“God is love” (1 John 4:8) but the world around us is unloving and we all know unlovable people. So where’s the love when we need it?
Christians know where to find it and how to share it. We do it by regularly withdrawing from this impersonal, unloving society to gather together with other people who are devoted to Jesus. “Love is from God” (1 John 4:7) and Jesus is bringing it to us, present tense. His love for you today started in eternity. Before anyone was born, God knew you and me with intimate love and, what’s more, way back then His Son willed to sacrifice Himself, to shed His blood to bring us into covenant with God. Selfless love, agape. “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last time for your sake, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:20-21). So today “though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible” (1 Peter 1:8).
Since life out there can be cold and impersonal, Christians regularly retreat to be together in the warmth of His love. “Love one another earnestly from a pure heart” (1 Peter 1:22). Not always easy! Who’s unloving in your life? Sometimes it’s me, sometimes you’re the unloving one. Vertical faith has horizontal dimensions. Martin Luther points out that human love seeks what’s attractive to it, but God’s love goes to the unlovable and creates loveliness (Heidelberg Disputation 28). That’s what makes, or should make our Sunday church gatherings different from other associations during the week. “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matthew 18:20). That’s present tense, this Valentine’s Day.
“Now richly to my waiting heart, / O Thou, my God, deign to impart / the grace of love undying.
In Thy blest body let me be, / E’en as the branch is in the tree, / Thy life my life supplying.
Sighing, crying, / For the savor / Of Thy favor; / Resting never
Till I rest in Thee forever.”
(The Lutheran Hymnal, 343, 3)
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