Sunday message · Wrestling with Love series
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Message Summary
On Easter Sunday 2018, Pastor Phillip Santillan launches the Wrestling with Love series from 1 John 4:7–11, 19. Clarity celebrates the resurrection of Jesus and believes it changes everything, which is why the church begins a series on real-life issues each Easter. This one starts with an observation: it is easy to love people who look, believe and vote like us, but no one is quite like anyone else, so people become hard to love, and we become hard to love too. Love can feel more like a wrestling match.
Before later weeks explore what love looks like, Phil asks why we love. Believer or not, everyone can learn how the resurrection shapes the way we love. The first truth in the passage is that love can only be received as love is shared. Quoting scholar Ben Witherington, Phil notes that our whole capacity to love comes from God first pouring his love into us. Love is learned by observation: children learn to love by being loved well, and we know what love is only because it was shown to us.
God showed that love by sending his one and only Son so we might live through him (verse 9). In Romans 5:6–8 Paul says that when we were utterly helpless, Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins (verse 10).
The why comes in verse 11: if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. God did not love us simply so we could be forgiven and go to heaven; his love “qualifies and commissions people to be missionaries of his love” in their everyday spheres of influence. For those who follow Jesus, this is not negotiable, and it reaches even to enemies, a command Jesus lived out on the cross. To get better at loving, Phil says, look to Jesus, whose death and resurrection bring not just permission but the responsibility and opportunity to love.
Phil admits nothing in him makes him worthy of this love; as a sinner, he has lived life his way, for his glory, instead of God’s way. Yet God’s love rests on who God is, not on who we are, and it gives us incredible value in the middle of our mess. The gospel means we are more flawed and sinful than we ever want to admit, yet more forgiven, loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we can ever imagine.
He closes with an invitation, especially for those on the fence who like Jesus but maybe not the church. No one has to believe everything the Bible says about Jesus to follow him; the disciples often did not understand either, and anyone can come to Jesus messed up. Phil invites anyone ready to pray with him, believing Jesus died for their sin and trusting him for forgiveness and power to love better; longtime followers can join in as daily repentance.