True and Lasting Love John 15:9-17; Acts 10:34–48; 1 John 5:1–8
Grace, mercy and peace be with you, from God our Father, and our Lord Jesus, who loves us with a true and lasting love.
Today we’re going to talk about the kind of love that is true, taken from our Gospel, 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
Jesus loves you with a true and lasting love. God’s love for you is so deep and so perfect that there’s nothing you can ever do to make Him stop loving you.
You can do something to keep Him from saving you, and that’s to throw away your faith in Christ. But even then, God still loves you.
His love for you is more than words, His love is action. Words are easy; actions are harder.
There’s the saying, “Put your money where your mouth is.”. Jesus went way beyond that. He redeemed you, “not with silver or gold, but with his holy precious blood, and his innocent suffering and death”, as we say in the meaning of the 2nd Article.
Jesus said to his disciples, 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. And the very next day, that’s what He did.
1 John 4:10 says, 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. To die for our forgiveness.
Jesus shows us what true love is, and He tells us what it is. Today’s Epistle says, 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. True love is to obey God’s commandments.
This dispels a common misconception of what love is.
Our culture tends to portray love as something akin to permissiveness, or tolerance of immorality, the idea that love is whatever makes people happy.
The problem is human nature; it’s corrupted with sin. Sometimes doing what’s wrong makes us happy, for a while. Eternally, sin makes us supremely unhappy.
In true love is where true joy is found, as Jesus says in our Gospel: 11 These things I have spoken to you, (about loving God and one another and keeping His commandments) these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
In godly love is true and lasting joy, eternal joy in God’s presence. But in worldly misconceptions of love, which in reality are sin, comes hurt and harm, and in the end, eternal sadness.
When we love others, we’re helping and blessing them; when we sin, we’re hurting and hating them, and ourselves, and our God.
Romans 13:10 says, Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law, the Ten Commandments.
When we give in and sin and do wrong, we’re not loving our neighbor, and we’re not loving God.
And contrary to popular opinion, we’re not loving ourselves; we’re just hurting ourselves.
Sin is in no way, and is never, love. Sin is the total opposite of love. Sin is the behavior of hate. To sin against someone is to hate him or her.
But in contrast, to do good, to obey God’s commandments, is to love. When we resist sin and obey God, then love wins.
On the other hand, when we sin, love loses.
When sin becomes the law of the land, and the laws condone or encourage, or worse yet, command what is wrong, then love loses, and hate wins.
But when we stand up for what’s right, and oppose what’s wrong, including the laws of the land that are wrong, then love wins.
When you stand up for what’s right, and condemn what’s wrong, you might be labelled a hater; but in truth, you’re showing love.
Love doesn’t embrace what’s wrong, but as 1 Corinthians 13 says, love rejoices in truth, what’s true and right.
Sometimes love means doing the difficult thing. Love is the courage to do and stand up for what’s right, even when it’s unpopular.
Even if God’s commandments are despised or ridiculed or disregarded by popular society, to obey them is to truly love God, and to truly love your neighbor.
Today, we give thanks to God for a special kind of love, the love that godly mothers have for their children, and that godly children have for their mother.
When godly mothers live in faith, and strive to show their children what a Christ-like life is, what a life of trusting obeying God looks like, that’s true and lasting love for their children.
The love of a godly mother might come about as close to God’s unconditional love as there is on this earth, or one of the closest things to it.
It takes a lot to make a mother stop loving her child, even if that child has gone astray from her love. A godly mother still forgives and loves and prays for her children, and does what she can.
And yet the truth is, mothers sin everyday, and fall short of loving their families as God commands, just as fathers do, and as children do, and as husbands and wives and brothers and sisters do.
And mothers, like all of us, can only make it by God’s grace. In the end, it’s all we have to parent by, and to live by.
But God’s grace is more than enough.
Living in His grace, mothers have an amazing love to share with their family, as do fathers and children, and brothers and sisters, and husbands and wives.
It’s amazing how tough, rugged men, can melt in the presence of their mother.
I remember some years ago when a player for the Timberwolves got expelled from a game by the referees, and he wouldn’t leave the court, until his mother walked up to him and told him to leave, and he did. He would listen only to her.
Blessed is the mother whose children trust and treasure her, who love and obey her, who listen as she teaches them to obey God and love others.
Blessed is the mother whose children faithfully and lovingly care for her and watch out for her when she’s older. And blessed are the children who do it.
Blessed is the mother who understands the difference between worldly misconceptions of love, and what God’s Word tells us love is, and that’s what she teaches and shows to her children.
Blessed is the mother who knows she can’t do this by herself, but only with the help of God, and the help of others in the family of God.
Blessed are the children who have a mother who loves them enough to teach them right from wrong, to set the rules that are needed, and follows through on the necessary consequences for breaking those rules.
Blessed are the children whose mother lovingly embraces and comforts them when they hurt or cry, who takes care of them every day, and never stops loving them.
Blessed are the children whose mother forgives them when they hurt her or make mistakes, or let her down.
Blessed are the children, who learn and grow from that grace, and become better people.
Blessed is the family, who lives in the Word and prayer, under the cross, and in the church; who repent together, and are forgiven together, and who strive together to be a godly, loving family.
It goes so much better when the whole family loves God, and as one, in harmony, they sincerely try to please God, and follow His commandments of love. There’s so much strength and comfort in that unity.
Now, a verse of thanksgiving, a recognition and blessing of mothers.
We thank You, Lord, for mothers
Who Your great kindness share
Through loving deeds for others
As emblems of Your care.
May we true honor show them
And joyfully express
That they are gifts among us
To cherish and to bless.
May God bless us all with true and lasting love. And may His peace which passes our understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our loving Lord. Amen.