Bible Text: 1 John 4 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
You’ve all seen I’m sure the COEXIST bumper sticker. It has the symbols of the Muslims, the Jews, the Christians, the LGBTQ advocates, the pagans and wiccans, the Hindus and the ying-yang Taoists, all these symbols together, spelling out the word: coexist. The obvious message is that we should all get along – and to a certain extent that’s true. We Christians aren’t called to force people to believe in Jesus – the Christian religion spread in the first centuries after Jesus’ resurrection through persuasion of the Holy Spirit, never by the sword or by force. And if you are a Christian it isn’t because anyone forced you to be, it’s because the love of God in Christ has won your heart to the true and only God. And we can and we should get along as much as depends on us with our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends and family who believe wrong and harmful things.
But the meaning of the COEXIST bumper sticker is more than a call for getting along. It’s a statement about truth. Is it hateful for me to say that the Jewish religion is wrong when they say Jesus isn’t the Son of God? Is it intolerant of me to say that’s a false religion? Because that’s what John says. Or Islam, with its mandate that all submit to their Christless god Allah, if I say this is from the devil? Or wiccan paganism with its worship of Satan in some pathetic protest against Christ and western civilization? Can I say that’s bad and that I want to protect my children from it? Can I say that the LGBTQ agenda is destructive and leads poor sinners to embrace their sin and run away from the Savior who can change their lives and forgive them and heal them? Can I speak the truth?
In John’s day, and now in ours, the answer is NO. You have to say that others’ beliefs are just as “valid” as your own. Which ends up meaning, of course, that there’s no truth at all – if the Muslim can be right and say Jesus was never crucified (which is by the way to reject the most well-attested event in the history of the world) and I can be right when I say Jesus was crucified for us men and for our salvation, then “right” means nothing, “truth” means nothing. We can’t both be right. And so the whole idea of “truth” goes out the window. My truth, subjectivism, is all you get. And that’s exactly what the spirit of our age wants, summarized in that bumper sticker: COEXIST. Just get along and don’t assert the truth. That’s not loving, they say.
But no, God is love. And Jesus is God. And Jesus is the truth.
When John describes the spirit of AntiChrist, he makes it very clear what it consists in: “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of the AntiChrist.”
The great heresy in the early church was not that Jesus wasn’t God. Pagans are always fine with another god. They’re polytheists, the more gods the merrier. The great heresy was the denial that God, the only God, the Maker of heaven and earth, came in the flesh. That Jesus was a man, with flesh and bones, just like us. That God had joined our human race. That’s what the Spirit of truth confesses.
It’s true that Christianity is exclusive. It excludes every lie. And it’s also true that it is the most inclusive religion, because it includes every truth, about God and about us. And more than that, it is inclusive because Jesus died for all, is, the propitiation not only for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world. And the most loving thing any of us can ever do is to confess Jesus, speak Him to our neighbors with COEXIST bumper stickers on their cars, to our children, to each other.
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Those who are born of God love this message. That’s how you know you’re a Christian. You want to hear about Jesus. You want to hear about Him because you know your love has failed, you know that the chasm between you and God was deeper and wider than anything you do could possibly fix. No bloodless, Jesus-less religion will do. You need God’s love, a love that did span the chasm, because God came down from heaven, He took on our flesh and blood, and with it He took the punishment for our sins, and bore everything that separated us from Him.
We can’t allow the world to define love for us. Those who are of the world listen to the world’s definitions. “Love is love” or whatever. We don’t listen to those definitions. We listen to God’s definition, and God defines love there on the cross.
John says that if we love one another, God’s love is perfected in us. That doesn’t mean that we end up becoming “perfect” in this life. That’s impossible – if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. The word for “perfected” in the Greek means literally, “reach the goal.” And this is the goal of God’s love toward us, that we love one another. So we could translate it, “If we love one another, God’s love has met its goal in us.”
How does that happen, that God’s love meets its goal in us?
First, it means that any love that we show one another, we define by God’s love for us. We don’t define it by our feelings, or whether what we say hurts others’ feelings. We define it by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that cross offends. Paul calls it an offense and so does Jesus.
The cross, the love God shows there, offends because it confronts sin. Jesus bore sin on that cross. The sin had to be punished and He took it. My sin, your sin, the world’s sin. So love, the love we learn from the cross of Jesus, doesn’t ignore sin. It looks at the ten commandments, love God with all your heart, honor your father and mother, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor, you shall not covet, and it says: These are good, this is love. And anything that goes against it is not love.
And that means taking a stand on what marriage is, between one man and one woman, it means insisting that we are to respect authority, parents, teachers, police officers, pastors, governors, presidents, it means we oppose abortion and every other taking of innocent life, it means we say gossip is wrong. And above all it means there is only one God and we are to worship and fear and love Him above all else. And this will offend people. It’s not how the world talks. But we are of God and we listen to God and we speak His words and we see what love is when Jesus has to bear our sins against these commandments on the cross.
And finally the cross tells us that God loves us so much and the world so much, that He takes these sins away from us. He forgives them, because He bore them in His own body.
And so we show this love too. We strive to live according to God’s commands and we trust in the God who took our punishment away for not obeying those commands. And that’s how we love one another. We encourage one another to live as Christ tells us to live. And when we fail, we forgive one another.
Perfect love casts out fear, John says. Again, that is love that has met its goal, God’s goal. That’s the love that casts out fear. You have nothing to fear when God’s love meets its goal in you. Because you don’t have to fear God. He loves you. When you fail to love, He still loves, and you return to that love, again and again, and He always loves and forgives. And He’s in charge of everything, your life, the world, the present, the future, everything, and He loves you. That’s what casts out fear. And when you return to that love of God, on the cross, day after day, you learn that there’s nothing to fear in returning that love to God and to your brother. His love governs all.
If we say we love God and we don’t love our brother, our fellow Christian, we’re fooling ourselves. The very reason we love God is because He forgives us, and when we receive His forgiveness, we’re receiving the same forgiveness He won for our brothers and for the whole world. That’s what we want, for ourselves, our children, our brothers and sisters in Christ, for everyone, that they know the awesome love of God in Jesus. It’s our life, our everything. That’s why we stand on the truth against false religion and why the only symbol that stands for us is the cross of Jesus who came in the flesh. He is God alone, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.