Messiah Lutheran Church:

Dear friends:

Your side’s been aching for two days. You tried eating a bland diet. Didn’t work. You’ve tried Pepto-Bismol. Didn’t work. So, you went to the doctor. He ran some tests and said "Your appendix needs to come out." What would you think if he then said "Well, I don’t know if I can take out your appendix. I really haven’t done it before, but I’ll try." Whoa! You’d have no confidence in this guy because he has no confidence in himself.

Where would a doctor get confidence in his surgical ability? Why, in medical school. He’d study anatomy. He’d practice during his residency. He’d do it, and gain confidence that he could do it again.

Today, God commands us to love one another. How confident are you that you can do that? Can you love your neighbor as yourself? Have you done it in the past? Come today and study what God has to say about "THE CONFIDENT LOVE OF A CHRISTIAN".

The care and concern of John for his fellow believers is so very evident in today’s lesson. He really cares about them. He really loves them. He calls them "dear children" and "dear friends." Those aren’t words that you use when talking to a casual acquaintance. John wrote these words to people he dearly and deeply loved.

Love can be an emotional thing, but true love isn’t purely emotional. True love, Christian love, isn’t just a feeling. It’s much, much more than that, a point that far too many people miss. True love is a total commitment to someone else. True love is a dedication to do what is best for the person that you love. True love is not changed or destroyed by what another person does to you or in their life. True love, Christian love, never fails. It never ends. It’s always there.

We don’t see that much today. So many of us love someone else because they give something to us. We love our spouses because they complete us. We love our friends because they do things for us or make us feel comfortable. Human love is often a quid pro quo arrangement. "I love you because I get something from you, and if I can’t get that, I won’t love you anymore." So, when a man doesn’t get respect from his wife, he divorces her. If a wife doesn’t get attention and respect from her husband, she leaves him. If someone doesn’t feed our love for them, it goes away.

Is that the kind of love Christians are to have for one another? Is God commanding us to love just the lovable in our lives? What about the prickly people we run into? What about the rude guy on the bus, the jerk of a boss, the insufferable bore at the beach? Love them too? Yes! Not because they can do something for our ego or make us feel good, but because God commands us to love one another.

This kind of love doesn’t spring from what they can do for us in our lives, but from faith. True love, a caring kind of love, is based on knowing God’s love for us. God’s love for us is not dependent on receiving something from us. He doesn’t love us because we will praise Him. He doesn’t love us because He is lonely in heaven. He loves us just because He chose to love us.

The confident love of a Christian comes from knowing God’s love. He decided to love us in spite of our sinfulness. He loves us even though we are broken and bent by sin, stained by rotten thoughts and hurtful actions. He loves us even though we can’t earn our way to heaven. He shows His love for us by sending Jesus to pay for our sins. He shows His love by sending the Holy Spirit to create a saving faith in our hearts, a faith that believes and trusts in the love of God. He shows His love by sticking by us even though we often run away from His love. He is faithful despite our unfaithfulness.

True love comes from following God’s command: "to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us." Really, it’s not a hard thing to do - love someone else. It’s not hard when we know how much God loves us. Plus, it’s a natural thing for a Christian to do. Faith naturally will bring forth love. That’s what Christians do. That’s what we will do.

We love others in spite of who they are. As John says "We love, because He first loved us." Because the Lord forgives us of all our sins, we forgive one another and then put our hands where our hearts are. "Dear children, let us know love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."

The child of God is no hypocrite. He doesn’t pretend to love. He does it.

Now, many of us are tempted to show love only when it’s convenient. If it doesn’t take too much of my time and money, I’ll show love. So often we excuse our lack of love for someone else by saying "It’s just good stewardship. The Lord gave me only so much money or time, and I’ve got to do what is best." For you or for your brother? When we don’t show love to someone else, we need to ask the question "Is it good stewardship or selfishness?"  That's not an easy question to answer, since our sinful nature just loves to knock us off track.

Or, we don’t want to be moved out of our comfort zone. We’re uneasy showing love to an inner city ministry. We’re uneasy serving at a soup kitchen. We’re uneasy taking our sick neighbor to the doctor. We’re uneasy sticking up for a classmate getting bullied. What if’s often cloud our expressions of love. What if it fails? What if I can’t do it? What if I get bullied, too?

Look once again at Christ’s love for us. His love moved Him to support us.  He took time to plan our salvation. He took time to come and save us, to write the Bible and send the Holy Spirit into our hearts. His love moved Him to send believers into our lives to help us. His love moves Him to continue to come to us in His Word and give us the strength that we need. Jesus’ love for us shows itself by action.

May God's love for us move us to show love to others. We can show our love in our actions, can’t we? We show love in our personal lives when we help others physically. We show love when we support this congregation’s mission to proclaim the saving Gospel. We show love when we support missionaries who go to far countries and teachers who prepare those missionaries. We show love in our private lives as we pray for those we like and those we don’t. True love, a dedication to others, isn’t limited to people that look like us and act like us. True love supports all others.

We look at ourselves in the mirror of God’s law and often come to the realization that we have not always loved as God commands. Ever find yourself burdened by that guilt? "I should have done this...but didn’t." Let God take that guilt off your shoulders. "This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything." He knows our faith. He knows we try to obey His command to love. When we fail, He knows Jesus paid for our sins, our lack of love.

Do you see how the Lord moves us to show love to others? Do you see how He strengthens us to love one another by His Word? As we stay close to His Word, the Holy Spirit will continue to give us the will to love others. He will set before us opportunities to love, not just in words but in action.

Don’t worry, those opportunities will come. You may be hesitant at first to seize those opportunities. You see all the things that could go wrong, all the arguments against loving your neighbor. But the Lord encourages us "love one another." You can do it, and you will be blessed when you do.

Remember the first time you stood on a diving board at the pool? It was only the three foot board, but as you stood at the end, it looked like a long way down. "Come on," your mom said, "you can do it." Finally, encouraged by her, you dove in. It was so exciting, you did it again and again. Now, it’s a natural part of your life when you go to the pool. You enjoy diving, even though it was tough the first time.  Your confidence came from doing it again and again.

Your confidence in showing love to others will increase as you put your faith into practice.  You will enjoy showing love in your life. That’s guaranteed. The hardest part is getting off the board the first time. Go ahead, jump in! The love is fine.

AMEN