes understanding."
Where did that peace come from?
The generous heart of God who led a wrong number and a wrong life, hear the blessings of someone who would close the distance between her and God, who would just in some way begin to say, "My purpose here, my reason for being here is to let you get near to God."
As undeserving and impossible as it may seem, I'm trusting God will use this to get you close to Him.
When you begin to recognize it was that generous love, you begin to recognize it was something else. It was a sacrificial love too. I mean, the wrong number had to wake up and get up and stay up and have a difficult conversation for hours.
And it's that generous love that also results in sacrifice that the apostle describes, verse 10, "And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
Any true act of generosity requires sacrifice. I give up something I'm due. I give up something I have for the sake of another.
And when God was providing a sacrifice, a willingness to forego His own due for the sake of another, it's the beginning to understand what forgiveness is. It's not people earning it. It's not people saying, "No, it comes from the generous heart of God." And you say, "What do I have to do to get that?" And the guy said, "No, listen. I'm going to sacrifice for you so that you can receive from me what you do not deserve, what you could not climb up to, what you could not climb out of. I'm going to make the way." And the Bible calls that a propitiation, a sacrifice of atonement, some sacrifice that makes things right between two people, two parties in this place between God and humanity, God and you and God and me, that Jesus came to do that. Now you must know that in modern times there are lots even of Christians who begin to sound almost Muslim in saying, "Well, you know, God shouldn't have to sacrifice Jesus." I mean, that's almost cannibalistic in some way. We don't really need the idea of a God who would sacrifice for the sake of His people.
I'll read to you again from the islamicpamphlets.com. I read that last week.
Islam teaches that God is all just and all merciful and does not need to sacrifice Himself to forgive sins.
God simply judges everyone based on their deeds and everybody is accountable for their actions.
God just forgives. It doesn't require a sacrifice. Well, the nature of forgiveness always requires a sacrifice.
You forego what is due you, whether it's monetary or relational, you forego a penalty, a compensation, what's owed you for the sake of another person. You always sacrifice something.
But more than that, you may sacrifice justice if you forgive inappropriately. As good as forgiveness can sound, it can be absolutely inappropriate if it jeopardizes justice. Now, some of us in this room, including myself, are from families that have experienced great hardship because of criminal action against us or our families.
And you just have to imagine yourself in a courtroom where the judge is dealing with the one who's damaged you or your family and hear the judge say, "Well, I'm just going to forgive it." It doesn't matter. You have to say that's not right.
That's not just, that's not the world in which I want to live, in which God just kind of says it doesn't matter. Why doesn't God say it just doesn't matter? Because any sin is not just an offense against God as though He's saying, "Well, that hurt my feelings, so I'm going to punish you in some way or I'll punish you." No, that's not really the point.
Any sin by its very nature is damaging to other of God's creatures, His people.
And when you recognize that, that God is the just judge of the universe isn't saying, "Well, it doesn't matter."
You recognize instead He was saying, "I'm going to compensate for your sin.
I'm going to satisfy justice that I myself require, but I'm going to do it not by requiring a period of you. I'm actually going to sin the sacrifice by what is dearest to me to provide for your sin."
And that is a love that is not merely generous. It is remarkably sacrificial. Why do you need that? Why do you need the compensation from God? Because precisely what the Islamic pamphlet says is true. If God is not providing the compensation, then I'll read it to you again. God judges everyone based on their own deeds and everyone is accountable for their own actions. Now that sounds reasonable.
Everyone's just accountable for themselves.
But what are you going to say to Auburn when she's in a fetal position on the floor?
Having jeopardized her future and her child?
Well God's just going to hold you accountable. And don't go to the extremes of life.
Our children visit us. We visit parents. We visit relatives. And almost none of us go into situations where there is not some shame for something in the past that we don't have a do-over, that we can't make it right. We may not have raised our children as we intended. We may not have a relationship with our parents that we intend. We may be on the outs with other people that we should hold dear. We should be loving one another and we can't seem to do that.
If all I have is I'm supposed to make it up and be accountable to God for myself, then ultimately I say I'm in deep trouble here.
It's just not what God is doing. He is showing us He sent His Son out of a generous heart, out of a sacrificial love providing something we could not provide for ourselves and saying, "I want you to have faith in my provision, not your making it up."
The difference?
If all you do is think God is going to hold you accountable, I will tell you what you'll do. Any of us will do it. We'll just keep maximum distance we can from God.
But the role of a priest like Jesus is to keep bringing us close.
Abi Hutto is a young Christian writer who at one point described herself as misdistant. She wants to stay away from God.
She described the experience. When misdistant was in middle school, two of her relatives became sick and she prayed to God for their healing.
But for reasons known in the counsels of God and eternity, He did not heal them.
God in this life, which led Abi to doubt either her prayers or her God. She developed, she said, a constant distrust of God and settled into a business relationship where she would pay Him by good behavior in order to get Him to be nice to her.
She constantly evaluated whether she was paying enough by comparing herself with other people.
Am I good enough yet? Good enough yet?
And then she wrote, one day I was studying the crucifixion and something shifted inside of me. I realized the Father had sent His Son to come and get me, to bring me back home so that I could live near His heart in His great kindness. The Father had been for years pulling down the strongholds in my heart of doubt and fear and anger so that I would trust Him again and believe that by the provision of Jesus Christ His very purpose was to bring me close to Himself.
That's what a priest does.
That's what the priest child did.
And remarkably, not only did He do it back then, but He's still doing it now, closing the distance.
But when the Apostle says that's done, he said we're a big part of the plan. Verse 11 and 12, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us, as though God is showing us that love, that grace of His own heart in the way that we treat and display Him so that when Auburn was dialing a wrong number
and somebody on the other end picked up and was present and closed the distance, that it was like there was this little pinhole of light whereby she could peer through and see the grace of God in a way she'd not seen before, as though we were even now standing outside the stable door and there's light coming under the door. But if you get close enough, if you come right up against it, you look inside and you see there is all the glory of heaven on display with a God who would come near and draw us close to Himself.
For Auburn, what that meant when she had the peace that passes understanding is it settled her enough to get clean, to raise a son who would ultimately go to college, and she could tell all those sweet things, but most of all she said it made her grateful to a God who would draw close so that she could draw close to Him.
Jesus is the priest child, and what He is doing when He comes close is saying, "Your Father loves you, and He's provided a way for you to come, and when you know that, you become a little pinpoint of light for someone else. When they come near to you, say, see the grace that has saved you and want it to."
That's really the reason that Jesus gave this meal, to be celebrated in His church forever. What's He saying?
He's saying, "Let me show you how close I came.
Down to this earth, my body, my very life, not only here, but given for you so that in generosity of heart and sacrifice of person, we would still see the light under the stable door.
And as we draw close, communion after communion, we would say, "In that light I see the glory of heaven.
Here is the priest child.
He's drawing me close to God."
Father, would you take the old, old story and do the new work of grace that we all need?
To be reminded we are not qualifying for you by taking this meal.
We are reminding ourselves how Jesus came near and by His sacrifice made a way to you so that we could be forgiven, not by what we do, but by His provision.
Would you remind us in what we are about to do, that when we are setting aside these elements for a holy purpose, we're not doing something that makes us right with you. We are remembering what Jesus did so that as our faith is put in His provision, again this day, we by this meal are peeking under the stable door and in the light of communion seeing the glories of heaven provided for us.
So bless us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.