Don’t Love God First

1 John 4:7-21

September 22, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Maybe like you, I was taught growing up that it is the Christians’ duty to love God first. There was even a Sunday School class at one of the churches on my home circuit called “JOY - Jesus, Others, You.” That is, it was said, the order in which we should express our love: first to Jesus, then to others and if there is any time and love left over, to yourself. Have you heard that? Have you taught that? Have you tried to live that out? Probably most of us have, so let me shake you up a little bit: “Love God first” is not a Biblical idea (cf. Villodas, Good and Beautiful and Kind, pg. 181). It sounds good, it feels good, and it looks good on a poster. But it’s not Biblical, and it’s not what John is saying in the passage we read this morning. Have I got your attention? Are you ready to run me out as a heretic? Just stick with me, because what John is actually saying is much bigger than “love God first.”

This morning, we are wrapping up our series called “Mended,” where we’ve been talking about our broken world and trying to get a handle on how to actually be people who bring healing and wholeness, shalom, to this broken and polarized world. And that’s going to be even more important in the next few weeks as we approach what promises to be a rather contentious election. Several years ago, I preached a sermon about voting, and I had one person come up to me after the service, very disappointed, saying, “I thought you were going to tell me who to vote for!” I didn’t do that then and I’m not going to do that now, but I do hope this morning that we end up with some handles as to how to approach the election and, even more importantly, how to approach the people around us even if they vote differently than we do. This is one of the most broken places in our world, and it is one of the places most in need of the prescription John gives in his first letter. John does want us to love God, that is true, but what we’ve gotten wrong is how to go about it.

So first I think we need to define what “love” is because we seem to have forgotten. We equate “love” with warm, fuzzy feelings and Hallmark movies. We think we can “fall” in love or “find” love or that we can “make” love. Our culture has redefined love to mean sexual intimacy and not much more. Through the centuries, the definition of love has been attempted by poets and philosophers, debated by betrayed spouses and abandoned children, wondered about by ethicists and people hoping for it. Definitions are many and none seem definitive (cf. Thompson, 1-3 John [IVPNTC], pg. 123). So our problem begins when we take all of these human experiences and understandings of love and apply them to God. If a worship song gives us goosebumps, we think we are loving God. If we are moved by a passage in the Bible and it makes us think, we believe we are loving God. When we go to a great concert or watch a beautiful sunset, we believe we are loving God. We rely on the feelings and when they are not present, we wonder if we really love God. But John says our experiences don’t matter, or at the very least our experiences are not the standard by which we decide if we really love God or not. Not at all. Our experience is not the standard, God is. John says, “God is love” (4:8). He doesn’t say God loves. He says God is love. God is the very definition of love, the very essence of love, and the standard by which any human experience of or expression of love is measured.

And how does God define what love is? It probably won’t surprise you if you’ve been here any length of time to know that the word John uses here is agape. Very quick refresher: the Greek language is much more expressive than English and has four words for love compared to our one. Phileo refers to friendship love, eros to sexual love and storge to family love. Agape refers to the kind of love God is, the no-strings-attached expansive never-giving-up love. It’s the kind of love that never quits, that always shows up and always loves us even when we are at our most unloveable. And so every time you see the word “love” in this passage—twenty-seven times in fifteen verses—it’s agape (cf. Wright, The Early Christian Letters for Everyone, pg. 158). Because God doesn’t love. God is love.

To explain how we experience God, John refers to or maybe even somewhat reinterprets something he would have heard Jesus say probably more than once. On at least one occasion, Jesus was approached by a “teacher of the law” who wanted to know which one of the 613 commandments was the most important. Of this whole long list, which one should go at the top? And it might seem that Jesus cheated because he actually gives what sounds like two. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). That’s one. But Jesus keeps going: “The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these” (12:21). Literally he says, “There is nothing bigger than this.” But, as I’ve said many times before, Jesus isn’t cheating. He’s not giving two commandments to answer the question. He’s giving two sides of the same commandment, and that’s the same thing John is teaching in his letter. If we’re going to love God, we have to love people. And in order to love people, we have to love God. John puts it this way: “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (4:11). In other words, the goal is not to love God first and others second. The call on the Christian life is to love God by loving others. When we love our neighbor, we are giving them the love that is due to God (cf. Villodas 181-182). By loving them, we are loving God.

John goes on to say: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (4:9). How did God show his love? He sent Jesus. Two things here: first, love is not a feeling. Love is an action. God is love, and God showed what that meant by doing something. He didn’t just send letters or a text message or an email or even write “I love you” in the clouds. God did something to demonstrate what love looks like. And that’s the second thing: love involves sacrifice. Jesus came into this world to give his life. He taught us how to live and showed us how to love. Just a bit earlier in this same letter, John put it the clearest way I know: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” The witness of the New Testament is that Jesus willingly gave his life in order to deal with our sin, our brokenness, our rebellion against God. He gave his life to show us what love looks like: it’s a willingness to give yourself for the sake of another. John goes on to say this: “And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (3:16). Or, as he puts it in the passage we read this morning, “We love because he first loved us” (4:19). God loves us. We love others. That’s how the world should work.

Or you might have heard it this way: love God, love people. As the old song goes, you can’t have one without the other. Two sides of the same coin. “Our love must come ‘in the flesh,’ just as God’s love did” (Wright 160), so the way we love God is by loving people and the biggest way we do that is to work for and seek after and build a world driven by the question I’ve shared with you before, “What does love require?” What does agape require? Well, it requires sacrifice, according to John and the rest of the New Testament. So if God has loved us enough to give his life for us, then what does loving others in that way look like?

For example: what does love require when it comes to the election and the current political climate? No one can deny how polarizing and divisive the last several years have been when it comes to politics. Some of us know people who no longer will speak to us because we have different political views than they do. Some of us have been rather vocal on social media about how our candidate is the only one who can save America. And some of us have said things we might later regret, unkind things defending someone we plan to vote for. It is ugly and bound to get uglier as the election gets nearer. I am not saying people should’t have clear and firm political convictions; I think we should and we should absolutely vote our conscience. But does love require that we attack and vilify others just because they differ from us? Or can we actually converse with each other and love each other even if we never convince each other of the “right” viewpoint? I’ve got a secret for you (listen carefully): God will still be on the throne no matter who wins in November. No matter who resides in the Oval Office, God will still be the ruler over the earth. I’m going to quote Chuck Colson again: “Salvation is not coming on Air Force One.” Never has, never will. That’s not saying it doesn’t matter who we vote for, and it’s not saying we don’t need to vote. We absolutely should vote and vote for the best candidates possible. It only means we need to vote with this question in mind: what does love require in this election season?

And what does it require in our families? Families are under great stress today, pulled in many different directions and faced with temptations like we could never have imagined just a few years ago. How many sports should a child be involved in? How many clubs at school? And should they even go to school or be educated at home? Is there too much money at the end of the month, and how will we pay our increasing bills when there is no raise in sight? Very often, the stress tears at the fabric of the family and we forget how to love each other. It’s good to remember how Paul described a well-ordered family: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). Submit to one another. Submit to Christ. And remember how Jesus loved us: he gave his life up for us. I heard of a man who resigned from a prestigious position as a college president when his wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He was in the prime of his career, yet he stepped down and stayed home to care for her. When he was asked why, he said, “It wasn’t even a question I had to ask. She took care of me for so many years, now it’s my turn.” That’s a picture of submitting to each other and honoring Jesus. What does love require in our families?

And what does it require in the church? It is a difficult season to be in church leadership, and not just at Mount Pleasant but in the church in America in general. And in our own tradition, in the United Methodist Church, the last few years have been extremely difficult. We have been engaged in a struggle over control of the church, and while the presenting issue has been about human sexuality issues, there are deeper issues of Biblical authority and the work of the Holy Spirit in the church today. I’ve tried to be up front and honest with you all through this process, and yet I and our Leadership Council have been accused of hiding information and keeping the church in the dark. I’ve been told on two occasions that the church has been taken over by Satan. In the midst of that, I’ve lost a lot of good friends who have left our denomination either to become an independent Methodist church (which is really an oxymoron) or to join another denomination. Now, I don’t tell you any of that to make you feel sorry for me; I’m a big boy and can handle criticism and harsh words. I wouldn’t have survived this long as a pastor if I couldn’t. No, I tell you that because I also had someone tell me not too long ago that the church isn’t divided like the culture. But it is. And it’s very likely that the people sitting next to you might very well disagree with you on any or all of these issues. They might disagree with you on the right way to handle our church’s finances or what staff we should have or whether or not they like the music. So what does love require in the church? They will know we are Christians by our love, the song says. Jesus puts it this way: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). What does love require?

Because, let’s be honest: some people are hard to love! And of course I mean those other people, not you and not me. Or are we willing to be honest enough to admit that we—you and me—are hard to love sometimes, too? But we don’t love them because they are easy to love. John says, “We love because he first loved us” (4:19). We love them because we are loved. But what about those people who make it challenging to love them? What about them? There’s a great story at the end of the Gospel of John where Jesus and Peter are walking along the shore, and Jesus is giving Peter a chance to make things right from the time when he denied knowing Jesus. For every time Peter said, “I don’t know him” on the night before the crucifixion, Jesus gives him a chance to respond to a direct question: “Do you love me?” “Yes, Lord, I love you.” Three times. And then Peter notices that John is following them. I think John is taking notes so that he can write his book; I don’t know, that’s just a guess. But Peter is mad that John is following them. He wants this moment to be just about he and Jesus. “Lord, what about him?” Peter says. There’s probably more than a bit of jealousy there, because John is known as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” What about him? Are you going to tell him to leave us alone so we can have this moment? Peter doesn’t say that, but it’s implied. And Jesus says to Peter, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me” (John 21:15-23). I think John has that scene in mind when he writes the last two verses in our morning passage: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen…Anyone who loves God must also love their brother or sister” (4:20-21).

Strong words! Love God, love people—all people, even the annoying ones. Even the ones who make it hard to love. Love God, love people. But what if they are from that other political party? What if they have the wrong policies, the wrong ideas, the wrong lifestyle? What if they watch the wrong news network? Love them anyway. What if they have hurt me, done damage to me, spread rumors about me or said horrible things about me? Love them anyway. What if they interpret the Bible differently? What if they believe and worship differently? What if they bless things I think are unblessable? Love them anyway. It’s not up to us to sort any of that out; that’s up to God. I’ve said many times before that I believe the reason eternity is so long is because God has to straighten all of us out. I know you think you’re right; I believe I’m right. But none of us are perfect and none of us are Jesus. So love the ones around you anyway, even when they’re wrong, even when it’s hard. If we say we love God and don’t love the people around us, John says we are liars. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want God to be able to call me a liar.

So, as we come to the end of this series, I want to acknowledge that we have covered a lot of territory. And I don’t know that we have come up with the foolproof secret of mending our world, or of helping it fully embrace shalom, but my prayer and hope has been that we’ve been able to give you some tools that will help begin to mend your world, bring some measure of healing to your world. If enough of us pursue shalom in our own worlds, that just might have a ripple effect out into the larger world and maybe, just make, make a difference in our own time. But it all comes down to this, the basic message of the Christian faith and the real way we make a difference. “We love because he first loved us” (4:19). So what does love require—today, right now, with the people around you? Answering that question will be the first step toward mending the world. Remember this truth: “We are not called to fix the world but to faithfully respond with the resources, strength, and love we have” (Villodas 195), to do the best we can to bring healing. So let’s be people who love God, love people and love life so that the world can be mended. Amen? Let’s pray.