As God Is So Are We in This World

Text: 1 John 4:7-21
Audio Recording

The Apostle John finishes this letter with a very cut-to-the-chase word of practical advice that I think we in our day and time tend to dismiss as ancient babble that is no longer applicable in our very civilized, very progressed, very sophisticated day. He says, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Idolatry, we don’t do that anymore, do we? We’ve lived through Modernity. We don’t make little stone figurines in the image of things we believe to be gods and put them on pedestals in shrines and make offerings to them in the hopes that they will favour us. We don’t do that anymore. We’re beyond all that, aren’t we?

No, we’re not. We have our idols. We worship celebrities, sports stars, political parties, trees, technology, Science, medicine, family values, Church, Capitalism, Socialism, Idealism, Realism, Alcoholism and so on. These are all idolatry. Seriously, if it weren’t for our propensity to worship idols the advertising business wouldn’t exist. Every billboard, every commercial, every Tim Horton’s cup littering the side of the road tells us that we worship gods called money, sex, power, hockey, and the unholy trinity of me-myself-and I. We are disgustingly idolatrous and this, my friends, is a problem. Psalm 115 verses 2-8 identifies this problem very well. It reads:

“Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.”

Humanity has a problem in that we tend to become like that which we worship and serve. The Psalmist says that idols are deaf, blind, mute, can’t smell, can’t touch, can’t walk, can’t even go “uh”; basically, they have no life in them. Therefore, when we worship and serve idols we become just like them; i.e., dead. It is popular to say that if there were no religions, there would be no wars. I would agree with that if what we are calling religion is idolatry. When we worship and serve money, poverty results. When we worship and serve sex, women and children get abused. When we worship and serve power, war results. When we worship and serve me-myself-and I, relationships and community dissolve into narcissistic pursuits of entertainment and pleasure of which there is never enough. Because of self-olatry, we North Americans have the social development level of pre-schoolers who play beside each other rather than with each other. There is only one way, “my” way. We take what we want and we scream and fight and bite when someone takes from us. We have a problem. “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

So, if humanity has a tendency within itself to become like what it worships and serves and idolatry leads to death, what happens if we go the other direction with this? God created humanity in his image so that when we worship and serve God the Trinity, the loving communion of Father Son and Holy Spirit, we become like God and live. Actually, it goes a bit beyond that for us who are in Christ. John says here in verse seventeen, “…as he (God) is so also are we in this world.” As God is, so are we in this world. One of the major points lurking behind John’s whole letter here is God cannot be seen apart from our worshipping and serving him. God is love. So, when we love as he has loved us, we are in this world as he is in himself and his intended purpose for humanity is brought to its fulfillment. In essence when we love as he has loved us God is seen. We are like a mirror reflection of God, except we are a living reflection.

How best can I explain this? Well, if we love God (because God loved us first) we will begin to experience ourselves as under obligation to love others. It’s like being swept up by a strong current in a swollen river and the only way you can swim is to go with the flow, to love as God has loved you. When you try to swim by just doing what makes you happy, you know it’s not enough to live on. You just know it. When God in his love gets a hold on us, there arises in us an awareness not only that God loves me, but also I must love as I have been loved. There arises in us a new desire to want to be and do what is pleasing to God, rather than just a blind sort of being and doing of what I want to do. There arises in us a new turning outwards in love, that wasn’t there before, a desire to forgive when before we’ve only wanted vengeance or vindication. There arises in us a desire to be proactive in the lives of others that they may come to know the love of the God as we do. This new awareness does not replace who we are as persons. It re-orders us. Its presence in us is very tumultuous for it comes against our deepest beliefs and instincts. It’s like a dandelion growing in the middle of a parking lot. When the tiny seed of these little flimsy things takes root, the power of its growth can push through asphalt. As fellow Christians, we must learn together to live out of this life-transforming urge to love that God has placed in us. It is the perfecting, the completion of God’s love. His love grows in us, matures, and bears fruit so that as he is so are we in this world.

I guess we should define love. John says God is love. In the Greek language there are four words for love. There is eros from which we get the word erotic. It means romantic love. This is not the love John speaks of. Another form of love in the Greek language is storge or family love. This too is not what John means by love. The third form of love for the Greeks was philia, love between friends. Once again, this is not the kind of love John means. All three of these loves can become an idol to us and in turn become destructive. God is love, but God is not the passion of being in love. God is not the love around Grandma’s table at Christmas. God is not being someone’s BFF.

John says that God is agape. At 3:16 he defines this love as what Jesus did by laying down his life for us. The Greek word John uses that we translate as life is psyche, which is usually translated as soul. The psyche or soul is the totality of one’s life before God and others. It is the entirety of who I am. In love Jesus set his self aside to be obedient to God the Father and to give his psyche so that we might have life. So our obligation to love, to agape means that we too must lay aside who we think we are, what we want to be and do, so that we together with our brothers and sisters in Christ might find out who we are in our new life together as children of God. Agape requires we be proactive in each other’s lives rather than simply reactive. Agape requires we get into each other’s souls and bear one another’s burdens and one another to forgive as we each have been forgiven.

You see, the Church is not where we go on Sunday morning for religious or spiritual self-edification; where we sing our hymns, say our prayers, laugh a little, and nap a little because that’s what good people do and it’s the way we’ve always done it. The Church is the community of people God has called together to agape one another as he has done for us in Christ Jesus, who laid down his soul to become who he was not so that we might have life. He who is life became death, so that we may live. Moreover, God has shown us agape by giving us his own soul in sending the Holy Spirit to abide in us that we might abide in his relationship with Jesus as children of God. God is the loving communion of the Father Son and Holy Spirit who seeks us out to bring our dead souls to life in his own. As God is so are we in this world. We are not the Church when we do our own things, go our own ways, and see each other in passing on Sunday morning. We are more than just friends. We are more than a church family. We are the community where people because of God’s love actively set their self’s aside to be for others, where the love of God is, where God is. As God is so are we in this world.