How Christmas is all about love – Advent Love, Part 3

In the first post in this series, I asked you to consider the first five words that came to mind when you heard the word “Christmas”. In that post, I linked to some online articles that suggest the words most associated with Christmas. Those articles listed hundreds of words, but not the one word I believe is the most important Christmas word. We’ve been studying 1 John 4 this week, and in verse 8, John writes, “God is love.” There it is. The most important Christmas word. Love.

In the previous post, I mentioned that love is an active power that emanates from God.  In 1 John 4:8, we learn there is more to God’s love than that. Now John tells us that love is what God is.  Love is who God is.  Of course God has all sorts of other characteristics like justice, mercy, grace, holiness, and so on.  John is saying that love is more than simply a quality that describes God.  Those other characteristics modify what is central about God, his love. 

God is merciful love.  He is gracious love.  He is holy love.  You can attach any characteristic as an adjectives to the central core, which is love.  God is all those characteristics, but only insofar as they describe his love. 

When John writes, “God is love,” John is not viewing the love of God as just an idea.  God’s love is not just an attitude or posture that God has toward the world. John says God proves that he is love by his actions. 

Notice how John continues in verses 9–10, “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. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

What John is referring to started with the Christmas story.  In the Christmas story we see the love of God clearly in view when Jesus, who is God the Son, became one of us, to save us, because God loves us.  John himself wrote about this in his Gospel, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (Jn 1:14)

The Word became flesh.  That’s a strange sentence.  What does John mean?  The Word, John reveals, is Jesus.  Jesus is God who took on flesh. God became human.  God was born as a human baby, just like we all were once born.  Why?  Love.

Think about what Jesus sacrificed so that we could experience God’s love.  Imagine what Jesus gave up, the perfection of heaven he left behind, for the purpose of connection with us, for relationship, to rescue us.  That’s love.

God who is love, became one of us so that we might encounter his love in a very real way.  John points out in verses 9 and 10 that God’s desire was that might live through him.  There is a difference between living through him and living apart from him.  When we live apart from God, we are disconnected from him, and the word that John concludes verse 10 with becomes a huge factor.  Sin.

Sin is when we do, think or say what is not in agreement with God and his love.  When we live apart from God, our sin is not dealt with.  When we live apart from God, our sin is still a factor in our lives.  Another way to put it is to say that apart from God, we are living in sin.  That doesn’t mean that people living in sin are totally awful, horrible people.  Living in sin means that their sin is not dealt with.  They have not confessed their sin, they have not repented of their sin.  That word repent is important.  Repent is the picture of a 180 turn away from sin and toward God.  Repentance is when we actively make a change to restore the brokenness in our lives, whether between God or others.

When we repent, we turn away from wrong habits, selfish patterns of thinking, greed, or whatever the sin is for us, and we turn toward the love of God.  Jesus is the one that makes that turn possible.  In verse 10, John mentions Jesus’ atoning sacrifice for our sins. John is referring to Jesus’ birth, his perfect life, his death and resurrection.  Jesus gave his life for us so that God who is love could be in our lives and so his love could flow through us.  That is what John means when he says that “God showed is love among us, he sent his one and only son in the to the world that we might live through him.”

The Apostle Paul put it this way: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Ro 5:6–8)

That is the wonderful message of how God in his love defeated sin, death, and the devil. That victory started when Jesus was born as a human baby.  That baby would grow up and give his life, the ultimate gift of love, for us.  Jesus himself taught, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Jn 15:13)

Love is what Christmas is about.  When you see the lights of Christmas decorations, see God’s love in Jesus.  When you see the Christmas dinner table filled with food, see God’s love in Jesus.  And especially when you see the gifts given and gifts received, see God’s love in Jesus in every single one. 

And when you think about the gift of love that God has given the whole world, when you think about the gift of love that God has given you, what should you do?

Here’s what John says in 1 John 4:11–12,

“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

John learned this from Jesus. Hours before Jesus was arrested and crucified, Jesus said to his disciples: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (Jn 13:34–35)

God is love, and when his love enters our lives, we receive his love and we seek to share his love with others.  As John writes in 1 John 4:7, when we see love flowing from our lives, this love is evidence that we have truly been born of God, that God is with us and in us, and evidence that we truly know him.  That is what John means in verse 9 when he writes that people can live through Jesus.  We are alive with his love and his love is working its way out through our thoughts, our body language, our mouths, our tone of voice, our hands and our feet. 

As John says, “God lives in us.”  When we love one we are showing that God is alive and well.  When we love one another there is a new incarnation taking place.  “Incarnation” is from the Greek, “en carne,” which is where we get our word “carnivore,” a meat-eater.  “Carne” is translated by our English words “meat,” “flesh,” and “body.”  In John 1:14, John writes, “The Word became flesh,” which is his way of saying that Jesus took on a body. Jesus was “en carne,” God in human flesh, and that’s why Christmas describes the Incarnation, the enfleshment of God. 

John describes this more precisely in the next few verses,

“This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.” (1 Jn 4:13–16.)

That is some radical, world-changing teaching.  God, who is love, wants to live in people, so that what flows out of those people is love to other people. In other words, when people see you loving them, they are seeing God in your flesh.  You are not God.  God is not you.  But God is in you, and when you love others, those people get to see God alive and well. 

When we love, we make God visible to the world.  When we are living in right relationship with God and we are receiving his love, his love will flow out of us and others will see it.

What do others see when they observe your speech, your body language, your actions? Do they see love? Do they see God in you?

In the next and final post, we’ll look at what John says about how to show the love of God to others.

Photo by Brigitte Tohm on Unsplash