Our desires reflect that which is incomplete in us. God’s love completes us. He loves us, we receive his love, and we give his love to others.
A sermon on 1 John 4:10,17 and 2 John 6 preached by Pastor Emeritus Steve Froehlich.
Quotations:
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
-Carl Sagan
It’s strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.
-T.S. Eliot
The fact that we desire at all means that we are essentially incomplete beings. We are unfinished. If we were self-sufficient, if we were our own good, if we were already finished, we would not have any desire. The reason for this is that desire is nothing less than a yearning for a good which we do not possess.
-Gregory of Nyssa, 4th c.
Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence… Love others as well as you love yourself.”
-Matthew 22:37, 39, The Message
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even 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. To love is to be vulnerable.
-CS Lewis, The Four Loves
Scripture text: 1 John 4:7-17
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have 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 ever seen God; 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 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his 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 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
Liturgy bulletin link
Sermon transcript link
“This Is Love” preached by Rev. Dr. Steven Froehlich, Sunday, April 6, 2025 at 10:00AM at New Life Presbyterian Church in Ithaca, NY. Come see the beautiful Finger Lakes region, and worship God with us. www.newlifeithaca.org.
Sermon music is from “We Will Feast in the House of Zion” provided by Sandra McCracken and with her permission. www.sandramccracken.com.