Podcast: Behind The Scenes: Be Love; (1John 4:7-21)

Good day, and welcome to North Rawl United Methodist Church behind the scenes podcast, where we sit down weekly and talk about this week's scripture and sermon.

My name is Kevin Van Hall.

I serve as your moderator, and joining me today is one of the senior pastors here, Laura Johnson.

Hi, Laura.

Hi, Kevin.

Great to see you.

You too.

Welcome back.

We I was gone last week.

We had a special episode last time we met, and Kevin was with us, and we talked about the new series that we are in the middle of that we're actually finishing up.

It was a short series, three series, or three subjects on the new emphasis that were or direction that North Raleigh is working on, goals.

And we talked about it uh belong, become, and be love.

And last podcast, it was um I hope everyone remembers to go back and listen to it.

I thought it was a very good podcast.

Uh it was a great introduction.

We had the opportunity to talk about both be long and become.

This week you'll be preaching, and it will just be love.

Kevin uh preached this past week on Become, and you were on a special trip, weren't you?

That's right.

I was invited back to my first church, the first church I served for their homecoming Sunday.

So I got to preach and see some uh folks that I hadn't seen for twelve years and got to reconnect, and it was a great time.

And of course, it's a rural church, so they had a potluck supper afterwards and more food than anybody could eat, and it was a great time.

That sounds like belong.

You never stop belonging, right?

That is absolutely right.

You came a part of that church and you're always a well-belong member.

That's right.

That's right.

Well, I hope uh you could feel that way.

North Raleigh, we tried to we can be get to be a little bit big sometimes, but we're still small in ways as well.

That's right.

What Kevin and I like to say is North Raleigh programs like it's big, but we love like we're small.

So we have the big programs, but our love for each other is personal and intimate, and it's it's we know each other.

We love like we're a small church.

Right.

So, and that leads us into what we're gonna be talking about today, be love.

And we were going to be in uh first John uh in particular chapter four, and we're gonna be talking about love.

But first, um how did we pick this verse to talk about love?

Kevin picked it.

So uh we take turns.

Okay.

We we've we kind of come up with the ideas for the sermon series together, then we take turns making sure the scriptures are are all selected, or if we're doing the lectionary, that we we have it all planned out.

Um and so he's the one who picked this one.

But this one uh is one of the most profound passages on the love of God and how that love of God is active in our heart.

So I fully applaud Kevin for picking this scripture for this topic because it really does get at our call to be love.

There are so many different uh verses or scripture throughout the Bible, love, love everywhere that um he could have picked from.

So we're gonna look at it a little bit more closely here in just a second as the uh reason for our podcast.

We sit down and try to look at things maybe from a different angle.

Uh you probably have an opportun an opportunity to think about where you're going as far as your sermon.

Maybe this podcast will give you a direction.

I sure hope so.

Direction.

Get some guidance today.

Some some what's the right word?

Inspiration.

Maybe some inspiration.

Inspiration of where you want to go or where you don't want to go.

Sometimes I ask I try to ask hard questions that some people out there might be thinking.

That's right.

Uh, such the purpose of this podcast.

But how about a word of prayer before we uh read?

Let's pray.

Oh, Lord, we ask that you would bless all who listen in today and bless our conversation as we ponder these scriptures and as we ponder your call to be love.

May you fill us up with your love that it would overflow in our lives.

In Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, New Testament reading.

So often we uh think of the New Testament, we think of all the letters that Paul wrote.

And we forget about the three short little letters that John wrote.

That's right.

And this isn't uh first John.

And who did he write this letter to, Laura?

Well, so John was one of the disciples.

He we legend tells us he ended up in Ephesus, where he settled down with and took care of Jesus' mom, because from the cross, Jesus said to John, Take care of my mother.

And um she said, he said to his mother, This is your new son.

And so the legend tells us that John settled in Ephesus with Mary and took care of her until she passed, and then he was a very uh well-known, influential teacher from Ephesus, which was a huge port city.

It's um it was a place of great learning, lots of people traveling through it.

Um, and and from Ephesus, he could go lots of different places or send the letter to lots of different places.

And so the letter is not addressed to any particular community, so we don't really know if it was written to anyone in particular, or if it was just a general letter that he wrote, probably near the end of his life, that captured his wisdom and what he'd learned, what he'd been teaching throughout his ministry, so that he would put it in writing and send it to the churches that he may have visited over his years.

Ephesus, uh, like you said, is a huge port city, huge Greek influence in that town, uh Ephesians, that Paul traveled there on his missions, introduced uh everyone to Christ as well, preaching in the synagogue, probably ahead of John and getting it uh the church established.

And if you can go back and read uh Ephesians, there's another great letter that Paul wrote to the Ephesians.

So, yes, it was a very important uh city, a huge uh Greek influence.

And if you want to think in uh modern day times, this would have been Turkey now.

That's right.

But back then, Islam had not been established yet.

So we're talking about ancient Greek uh Roman god traditions and worshiping and then turning into a more Christian-like.

So it's not the Islamic country that you're thinking of uh in today's totally different.

That's right.

And from what we can tell of Ephesus, they really liked to think deeply and they loved philosophy, and they really were learned people.

And so this is a very dense text.

And John clearly fit right in to this ac you know, this intellectual community, this philosophical community, and was trying to bring some concreteness to their theology, to their conversations of of how uh the spiritual life is not just thinking, it's doing, it's being.

So do you think this letter was just to the Ephesians, or do you think it was uh just a general letter um to be passed around the church?

Aaron Powell I my my sense, and this is Laura, not from a smart scholar.

My sense is that he wrote this to kind of put on paper his teachings and his wisdom and then sp spread it out throughout in Ephesus and throughout the places he may have visited or or been in contact with.

So I I think as someone who lived in Ephesus, we're seeing his wisdom on paper here.

All right.

And he goes through a little bit of a uh explanation of what it actually means to love Christ.

There's a movement going on through in this time period, maybe around 80, 90, 100 AD, um Gnosticism.

That's right.

And then early church is having to battle that with people that are coming up with their own understandings of of trying to the whole mystery of Christ.

It's hard to understand how this is God, yet God dies and suffers on the car.

There's there's talk that, well, that wasn't really him, or that wasn't his body, or it was only a body, not spirit.

Um and they have to try to address that and try to strange it out.

And John gives a little bit of an attempt at that, correct?

That's right.

Because the Gnostics believe that the the spiritual world is good and the physical world is bad, and that there was secret spiritual knowledge for those who reached the highest of the of the spiritual caliber.

And so for them, the idea that God would become incarnate and be a part of human, actual the physical world, they could not.

That was that so they like that was rejected completely, that that Christ would bodily come again and that the resurrection would be a bodily resurrection.

And so John is definitely combating some Gnosticism in this letter of making it very clear that no, this faith that we have, this religion, this this spirituality is very physical as well, that Christ was an actual human, fully divine, fully man, but an actual human, and that our our spirituality is best shown in concrete physical deeds of love towards one another.

Deep physical deeds of love, not part of the Gnosticism uh movement, some beliefs, where the with the flesh was bad.

The flesh could do whatever it wanted to.

It didn't matter.

It was the spirit that was saved, as long as the spirit was good and saved and in Christ.

So there was a lot of sinful things that people were still doing and could justify getting away with it, saying the separation from the physical, from the spiritual.

Laura, does that go on today?

We don't necessarily call it Gnosticism, but a lot of people claim to be Christians and to be saved, and yet they do not act like Christians.

That's right.

There's definitely been a movement in the last few hundred years that have that has kind of embraced some, it wouldn't be called Gnosticism because it doesn't have all the elements of it, but embrace some of the idea that like the the body is bad, the the world we can forget about it, because all that really matters is us going to the spiritual heaven.

So who cares what happens to the earth because we're all gonna go to the spiritual heaven anyways.

And it definitely makes the physical concrete less than or less important than or irrelevant, and the spiritual state of our soul is the most important thing, which is not the fullness of the gospel.

The fullness of the gospel is that God became incarnate and that this earth is going to be renewed and restored in the end times.

Yeah, so not just about salvation.

The rapture is one other one of those uh theology things that came about in the 17th century, or I mean 19th century, that um it didn't matter, you were just gonna be taken up in a way, and it was all about salvation.

Uh that didn't even that's people think that's old theology.

It is actually not.

It came about in the late 1800s.

That's right.

So made popular by the Left Behind series, which Kevin read every book, so he can tell you all about it.

I never read the books.

It wasn't part of my religious upbringing, but I'm leading us down a different path, and I'm trying to give us a wide, narrow uh view of what John is trying to talk about and address even in the early days of the church.

It was about um not just believing in Christ, but what did that mean?

What does that mean?

So we're in uh 1 John chapter 4.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

We're gonna be uh verses uh 7 through 21, but we're gonna break it up.

We're just gonna read uh seven through sixteen at first.

All right, John writes, Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God.

Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

God's love was revealed among us in this way.

God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

In this is love.

Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.

No one has ever seen God if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is 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 do testify that the Father has sent his son as the Savior of the world.

God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.

So we have known and believed the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

God is love, repeated a couple times.

Yeah.

Right.

And that we are also supposed to be loving one another, so it's our conduct of how we're supposed to be actually acting here on earth.

That's right.

Um, and love one another just as God loves us.

That's right.

But but he does talk about uh Jesus coming and atoning for our sins as well.

That's right.

So he does want to recognize that part.

Yeah.

So if you think of our purpose statement, belong as you are, become like Jesus, be loved for God's world, we intentionally designed that to reflect the three different graces that we United Methodists profess.

Pervenient grace is the great, and and this John Wesley really kind of put this all in writing for us and organized it as a thought that we can then carry on as people from the Wesleyan tradition.

But the idea is that provenient grace is the grace that goes before us.

Before we are aware of God, before we've done anything to ever make God love us, even when we're tiny little babies, God chooses us, God calls us to be in relationship with God, God pervenes, goes before us.

So this is why we baptize babies.

It's because we believe that they don't have to confess Jesus because God's already welcoming them into the family.

Um, and so in in order to be part of God's family, it's God's invitation first that we then accept.

And so justifying grace is the next grace.

So the first one is belong as you are.

That's that like you belong because God has created you and God loves you and God invites you in.

The second grace is justifying grace.

And this is maybe what we see at like an adult profession of faith with a baptism, or at confirmation, or when somebody first comes to faith and and believes Jesus as Lord.

It's that moment when we are remorseful for our sins, we we first kind of are awakened to how far we are from God.

And it's when the Holy Spirit helps us confess those sins and when we receive that sense of pardon, or that that that it's what we often hear described as being saved.

Like we get that sense of pardon, we've we're we're in, you know, we've we've made it into God's kingdom.

That's often where a lot of traditions stop.

The Wesleyan tradition moves to the third grace, which is sanctifying grace.

And this is some of what Kevin talked about in his sermon on Sunday.

But the idea that our life doesn't stop with, okay, I believe in Jesus, I'm going to heaven, and a story.

Sanctifying grace is this idea that we are constantly being shaped by the Holy Spirit to be more and more like Jesus.

And that's what is happening in this.

So he refers to the atoning of sins.

Like we have been, we have that justifying grace.

We have been saved, we have been brought into the fold, and we are being shaped into reflections of God, and God is love.

And so, if we are actually Christians, if we are actually on this path of sanctification, what that means is we are becoming more and more loving.

And so this is kind of like John is giving a like measuring stick of like, if you want to know you're a Christian, acknowledge or look within you to see, are you growing in your ability to love?

Are you loving those who love you and are you loving those who don't love you?

And are you are you loving in your heart?

Are you loving towards God?

Like that is the measure of growing in grace.

We call that in the in our tradition, being perfected in love.

And so when Methodist clergy are ordained, we're asked several questions that have been asked of all Methodist clergy.

And one of them is, do you believe that you will be perfected?

And the answer is yes.

The caveat that we all know is we're not saying we're going to be perfect in never making a mistake or never doing anything wrong.

But we believe that the Holy Spirit is working in our hearts to make us more perfect in love, that we will be more and more loving every single day as we grow, and eventually in the next life, we'll be fully perfected as people who reflect the love of Christ.

Excellent.

Uh thank you very much for that long uh explanation and in separating the different kinds of graces.

We often hear about them, but that was an excellent uh explanation of the three and how it's going to ties into your belong, become, and be love, such as a great uh understanding of why you guys picked this for our new direction for our church.

We need to be like Kevin did uh do an excellent job of the sermon this past week of trying to become, and I've I've put emphasis on the trying.

That's right.

I I I try.

That's right.

I fall short all the time.

That's right.

We all do.

But you're doing better today than you were 15 years ago.

I guarantee it, right?

Probably.

Yeah, exactly.

It's it's a it's a slow growth sometimes.

But but we have what John is telling us here is that God is love.

Look, love we can't define love outside of God.

God created love.

God is love.

And so if if we are to live as reflections of God, then it's the love of God that is reflecting from our life.

And he tells us what that love is like.

It's verse um 10.

Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice of our sins.

And so this, or in verse 9, I'm sorry, God's love was revealed among us in this way.

God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

This sounds a whole lot like John 3.16.

Right?

It's like there's a lot of echoes there.

And in this version of it, I mean, John three sixteen is for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that anyone who believes in him should not perish, but should have eternal life.

And here what we see is that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.

So they're very similar.

And he's showing us what God's love is like.

It's this cruciform love, it's this self-sacrificial love, that the love of God is always giving God's self for the sake of the other.

And that's the kind of love that we're called to be perfected in.

Outstanding.

Well, he goes on a little bit more.

Um, so why don't we read continue reading and and look at uh verses uh seventeen through twenty-one.

Let's do it.

All right, John writes Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

We love because he first loved us.

Those who say I love God and hate their brothers or sisters are liars.

For those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.

The commandment we have from him is this those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Very strong words there to finish up there that don't even say that you uh love God if you're actually hating your brother and your sister and you're not showing them love as well.

So that's a little bit more in the action part of it, not just in the believing or the saying.

That's right, exactly.

He's he's asking for concrete love, not just towards those who love you, but toward everybody, towards the, you know, the person on the street or the person in the church who you don't know.

Like the it's it's concrete love towards everybody.

Right.

Well, I think of uh the love chapter, uh Corinthians, uh chapter 13, when it talks about what love, Paul tries to describe what love is.

And here I love how John makes the emphasis of of there is no fear in love.

Love is uh absence of of fear.

You don't have fear.

I think so often today uh world we are scared of of other people that might not be or act like we do or think like we do, and we are under like some government uh agencies that want to attack those people.

Is it is it out of fear that they don't understand them?

Why do we do this instead of showing them love?

We attack them.

I know we love to have a scapegoat, don't we?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know why we humans are like that, but there's always someone to be afraid of instead of instead of approaching with curiosity, which is a form of love, right?

Of trying to understand what we don't understand.

Yeah, well, we can just go back to apartheid in South Africa.

It's a great example of that instance where the white minority was so scared that if they gave the majority back to the black that they were going to be mistreated because there was a re they were word of revenge.

That's right.

Because they mistreated the other group so poorly that, well, when they become power, they are obviously going to get back at us for everything we did.

That's right.

Well, if you'd didn't act like such a turd in the first place, you wouldn't have had to worry about that now, would you?

But that's a different story.

But the actual encounter and change that happened was Mandela said, We're not going to do that.

We're not going to seek revenge.

He actually took a very forgiving Christian approach.

He says, We're moving forward.

We're past that point.

And that was a great example to the world of reconciliation of how we should move forward, sometimes wars, but it didn't happen too long ago and we've already forgotten those lessons.

Yeah.

And another thing he did though was it wasn't just like, oh, that happened, try to forget about it.

He had very intentional meetings with all the victims and the perpetrators to talk about it so that they're they if they were willing to try to find some closure in it.

So it it like it was very bold of him to move forward that way, but it by and large, I think it worked from the outside looking in.

It seemed to have promoted a sense of of peace and able to kind of put the fear aside and move forward with forgiveness or at least a sense of closure.

Oh, here he is a leader, and he did not take a vengeful approach once he got into power and go after all of those that spoke battery.

That's right.

He was put in prison, treated very poorly, and he never went after anybody to retaliate.

That's right.

Unlike our current president, but I didn't say that.

So but the fear he's talking about that I'm trying to think of of what are they afraid of, of the fear has to do with the punishment that's going on at this time period that John is trying to address.

Yeah, I mean, I would imagine that there's fear of persecution.

Like there it in those days, the world wasn't always kind to Christians, and you know, you know, the arenas where all the Christians were slaughtered, and um if you got into the wrong community or the wrong place or under the wrong leader, your life might be forfeit if you were a Christian.

And so I think there is some of of that happening there of that if you love God and you love one another, you you're not afraid of the consequences because you know that you're you're being the fullest version of the self that God made you to be, and you're living in relating like John is very clear that when you love, you are connected to the divine.

Like you are in a relationship with God.

And that is more important than any obstacle you would face.

All right.

Well, Laura, I'm gonna throw you a curveball here.

Um I was taught as a young person in the Catholic Church to fear God throughout the Old Testament, throughout the Bible, fear God, fear God, fear God the punishment.

You're going to the bad place if you are not a good person.

There's gonna be a fear, you better fear God and the punishment that happens.

And if you look at that, or we've it's it's he's literally telling us one sentence to fear.

In that sentence, it's it's fear of God, but the previous is ones it was God is love and and you don't have no fear of punishment.

Don't you love the Bible?

There's so many things like this where you're like, wait, if you read this, it's one thing, if you read this, it's another thing.

So here's how I understand it.

Fear is used differently in the Old Testament.

Sometimes it's a word, I mean, we don't have all the perfect equivalent words as they had in Hebrew or Greek.

So sometimes when we see the word fear in the Bible, it's really describing like a sense of awe or wonder or like astounded or respect of just being in that holy moment and and not being afraid for your well-being, but more of just being feeling overwhelmed by the grandeur of what you're in.

And I think that's a lot of what we see in the Old Testament.

Um I think there are traditions that highly emphasize fear of punishment or judgment.

Um and I think some would argue that the Methodists aren't strong enough in promoting a fear of condemnation, uh, but we're people of grace.

And so that's just not where we go to.

We all know we've messed up.

We believe in a God of grace.

And so what I read in this is what John Wesley called assurance.

And he spent most of his adult life in his ministry, at least the first half of his ministry, seeking this sense of assurance.

He was on a ship from um across the across from England to America, or maybe it was America back to English.

America back to England.

Yeah, and the ship was about to go under, and it was a bad storm.

He was terrified of dying, of judgment.

The Moravians, he was on a boat with the Moravians.

He was, and the Moravians were all sitting around singing hymns and were staying calm and had this like sense of peace about them, even though he's like, We're about to go down.

And after that moment, when they survived and he got back, he's like, I have to understand how they got that sense of peace and assurance.

They did not have fear, they were just sitting in love.

I want that.

And so he spent his ministry kind of looking for that sense of assurance, at least the first half of it.

And he found it at Aldersgate Street, um, where he just had this prevailing sense of peace wash over him, that he is saved by God, regardless of all his faults.

And I think that's part of the journey of sanctification is learning to trust that God's love is bigger than all of our faults, that God's salvation is bigger than all of all the things that we're afraid of, and learning to trust that you don't need to have fear because God is love.

Yeah.

And or if we loved our brothers and sisters and loved God, there is no fear of punishment or fear of anything else.

That's right.

That's right.

So he's trying to, I guess John is trying to uh make that point.

There's no fear for punishment if you would just love one another and that's right.

And and I think what he's he I don't think he's trying to couch it as if you love people, you don't need to be afraid.

I think he's trying to say you don't you're not afraid when you're in this loving relationship with God.

When you feel connected to God and you know God's love and grace, you're not afraid because you know that love is for you, which makes you love other people.

Like it's all kind of connected.

Excellent.

Well, great.

Well, did we help with your uh direction for your sermon on Sunday?

It'll come.

It'll come, Kevin.

It's only Tuesday.

But uh there's so much in here to talk about, and it's a big topic, a good topic.

It is, it is, and uh sometimes it's hard to explain um to uh pagans or non-believers or people that have tried to make God out to be something that you used to believe in, and then you're trying to convince him, oh, he's not this uh um thunderbolt throwing uh spirit throwing God.

He actually loves you.

That's right.

And as you are it's it's a different and as you are, belong, become, be loved as you are.

So excellent.

Well, this is going to wrap up this series, and we're gonna start with a new series next week.

That's correct.

Um when Kevin comes back in.

I think we're gonna, if I'm remembering correctly, we're gonna be looking at the book of James.

The the letter from James.

Faith without deeds.

That's right.

That one.

Okay.

Well, I look forward to it.

It's a good one to read.

Yeah, it is.

It is a great one.

So I like to thank you very much for being with us today.

Thank you, uh, everyone out there for uh listening.

And uh please uh listen to uh Laura's sermon.

It can be posted on to the uh webpage, uh found right underneath the uh podcast, or uh live streamed if you're unable to come join us on Sunday.

That's right.

So those options are open to everyone.

So thanks again, and may the love of Christ be with you always.

Goodbye, everyone.