Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today’s epistle lessons sets the entire Christian life before us. It consists of two things. First, the apostle says, “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” God is love. Not the way the world thinks of God as love. The world thinks “God is love” means “God loves everybody just the way they are and wants them to be happy just the way they are, no matter what they think they are how they’re behaving.” But God teaches us in Scripture that God’s love isn’t tolerance. “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son,” meaning, “This is the way God loved the world, by giving His only-begotten Son into death to pay for the world’s sins, so that “whoever believes in Him”—not just that He exists or that He is the Son of God, but repents of their sins and trusts Him as their only mediator with God—“shall not perish but have everlasting life.” This is the love that God is. And God wants all people to believe this, to repent of their sins, and to abide in His love by living in it each day, by using the gospel faithfully. Enduring, persevering faith is how we abide in God and God in us.
God’s love is perfected among us in this, John goes on: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment. When the unbeliever thinks of the judgment to come—if they think of it of all—he imagines he’ll pass muster based on how good he’s been, or at least how good he’s intended to be. But with this comes a certain amount of uncertainty about the verdict that will be rendered about him. Not so the Christian, the one who abides in, dwells in, and lives in God’s love given in Christ. The Christian has boldness in the day of judgment. The Christian can be confident to stand before the judgment seat of Christ because the Christ who judges is the same Christ in whose love he has been abiding throughout his life. John says we are confident because as He is, so are we in this world. What is Christ? He is the only-begotten Son of God the Father, who rose to new life and ascended far above all the heavens, victorious over the devil and world, ruling in the midst of His enemies. As He is, so are we in this world. Christ is the Son of God and we are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. In baptism He has clothed us with Himself, His merits, His righteousness, and adopted us as children of God the Father, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17). As He is risen from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God the Father almighty, we too are risen from the death of sin by baptism, alive with the life of God the Son. We, too, ascend, not bodily as He did, but as Paul says, we seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God, we set our mind on things above, not on things on the earth . For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory (Col 3:1-4). This is what we are in the world. We are sons of God, who are victorious over our enemies of temptation, death, and the devil, who set our minds on things above, not things below.
And when we dwell in this perfect love of God the Father, we have no need to fear any judgment. This is the confidence of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 4[:3-4] when He writes, “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I know nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord.” Abiding in God’s love, repenting sins as soon as the Holy Ghost convicts us of them, and immediately fleeing to the gospel of perfect forgiveness for Jesus’ sake, drives out all fear of judgment. If we fear torment and punishment for our sins, then we aren’t perfected in love. And who of us can say that we are perfected in God’s love in this life, so that we never have a moment of fear of sin, its consequences, and the final judgment? No one, since we still live in the sinful flesh. But God gives us the Holy Spirit so that when the conscience does quail in fear, when the terrors of guilt do come upon us, He may bring us to repentance and then back to God’s special love for all who repent of their sins and believe in His Son. We love God, after all, because He first loved us. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8), without any merit or worthiness on our part. Believing this to be most certainly true, that this is how God the Father has loved us, we then love Him and abide in His love each day by a true and lively faith.
That’s the first part of the Christian life: faith. Then John moves to the second part of the Christian life. “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” Faith and love toward God is a living and active thing that will show itself, not only in hearing God’s Word, prayer, and patient endurance in suffering, but in love. Faith works through love for the brethren, by which John means our fellow Christians. If someone says he loves God but hates his fellow Christians, he is a liar. And who would actually hate his brother in Christ? It’s easier to do than it might seem. When we hear the word hate we think of intense dislike, aversion, or hostility towards someone. Scripture sometimes uses the word like that. But at other times to hate something means to esteem it less than something else. Jesus says in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” When disciples serve mammon by fretting over it, they’re not hostile towards God—they think too little of Him. Jesus says in Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” Christ doesn’t want us to be hostile and adverse to our family in our following of Him. He’s telling us that we can’t think more highly of them than we do Jesus and His word, so that we allow them to remain in sins simply because they’re our family. If anyone says He loves God, yet despises His brother, thinks little of him, and doesn’t esteem as a fellow son of God through baptism and faith, then He is a liar.
The rich man in today’s gospel lesson is the example par excellence of hating one’s brother. He despised Lazarus, a fellow Israelite and son of Abraham. He didn’t esteem Lazarus for what he was, a child of God through faith. He hated Lazarus. If the rich man had loved the poor beggar he would have helped him. He would have invited to him to his table, or at the very least, fed him at the gate. And since he had no love for his brother Israelite, he did not love God, no matter how much he may have boasted of it to others. He didn’t love God for His mercy which is why, when He died, he goes to Hades to be tormented in flame of fire. There he realizes that he needs mercy. But the chasm is fixed and no mercy can be given, not even a drop, not even the mercy of knowing he did something to save his five brothers from that place. They, like he while alive, have Moses and the Prophets—the word of God, Holy Scripture—and if they will not believe the Word of God, they won’t repent and believe because a man rises from the dead.
Lazarus, on the other hand, is the example par excellance of faith. Jesus doesn’t tell us about His faith, nor does he have any works. How could he, he was full of sores and was laid at the rich man’s gate? But Jesus proves that He had faith by the fact that when He dies, he was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. Lazarus had the faith of Abraham. Lazarus had nothing good in this life, yet, Paul’s words about Abraham in Romans 4[:40-21] apply to him: “He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform.” The circumstances of life didn’t matter one bit. Abraham was rich, Lazarus poor. Abraham was healthy, Lazarus was sickly. But both believed God’s promise and neither set heart on their circumstances—wealth and health on the one hand, poverty and sickness on the other. This is why Lazarus is carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom, paradise, the only destination for all who die in faith, enduring until the end. This faith in God, who is love, saved both Abraham and Lazarus, and continues to save all who abide in it. It gives boldness in the day of judgment because it believes that as Christ is, we are, by faith. Since we are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, we love our neighbors, but especially the brethren, so that we do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith (Gal 6:10). For this commandment we have from Christ, that he who loves God must love his brother also, not because we have to, but because we love the God who loved us first, who sent His only-begotten Son for us. This faith cannot help but work through love. Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
