Today we’re going to talk about The Initiator. And becoming more like the One who initiates. One who goes first, makes the first move. And for some of us, that feels like this [cliff jumping] picture...
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us.
Note the Trinity sighting! (vv 13-14)
Beloved, let us love one another. Everyone who loves is born of God. We’re not talking about your natural self, who you were coming out of the womb. We’re talking about your supernatural self. Born of God. And we’re not talking about just loving those who are easy to love. Even the unbelievers can do that. That’s not why He has given us His Spirit. God's Holy Spirit gives us - each one of us - the power to love those who are hard to love. My guess is that there is someone, maybe in your family, maybe in this church body, who you are having a tough time loving. Someone you’re simply not loving. Maybe someone you don’t even know their name. Maybe they’re different than you. Maybe their personality just rubs you the wrong way. Either way this is somebody who God wants you to love. And He wants to help. He wants to help you to demonstrate love to them, to perfect His love in you. Because you are both His children. And He is Father of love. The Love-Father.
God is love. God is love. That phrase, one of the most sublime, most profound, most powerful lines in all of literature, appears twice in the entire Bible. Right here in this passage. John says it twice. God is love. God IS love. And He so loved. God so loved, and He thus did. Because love is a verb. And what did He do? He sent. He gave. He went out of His way, crossed the street and the cosmos to meet a need. The need of needs. He thus did. He showed up. He went first. The Initiator. God is the quintessential Initiator. Love initiates.
God is love. God IS love. Present tense. Right now, and always. Today. Always and forever, love at the ready, going out, going first. Abounding, overflowing. Since the beginning of time - and long ages before that. Everything about God is characterized by love. Everything He does - love. Everything He says - love. Everything He plans, everything He prohibits - love. This active, positive support of the beloved, the serving of the beloved. This going out and out of its way for the beloved. Initiating good, going first in good, working on their behalf for their good, supporting them, helping them. This is love, and God is love. It is active, it is constant. You and I will never ever be on the receiving end of the first unloving thing God ever did. Because His love is everlasting. Infinite, eternal, immeasurable, unstoppable, indomitable. His love never fails. Not ever. Going out. Sent out. The Initiator. Initiating on behalf of the good of the beloved. Which is us. Paul bends his knees and prays for believers to be able to comprehend how big God’s love is, how long and how wide and how high and how deep is this infinite love of God, this God Who IS love, that we might be able to know Christ and His love, which Paul himself admits, it surpasses knowledge. But to know this love, this God Who IS love - you could take a lifetime and then some, an eternity in fact, and never come close to being able to fully know how great is the love of God which is in Christ. How great His love is for you. And He manifested this love, He showed and demonstrated His love - which is what love does, it does something on behalf of the beloved - what He did, is He said I love you this much, and He stretched out His arms and died for you and for me. God is love, and God so loved… He went first.
What John is not saying is that love is God. All that is love is not God. We do not make love the object of our worship, we do not bow down at that altar. The world likes to say that love wins - which is basically saying that love is God. Love is what is most important. All we need is love, love, love… But that is not what we are saying at all. Love is not most important - God is most important. He is ultimate.
“… a modern author [has said] that “love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god”; which of course can be re-stated in the form “begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.” This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God. I suppose that everyone who has thought about the matter will see what [he] meant. Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. Its voice tends to sound as if it were the will of God Himself. It tells us not to count the cost, it demands of us a total commitment, it attempts to over-ride all other claims and insinuates that any action which is sincerely done “for love’s sake” is thereby lawful and even meritorious. That erotic love and love of one’s country may thus attempt to “become gods” is generally recognised. But family affection may do the same."
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
God is love - and He is ultimate. Love which has Him as the Source and Ultimate Destination is truly divine. So no, not all that is done in the name of love is God - yet anything which is done without love in the name of God is also not of Him. But Jesus said whoever loves family or friends or his own life more than Me cannot be My disciple. The fallacy of earthly love is that short-term happiness is the driving force behind it, it is what validates affections and activity directed on behalf of that which is beloved. What matters most is not the glory of God, but my short-term happiness. Or perhaps it is devotion to some person or a cause. But devotion and short-term happiness are not ultimate. God is ultimate. He is ultimately loving, yes, but any and all affections which fail to consider the entire truth of Who He is, what He is like, and what He wants will ultimately fall short and fail the test.
“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
God is love. The Inventor. The Initiator - because love initiates. Love does, it goes into action. God went first - He made us, superfluous creatures - showered His love and His goodness on us, perfecting us in holiness through the sacrifice of His Son, making the most out of us - so that in the ages to come we would make the most out of Him. He makes it about us because it is all about Him. He is ultimate. We do not give our hearts to any one of His creatures or to any one of His attributes. We do not give our hearts to love, in and of itself. We give our hearts - and our lives - to Him. And by extension then we give our hearts and our lives to His children - to one another.
God is love, and He sent. This word appears only here in this writing, three times in this passage. God sent His only begotten Son. He sent His Son. The Father has sent the Son. So that we should live through Him. To be our propitiation. To be the Savior of the world. “Sent” is the verb form of the word, apostle. One who is sent out, sent out on a mission, usually from and by the king or some other person in authority. And those sent go out not only with a mission but with authority. The authority of the One Who sent them. Authority. Authorization - and the means - to carry out a mission. THE mission - which He has now delegated to us. Authorization to love, to initiate. To go first.
“All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore (I am sending you, therefore) and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you, and behold, I Myself am with you all the days, even to end of the age.”
The Initiator. Now with us, living inside us. And as He was sent, He is now sending us.
John 17:18 “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. 20 I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; 21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; 23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”
We go, we teach, we serve, we love because He first loved us. Love is from God. He took the first step. Somebody has to take the first step. Tag - you’re it. You have been loved by God, begotten by God, have come to know Him, are living through Him. His love is in you - waiting to come out. He has created this little love hotspot - and it is all ready to shine. And He wants to love that unlovable person through you.
The Initiator
- A person or thing which initiates or begins something
- OR, the person who admits someone into a group
He is the Initiator - and by all accounts, we indeed have been duly initiated - into God’s family! Into the family that so loves. An initiator can be:
- CHEMISTRY: a substance which starts a chain reaction
- an explosive or device used to detonate a larger one
That’s exactly the idea. Our God and Savior is looking to detonate a larger explosion of His love through our lives - as we unleash His love on one another and on our neighbors and on the nations. He has sent us His Son. He has loved us with His love. He has given us His Spirit. Initiating a chain reaction of love. The Initiator.
Listen to the words of none other than Napoleon Bonaparte: : “I am a man. I understand men. These were all men. Jesus Christ was more than man. Our empire is built on force, His on love, and it will last when ours has passed away…”
An empire of love, a chain reaction, detonating to the ends of the earth. There is no love apart from Jesus, and it is His will that we love one another. The Initiator.
There is a wondrous paradox here. Unseen yet seen. People see the invisible God - His love - when they see us loving. Family. Beloved, let us love one another. Have you noticed the upgrade in this command, Love 2.0? No longer is it love your neighbor AS YOURSELF. With self in the middle. It’s not about me. Now it is, love one another AS I HAVE LOVED YOU. Christ is in the middle, at the back and the end of all our one anothers.
“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
You don’t choose your family. But you love them - family SHOULD, at least, be that place where you find the truest, most faithful, most accepting love. And there is no love apart from Jesus. We should find it here, find Him here, find His love here. And so should the world… I have chosen you for one another. But this chain reaction, our chain of love is only as strong as our weakest link - and those are the places where we are not loving one another. Not loving the unlovable. Where we are not going first. The weak link is not the perceived shortcomings or unloveableness of the unlovely. The weak link is my failure to love.
No fear. He mentions fear 4 times. Instead of fear we have confidence. And this confidence all stems from the fact that it doesn’t depend on us. Confidence in the day of judgment - and confidence to go first - does not depend in the least on our feeble efforts to try and be good. To try and love God. He is the Initiator. He loved us. He showered us with His love. He lathered it on, all thick and rich. The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the the world, the Propitiation for our sins, the all-sufficient Sacrifice - and again, when we embrace this truth, when we embrace Jesus as Savior, God puts us in Jesus and puts His love IN us, His seed of love, His Holy Spirit, and we then become extensions of His love. Love hot-spots. We become initiators - LIKE HIM. We want to be the people who initiate. Or do we…? Many of us do not. We hold back. Fear. We let others make the first move. I’d like to suggest that God’s love does not do that.
Seth Godin: “The initiator"
"I'm just here to learn.” Learning is fine. Listening is good. Consensus is natural.
But initiating is rare and valuable and essential.
How often do you or your brand initiate rather than react? How often do you tweet instead of retweet?
For each person who cares enough to make something, who is bold enough to ship it, who is generous enough to say, "here, I made this,"…
There are ten people who say, "I could have done it better."
A hundred people who say, "Who are you to do this?"
A thousand people who say, "I was just about to do that,"
and ten thousand people who sit back and watch or don't care at all.
And all of that is okay, because the person we need, the one we cherish, the one we would miss, is the first person, the initiator, the one who cares.
Thanks for shipping your work.
Love goes first. Love initiates. Love is bold enough to ship itself out, to put itself out there. Love is not merely here to retweet, to react - love sends itself out. The one who is abiding in THIS place, in this place of love, has the assurance that the God Who is love is abiding in them, that what is coming out of me is the outcome of His work in me. We love because He first loved us. Love goes first. And so it is with God’s people. We go first. We initiate. Because love - God’s love - initiates. We don’t love because someone else did something nice for us. Because they initiated with us. We don’t wait to be loved first. Love goes first. Love sends out. Love takes a risk.
“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Yes, Love is dangerous. Love is risky. It means putting yourself out there. Where you might be rejected. But love is courageous! It doesn’t give in to fear. Far better to get in the game and join Jesus on His rescue mission of love than to sit on the sideline. Wrapping our hearts up in a coffin. Let us not be among those who stand back and sit on their donkeys, critiquing and criticizing. I could have done it better. Who are you to do this? And let us not be among those who feel better about themselves because they merely thought about doing something. Have you ever done that?
Steve Moore calls it the off-ramp of good intentions. On our way to loving, we think about loving, helping, giving - we think about doing something. I really ought to do something. But we don’t follow through. We exit off the love highway. Life is busy. Initiating is uncomfortable. And so we miss our window, and maybe we feel regret at that - but sometimes we comfort ourselves for merely having had the intention to love. It’s the thought that counts, we say. Almost given. Is it the thought that counts?
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. — Henry David Thoreau
Attention. Time. Compassion - we have plenty of these priceless gifts to offer. Let us not stop short of actually sending, sending out love, out to one another - and to our neighbors and to the nations. Spiritual first responders - that’s our mission. That’s our calling, our lineage. And the call has already gone out. The disaster is already happening, in the lives of everyone around us. Brokenness everywhere. Everyone has a story, a deep need. Everyone. Everyone needs grace. Not everyone WANTS it. So, going first works best without expectations. Because not everyone will respond. But a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle. Who are you going to initiate with this week? With whom? Today? Is there someone with whom God wants you to initiate this afternoon? Learn their name? Ask how you can pray for them? Serve them in some way? Go first with a stranger? Smile first. Say hello first. Go first with family or friends - tell them / show them how much you appreciate them. Serve them. Go first. The Initiator. He lives inside us, His people. He wants to go first and love through us. Let’s make every effort to keep in step with His Spirit and allow Him to do just that.
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