Faithful Christian Commitment and service
in the Middle East for almost 150 years The Nazareth Trust Healing in the Name of Jesus Since 1861
in the Middle East for almost 150 years The Nazareth Trust Healing in the Name of Jesus Since 1861
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Welcome
Welcome to our devotion as we begin the run up to Christmas! With the first Sunday of Advent already upon us, we know that the rest of the season will come around very quickly! We pray that as we approach this season again, we will each have a new understanding and appreciation of God and His love for us, shown through Jesus.
We are blessed to have this relationship with Him and we pray that our focus will remain on Him always.
As we say goodbye to more of our volunteers this week, we wish them safe journeys and a blessed Christmas season with friends and family. We pray that although we are no longer in the same location, we will continue always to be in community together and remember each other in our prayers.
Devotion
In last week’s devotion Matthew spoke about how the Ephesian Christians had lost their first love. During the week Rev Suheil spoke about love and how all the gifts we could have are valueless without it. So continuing the theme, this devotion talks a little about love from some of the writings of John.
Interestingly, although the Bible doesn’t tell us much about John after Acts and then Revelation, there is traditional belief that he actually lived in Ephesus and died there. It is believed that his letters were written from there, and he is also said to have destroyed the temple of Artemis by means of a prayer vigil.
So we begin by reading part of one of those letters, possibly written from Ephesus, which is entitled in some versions as "Seeing God through love".
1 John 4:12-16
“No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”
As we approach Christmas, we think about God’s love and how this love is shown in the birth of Jesus. However, in verse 16 we read “we have known and believed the love that God has for us”. As we read this today, each one of us should ask if this is true for us, if it is really true for where we are right now.
Often times when we speak of God’s love, we are speaking of something we know in our heads, which is written on the pages of the Bible, and which we are told by others is real. We believe it is real – but although we “know” it in our heads we have not “known” it in our hearts and lives.
Our faith is about relationship. In John 5, Jesus rebukes the Jewish leaders of the day by telling them, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”
This is like us saying that we know some famous person – we know everything about them, when and where they were born, who their parents were, what friends they had, their school and university and even their birthday and favourite food. But until we actually meet the person, we don’t know them. The Jewish leaders of the day were doing the same thing. They knew about God, so much so that they felt comfortable enough to extend His rules, but they had never come to Him. They hadn’t met. They knew of Him, but they didn’t know Him.
We can also be this way when it comes to God’s love. Personally, I knew of it, through the Bible which said that God loved me and that Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection showed it. But I didn’t feel it. This left me somehow frustrated and lacking. Similarly when people would pray and say they loved God, I didn’t really know how they felt.
The Bible tells us that we are loved by God. We have so many verses to tell us this, not least in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” and in 1 John 4:10 “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. “
Actually John almost has a monopoly on this subject. His connection with God’s love is something which seems to have been particularly strong. He is described as the disciple that Jesus loved, He speaks about love in his gospel, in his letters and tradition says that all he talked about as he grew close to death was that same love. What a legacy!
The scriptures testify of Jesus, but we need to come to Him as a person receiving His love, knowing it, believing it. What good is love which isn’t believed or known? I think it is possible sometimes for us to read the scriptures and believe them, because we believe in their authority and truth, but not to “know” their truth in our hearts. In a recent conversation, someone told me that the longest journey in the world is the 20 or so centimeters from the head to the heart. Often it can be this way, in fact we can go for years without really knowing, trusting, believing that we are loved.
We need to know the testimony of the love of God for us, but also come to Him, come to His love and receive it.
John writes more about this in the gospel:
John 15:5
I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.
This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
Wherever John talks about love, it is connected with our relationship with God. We need to be intimately connected with God, we need to live in Him, live in His love, not just know it in our heads. When we truly know God’s love, this is when we can pass it on to others. We can do this because we are overwhelmed by His love and love Him in return, obeying Him and putting Him first in everything.
So how can we know His love more deeply? We need to know Him more deeply. He is love.
There is a book called “He loves me” by Wayne Jacobsen. He shares three main ideas 1) God loves us constantly and unchangingly 2) We cannot earn His love 3) Living in this love changes everything.
“God’s desire is to engage us in a life-changing relationship. He knew the ‘life-changing’ would come only out of the relationship. Thus he demonstrated his love for us before we did anything to make ourselves worthy of it. By doing so, he wanted us to stop trying to earn it and just live in light of it.”
This reminds us of 1 John 4:10 “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
“By releasing us from the terrible burden of trying to earn his friendship God put the focus right where he wanted it—on the relationship he always wanted to have with each of us. He wants to be a closer friend than any other we’ve ever had: sharing our joys, our pains, even our failures as he teaches us how to live in him.”
This love really changes the way we live. When we think about commands and rules often we get a sense of heaviness, responsibility, being judged or found wanting. But John describes how this changes in relationship with God:
1 John 5:3
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,
Suddenly the commands, the things we have to do, are no longer a burden. The process then becomes circular as we see in 2 John 1:6, “And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. Not only does the love change our feeling towards His commands, but the commands themselves are about love too!
1 Corinthians 13 is another passage which shows the Christian emphasis on love:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Verse 13 sums it up: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Jesus Himself summarized the whole gospel in two rules in Matthew 22: 36 – 40 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
We can’t do either of these without relationship with Him. It all comes from Him, as the source of love itself.
Thinking of John, it is easy to think of him as conceited. Calling himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved”- can sound like he thought he had a monopoly on Jesus’ affections. We may ask, didn’t Jesus love any of the other disciples?
I think this misses the point.
Looking through his writings and learning more about him, this naming of himself was more likely from astonishment and wonder. Reading it now, we can almost imagine John’s voice, when dictating (as tradition says he did) saying “The disciple, whom JESUS loved!” – with incredulity and joy. His amazement becomes the emphasis as he refers to himself, almost as if to remind himself of what he could never deserve.
We too have the same opportunity to claim this love. Each one of us can say with the same certainty, wonder and awe, that we are the disciple - the woman - the man - the student- the person - the sinner - the helpless one - the broken one - that we are, in all our failings, the one… whom Jesus loved.
Speaker: Christine Farah