The First Sunday After Trinity, June 22, 2025
The First Sunday After Trinity, June 22, 2025
John, the disciple whom Jesus loved (cf. Jn. 20:2 & Jn. 21:24), delivers to us a tool of discernment. This tool of discernment—that is, perfect love—works in two directions. The first direction discerns our knowledge and belief (cf. v. 16). The second direction discerns our love toward our brothers and sisters (cf. v. 21). By faith, we abide in God, and when abiding in God, we abide also in love because God is love. When the reality of God’s love for them takes hold of sinners, God is exercising his ”coup de gras”—his stroke of grace—that puts suffering sinners out of their misery and raises up saints to walk in newness of life. This reality is the new creature in Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). This new creature in Christ loves perfectly. The new creature cannot help but love… love without command… love without thought of reward… love spontaneously. Using John’s tool of discernment encourages us to examine ourselves to discover whether we live in the reality of God’s love for us. If so, then faith possesses us… Judgment holds no fear for us… and love is perfected in us, not commanded of us.
The second direction exposed by John’s tool of discernment is that toward our neighbors… toward those who would be our brothers and sisters in Christ. In the reality of being possessed by faith in God’s love for us… God’s love for sinners, we confess with John: “We love because he first loved us” (v. 19). This is a remarkable and wondrous confession! There is no command in it! Those new creatures in Christ, loved by God and possessed by that love… simply love; they do not have to be told to obey. Love is simply what they do. John’s tool of discernment diagnoses the presence of the new creature in Christ by determining whether our love for the brothers and sisters in Christ is spontaneous or considered—that is, is love perfected in the new creature, or is love merely obedience to a command.
John’s tool of discernment provokes us to harsh judgment: We are not the lovers we thought ourselves to be. Rather than loving freely, spontaneously, and without thought of reward, this tool discerns in us an unperfected love, the love possessed by sinners. No amount of obedience will perfect that love. Only the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God will perfect that love in the new creature in Christ.
Table Talk: Discuss the distinction between perfect love and commanded love.
Pray: Heavenly Father, take hold of me in faith that I may love.
I John 4:15-21 (ESV)
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. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.