See also John 3. 16; Philippians 2. 1-11
The third advent Candle is about God's LOVE. That Father’s love is fixed and certain. It is not a maybe love. It is not a conditional love. It is not a vague, wishy-washy, theoretical love. It is a clear, definite, demonstrated love. God calls us to show the Father’s love. Because God has loved us. He has demonstrated his love. Love focussed into a historic event. “I have loved you”.
This is how we know what love is: 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. (1 Jn 4. 9) God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (Jn 3. 16)
I have loved you...
Visible love, with arms and legs. Love through history. Love through a person. Love through incarnation. Love through sacrifice. The birth, the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus, all show us God's love. We need to pause and think about the way Jesus loved during his thirty-three years on earth, rather than jumping quickly from Bethlehem to Calvary. Jesus didn't. He walked from Bethlehem to Calvary.
Remember where he came from. He was in the form of God. That doesn't mean Jesus “looked like God”. (After all, what does God look like?) It means he was totally God-shaped. Not so much that he is “shaped like God” but rather, he is the Shape, the physical form of the God who is spirit. When God takes shape, that Shape is Jesus. He is the same kind of being as the Father. Paul says in Colossians 1:15 he is the image of the invisible God, the first-born over all creation.
In his birth, he had … nothing of kingly security, comfort, or prestige. He was born to a peasant girl, in an occupied country, during an enforced journey, in a manky corner of a crowded room; not long after his birth, he was a refugee. He came to his own and his own received him not. He emptied himself,
When he was baptised, the one who prepared the way, John the Baptist, was surprised. “Jesus, why are you coming to me to be baptised?” And Jesus insisted “It's the right thing to do.” In love, he placed himself right alongside us. “Taking the form of a servant...” And he walked right alongside us, healing the sick and broken; challenging the proud and the hypocrite, feeding the hungry, accepting the outcasts, washing feet. “Taking the form of a servant...”
And then at the end of his ministry, he was arrested,subjected to a mock trial, falsely accused, ritually humiliated, cruelly tortured to death, then buried in an act of desperate kindness, in someone else's burial plot. Obedient unto death, even death on the cross. Herein is love...
He is the Victor And all that, so that the stuff that impedes and opposes God's Kingdom in our lives, our sin, could be dealt with. We have everlasting life. He is the sacrifice that deals with our sin. He is the Victor over sin, and death and hell; he is the Victor over oppression, greed, injustice... he is the Victor over inequality, exploitation war; He is the Victor over sickness, and brokenness, insanity and the demons. All of these things shall come to an end. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, (Phil 2. 9-10)
Maybe we need to think about some of the way-marks along Jesus' journey: the manger at Bethlehem, the river Jordan, the cross of Calvary, and see him there... and see afresh the father's love. John says with delicious daring : “God is love”.
So I want to ask you, “Do you feel loved today?” Are you basking in the reality that your Heavenly Father loves you today? God says “I have loved you with an everlasting love” and, no, he hasn't changed his mind: “...with an everlasting love”
When Jeremiah wrote these words down, Israel was going through an experience that made them wonder about God's love. In 722 BC, King Hoshea of Israel refused to pay tribute to Assyria, so the whole country was destroyed and thousands were taken captive to Assyria. That was a disaster at three different levels. Politically it was a new development for Mediterranean history, and would set the scene for hundreds of years: Empires, first Assyria, then Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome; a new, expansionist dictatorship. Personally, it brought pain and loss to every Israelite: deportation, separation from loved ones, enslavement, poverty, humiliation the loss of homeland, freedom, security, income, family life... And spiritually, the prophets were saying this was the result of their sin: those who accepted that must have felt a deep sense of grief and guilt. Maybe your circumstances make you wonder: does God really love me?
As we rush, or stumble, or stagger, or drift, into the Christmas season, the majority of the world's population struggle with grinding poverty, toil and suffering. The angels sing but “man, at war with man, hears not The love-song which they bring” During the last century, 170 million civilians died due to the actions of dictatorships: bombings, gas-chambers, beatings, executions, starvation. That’s 3 people every minute of the last century. Where was God in all of that? Yet the message of Christmas, the message of the Cross, is that all the sorrow, all the aching wrings with pain the heart God. Our world is broken, fallen, spoiled; God's Kingdom is still awaited. But the message of Christmas and the message of the cross, is that God has entered fully into the suffering of his world. He has borne it, carried it in himself, and his Kingdom will come.
As we rush, or stumble, or stagger, or drift, into the Christmas season, we carry our own scars: the losses, the worries, the physical pain. Does God understand? Does he care? The coming of God into the world, to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins, tells us that he does care. O little heart of mine, shall pain or sorrow make thee moan, when all this god is all for thee, a father all thine own.
As we rush, or stumble, or stagger, or drift, into the Christmas season, knowing what we are, conscious of sin, failure, and perhaps all too used to feeling utterly worthless... can God love me? “Bethlehem, Calvary, and the journey in between, scream at us, “Yes, a thousand times Yes”. “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
And in response...
"It would be a strange God who could be loved better by being known less." says Frank Sheed. As we get to know this God, who has come to us so generously in Christ, we know that he is pure distilled love. We respond to his love, with love. Firstly, our lives become an outpouring of gratitude and adoration to such a wonderful heavenly Father. We love God.
Secondly, we love one another. be like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Have this mind among yourselves. (Phil 2. 1-4) Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4. 7, 11) My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. (Jn 15. 12)
Love our neighbours. We show God's love, in the world God so loved. Our commission from God is to be “Learning to show the Father's Love.” That hasn't gone away. We may have lost sight of it. We may feel pessimistic about it. But that remains what God has called us to. Big-hearted living that responds to and reveals the character of an amazingly big-hearted God.
© Gilmour Lilly December 2013
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