Author: Nina Schmidt

The Apostle John is absolutely eloquent here as he extols love, rivaling the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. For both Paul and John, their writings on love reveal to us that we cannot speak of the love of God for us or speak of our love for the neighbor without speaking of Jesus Christ.  Simply put, the love of God is Jesus Christ given to be the “propitiation for our sins,” the mercy seat whereupon the sins of the world are dealt with once and for all.  This is the love of God.

To say, “God is love” without Christ is speak an abstraction; it declares a general principle, a timeless truth.  These things (abstractions, principles, and timeless truths) are empty statements, devoid of application, demanding to be filled with specifics.  Humans are quite happy to fill them up with whatever suits their fancy.  In just such a way, “God is love” has come to be equated with tolerance, acceptance, hospitality, and many other forms of human kindness.  Because we humans, in our sin, are so adept at manipulating the meaning of “the love of God,” God has taken the definition of love away from us.  The love of God is this: Jesus Christ given for you.

Jesus Christ is not an abstraction:  he confronts you with his person… in his flesh and blood… demanding that you answer this question, “Who do you say that I am?”  Jesus Christ is not a general principle for you to agree with and attempt to put into practice if you’re motivated enough.  Jesus Christ is not a timeless truth standing apart from the muck and mess of this sin-broken world; rather, he is the one truth… the one way… the one life who has come “for you.”  He has come to be the life of you, a lost and condemned sinner.  Jesus Christ, God’s love, is now the love you give to others.  To “love one another” is to give them Jesus Christ “for you.”  Such love is the unique love that Christians deliver.  Christians, as well as pagans, may practice sharing human kindness, but that is not the unique love of God.  The unique love of God is “Jesus for you” to share, one with another.

Table Talk: What results from equating the love of God with human kindness?

Pray: Father, put Christ, your love, in my heart. Amen

I John 4:7-16

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 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. 10 In 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. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

These words of Jesus as he addresses God, his Father, reveal a truth heretofore obscured from our minds broken and steeped in sin: humanity is addicted to sacrifice. Sacrifice is a means of manipulating the future… a means of manipulating God… a means of manipulating our neighbors. Sacrifice is a system of reciprocity: I do this for you now and you’ll do that for me later. It is a bargain of short-term pain endured for the sake of long-term gain. The sacrificial system of reciprocity reveals itself in this admonition regarding the future: “No pain, no gain.” It shows itself in relation to the neighbor in adages like this, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Sacrifice in relation to God was most evident in the pre-Reformation mass and endures in such biblical injunctions as “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God…” (He. 13:15).

Yet, this injunction doesn’t qualify as a command of the law because God “does away” (He 10:9) with such sacrifices. Even though sacrifices commanded by the law are no longer appropriate, God has put something in their place. Knowing humanity’s sin-born addiction to sacrifice, God has put the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the one sacrifice to end all sacrifices (cf. He 7:27). Jesus came to a sinful humanity in the body… in the flesh… as the Incarnation… which God had prepared for him (cf. He. 10:5). Jesus, in the fulfillment of God’s will, presented himself to the people. Through torn flesh and spilled blood, Jesus offered himself up to the hands of sinful men, a sacrifice not on account of God but on account of the sinfulness of a rebellious humanity.

No longer are there sacrifices demanded by the law. There is only the spontaneous praise that bursts forth from your throat, the throat of the new creature in Christ… only your praise that anticipates the exaltation of Jesus’ name above all names, the bending of every knee to Jesus’ Lordship, and the confession of every tongue “that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9-11).

Table Talk: Discuss the ways in which the sacrificial system is manipulative.

Pray: : Heavenly Father, so hold me in the faith of Jesus Christ that my throat is filled with the sound of praise. Amen

Hebrews 10:5–10

5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me;

6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.

7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’”

8 When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

As the reading reminds us, the peace of God is beyond our understanding. To define it as the absence of strife and conflict is, in fact, to be confronted by the reality of the strife and conflict surrounding us. To define it as the absence of war is, in fact, to admit that wars never cease. To define it as the absence of personal hardship in the form of sickness, poverty, or failure is to note how deeply those hardships penetrate our lives together. To define it as the absence of that spiritual struggle which Luther named “Anfectung” is to deny one of the most important insights of the Reformation, the theology of the cross.

We can grasp these sorts of “absences” with our human understandings. The reality of these contentions brings prayers of lament and pleadings for deliverance from our lips. But these absences are not the peace of God, for his peace is not absence but presence: the presence of Jesus Christ who has come to be the life of sinners dead in their sin. Jesus Christ has come to be the future for those who have no future. This little phrase: “in Christ Jesus” sets out the location where the peace of God guards us. Only in Christ Jesus, not in ourselves, will this “peace of God which surpasses all understanding” provide for our protection.

A wonderful commentary on this text comes from the hymn “The Christian Life” by William Alexander Percy (1885-1942). After delivering several verses highlighting the contradictions inherent to depictions of peace as “absence,” Percy delivers this wonderful verse: “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod yet let us pray for but one thing — the marvelous peace of God.” Truly, this peace beyond understanding comes when we lay down all our strivings and go beneath the sod and into our grave. But our strife also ends with the humility of a life lived beneath these words: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” (Ge. 3:19). In such a life, John the Baptist tells the truth, “He [Jesus] must increase, and I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30).

Table Talk: Why do we get in trouble when we try to “Be Something?”

Pray: Heavenly Father, keep me in the humility of my mortality. Amen

Phillipians 4:4–7

4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The Apostle Paul teaches here of the Christian life. He has just finished relating the life of a Christian as citizen (14:1-7). Now he turns to relating the life of a Christian as a neighbor. He does this by first dealing with the actuality of love (14:8-10) and then by putting the neighbor in the context of the dawning day (14:11-14).

In full realization that love cannot be commanded, Paul turns to the actual commandments of the past, naming them as concrete activities which promote the neighbor’s welfare. Love is first an act, not a sentiment. There is no righteousness to be had from such activity, though, if sentiment and activity do not align. One must both desire to promote the neighbor’s welfare and then, actually promote that welfare. Because of original sin and our bound wills, we simply cannot get ourselves out of the way: our love of neighbor is always tainted with self-love.

Consequently, since the alignment of sentiment and activity required for love of neighbor cannot arise out of obedience to past commandments, Paul turns to the future reality. He turns to the Lord Jesus Christ in whom Paul has previously said (2 Cor. 5:17) “there is a new creation.” Our resurrected Lord comes back in time to us from beyond the eschaton. Only as we are in him are we in the light of the new day and not in the darkness of this old world which is passing away. This light shines in faith alone; sight can only perceive the darkness (2 Cor. 5:7). This new creature existing totally in the reality of faith in Christ lives the alignment of sentiment and activity, spontaneously promoting the neighbor’s welfare.

You who have been taught that the good tree bears good fruit, now know that the good tree comes to you from beyond the eschaton. It is the future’s gift to you, not your commanded obedience to laws from the past. Being found in Christ, all your sin—even original sin—is forgiven. Being found in Christ, your bound wills have been replaced by His will. The debt of love owed to your neighbors is paid again and again as you, a new creature in Christ Jesus, act spontaneously for their good.

Table Talk: Discuss having faith in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

Pray: Heavenly Father, hold me in the one voice of praise to Christ. Amen

Romans 15:(4–13)

⁴ For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. ⁵ May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, ⁶ that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁷ Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

⁸ For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, ⁹ and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,
“Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles,
and sing to your name.”

¹⁰ And again it is said,
“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people.”

¹¹ And again,
“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,
and let all the peoples extol him.”

¹² And again Isaiah says,
“The root of Jesse will come,
even he who arises to rule the Gentiles;
in him will the Gentiles hope.”

¹³ May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.