5th February 2024

5th February 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (1 John 4:7-12 focus 7-8)


Message (Alan Burke) 


There is a word that sprang to mind this morning when I was thinking about this passage before me and that is anaemic. An adjective, a descriptive word looking up the thesaurus we get feeble, weak, insipid, pallid, pale, wishy-washy, vapid, bland, poor, puny, flat, inadequate; tame, uninspired, unimaginative, lacklustre, spiritless, half-hearted, vigourless, lifeless, powerless, impotent, ineffective, ineffectual, enervated, bloodless; pathetic; etiolated. I want to say that these in the main are good words and could easily be used in saying just how anaemic, feeble, weak, insipid, pallid, pale, wishy-washy, vapid, bland, poor, puny, flat, inadequate; tame, uninspired, unimaginative, lacklustre, spiritless, half-hearted, vigourless, lifeless, powerless, impotent, ineffective, ineffectual, enervated, bloodless; pathetic; etiolated our understanding of love is and it’s not just out there it is in the church too. 


The concept of love that the world has falls so so short of the love of God. Love is often deemed as feelings, attraction but our understanding of love is much more than those things, it is a love that comes from God a love that has been shown to us, exemplified to us, it is a costly love, a sacrificial love. What is love, how do we know what love is, well John has already told us and it is that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us (3:16). 


Once more John returns to the subject of love and is emphasising the necessity of love once more because of just how poorly we even in the church who have been shown the love of God in Christ Jesus. It is hard for us to love, it can be really hard for us to love because we are not to love as the world loves that is motivated by often selfish reasons, or show love conditionally because that is the kind of love that the world has. Instead we are to love with does not come naturally to fallen sinful people outside of Christ, we are to love as how God loves us.


Maybe loving others comes really easily for all of us, except that is for me but I doubt it. If it was easy for us then John would have only needed mention that we are to love once and that would have been it but the fact of the matter is that he has to repeat it, emphasise the necessity of love to the church because of how difficult it is for us. For the believer we love because of the Spirits work within us, the love which the believer has only comes from a heart that has been given new life, a love which the Spirit has caused to well up in the believer.


The reason why the believer can love in this way is that God is love. This is the very character, the nature of God and it is essential to him. If we are his children then we as we are reminded in 2 Peter partakers of his nature (2 Pet 1:4), what that means is that when we are God’s children in Christ Jesus then we have received the indwelling Spirit, what happens is that the Spirit inwardly transforms us to the likeness of Christ Jesus, to the image of God (Rom 8:29). Of course this doesn’t come all at one time, when the Spirit calls us to God that that is that we are transformed completely, no there is an ongoing process which we play our part in as we are enabled to love more and more. In the life of the believer we are to mimic, to mirror what we have seen in our elder brother the Lord Jesus Christ, we are to become more and more like him, confirmed more into his likeness.


If you are a child of God and are finding it difficult to love, if you are not loving as we are commanded by God then you need to repent of that attitude. Pray to the Lord ask for his help with that failure to love as you have been loved, reflect more on what Christ has done for you as your Saviour. While we may not want to admit it, we all have work to do on this and for all of us we are to love as we have been loved knowing that the love that we have is not like how this world loves, rather we are to love as Christ showed his love towards us.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q 60 How is the Sabbath to be sanctified?
The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, (Exod. 20:8,10, Exod. 16:25–28) even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; (Neh. 13:15–19) and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’ s worship, (Luke 4:16, Acts 20:7, Ps. 92, Isa. 66:23) except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy. (Matt. 12:1–31)
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