In the Epistle appointed for today, the First Epistle of John, we have a sublime declaration of heavenly inspiration and eternal felicity.  . . . Unfortunately it has been seized by thoughtless persons and cheapened by frivolous employment.  I am speaking of the saying that “God is love.”

    That sublime declaration has been bandied about on bumper stickers and printed on buttons you pin to your clothes; it is used with reckless abandon wherever Christian folk want to paint a happy face on God before an irreverent, unbelieving, and hostile society.  But, you see, those words of the Apostle that “God is love” are a private and intimate declaration to the Church; . . . they are taken from a private and intimate conversation which John recounts in the portion of his Gospel you have just heard read to you.  . . . That “God is love” is a private and intimate declaration to the Church taken from the private and intimate conversation Jesus had at His last supper with the Twelve just before His arrest and eventual Crucifixion.  So, to publicly gush about God’s intimate nature is an irresponsible thing for members of the Church to do.  It is irresponsible because it communicates to crass and carnal minds that there is no such thing as Divine Wrath; that there is no such thing as absolute Justice; that Final Judgement and eternal damnation are merely disconsolate mutterings of puritanical preachers with digestive difficulties.  It is to give the impression to crass and carnal minds that the Commandments are rules to teach children in order to give them “moral values” so that they know they are doing wrong when they violate them all as adults.  Or, worse yet, it is to suggest that the Commandments are merely archaic laws promulgated by domineering males in order to oppress everyone else.

    It is a very dangerous thing to attempt to evangelize the world by telling the world something it was never meant to hear.  It is very dangerous because it leads the carnal and self-absorbed astray.  It gives them cause to hope in God when they have every reason to despair and urgent need to repent.  Because to publicly utter the sublime secret that “God is love” suggests to carnal minds that God is as sentimental and careless as they are; . . . that God will embrace all the things that they do.  . . . But listen very carefully to what the Apostle says:

not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sin.

Do you understand what is being said here?  It is impossible for us to love God or to even comprehend God’s love while we are in sin.  Sin, by its very nature, prevents love’s power.  Do you remember the term which the Church uses to define sin?  The Church teaches that sin is a “disorder of affections”; . . . “concupiscence” is the technical term.  And if the state of sin is a condition of disordered affections, how can the carnal mind even understand the idea of divine love?  To tell the world that “God is love” is as useful as telling someone that “starlight smells musical.”  They have no idea what you are talking about, and they even do themselves spiritual harm by imagining what you mean.

    And this is why Jesus is very precise in what He says to His disciples in the Gospel appointed for today:

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.

Using an ordinary example of the very best impulse of the human heart, our Lord Jesus defines His relationship to us.  Just as any valiant man would do, Jesus places His life in the way of certain death so that we, who are His friends, might live.  And we live only because Jesus has sacrificed Himself as an expiation for our fatal error -- for our fatal sin.  But then Jesus defines for us who is safe -- who will live:  the friends for whom Jesus died upon the Cross are those who do as He has commanded -- those who honor Jesus by carefully observing every precious word that Jesus has spoken to us; as they have been written down for our remembering in the Gospels.  In other words, Jesus did not die for the salvation of all of humanity as some overwrought Christians are likely to say with uncritical abandon.  Jesus died for the redemption of the lives of His friends, . . . and He rose again so that His friends might share, by grace, in the resurrection to eternal life.  But the gift is not universal.  It is given to the friends of Jesus; it is given to God’s friends.  And who are God’s friends?  Whoever will lay down his or her life for their friend Jesus -- whoever will die to all their chaotic, disordered affections and abandon all occupation with self and what one wishes to will for one’s self -- . . . and live only by Christ’s holy word; . . . God’s friends are those who will live only as Christ has commanded us to live.  For then the miracle of grace happens:  having only Jesus and not ourselves as the focus of our lives,

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 . . . that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

Or, as the Apostle John succinctly puts it:  “We love, because he first loved us.”  … In other words, a person begins with the dogged and determined doing of all that Christ has commanded; . . . a person begins by attempting to feel at home with Christ’s commandments; . . . by living them; . . . by abiding in them, . . . and by the helpful grace of God’s Holy Spirit, Christ’s commands do begin to feel more and more like home . . . and a person does gradually comes to joy; . . . they come to the “perfect love which casts out fear.”

    This is what our Lord Jesus means by His saying that we did not choose Him, but that He chose us.  By being available to Jesus by our doing of all that He has commanded us . . . we make ourselves available to hear Him call to us . . . and to follow where He leads.  For then you will have the grace to pray in the Name of Jesus for all things necessary for you to keep to a holy life -- a life which is like a succulent tree:  . . . a life which abounds with divine fruit; fruit which Jesus has appointed each of you to bear into the world and so impart to sinful humanity divine nourishment and health which gives life and saves.  You do this not by standing at a distance chirping cryptic sentences from Holy Scripture.  You nourish the world by manifesting the divine fruit of God’s love; you nourish the world by manifesting the Father’s caritas . . . by manifesting the Father’s unconditional love.  You teach the world that “God is love” by living valiant, fearless lives after the example and by the grace which Jesus gives us.  You teach the world that “God is love” by being a living icon of Christ Jesus:  . . . by abhorring sin but feeding the hungry, . . . by hating wickedness but clothing the naked, . . . by visiting the sick, … by visiting and encouraging those who are in prison.  You teach the world that “God is love” by welcoming the stranger, . . . by sheltering the homeless; . . . by burying the dead.  You teach the world that “God is love” by laying down your life in order to receive and manifest the forgiveness of Jesus which flowed from the Cross and which flows from the Chalice from which you do drink.  You teach the world that “God is love” by manifesting the reconciliation of the Risen and Living Christ whose flesh you are becoming.  . . . God, our heavenly Father, is, indeed, love.  But it is unhelpful for us to simply tell people that.  Christ has commanded you to reveal God’s love . . . by keeping to everything He has taught you . . . in all that you think, in all that you say, and in all that you do.  For, Christ is risen . . . and in Him alone is there life with all its goodness and joy . . . when you do as He commanded . . . and manifest His love.