Thursday, April 29, 2021

The Outline

 


God’s grace, peace and mercy be with you. … My focus is the First Letter of John where we read: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”[1] Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”[2] Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.

The Outline. A key lesson I learned in high school was how to write an outline. High school seniors should know how to write an effective outline. It can help them organize thoughts before they write an essay to a college for admission. Adults seeking employment use outlines to write resumes. Pastors and playwrights draft outlines for sermons and scripts.

John outlined his letter into three primary headings.[3]

I.               WALK IN THE LIGHT

II.             LIVE AS GOD’S CHILDREN

III.           LOVE AND FAITH

Each contains secondary headings. Today’s reading combines the last section of Live as God’s Children and the first section of Love and Faith. Charged with guarding God’s flock, and following the example of the Good Shepherd, John warned Christians to be on guard against the enemies of Christ; to be on guard against the world; and to love.

Warning Christians to be on guard, John instructed them to discern or test spirits to determine whether they were from God or a false prophet. Was the teaching from someone who confessed Jesus Christ came in the flesh or from someone who denied Jesus Christ came in the flesh? As we see from the writings of the Apostles, discernment of spirits was essential in the infant church.

In First Corinthians, Paul wrote, “Who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”[4]

In Hebrews, we read, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”[5]

Discernment of spirits was necessary because not every spirit was from the Triune God. In Ephesians, we read, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.”[6]

Evil spirits prompted dynamic people to preach a false Gospel. In Second Corinthians, Paul warned against those who proclaimed “another Jesus than the one we proclaimed … a different spirit from the one you received … a different gospel from the one you accepted.”[7]

So concerned was Paul for Timothy that he warned, “The Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.”[8]

While there were many spirits in the world, John was concerned that Christians identify the two opposing systems and distinguish the spirit of truth from the spirit of error.[9] Because John was an eyewitness of Jesus Christ, his children could rest assured that God’s Spirit abided with the Church. They had fellowship with Christ because the Holy Spirit connected them to Him through Word and Sacrament.[10]

Make no mistake, John made no room for naïve acceptance of what felt good or seemed inspiring. Good vibrations did not govern his assessment of the Spirit’s work.[11] Rather, commitment to Christ and His teachings assured Christians victory. Clarity reassured victory, but also warned against wavering or accepting any alternative.[12] Those who preferred listening to the teaching of this world passed judgment upon themselves.[13]

John then turned his interest from Christians confessing Jesus to Christians responding in love. Why? Because the secessionists who walked in darkness damaged relationships among the remaining members. John mended wounds by getting the remaining members to redouble their efforts to create true Christian community. They rallied and pulled together.[14]

Love is the principal attribute of God that defines believers. Love is a nonnegotiable in the household of faith. Love is both from God and belongs to God. Beloved Christians extended that love to one another.

By extending love to one another, Christians demonstrated their love was not mere human love. Human love, however noble, falls flat if it refuses to include our Triune God as the supreme object of affection. Human love cannot balance the scale of sin and salvation. Human love cannot save humanity.[15]

Our epistle teaches that God showed himself to be a God of love. To refuse to love means not to know God, for love accompanies confessing faith in Jesus Christ.[16]

Love accompanies confessing faith in Jesus Christ. In this fellowship called the Christian Church, love accompanies our confession. We embrace and confess our faith through three creeds: The Apostles’ Creed, The Nicene Creed and The Athanasian Creed.

On Trinity Sunday, many congregations speak their faith in the Holy Trinity through the Athanasian Creed. This creed is thorough. It details who the Holy Trinity is and what He is not.

In all three creeds, we confess the Son of God is begotten of the Father. The Father did not reproduce Himself to form the Son in a biological way, like a human father begets a son, but the First Person of the Trinity’s relationship with the Second is like that of Father and Son. This is because the Son is eternally present.

The Son existed with the Father since eternity. This is impossible to imagine, but the fact remains that before the beginning of time there was Father and Son, together one God, yet in a relationship to one another like that of Father and Son.

The creeds also express the relationship between the Father and Son together and the Holy Spirit. But in this relationship, the Nicene Creed confesses that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” Again, it is impossible for us to imagine what this means or looks like, but it affirms that there is a relationship between each of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity.

This inner relationship is at the heart of the Godhead, which is why John wrote, “God is love.”[17] To love, there must be someone to love. St. Paul referred to this in Corinthians when he wrote, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.”[18]

Love is always directed at another person. It is always a denial of oneself in favor of the other, their interests and their life and being. In this sense, self-love is an oxymoron. Love is always about the other.

When we confess the Athanasian Creed, we see that God is never alone. God is a community, a relationship. He is One but also Three and always One in Three and Three in One. God passed this love to us when He created us in His image in a community with Him and one another. He created us so that we could express our love in community with spouse and children, friends and neighbors.[19]

Love accompanies confessing faith in Jesus Christ. Martin Luther said as much when he wrote, “Consider the inestimable love of God, and show me a religion that could proclaim a similar mystery. Therefore, let us embrace Christ, who was delivered for us, and His righteousness; but let us regard our righteousness as garbage, so that we, having died to sins, may live to God alone.”[20]

Christians live for God alone through love that accompanies confessing faith in Jesus Christ. I repeat that statement because it was important in John’s day, in Luther’s day and in ours. Not everyone who loves confesses faith in Jesus Christ.

In the early Church, syncretism was a great danger, and we find evidence of it throughout the New Testament. Syncretism occurs when you combine different or contradictory beliefs, assert an underlying unity and allow for an inclusive approach to other faiths. John wrote to his congregation to warn them of false teaching, even if it felt good or inspirational.

Today, many false teachings are present in our popular culture. Books like The Shack and the Left Behind series tempt Christians into believing false teaching. Incorporating these teachings into our belief is syncretism.

The Shack promotes strange ideas about the Persons of the Trinity. The Left Behind series stems from the preaching of a 19th-century Anglican priest turned travelling evangelical preacher named John Darby. Prior to Darby no Christian church embraced the rapture doctrine. Rather, up until then Christians believed that Jesus would come again visibly at some undisclosed time to judge—for the last time—the living and the dead. This is what is affirmed in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.

My point is that while we may be enjoying the latest spiritual reading material, if we are not careful, false teachings can creep into our belief system. Therefore, when we petition God to lead us not into temptation, we need to keep in mind that our enemies subtly attempt to plant seeds of false teaching. Sometimes, this is accomplished by Satan; sometimes, by the world (popular culture and entertainment); and sometimes, by our sinful selves because we say we would never take that stuff seriously and then we start to wonder. That is when doubt begins to take root. So, test what you are reading or watching against Scripture, and pray to our Father in heaven to give you strength to resist and overcome these 3 temptations – Satan, world, sinful self.[21]

In his Large Catechism, Luther reminds us that even loving Christians can be lured into the deadly vices of unchastity, laziness, gluttony, drunkenness, greed, deceit and acts of fraud and deception against our neighbor. When we associate with people who regularly engage in those practices, we easily slip into the mire of sin because we look at our friends and say, “They’re not so bad.” It is this thinking when the sinful self becomes the Trojan horse of our lives.

We are always going to face temptations or what Luther calls attacks. That is why Luther, in his Large Catechism, wrote this: “To experience attack is different from consenting to it. We must all experience it. …  Strong Christians are tempted by the devil. But no one can be harmed by merely experiencing an attack, as long as it is contrary to our will and we would prefer to be rid of it. … But to consent to it is to give it free rein. … We must be armed and expect every day to be under continuous attack. … Even if I am patient, kind and firm in faith, the devil is likely to send an arrow into my heart that I can scarcely endure, for he is an enemy who never lets up or becomes weary.”[22] Hence, we need to pray often to our Father to lead us not into temptation,

For those you love and for the world, profess your faith in Christ and love one another. Live God’s Word and be God’s Sacrament. Children of light, pray to the Holy Trinity for that grace in Jesus’ Holy Name, and when you do, may the peace of God that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.



[1] 1 John 4:11

[2] Psalm 122

[3] See The Jerusalem Bible for the outline of 1 John.

[4] 1 Corinthians 2;11

[5] Hebrews 4:12

[6] Ephesians 2;2

[7] 2 Corinthians 11:4

[8] 1 Timothy 4;1

[9] Bruce G. Schuchard, 1 – 3 John. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House (2012), 418. See fn 137.

[10] Ibid, 137, fn 138

[11] Ibid, 420, fn 154

[12] Ibid, 422, fn 164

[13] Ibid, 432, fn 228

[14] Ibid, 442

[15] Ibid, 445

[16] Ibid

[17] 1 John 4:8

[18] 1 Corinthians 13:4-5

[19] See http://blogs.lcms.org/2011/the-holy-trinity-and-life-together-6-2011

[20] Schuchard, 448.

[21] Luther’s Small Catechism, #230.

[22] Luther’s Large Catechism, #107-109.

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