1st John: Perfect Love Drives Out Fear

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 05/22/2011

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. 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. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with (holds on to) punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Fear is what gets our attention here, isn’t it…?

Love, favor (at the heart of the idea of living in God, and God in us), judgment, fear. Four related concepts all coming together in this passage. Let’s explore them for a bit to get started.

First, judgment and love.

Judgment involves standing above another, to evaluate… (examples)

Love involves kneeling under, to serve… (examples)

Connections start to emerge, don’t they?

When you are above, you are unable to love.

When you are below, judgment just can’t flow.

The world has taught us to judge, even for sport. Shared judgments are so often what bind us together. But as students of Jesus, love is our calling. And it’s the only thing we are authorized to do.

Next, fear and favor.

Fear comes when you perceive the absence of loving presence and power, and is multiplied when you perceive the presence of danger… (examples)

Favor is making your loving presence and power available to another… (examples)

The connections between fear and favor are as profound as the connections between judgment and love, aren’t they?

When you encounter favor, you are protected from fear by the loving presence and power of whomever’s favor you are enjoying (examples…).

On the other hand, a lack of confidence in favor leads to fear. And when you are in fear, it is difficult to show favor towards others, difficult to make your presence and power available to another. Mainly because fear causes you to withdraw, retreat into whatever circle of favor you do have confidence in, and devote your power to protecting the interests of that circle; and this ultimately becomes a withdrawal into one’s self and a devotion of one’s power to protecting one’s self. (examples…)

Now we can begin to explore how the twin ideas of judgment & love, and fear & favor relate to each other.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment…

The word translated “has to do with” is “echo” in Greek. It more literally means to “hold,” as in to hold in one’s hand. As if fear, no matter where you find it, carries a form of punishment, or torment, with it.

Consider this. We are vulnerable to fear when we are unable to perceive favor. When we perceive the absence of loving presence and power. Is this not the fundamental form of punishment we exercise towards one another when someone falls out of favor? Someone displeases us – which sows the seeds of fear in us – we feel unsafe having the posture of a servant towards them, we start to judge them as not having goodwill towards us or sufficient power to meet our desires, and we withhold our loving presence. We stop making our power available to them. We stop smiling at them, stop talking to them, stop helping them. Eventually stop being near them at all. Of course, if they continue to displease us (which they will, because our fearful response causes them to perceive an absence of our loving presence and power, starting the same fear / withdrawal cycle in them that is started in us), we may move even beyond that form of punishment to a more severe form. We take our presence and power and use it to actively punish them. We try to use fear as a tool against them. We get in their face, lash out with hateful words, swing our fists. All the while hoping that the fear of us punishing them will put an end to whatever they are doing to displease us, and the pain they are causing us.

This is a vicious cycle. Truly vicious. Fear “echoing” punishment. And it has been wreaking havoc on the earth.

And it gets worse. Fear holds punishment in its hand. Fear anticipates judgment and all that comes with it, causing us to experience judgment’s effects as soon as the fear arrives, even before any actual punishment has arrived.

Think about Adam and Eve. They sin, and then, in fear of God’s judgment, they hide. In their fear, they experience the absence of his loving presence and power, even though he hasn’t yet withheld it.

This is the horrible destructive power of fear. It causes us to be unable to receive love from anyone from whom we even anticipate judgment. (catching a ball illustration…) And we anticipate judgment from almost everyone, eventually, because we will, in our sinfulness or because of the sinfulness of others, displease nearly everyone we ever meet, somehow, sometime, someway.

Then, horror of horrors, fear inclines us to judge those whose judgment we anticipate. And what we judge them for, out of our fear, is not their actual judgments towards us – which could potentially be repented of, sorted out, forgiven – but only imagined judgments. About which we can do absolutely nothing. Causing us to be reluctant to love them, or show favor to them.

The further fear drives us into ourselves, the stronger fears grip gets on us, life becomes a living hell. Fear punishing us mercilessly. (The one who fears is not made perfect in love.)

God have mercy!

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides and God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence [freedom] in the day of judgment; because, as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear… (NASB)

Our only hope is that the God who is love would visit us with his perfect love, pouring out healing favor on us. And visit us he does, in Jesus of Nazareth, plunging into the heart of our withdrawal into ourselves, becoming one of us, meeting us in our hell and meting out God’s favor: announcing, demonstrating, and embodying the favor of God, the good news of the kingdom of God, the good news of eternal Zoe life. In Jesus, we have come to know and believe the love which God has for us. And in following Jesus, we join him in his love, allowing us to abide in God and God to abide us. And through our discipleship to Jesus, learning and practicing the way of love, love is perfected (telios, made complete, brought to maturity) with us, so that we may have freedom in the day of judgment. So that we may be free of the fear the presence of judgment usually inspires. [ people coming to church for the first time… ] Because as Jesus’ students, we enter into the same freedom from fear in this world that freed Jesus to not be afraid of the judgment of the Pharisees or the ridicule of the crowds or the brokenness of the sinful or the illnesses of the sick or even of death itself.

More on that in a few minutes. First, let’s examine the specific relationship between fear and love.

There is no fear in love. This is true because of the nature of fear and love, and true in a profound way as well, because of the nature of God.

Let’s start with the nature of God. God is love, John writes. God has no fear within him. Therefore, there is no fear in love. What could possibly cause God to not have confidence in favor? He is full of favor. The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit continuously making their abundantly loving presence and infinitely powerful power available to one another. No one can intrude on that exchange of favor; at the same time, God invites everyone into it. (Put that in your pipe and smoke it, as my Dad likes to say.) There is no fear in this love that is God.

This reality extends to love as we experience and participate in it as well.

Whoever lives in love, lives in God… To love, to place yourself below another to serve, is a defeat for fear, since you have not withdrawn into yourself, and since you have made your presence and power available for another. To love that way requires trusting in God. There is no fear in love in this sense.

And more than that, when we love, we are joining the God who is love in placing himself below another. Whoever lives in love, lives in God, and God in them. So when we love, we are living in God – in that eternal exchange of favor between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – and God, in whom there is no fear, is living in us. Put that in your glass and drink it!

But wait, as the commercials say, there’s more! When love is received by someone, it is similarly a defeat for fear. Perfect love drives out (casts out) fear.

We can understand this in two ways.

The first has to do with the idea that love and fear are like presence and absence. When presence arrives, absence must go elsewhere. When enough love is received by someone, there isn’t room any more for fear. Love completely displaces the fear. Getting rid of fear on its own is like trying to get rid of a hole by shoveling the hole away. Useless and frustrating. Fill the fear hole in with love, however, and pretty soon the hole is gone.

The second, and more powerful way of understanding this has to do with authority. Same language as Jesus driving out (casting out) evil spirits.

Perfect love drives out fear because love has authority over fear. Fear ruled the old creation from the moment of Adam and Eve’s first sin. Love rules the new creation from the moment of Jesus’ incarnation.

Whenever Jesus drove out demons, he did it with a word of authority. Be gone! Because Jesus is the author of life. All things were made through him, and without him, nothing was made that has been made, John writes in his gospel. In every situation, the creator has primary authority over his creation, over and against the pretend authority of the destroyer. Love is a creative power; fear is destructive.

Fear has this grip over all of humanity. A grip that pretends to the throne. A grip that defends its authority with lies. “You must bow to me because of your sin.” “You must bow to me because of your weakness.” “You must bow to me because of my strength.”

And then along comes Jesus, who is perfect love inhabiting human flesh. And he comes to us, in perfect love, humbly, below us, serving. Ultimately facing down fear with confidence in his Father’s favor. And the creator exalts him, giving him authority over all of creation that has truth as its only defense.

Fear tells you that you must bow to it because of your sin; Jesus says to that fear, “Because of the Father’s favor to me, her sins are forgiven. Be gone.” And fear flees. Fear tells you that you must bow to it because of your weakness; Jesus says to that fear, “My favor is sufficient for him, for power is perfected in his weakness. Be gone.” And fear flees. Fear tells you that you must bow to it because of its strength; Jesus says to that fear, “Your strength has all the power and substance of a shadow and I am here to bathe the world in light. Be gone.” And fear flees.

With all of that in mind, what do we do about the fear in our lives and in our world?

Many of us are probably familiar with that passage from a letter in the Bible to the Corinthians, 1^st Corinthians 13: “Love is patient, love is kind, etc.”

If we are in the grip of fear, 1^st Corinthians 13 is a picture of the love that Jesus is that is driving out fear in our lives. If we are Jesus’ students, it’s a picture of the kind of love Jesus calls us to join him in as he delivers the world from fear. In truth, for most of us, we need both of those pictures.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸Love never fails.

Fear will say all sorts of things to you about God, about the absence of his loving presence or power. Fear is lying. Here is the truth.

God is patient. God is kind. He does not envy. He does not boast. He is not proud. God does not dishonor others, he is not self-seeking, he is not easily angered. God keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. God never fails.

Fear will say all sorts of things to you about how you should respond to others when you are afraid, or when they, under the influence of fear, withhold their favor from you. Fear is lying.

Jesus invites you to respond by joining him in his love. By joining him in patience. In kindness. By rejecting the temptation to be envious. Or to boast. Or to be proud. By honoring them. By seeking their blessing. By resisting anger with every fiber of your being. By keeping no record of other’s wrongs. By not delighting in evil but rejoicing with the truth. By covering them with prayer, by trusting that good news will prevail, by hoping for restoration and reconciliation, by remaining even when it’s painful, so that we can be present and active participants when love wins.

(a word about healthy boundaries: there will be occasions when the way to participate in God’s love is to withdraw, not in fear, but as a participation in God’s love for you…this is especially the case when fear has moved the other into a place of active aggression towards you and it is no longer safe for you be near, or when your capacity to love those for whom you have a primary call to love is compromised…)

No one of us will do this perfectly. Every one of us will fail along the way. This is a “we” exercise. Love is made complete among us as we, the body of Christ, participate with him in driving fear out of this world. As we come to know and believe the love which God has for us, giving us a freedom to be in this world as Jesus is in this world. (As he is, so also are we in this world.) Full of love and favor.

Practical Tips:

1. Welcome perfect love. Identify a fear you feel relatively frequently, and deeply. Death, harm (for yourself, people close to you), relational rejection or abandonment, social embarrassment, financial ruin, etc. Recognize that God desires to set you free from that fear, not simply by removing the fear and leaving a vacuum behind, but by arriving with his loving presence and power and authoritatively driving it away. Because somewhere along the line, the enemy whispered or shouted an accusation about God or about you that you embraced, and that lie has become the basis for that fear’s influence in your life. In prayer, invite Jesus to make you aware of his loving presence and power in that area of your life. Let him know you are willing to stop trusting whatever that lie is, and begin trusting his truth.

2. Be part of the solution. Identify somebody you have judged and as a result have stopped loving and serving like you once did. Somebody that you have put yourself above, in a position to evaluate the rightness or wrongness of their actions. Somebody that you have since withheld your loving presence and power from, because of the judgment you reached. Repent of that judgment and prayerfully commit to join Jesus in 1st Corinthians 13 love.

3. Enter the mission field. Ask Jesus to show you somebody under the influence of fear to whom you can be an expression of his perfect love, in order to join with him in driving out fear. Adoption. Compassion International. Compassion Ministry. Alcoholics Anonymous Sponsor. Youth or children’s ministry. Ushering. A family member.

1st John: The Life That Gives Life to Life

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 05/15/2011

(thanks to Shane Hipps at Mars Hill Bible Church for the inspiration – and some key ideas! -  for this message)

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. ²The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. ³We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. ⁴We write this to make our joy complete.

1 John 1v1-4

Here’s the basic idea in this passage. There is something that always has been and always will be. And even though it is powerful and ever present, it is easy to miss, to be ignorant of; and in our ignorance, to never ever truly experience it. Nonetheless, some people have heard of it, seen it, inspected it, and held its weight in their hands, felt its texture, its temperature, its strength. And these people have made it their mission to bring others into this same awareness of this now uncovered reality, so that they and we and God can share together in it. Because it is in the sharing in it that joy finds fulfillment among us.

What is this something? It is life. Not just any kind of life. The greek word for it in 1 John is “zoe.” A particular kind of life that we will talk about in more detail. Eternal life, as it’s described here, a life that has been revealed in Jesus, a life that Jesus shows us and makes possible for us and offers to us and gives us, a life that isn’t just for later, but for right now, a life that is meant to be known and experienced even today.

In fact, there is so much to discover about this life, so many implications of it for our present lives and hurting world – that we will spend a few weeks exploring it together.

Let’s begin by setting some context. The book of 1^st John is written to a particular community of Jesus followers some time after the death and resurrection of Jesus (perhaps in what is now modern day turkey / explain spread of Christianity). And this particular community has particular ways of understanding and talking about who Jesus is and what it means to follow him and what it is he has done to fling wide the doors to a new kind of life, life that can transform the world.

To understand this, especially if you are new to the Bible, it may help to realize that the Bible you hold in your hands is not in fact a single book, but a collection of books compiled and organized many years after the letter of 1^st John was written. Some of these “books” were more like history accounts, some were more like collections of poems or songs, some were more like biographies, some were books of law or instruction, some were letters, and so on. Some of these books were written many, many years before 1^st John, some were written after, some were written around the same time, but to different groups of people.

In the early church, not every community of Jesus’ followers scattered throughout the Roman empire would have had access to all of the same writings. It took years and years for things written to one part of the world to make their way to other parts of the world. So it wasn’t uncommon for any individual church or local community of churches to have access to only a very limited selection of the books we have today.

The community to whom the letter of 1^st John was written may have never read or heard some of the books that we have in our Bibles. The community of disciples to whom 1^st John was written, in fact, was probably a community whose faith, and way of talking about Jesus and faith and way of understanding Jesus and faith, was shaped primarily by just one book from what we call the New Testament, the gospel of John.

There are four books in our Bibles – the gospels - that describe the life of Jesus and explain who he is and what he is up to in the world. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the “synoptic” gospels because they all take a similar approach to telling the good news about Jesus. “syn” means together, and “optic” has seen, because these three accounts of the good news, the gospel, can be “seen together.” They contain many of the same stories, parables, even word for word phrasings in certain passages. They have a strong emphasis, each of them in their own way, on Jesus’ message of “the Kingdom of God” or as it’s described in Matthew’s gospel, “the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The gospel of John, though, is very different. It tells the same story of the same Jesus, but it does it in a very different way, using different kinds of language and structure. There are no parables in the gospel of John, for example. It uses much more poetic, abstract language than some of the other gospels, even a more sophisticated Greek vocabulary. And, it rarely speaks about Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God. Instead, it talks over and over about Jesus’ message of eternal life.

This gospel, the gospel of John, is the gospel that shaped the community to whom the letter of 1^st John is written. In fact, the letters of 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd John can be seen as commentaries to the gospel of John. Pastoral letters to people in the churches who came to faith in Jesus through the witness of John’s gospels, helping them to understand and clarify and apply what they had heard through the gospel of John.

To make a little clearer what we’re talking about, listen again to how this letter starts.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. ²The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. ³We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. ⁴We write this to make our joy complete.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

1 John 1v1-5

Now listen to how the gospel of John starts, and a couple of other statements from it…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was with God in the beginning. ³Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. ⁴In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1v1-5

Then later, John quotes Jesus as saying:

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

John 15v11

These [words] are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John 20v31

Beginning, word, life, light, life, darkness, joy, son, fellowship (in), life... This matters to us because the gospel of John will help us understand John’s first letter, and John’s first letter will help us understand the gospel of John. This matters to us because we are hungry for life - aren’t we? - and both John’s first letter and the gospel of John are all about Jesus’ message, or word, of life.

Practical Tip 1:

Go on a life hunt. [Go through the gospel of John and underline or note down or highlight every reference to “life” or “eternal life” and then read through 1^st John 1v1-4 again to see what God might help you understand.]

So let’s dig in and start to see what’s going on here as 1^st John gets the party started…

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.

Sometimes it is assumed that John is talking about Jesus here when he talks about that which was from the beginning, what we’ve heard, touched, etc. And in a way, surely he is. But if we leave that assumption unexamined, we’ll miss something really important.

You’ll notice that your Bible capitalizes “Word.” This is because John’s gospel talks about Jesus as the “Word” or “logos” of God, and so the translators make the determination that John is doing the same thing here. Which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself; it’s just that it makes the passage lose some of it’s poetic punch, and may get our noses sniffing down the wrong trail. Because there is no capitalization in the Greek that John uses to write this letter, so it isn’t necessarily the case that the logos of life here couldn’t also be translated “the message of life,” or the “message about life.” Similarly, in the next sentence the translators say “The life appeared…” which would make sense if they are talking about a person, Jesus. But the word they translate “appeared” might better be translated “was revealed.”

In other words, this life that John is talking about, this life that he has heard, seen, touched, this life he wants to proclaim a message about, this life was revealed to him – in and through Jesus, no doubt – but it’s the message of this life that he wants us to know and understand.

It may seem that we’re splitting hairs here that don’t need to be split, so let me tell you why I think this might really matter to us.

First, we need to understand that there is only one word for life in English, but there are two words for life used by John when he is writing his letters and his gospel. And they mean related, but fundamentally different things.

Take John 12v25, for example.

Those who love their life will lose it, while those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

The word for life in the first two instances is “psuche”. Which literally means breath, and is connected to the physical, embodied, biological life we all know and love – or don’t love, depending on how things are going. It can also be translated soul, to encompass the whole of our natural and spiritual lives. It is a general term for life that gets at the life all of us experience in varying quality. Psuche has a beginning – it starts when start breathing (at least in the ancient world view; a modern world-view might suggest that it starts at conception) - and ends when we stop breathing. Psuche can be threatened, thrown away, taken from us, defended, striven after, destroyed. It can be really great, and it can really be a struggle. It can have ups and it can have downs. (We can be psyched about psuche, and psuche can be sucky…)

Well, psuche’s like a road that you travel on

There's one day here and the next day gone

Sometimes you bend, sometimes you stand

Sometimes you turn your back to the wind

Psuche’s a highway, and I wanna ride it all night long…

So psuche life is one kind of life. But it’s not the only kind.

The word for life at the end of the sentence, preceded by the word “eternal”, is not “psuche”. It’s “zoe.” Zoe life, as John uses the term, often in connection with the adjective eternal, is something bigger than, and more powerful than, psuche life. You might call it the life that gives life to life, that gives life, life. Zoe life is the life of God, the life of the age to come, the life that all other life flows from.

Zoe life is life that doesn’t have a beginning and doesn’t have an end. Zoe life can intersect with time and space, but it’s not bound by it. Time and space is not where it has its home, because it’s outside of time. In the past, zoe life is. In the future, zoe life is. In the present, zoe life is. You might say zoe life is all is-ness.

Zoe can’t be threatened, can’t be thrown away, can’t be taken from us, doesn’t need to be defended or striven after, it can’t be destroyed.

And because zoe is the life of God, the life of his kingdom, the life of the age to come, it is the life at the heart of joy. It is life with joy at its heart.

[perhaps you’ve seen someone with zoe life at work within them…? Perhaps you’ve felt the limitations and insufficiency of psuche life…?]

And so when Jesus says:

Those who love their life will lose it, while those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

…what he’s getting at is that if you hold your psuche life, your breath, the concerns of this present life as your highest value, you will lose it. But if you hate (which doesn’t mean, for our purposes in this context, “dislike intensely,” but rather something more like “are willing to part with in preference for something better”) your psuche life, you’ll discover the zoe life underneath it, sustaining it.

When Jesus says the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep in John 10, he’s referring to psuche life. But when he says he came that we might have life, and have it in abundance, or to the full, he’s referring to zoe life.

Practical Tip 2:

Choose zoe-life over psuche-life. [Our lives are full of day to day concerns. Going to work. Raising kids. Taking care of relationships. Houses. Cars. Paying bills. Dealing with injuries, sickness, problems of all sorts. These are our psuche lives. We can attempt to protect them and preserve them and defend them at all costs. In so doing we will surely become anxious, fearful, selfish, and eventually even willing to hurt others. To such an extent that all the joy will be drained of our psuche lives. Or, we can reorient our focus on the zoe life Jesus reveals to us, trusting Jesus that if we seek first his kingdom (which is just another way of speaking of eternal zoe), all of these psuche life things will cared for by God himself.

So work is no longer a matter of “how can I make the most money and get ahead the furthest and make my life better” but rather “how can I do this work in a way that pleases the God who will reward me with more zoe than I can possibly imagine.” Raising kids is no longer a matter of “how can I give my kids the best possible psuche life and/or at the same time maximize my experience of psuche life while raising them” but rather “how can I help my kids know and experience zoe life while I trust God to provide for their psuche life.” Taking care of relationships is no longer a matter of “how can make sure I am making everyone around me happy” but rather “how can I go to Jesus for living water so that I have a stream of living water welling up to eternal zoe in me for others to drink from.” Or perhaps it’s no longer a matter of “how can I protect myself from harm in this relationship or that relationship” but rather “how can I repent or forgive or offer favor to repair damage that’s been done, knowing it might cost me psuche life, but gain me zoe life.” And on and on.]

The thing about Jesus is that he is God himself born into a human body. Zoe life, the life of the ages, life without beginning and end, life that cannot be threatened, life filled with joy and joy filled with life took on flesh and blood and lived the same psuche life that we live. Breathed the same air, had all the same up and down experiences. But all the while, he was shining light for us on a deeper kind of life, on the kind of life that was within him, shaping and sustaining and transforming his psuche life. Zoe life.

Zoe that he said he came to give us.

Zoe that he said he desired for us to know and enjoy and be shaped by and sustained by and transformed by.

Zoe that was from the beginning and was near and at hand and yet was still coming in its fullness.

Zoe that is a gift from our loving Father, and the birthright of the children of God.

Zoe - that even when his psuche was taken from him, offered as a sacrifice on the cross for our sake - Zoe gave birth to resurrection, to zoe and resurrected psuche married together, inseparable, incorruptible.

So, now, back to our text:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the message of zoe. ²The zoe was revealed; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal zoe, which was with the Father and has been revealed to us. ³We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. ⁴We write this to make our joy complete.

Do you see how this matters? John isn’t just saying he’s seen zoe life in Jesus, and so he knows it’s a possibility for human beings. Nor is John telling us zoe life is just an abstract concept off in the distance. No, John is saying they’ve experienced it already (heard! Seen! Looked at! Touched!), and they are telling us about it so that we can experience it too.

[like a baby…]

Zoe can vibrate the air around us so that our ears can hear it. Light can reflect off of it so that our eyes can perceive its quality and characteristics. It will even present itself for inspection, for examination, allowing us to consider it, contemplate it, attend to it with our eyes. And then, yes, we can also hold it in our hands. Cradle it, embrace it, welcome it, possess it, perhaps even join Jesus in giving it away to others.

This is the zoe we will explore more next week.

Practical Tip 3:

Go all CSI on some ZOE. Identify somebody who seems to have zoe life fueling their psuche life. Talk to other people about them. Watch them. Ask them questions, if they’ll let you. See what you can unearth about the sources of zoe life within them, the ways in which they’ve loosened their grip on psuche life to touch zoe life. See what you can imitate, try on for size.

This Is How We Know What Love Is

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 05/08/2011

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. If anyone of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-20, TNIV

There is something I've noticed about many of the moms I know; something that is present in them to a degree that that it isn't present in me. And that is an awesome capacity to be moved, to lay down their lives for others.

Certainly, this capacity is present in all of us, to a greater or lesser extent. It isn't unique to Moms; not at all. But there seems to be something about being a mom that especially demands and develops this capacity. Consider, from the start, mothers are:

Moved from within their wombs...

Moved by cries in the night...

Moved by cries in the day...

Moved by needs...

Moved by desires...

They aren't just moved, either.

They are ready to be moved...

They move first and ask questions later...

And they seem to be moved not from without, but from within.

Deeply moved...

This movement has purpose and power.

Moms give life through their movement.

Moms find life in their movement.

Even though every movement is, at heart, a laying down of life.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. If anyone of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-20, TNIV

This Mothers' day, let's talk about knowing love. The love we see most profoundly in Jesus, who one time compares himself to a mother, saying "how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings."

We are made to know Love. Love is as important to human life as oxygen, as food, as water.

With Love, we will have life in abundance, overflowing, everlasting, imperishable. But without it our lives fall apart and death is imminent.

So when John writes, “This is how we know what love is…” we have every motivation to pay attention to what he says next.

Will it be the kind of feeling it generates? We feel alive inside and corny pop songs all of a sudden have deep meaning to us? We get weak in the knees? We feel secure, cared for? We feel emotionally affirmed?

No, John doesn’t say anything like this next. And for good reason; way too many things can produce the same kinds of feelings love sometimes produces, at least at first, and not be love at all.

But before we consider what he says next, it’s important to realize that when the Bible talks about knowing something, especially something like real love, it almost always means a deeper knowledge than head knowledge. Biblical knowing is experiential, participatory knowing.

[singing in Spanish, 30 hour famine, new year’s resolution…]

[Juggling example. I can tell you what juggling is. Better, I can show you juggling. Better yet, you can try to juggle yourself. But Biblical knowledge is deeper still. It’s more like being captivated by watching a master juggler. And then learning how to do it yourself. And coming up with your own techniques. And then seeing the look in kids’ eyes as you juggle for them. And seeing the satisfaction it brings them when you teach them to juggle too.

“This is how we know what Juggling is: Jesus juggled for us, and now we ought to juggle for one another. If any one of you knows how to juggle, and sees a child with downcast eyes and isn’t moved to juggle for them, how can juggling truly be in you? Dear children, let us not juggle with words or pantomime, but with actions and in truth.”]

So let’s dig in to what John is trying to say to us…

This is how we know what love is: Jesus the Anointed King laid down his life for us.

This is how our knowledge of love begins. We see it enacted before our very eyes. That’s love. You can see it, tell it, remember it, experience its effects on history.

And look at what we see! The one with all the power and prestige and resources and riches lays down his life for us. He looks on us, and out of his love for us, sees our needs and is moved. The one with the power to move us is instead moved by us.

[Jesus Christ / Jesus the Anointed King / language that sets up a contrast with the Kings of the day… the corrupt king sees our hungers and figures out how to exploit them for his gain, how to use them to move us for his purposes…]

When Jesus sees our hunger, he offers himself to us as the bread of life. When he sees our thirst, he offers himself to us as living water. When he sees our debt, he becomes our ransom.

Jesus voluntarily displaces his life so that we might have life. Jesus, “Who, in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being formed in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross!”

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. That’s the beginning of the love story. But it is not the end. There is also an And.

And we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

The love story continues in our lives. The Jesus love story becomes the Jesus/Sharon love story, the Jesus/Vern love story, the Jesus/Roxie love story. When the story Jesus writes becomes the pattern for the story we are writing, this is how we know what love is.

The love of God cannot be in us, cannot be truly known by us, until we too are moved, until our self is displaced for the sake of another.

“If anyone of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need, but has no pity on them…” or KJV, “…but shutteth up his bowels of compassion…” “then how can the love of God be in you?”

In other words, if the love of God doesn’t move us to be moved out of love for others, then the love we think we know isn’t in fact the true love of God. Love is dynamic, creative, alive, expanding…if we cannot be moved, there is no room in us for love. And without love we are without God. And without God we are without life.

We are made in the image of God. We are, in fact, made to be moved, for our selves to be displaced for the sake of another. Just as he is moved by us.

The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.

Romans 8:29 The Message

Love lays down His life for others.

Love is moved by others as they are.

willing to allow the desire of his heart to become that others can have the desires of their heart,

willing to join others in their misery that others might taste true joy,

willing to live in others' skin and walk in others' Nikes in order that he could point the way to freedom.

Why is it so easy for us, dear children, to love with words and tongue and not with actions and truth?

Rut Stories vs. River Stories...

Rut stories limit us, lock us in place; river stories move us forward.

It's easy to love with words and tongue, but not actions and in truth because we've adopted a rut story. Jesus wants to change that by inviting us into his river story.

Our World’s Rut Story: Real love is the experience of self through the approval of others. [the teenager who experiences self by "winning" the "love" of others who are ultimately using them...S/O, clique, fans, parents living vicariously through him/her...]

If attractiveness "moves" others, what do we pursue? If talent "moves" others, what do we pursue? If money "moves" others, what do we pursue? If power "moves" others, what do we pursue?

This puts us in a serious rut.

If we accept this story, our capacity for love is equal to our capacity to "move" others in this way. And it's ultimately all "movement" that shrinks our capacity to know real love, because all of it has strings attached. All of it is conditional. It's moving people closer to us so they can eat us or so that we can eat them. And pretty soon everyone is devoured or starving.

Look at the world around us…do you see this rut story at work? Look at our lives…do we see this rut story at work?

Loving talk reinforces our experience of self as the kind of people others would approve of, but it’s still part of the rut story.

We need a new story, a river story. Because river stories move us forward.

When the stories of scripture become “our” stories, when biblical images and metaphors become “our” images and metaphors, when we structure “our” lives around the cornerstone Jesus story, a new architecture for our souls is constructed.

Leonard Sweet, Aqua Church

Here’s the story of Jesus’ life: He laid down his life for us, while calling us to lay down our lives for others.

That’s a river story.

Real love is the experience of God through self-displacing love for another. Loving actions move us out of our comfort zones, into a place where the only one who can provide for us is God.

If this becomes our story, our capacity for love is has unlimited growth potential. We fix our eyes on the love of Jesus, which opens our hearts to be moved for others as he was moved by us. And as we allow ourselves to be moved by the needs of others, more of the love that first moved us makes a home in us.

John is pointing the way forward, into this river story.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we should do the same for others.

Is this the love story you are living? Is this the love story your life is telling? What the world needs now is love. What the world needs now is men and women willing to be mothers to a new creation.

This is the powerful beauty of love. God is moved by us, and moves to lay down his life for us. We are moved by his sacrifice for us, and we move to lay down our lives for one another. Our laying down of our lives for one another becomes a picture of his laying down of his life for us that those we are moved to serve can see up close and personal. Causing them to be moved by his initial movement.

And now we have movement all around. Now love is the order of the day, and love is ordering the day. Now the kingdom of God is arriving in its fullness.

[good Sam ministry story]

Practical Tips…

1. Try the 15 Minute Challenge. Spend 15 minutes a day this week just looking for needs to be moved in action to meet. Then do whatever you can to help. If money, give money. If time and energy give time. If prayer, give prayer. (can I pray for you right now?). Ask Jesus to help you with this each time.

2. Take a Laxative (you know, so you can be regular for the rest of your life). Make a 2 column list. Column 1: regular things you do that you would do even if no one else needed you to do them. Column 2: regular things that you do because you have been moved by someone else's needs. Do you feel constipated when you look at this list (are your bowels of compassion shuttethed up?) If so, find one thing you can take off Column 1 so that you can add something to Column 2.

3. Ask 3 questions. Ask yourself if you are too busy moving to be moved by others. Or too tired from moving to actually move when you want to be moved. Ask Jesus, are you OK with this? If not, repent, and go from there.

This is how Milan will know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for The Vineyard Church of Milan. And Vineyard lays down their lives for one another, and for their neighbors. And when the people of Vineyard see brothers and sisters in need and are moved by compassion for them, then the Love of God has made a home in them, and their imitation of the Master speaks louder than the loudest words!