ADVENT 2021: LOVE

EPHESIANS 2.4-5

Introduction 

Alfred Lord Tennyson said, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Mahatma Gandhi said, “Where there is love there is life.” Lao Tzu said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Victor Hugo said, “Life is the flower for which love is the honey.” Dickens wrote, “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.” Aristotle said, “Love is comprised of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” Buddha said, “You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” Plato said, “At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.” Augustine said, “Love is the beauty of the soul.” Einstein said, “You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.” 

Much has been written about love. Much has been sung about love. Much has been said about love. Love is in fashion every year at Christmas time. There is no shortage of romantic comedies that flood the Hallmark channel every December. And every year on the Sunday before Christmas Eve we celebrate love together as a church. 

The first week of Advent we considered hope. The second week of Advent we contemplated peace. Last week Pastor Kevin preached on the joy of Advent. And this morning we celebrate the love of Advent. But the love we celebrate every year at Advent isn’t a generic love. It is a very specific love.

The love of Advent and the love of Christmas is the love that God the Father had in sending his Son the Lord Jesus Christ. Our text this morning is not a stereotypical Christmas passage, but it is very much about Advent. Let’s consider these two verses from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in light of the incarnation of the Son of God and what it means for Christ Community Church over 2,000 years later.

Love is the Motivation for Advent

But before we actually dig into these two verses it’s important that we understand the context of these two verses. Ephesians, like many of Paul’s epistles follows a particular pattern: the first half of the book is about orthodoxy – it teaches us doctrine, it teaches us about how we’re saved. The second half of the book is about orthopraxy – it teaches us how we are to live after we’re saved. The first chapter of Ephesians is one of the richest in all of Scripture. It reveals to us God the Father elected us, his Son redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit regenerated us.

And then we come to chapter two. The first three verses of Ephesians 2 paint a dark picture of humanity apart from Christ. We were dead in our sins. We followed the world, the flesh, and the devil. We were rightly deserving of God’s wrath. It’s imperative that we pause for a moment and give a gospel warning. If you are not trusting in Christ alone then this is you. You are dead in your sins. You might think, “I’m not dead; my heart is beating; I’m alive.” But Scripture reveals that you are spiritually dead. You are enslaved to your flesh, to the world, to the devil. That is the state of every human being who has ever lived apart from Christ.

But there is good news. And that good news starts with two little words, but God. These are the two most important words in Scripture. They are the two most important words ever written. We were dead in sin. We followed the world, the flesh, and the devil. We deserved God’s righteous condemnation in hell forever…but God.

On this little conjunction – but, and this little noun – God, hangs our only hope for peace, joy, or love. We were in our dead state, we were following the world, the flesh, and the devil, we were running as fast as we could toward hell, but God. God took initiative. We did not move first, God did. No ne ever decided to follow Jesus. Everyone is dead until God.

And then Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, peels the curtain back on who God is. He says, God, being rich in mercy. God is rich in mercy. What do we mean when we say someone is rich? We mean they have a lot of money. Rich people don’t make ends meet every month. They have excess. 

When I was a kid I loved watching Richie Rich. Do you remember that movie with Macaulay Culkin? Richie Rich was like the richest kid in the whole world. He lived in a giant mansion. He had his own roller coaster and a McDonalds in his house. He had everything a kid could want. He lived a life of extravagant excess.

That’s how God is with mercy! He has an excessive amount of mercy. He doesn’t have barely enough. He’s rich in mercy. He is wealthy in giving us that which we do not deserve. The richest man in the world right now is Elon Musk. He is worth $297 billion. Elon Musk’s bank account is like a drop of water in the ocean compared to the mercy of God.

God has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to mercy. He has enough mercy to forgive our sins and count us righteous. And he has more mercy to continue to forgive and sanctify us for our whole lives. Our kids are super into board games. Last Monday Alex Jr. and Haddon were playing monopoly and Alex bought a property. Haddon warned his brother, “don’t buy it, you’ll have to spend more money.” Alex responded, “You have to spend money to make money.” 

I don’t know if that’s true with real money, but I know it is true with the mercy of God. The more God  spends his mercy, the more mercy he has to give. On Wednesday nights Pastor Kevin has been leading a study through Dane Ortlund’s book, Gentle and Lowly. Even if you can’t make the study, read the book. It is a life-giving treatise on the heart of Christ for sinners and sufferers. It is a beautiful study of the mercy of God.

That leads us to the motivation of God. I follow the Rock on instagram. On Mondays the Rock posts videos of himself working out entitled, #motivationmonday. The Rock, who is an Adonis, is trying to give pathetic people like me motivation to get in the gym and get swoll. What is God’s motivation? Verse 4 says, because of the great love with which he loved us. The preposition because of gives us the reason for God’s action. His great love, describes his motivation. This God who is filthy rich in mercy loved us.

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, the day when we light the love candle, we see that God’s motivation for redemption is love. We have reasons for everything that we do. All of our actions have motivations. Sometimes they’re good; sometimes they’re bad. God’s motivation for sending his Son was the great love with which he loved us.

Paul reminds us again how great God’s love is. God did not love us when we were loveable. God loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses. When we were in rebellion against his law, God loved us.

And that brings us to the main idea of these two verses. The main idea of this sentence is God made us alive together with Christ. God is the subject; we are the object; made alive is the verb. We were spiritually dead, but this God who is excessively wealthy in mercy, because he loved us, made us alive together with Christ. This is the good news of Advent. This is the gospel.

We could only be made alive because Jesus was made alive. The eternal second person of the Holy Trinity was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. We would have remained dead in our sin if not for the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. When the Holy Spirit conceived Jesus in the womb of Mary God himself became incarnate. For the first and only time in history there is one person with both a divine nature and a human nature.

Jesus lived without sin, died in the place of sinners on the cross bearing the wrath of God, and resurrected on the third day. The Son of God was made alive twice: once at the nativity and then again on Easter when he was risen indeed. But he couldn’t have resurrected if he didn’t die, and he couldn’t have died if he didn't live, and he couldn’t have lived if he hadn’t been conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Advent is about how God loved us enough to make Jesus alive. And because he made Jesus alive, he can make us alive.

If you repent of your sin and trust in Christ, God will make your dead heart alive. The Bible says, by grace you have been saved. One time Debbie Broach told me that she remembers what grace means from this acronym of the word grace: God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. Man, that’s good. We need to be saved. We need salvation from the wrath of God. It is only by God’s grace that we can be saved. It is only when God makes us alive that we can believe.

God’s grace comes exclusively through the gospel. The good news that Jesus Christ lived righteously in your place, died in your place bearing the justice of God for your sins, and that he resurrected on the third day. If you trust in his person and work and turn from your sins you will be saved. God did this because of his love. This is the meaning of Advent.

Love is the Result of Advent

When you repent and believe the gospel of Jesus, the Father gives you his Holy Spirit and enables you to love like God does. Karl Barth said that all of the attributes of God can be summarized under two headings: holiness and love. God’s holiness attributes are his incommunicable attributes. They are the attributes that humans do not share. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Humans do not and never will share these characteristics with God. But because we are made in God’s image there are attributes we can and do share with God. Barth summarized these as love attributes.

God loves. God shows mercy. Christians can and must love. We must show mercy. In Matthew 22 Jewish leaders ask Jesus which is the greatest command in the Law. Jesus answers:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 22.37-40).

Jesus says that the 10 commandments can be summarized in two commands: Love God and love your neighbor. If you want to know how Jesus defines your neighbor check out the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10.25-37. Spoiler alert, every human being is your neighbor. On Maundy Thursday Jesus gave further explanation as to how we’re supposed to love, especially other believers. Jesus said:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13.34-35).

The command to love one another is not new. But the new command is to love one another as Jesus loved us. Jesus’ love for us was self-sacrificial. Jesus sacrificed himself for us because he loved us. Jesus commands us to have a self-sacrificial love for one another. We should love each other in a way that is costly. If your love and service for your brothers and sisters here at church is only when it’s convenient for you, then you are not loving like Christ. The love of Christ is a self-sacrificial love.

Jesus also tells us that our love for fellow Christians is evangelistic. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. In a world that divides based on skin color, political parties, economic status, and everything else under the sun, we are a church family that loves each other in spite of our differences. Regardless of your net worth, skin color, or vaccination status, if you are a fellow member of this church then we are family and we love each other.

That kind of love doesn’t make sense to the world. How can people who voted for Trump and people who voted for Biden love each other? How can people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated love each other? How can people who live in north Macomb love those of us down in Madison Heights? Our love for each other preaches the gospel to the world because it is alien. It is not a love that the world can muster up on it’s own. It is a divine love. It is an overflow from the love that exists between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is the love of God.

Conclusion

We began this sermon with some of the most famous quotes in history about love. We have considered what St. Paul taught about God’s love. We have also heard quotes from Jesus himself about love. We will end with one more quote about love from the Lord Jesus Christ. Besides the Lord’s Prayer it is probably the most memorized verse in the whole Bible and it is the most important thing you can consider this Christmas. It is literally a matter of life and death. This is the quote from Jesus that I want to leave you with on this fourth Sunday of Advent: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3.16).