March 14, 2021 Sermon: Motivated by Love

What difference does it make to believe in a God who is motivated by love? That’s the question for this sermon on March 14, 2021, the 4th Sunday in Lent. Today’s message is on God’s gift of grace and love for you, for me, and for the whole world.

The texts for this sermon are Ephesians 2:1-10 and John 3:14-21. I found helpful this week this Sermon Brainwave podcast and Will Willimon’s writing here. 

Grace to you and peace from the One who was, who is, and who is to come, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

A few years ago, back in 2017, a Pew Research survey found that 80% of US adults say they believe in God. There’s also another 9% who don’t believe in God, but do say they believe in some higher power or spiritual force. Sounds about right to me.

And of people who identified as Christians, 99% said they believed in God. Ok.

But of US Christians, only 93% said God loves all people, despite their faults.

That means there’s a substantial group of Christians who believe in God, but don’t believe God loves everyone, and that’s a bit problematic, although maybe it’s not surprising.

Today’s Gospel reading includes probably the most well-known verse in the Bible, John 3:16. Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

You’ve heard this verse before. Martin Luther once said it’s “the gospel in a nutshell.”

In 27 words, it lays out the whole point of why Jesus came, which of course is why we’re here. This verse tells us God’s motivation.

Why did God send the Son to come into the world? Why did God the creator of the heavens and the earth enter into creation? Why did Jesus suffer and die for us? The answer is love. God so loved the world. God’s motivation is love.

I wonder if we believe that. I wonder what difference it makes to believe in a God who acts out of love, as opposed to a God who acts out of other motivations? And remember, there are people who identify as Christians but don’t believe God is always loving.

I think it’s because we as humans are not always motivated by love, and we tend to assume God is like us. We try to make God in our own image, rather than believing we are made in God’s image.

You and I are motivated by all sorts of things, including anger, the desire for revenge, hatred, and fear.

In fact, I don’t think we appreciate how often fear is what’s motivating us, fear of the unknown, fear of others, fear of insignificance, fear of loss…but that’s a different sermon.

Far too many Christians have been taught that God is out there somewhere watching us, waiting for us to slip up and make a mistake so he has an excuse to punish us.

God is right there with a clipboard, marking down every evil thought you have, tallying up all the times you don’t follow the commandments, just looking for the opportunity to zap you.

Or there’s the idea that if you do good things God will make good things happen to you, or you’ll get back the bad things you do to others. That’s karma, not the God of the Bible, the God revealed by Jesus. The Bible does clearly say Jesus will judge us, but the judgment will be a judgment of mercy, given in love.

The one who is our judge is the same one who loves us enough to die for us. God is just, and God is loving. God is merciful. Verse 21 of the Psalm we just read: “Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love.”

Part of it is that so often, people stop reading John 3 before verse 17. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Jesus came to save the world. Jesus came to show the world who God is, to give eternal life, to restore our right relationship with God, to bring us into God’s light.

You can reject God’s love, reject God’s grace, stay in the darkness of sin and the world’s temporary pleasures, but God won’t stop offering you grace and love.

As Paul explains it in Ephesians, we were once dead in our sins. Sin leads to death. I like his image of us following the “ruler of the power of the air” because it’s true, the promises of the devil, the promises of this world turn out to be empty air.

You can’t find true life, eternal life by following the desires of this world, the desires of the flesh and senses, just doing whatever feels good.

You can try to live your own way, and it can even be pretty fun for a while—there are a lot of fun sins!—but when the evil deeds are exposed to the light, they ultimately turn out to be empty, meaningless, temporary pleasure. Our sins have consequences. We condemn ourselves.

Verse 4: But God (that might be the greatest phrase in the Bible…you were dead in sin, on a road leading to death…but God) who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, even when we were captives to sin, unable to free ourselves, unable to turn around, caught up in doing our own thing, looking for life in all the wrong places, even when we were dead people walking, God made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved. God has given you the gift of life. Not because of anything you did, not because of any good works you did, or because you tried hard enough, or you gave enough money, but because God loves you. Your heavenly Father, the One who created you, loves you.

What does it change in your life if you believe God loves you? What changes when you see God’s motivation is love?

Think about all the ways people have been wounded by the church, all the time wasted living in fear, the people who have been driven out because they’ve been told they’re not good enough, or they’ve done something unforgivable.

Think about the way so many people look at Christians as greedy judgmental hypocrites and reject God because they don’t like the way Christians act.

Imagine the difference when we proclaim the God who loves the world, who came into the world to save, not to condemn.

Imagine what changes when we live as the people God made us to be, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, not so we can be saved, but because we are motivated by the same love God has given to us.

This idea of God’s love, of God giving us grace, it’s not something new Paul came up with. All of Scripture is a story of love. It’s the story of God seeking God’s people, seeking to restore the world to the way it was always intended to be when it was created, way back in the garden of Eden.

The world rejected God, we humans turned away from our Creator, but our Creator never gave up on us. God continues to love the world—this rebellious, sinful, stubbornly-broken, God-hating world.

And God will do anything to communicate that love, even suffering the loss of God’s own Son as a consequence of the world’s sin…our sin. This is the gospel. This is the good news. This is the truth shown in God’s light.

Love is God’s motivation. Love is what motivates Jesus to eat with sinners and prostitutes and tax collectors. Love is what led Jesus’ followers to rescue abandoned children, to include Gentiles and Greeks, to risk everything to share the good news and even to pray for their persecutors. God’s love is what has inspired the Church for 2,000 years to reach out to people on the outside, people overlooked by society, to care for lepers and treat plague victims in the middle ages, to create community chests for the poor in 16th century Germany, and to establish hospitals in 19th and 20th century America.

Because we know the story of God’s love, because we know God’s motivation, we can reflect God’s love.

Because we have received the free gift of grace, we have something to share with our friends, with our neighbors, with our world, this world God so loves.

Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, thank you for your love for us and for this world you have made. Thank you for never giving up on us, for giving us new life in Christ. By your Holy Spirit, inspire us to share the good news of your grace with the world, to testify with our very lives to the gift you have given us, that all may know your love. Through Jesus Christ, we pray.
Amen