1ST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY 1
Text: Jn 4:16-21
Source from Back to Luther with German archive reference. Back to Walther's Epistle Sermons.
Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ Jesus.
If we ask someone who believes in a God, whether he loves this God none will say that he hates God; rather without further thought everyone will reply: Who should not love God! Would not this be the answer of most of us to this question?
But how many, what countless numbers deceive themselves because they suppose they love God! To love God is something entirely different, much greater, higher, more exalted, nobler than what most men think it is.
The way of love is to love the beloved more than oneself; if we love God we would hate, deny, mortify, and crucify ourselves. The way of love is to be united with the beloved; if we love God we would also be one spirit and heart with God "for", says the apostle, "he that is joined unto the Lord is one
spirit." 1 Cor. 6:17
The way of love is to refuse the friendship of all others and cling to the beloved; if we would not make love to the world, but with Paul regard everything, all its treasures, wealth, and honor, as great harm in comparison with the knowledge of Jesus Christ which passes understanding; for if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
The way of love is to reveal one's heart to the beloved and expect all good from him; if we love God, we would have a joyful confidence in God; praying to this God would be our desire and in all troubles we would cry to him by the Spirit of adoption; "Abbah, dear Father." The way of love is to surrender itself completely to the beloved with all which it is, has, and is able; if we love God we would offer ourselves to him completely body, soul, and all our powers. The way of love is to deny its own will and do the will of the beloved in all things; if we love God we would rejoice just as long as God's gracious will, be it sweet or bitter, easy or difficult, is complete through or in us.
If the love of God dwells within a person in the way it should, it cleans the heart from all wilful sins and insults toward God, and from all worldly lusts, so that it seeks and loves nothing but what is heavenly. True love draws the mind with all its inclinations and thoughts up to God, so that the soul thinks of nothing, desires and wishes for nothing but God. For what would he even want to seek outside of God, who has everything in God? why should he want to gather sweet drops here and there who is immersed in an entire ocean of sweetness? To be sure, love awakens in the soul a desire to endure God's love, calls itself happy if it has many burdens and crosses, rejoices with the disciples if they were counted worthy to suffer disgrace and blows for Christ's sake, and with Paul boasts of tribulation and the marks of Jesus Christ.
True living love grows from day to day like a green tree and always grows larger. At first it begins to forsake the world and to be displeased with everything with which God is displeased. Then it clings to God, considers him
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its one and all; in all its works It looks to God, accepts everything which befalls it as coming from God, is at peace in all the situations of life which God sends, is not concerned about friend or foe, trouble or happiness, and is satisfied with God's grace. Finally, it progresses so far that it hates its own life and yearns for death, so that nothing will hinder it in delighting itself in the Beloved. It does and suffers everything with such joy that even its work is not toil, yes, suffering becomes joy.
If love toward God has begun to burn in a heart, it can not hide its inner flames but sheds its rays as does the sun; it wishes well to all men; if it sees the unfortunate and unhappy, it is disturbed at the distress; it tries everything it can so that they might be as blessed as it is.
David had this love, so that he could exclaim; "I will love thee, O Lord my strength. The Lord is my Rock, and my Fortress, and my Deliverer; my God, my Strength, in whom I trust; my Buckler, and the Horn of my salvation, and my high tower." Ps. 18;1.2. "As the hart panteth for the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God, My soul thirsteth for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?" Ps.42:1.2. This love Asaph also had so that he could say: "Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart falleth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever." Ps. 73:25.26. This love St. Augustine also had; he wished to be a light which would kindle God's love and which would be consumed in this love.
If they would examine their supposed loved toward God according to this, how many would have to confess that their love is nothing but a dead thought! Oh, to how many would our Savior therefore have to say, as once he said to those Jews: "But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you." Jn. 5:42. And he of us who has begun by God's grace to tear his soul free from sin and all visible things and sink it alone in God's love, he must nevertheless groan with St. Augustine: I have loved you too late, my beauty, alas I have loved too late, my God! I have sought my rest in the creature until you called me to you.
Therefore let us now try to awaken ourselves to love God by considering it in greater detail. But first we turn to this eternal, divine love itself in silent prayer after we have sung ___.
The text. 1 John 4:15-21.
In the epistle just read, John seeks to impress upon his readers the cords of divine law, by showing them the source from which they can draw this love, namely God; he further shows, how necessary love is, since without it we can have no joy on the day of judgment; and he finally shows, how love to God must reveal itself in the love toward one's brother. So today we also willingly wish to let our souls be bound by these bands of love, as we consider together:
LOVE TOWARD GOD
and indeed
1. How It Comes Into Our Hearts;
2. How Necessary It Is; and
3. Whereby It Must Reveal Itself.
God, today we wish to hear that we should love you; oh let your word not be in vain in us; those of us who are still led astray and seek their rest in vain, sometimes in riches, sometimes in the lust of the world, sometimes in
honor, let them today find rest in your love. Those of us who have known the deceitful lusts of the world, to whom now everything tastes bitter which is not you, who rest in your love and ate blessed, strengthen them, that they may remain until their death, yes, forever in your love. Amen.
I.
My friends, God did not create us as he did the animals for this perishable world; he did not fill the earth with his blessings, in order thereby to satisfy our immortal spirit; no, with our creation God had an inexpressibly higher, more glorious purpose. Not through the enjoyment and love of the creature, but through the love and enjoyment of himself does he want to make us blessed. Poor insignificant man is born with the high destiny, of embracing the highest good with his love, and being eternally blessed in his communion.
But man fell into sin, and thereby a great frightful change took place in his heart. Now when he is born no person knows that he has that high destiny, and if it is preached to him there is no drive in him to attain it. All men still have the drive for rest, for peace, for salvation in themselves; but after we fell we all by nature no longer seek our salvation in God, but in the world. God's holy law stands like an enemy between God and the natural inclination of man. Therefore man either sins securely and maliciously against God, or he accommodates himself only outwardly to God's law, and outwardly seeks to keep God's commands, because he fears God's wrath and punishment. By nature no person now wants to enter into heaven because he loves God and finds his salvation in God, but because he does not want to be damned. Certainly, many who today pass for the best of Christians on account of their zeal in the outward exercises of Christianity would, if they would now learn that there is no hell but only a heaven, quickly forsake the banner of Christ's cross, lose all their zeal, discontinue their praying and Bible reading, and find delight in the world with its lusts. By nature no person has a spirit willing to fulfill God's will; by nature no person wishes to be blessed in that he has God and his grace and is united with him. Therefore by nature no person loves God.
Oh we miserable men! How deeply we have fallen! God does not want to satisfy us with visible, temporal, transient things; he, the eternal highest God, wishes to give us himself, and we rather wish to satisfy ourselves with the husks of this world! How does love to God, for which we were created and In which we alone can be truly happy again enter into our heart?
The apostle tells us in our text; he shows us the source, the spring, from which alone love to God proceeds and again enters our hearts. He says: "God is love." V. 16. Oh man, if it is your wish that love to God re-enter your heart, so that you can deny sin and the world with a willing spirit, that the will of God might be your joy and God himself your highest good and blessedness, then seek this love alone in God himself. No creature, no person, no angel can change your heart, and give you love toward God in your heart; wherever a drop of love is found in this whole creation there it has flown from God, the source of love. Therefore, do not labor with might and main to produce God's love in yourself with your own powers and compel your dead cold heart to do it; it is in vain. God alone,who at the first creation poured out his love into man, can create it anew again in you; God alone is love; he alone is the fountain of love from whom alone it proceeds.
The apostle also shows us the way in which God wants to let his love again come into our heart, when he says: " We love him, because he first loved us." V. 19. Here we hear: If we really recognize that God first loved us, that, therefore, we did not first love God but rather hated him, that we by nature
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are God's enemy, that we are worthy only of God’s wrath but not his love, and that God still loved us from eternity, even before we were born, and so loved us that he gave us his only begotten Son; if, frightened by our conscience, death, and hell, we were once for all refreshed and cheered with the comfort: Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, came into the world to save sinners; if we heartily believe this through the working of the Holy Spirit; if we at one time looked with fear and trembling into the abyss of our ruin brought by sin, but in this very instant were seized by merciful eternal love; in short, if we in the living sense of our wickedness, under the feeling of our sinfulness and accursedness, came to know the love of God in Christ in faith in our hearts, then also love to God is again poured out into our hearts.
It is impossible to draw near to the great fire of God’s love in Christ without becoming warmed by it in ardent return of love. That man loves God so little comes alone from this, that they have not tasted the love of God which he bears toward them in their heart; they still have not believed and known how highly they are loved by God in Christ. Had they believed and known it, they would truly burn with love and love God more than the greedy person his earthly wealth, than the mother her child, than the bride her bridegroom. Whoever knows what a great sinner he is, but that he is also accepted in Christ, to him the whole world with its love is as though gone; to him everything outside of God is small, insignificant, yes, stale and bitter; he who knows that God alone is worthy of his love finds everything which his heart could wish in him; to him even here heaven with all its blessedness is open when he finds that reconciled God.
Why were the sainted martyrs so firm in love to God? Not by their own power but because they had really known God’s love in Christ. This the history of our Lutheran Church tells us. When in the 16th century a confessor of salvation alone by grace through faith was to be burned, and was asked how he could endure this, he answered: "I gladly will let myself be burned, even if I should receive this alone, that from my ashes there would grow up a flower to his honor, who loved me in Christ from eternity." Queen Katherine once cried the same thing, when at the command of a Persian king her flesh was torn from her entire body with whitehot tongs; amidst these inexpressible pains she cried out, "Oh my God, my Jesus, this is still too little for your sake; I can never repay your merit, because out of love for me you died in your love." Oh my dear hearer, don't also all of you wish to be filled by such love of God? Then taste and see first of all, how friendly the Lord is, come to know God's love in Christ to you, and you also will soon discover your love to him. " We love him, because he first loved us." V. 19.
II.
And that we be awakened the more powerfully to love God, let us now secondly consider how necessary it is. Should love be so necessary since faith saves us? Can it hurt one who believes even if he has no love? Luther answers this question in the exposition of our epistle in this way: "The world always wants to go the wrong way; it can't hew to the line, it lets go either of faith or of love; if one preaches on faith and grace, no one wants to do works; if one emphasizes works, no one wants to cling to faith, and very few
are they who keep to the true middle road."
It is indeed true, my dear hearers, if we ask: " What must I do to be saved?" God’s word gives us no other answer but: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shal t be saved, and thy house." Acts 16:31. No work can erase our sins, no love can reconcile God, but faith in Christ alone makes us righteous before God and saves us. Wherein does this blessedness to which faith should lead us consist? Above all in blessed communion with the Triune God. Can we be
in communion with him, when we do not love God? Never! Our text says: " God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." V. 16b. Therefore in vain does a person boast of faith and in vain rely on his dead faith, if love of God is not in his heart.
Faith is not a dead thought; it is not a human resolution to appropriate all the comfort of the Gospel for oneself; it is a heavenly light, a divine power, a gift of God which God himself should bring into the heart with his grace and love. A faith without love to God is an empty conceit of our understanding, a hull without grain, a shell without the kernel, a portrait without life. If there is true faith, love also radiates from him, as the light from the sun. If there is no love in the heart, there also is no God, the eternal love; where God is absent, there is also no faith. As darkness can not be in light, so a loveless person can not be in God.
Therefore, you who want to come to God and be saved, hurl yourself down before God with all your sins, complain to him of your misery and distress, cry to him for mercy, then his Holy Spirit will comfort you and work true faith in your heart; but then he will also live in you through faith and pour out his love which you taste and experience in you. But know, if you do not abide in love you also do not abide in faith, you do not let faith take root in you, so that the heavenly plant of love with its fruits can grow up in you. If love ceases to be in you, then God also again departs from you, for " God is love;" if you forsake love, you forsake God, and are forsaken by God; for " God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." V.16b.
Yes, the apostle says still more in order to testify to the necessity of love. He adds: " Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love." V.17a.18. It is indeed true my friends: Nothing but the word of forgiveness can heal our wounded conscience; nothing but faith in him who makes the godless righteous can strengthen us in the temptations of sin and despair; nothing, nothing but the believing upward glance to the Crucified, who bore our sins, can give us rest and comfort in the hour of death; no work, no love will stand on the day of judgment; but we should also know this: If our faith has not worked love in us, we will with terror in temptation, in death, or finally on the day of judgment see how our faith was nothing but a dream and froth.
Ah, many a one now continues to live in sin against his conscience; he is calm because he comforts himself in his faith. But when death will come he will no longer be able to be so calm since his conscience, yes, heaven and earth and all creatures, which he misused to that hour, will rise up against him as witnesses and accuse him of not having true faith in his heart. And even here it is impossible to have a joyful confidence toward God through his faith, as long as one is conscious, that he is not honest and sincere toward God. It is impossible to be at rest in his faith if one lives in sins against conscience. A good conscience and faith are inseparable.
Therefore you who pretend to believe in Christ, but live in dishonesty, pander in secret to your lusts, now and then gratify the lusts of the flesh, are irreconcilable, proud, arrogant, frivolous, dishonorable and unfaithful, greedy, slanderous, and untruthful know this: With all these sins you destroy in yourself the comfort of your faith and rob yourself of confidence in your heavenly Father. God will at his chosen time put you to the test; you will then see that your faith has no roots, and in eternity you will hear: "Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Mt. 7:21.23.
If you wish to die in peace, then take care that you have the conviction, that you have intended to be honest, and did not let sin rule over you, and that with Moses, Samuel, Hezekiah, and St. Paul, you can call for the testimony of
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your conscience and say: Lord, I have loved you; I have confessed you before the world; you have been my all; I have not served you hypocritically; I have been truly earnest; my life is the proof that I have stood in the truth.
Of course, I will in no way deny salvation to those who do not turn until to God their last hour and die sighing for grace. But how difficult it is, when there is absolutely no testimony of faith. What struggles, what wrestlings with despair; oh may no one wantonly drawing upon grace, rely on the malefactor, the only example in Scripture of a conversation in the hour of death. Many, many might also depart of whom we have this good hope and who still merit eternal ruin. For write St. John: " Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is. so are we in this world." V. 17, That is as the Lord received hatred as thanks for his love, and yet did not let the fire of his love be extinguished, so must also his own, who have experienced the same thing in this world, if the Lord should recognize them for his own remain faithful in love until death in spite of all thanklessness.
However the apostles also tells us whereby our love to God must reveal itself, when he adds, " If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment we have from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also." V. 20.21.
Hence, my friends, love to one's brother it is whereby love to God must reveal itself; and according to our text this is true for two reasons; first of all, because he certainly does not love God who does not love his brother.
When the apostle writes in the first place in our text: " If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ?" V. 20. The apostle is arguing from the greater to the less, or from the more difficult to the more easy as the Lord does when he says: "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." Lk. 16:10 The apostle wishes to say with these words: It is easier and less difficult to love that which one sees than to love that which one does not see. Seeing an object with his eyes is an important way of being moved to love that which is not present, if the object of one's love can not be seen. Man indeed loves many things which he considers worthy of love, although he may never seen but has merely heard of it; but how much more is he moved to love that when he sees it!
On the other hand, if a person does not love something worthy of love, although he sees it, how much less will he love it when he has not seen it! A person can see his brother or his neighbor, while on the other hand he can not see God. If he loves God, how much more will he love his brother or his neighbor! On the other hand, if he does not love his brother whom he sees, how much less will he love God whom he can not see!
Bear in mind, my friends: With your eye you see the good things which your brother has and what he does to you; if you still do not love him, how much less will you therefore love God, whose glory, and that it is he who does so much good to you, you do not see, but can only believe! Moreover, with your eyes you see the misery of your brother, his sickness, his property, his nakedness, his tears, his trouble, his misery, his destitution; now if you do not love your brother, but like the rich in the Gospel close your heart and hands to his trouble which you see, how much less will you love God in whom you see nothing, because of which he would need your love! Undoubtedly, whoever does not wish to do the easier and the lesser thing will much less wish to do the more difficult and the greater. For " if a man say. I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love
God whom he hath not seen ?" V. 20.
In our text John adds: " And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also." V. 21. With these words the holy apostle mentions a second reason why love to God must necessarily reveal itself in love to one's brother, because God has commanded love toward our brother just as much as love toward God. The conclusion which the apostle makes here is, that one can not possibly love him whose will one does not wish to fulfil. This conclusion is also completely irrefutable. Tell me yourself, would you believe, that he loves you who continually does the opposite of that which you wish and thereby insults and offends you? Certainly not! You would rather conclude from his attitude, that he hates you.
God has written the command of love toward our brother just as well as love toward God not only in the hearts of all men, but has also repeatedly impressed both commands in his revealed Word in every possible way. Yes, in his Word God declares that because he himself does not need our service of love, he wishes to be served in our brethren. Christ remarks that his sentence on Judgment Day will read thus: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Mt. 25:40. And James testifies: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction." Jas. 1:27.
And still more: God wants to have nothing to do with our worship as long as we do not give the necessary service of love to our brethren. Christ says: "Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Mt. 5:23.24. If love toward one's neighbor demands it, we should leave even the outward service of God and serve our neighbor instead, and know that then above all we are serving God.
What shall we think of him who with his deeds refuses to love his neighbor, and pretends that he has love to God in his heart? John mentions what we should think in our text: " If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For," the same apostle remarks immediately after our text, " this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." 4:20a; 5:3a. God has commanded: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Therefore, whoever does not love his neighbor, does not keep God's commandments, but despises it and thereby does not love God but is still God's enemy. Love toward God and one's brother are completely Inseparable from one another as the stream is from the spring; for from love of God flows love of the brother; where the one is there is also the other; and where the one is not, there the other is not.
Oh, may God let his love to us in Christ be known to us all; then the fire of our love to him will not only take fire in our hearts but also brotherly love will break forth in desires, words, and deeds as a flame of the Lord. May God then also preserve us all here through faith in this love until our end, and we will there enjoy God's love in eternity. For " God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." V.16b. Amen.