All I Want For Christmas is Love

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly... But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us... (Romans 5:1–11)

All I want for Christmas is love—because grace, peace, and hope all flow from the love of God.

The Advent of What We Deeply Need

We call this time of year Advent, which properly defined means a coming into place or an arrival. Over the last several Sundays in our series "All I Want for Christmas," we've considered that Christ's advent is the arrival of that which we deeply need and ultimately desire.

This season is dominated by desire, especially for children. I have four specimen of children, and there's hardly a day that goes by that I don't hear, "I want this for Christmas, I want that for Christmas." If I went by their lists, Amazon would be at my house six times a day. We live in a culture where our wants have been met so thoroughly that we begin to think our wants are actually needs.

There certainly are things we truly need—essentials. But when we look closely, we discover quickly that it's not just material things we need. We are more than just material beings. Because we have a spirit and a soul, there are needs deeper than the material. We need air, food, and water—but in the same way we deeply need grace from God, peace with God, and hope in God.

Grace, Peace, and Hope Are Interconnected

All three of these are essential if we are to experience the abundant life Jesus came to give: grace from God bringing peace with God resulting in hope in God. And these things are found in Christ. His coming into this world—that little child born in Bethlehem—is the arrival of that which we deeply need and desire.

These things are interconnected. It's impossible to have hope in God if you don't also have peace with God. The opening pages of the Bible, in Genesis 3, tell of sin entering the world and death spreading to all humanity. Paul says in Romans 5 that through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and it has spread to all of us. We are at enmity with God because of sin, which is against His very nature.

So there must be a dealing with that conflict before we can have peace and hope. And we cannot have the grace that brings that peace and hope without the love of God. As you look from Genesis to Revelation, love is the basis from which God's grace comes, the resulting peace it enables, and the hope we have. Love is the foundation.

Love Is the Basis: God Gives Grace Because He Loves

This season in our culture is largely about giving and receiving. And one thing you discover as you become a giving person is that the words of Jesus are true: "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35). As a child you love receiving gifts; my kids love receiving gifts. But as you become the one giving, you realize there is great joy in it.

Yet this whole giving season would not exist if it were not for the gift given out of love, described in the most famous verse of the Bible—you even see it at football games: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). The love of God is the basis for the gracious gift, which is the foundation for this season of giving.

So our first point is this: God gives grace because God loves. Love is the basis for God's gracious gift that has brought peace with God and gives us hope in God.

Justified, at Peace, with Access

Look again at Romans 5, beginning at verse 1: "Therefore, having been justified by faith…" Through the gracious gift of His Son, God has made it possible for us to be justified before a holy God. Genesis 3 tells us we are sinful—we have done, thought, and lived things contrary to God's nature and law. Justice needs to be satisfied, and to be justified means justice has been satisfied—in the gracious gift of Jesus on the cross. We are justified by His blood, and we access this justification by faith.

Because of that, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. But God's grace goes further than dealing with our past—it deals with our present, making it possible for us to have access to a holy God. In the Old Testament, sinful humanity could only approach God through animal sacrifice, and even then there was separation, vividly portrayed by the veil between the Holy of Holies and the people. But now in Christ, because our sin has been dealt with, we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

And there we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. The whole Bible orients us toward a future when God returns and establishes His kingdom—a time with no suffering, no war, no death, no tears. I don't know anybody who wouldn't desire to live in such a world. So we glory even in tribulation, because tribulation produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. And hope does not disappoint—why? "Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:5). Did you underline that? Hope does not disappoint because of the love of God.

Love Is Essential—Seen in Titus and Ephesians

We cannot have these deep needs of the soul met without the love of God. See it in Titus 3:3: "For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived… hateful and hating one another." That describes our past condition. "But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit…that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:4–7).

Grace, peace, hope, mercy, justification, regeneration, renewal, an inheritance of eternal life—all of it on the basis of the kindness and love of God, not by religious works or ritual or sacrifice we could offer.

Paul says it again in Ephesians 2:1: "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins… we were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ." Underline those words: because of His great love. By grace you have been saved—not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. It will take all of eternity for us to grasp the riches of God's grace toward us in His kindness. And where does it all come from? God's love.

God Loves Because God Is Love

Where does this love come from? Those who have served in children's ministry know the song from 1 John 4:7–8: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God… He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." Love comes from God because God is love. He doesn't merely love as an action or show love—it is His very nature.

So point two: God loves because God is love.

In our culture we have a difficult time defining love because we throw the word around for everything. You might love tamales, you might love your dog, and you love your spouse—hopefully there's some hierarchy in there. We use the same word for all of it. The English language has only one word, while the Greek of the New Testament has at least four words for love, three of which appear in the New Testament.

But it's not only a deficiency of language. Our culture in the West has spent the last 150 to 200 years seeking to remove God from its consciousness, and no wonder we struggle to understand love. As William McDonald said, "There is no love in the true sense but that which finds its source in Him." When you remove God from the cultural construct, everything is destabilized—like a game of Jenga—dignity, identity, morality, and love all go away.

This is why Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Madman, did not say what people think. When he said, "God is dead, and we have killed him," he asked, "What shall become of us, the murderers of God?" He was saying we have no basis for morality, meaning, or love once we remove God. As another commentator wrote, "Because of His nature, God's love, mercy, and goodness flow from Him like a beautiful river, as sunlight radiates from the sun. Real love has its ultimate source and origin in God."

God Demonstrated His Love by Giving All

Romans 5:6 says, "For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

God's love is demonstrated, revealed. When we open the Bible we open revelation. Theologians speak of three kinds. General revelation: Psalm 19 says the heavens declare the glory of God, and Romans 1 says God reveals Himself through conscience. Creation and conscience cry out to us of a Creator. But general revelation is deficient—it tells us that God is, that He is intelligent and powerful, but not what He is like.

Special revelation: God speaks in a language we can understand through the prophets, revealing His nature and His will—what God is like and what God likes. But even this can be lost in translation. Those of you in bilingual families know things can be lost in translation. Because we are broken and fallen, we frame love through broken lenses. So when God says through Jeremiah, "I have loved you with an everlasting love," we don't really know what that means.

So God moves to the third form, personal revelation: God became a man to personally show us what He means by love. Romans 5:8 connects us with this—He demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. John says the same in 1 John 4:9–10: "In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him… and He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

That word propitiation means atonement or payment. Through sin we have a debt too great to pay. Americans understand debt well—national, personal, consumer debt. You know that paying the minimum keeps you in debt a long time. But our debt for sin is so great we can't even afford the minimum payment—not through religious ritual, effort, good works, church attendance, service, or tithing. Yet when Jesus on the cross said "It is finished," in Greek it is one word, tetelestai, an accounting term meaning "paid in full." The redemption cost has been paid.

So point three: God demonstrated His love by giving all. Jesus said in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends." That may be the greatest expression of human love. But Romans 5:8 says God demonstrated His love while we were yet sinners—while we were His enemies. As 1 John 3:16 says, "By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us."

Our Response: Love God, Love Others

This love is so great that the church has commemorated it for the last 2,000 years through the sacrament we call communion, which we'll partake of shortly. In communion we memorialize the love of God in a tangible way—the bread representing His body broken for us, the cup His blood shed for us. God says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love," and then He says, "Let me show you what that looks like."

But what else is the proper response of one who has received this love? John says in 1 John 4:19, "We love Him because He first loved us." Jesus said one who is forgiven much loves much. So point four: we love God in response to His love.

This theme runs through the entire Bible. Genesis 1 shows God created everything; Genesis 3 shows why the world is broken through sin and death; and from Genesis 4 onward we see how God intends to deal with sin—first by selecting a family through whom He would bless all humanity. In Genesis 12 God called Abram, promising, "In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Through Abraham's son Isaac, and Isaac's son Jacob (Israel), and Israel's twelve sons, God would bring the Redeemer, Jesus.

By the book of Exodus this family is enslaved in Egypt, and God sends Moses to deliver them. After the plagues and the exodus, Moses brings them to the edge of the Promised Land. In Deuteronomy 4:37 Moses says, "Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them; and He brought you out of Egypt with His Presence and His mighty power." Why did God deliver them? Because of His love.

And lest they forget, He says it again in Deuteronomy 7:7: "The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples." Don't think God chose you because there's something amazing about you. Verse 8: "But because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath He swore to your fathers… He redeemed you from the house of bondage." And the response, Deuteronomy 6:4–5: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." The response to the love of God is to love God.

His Love Compels Our Love for Others

But we don't respond to God's love only by loving God. The Scriptures reveal that we also respond by loving others. First John 4:11 says, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." Point five: His love compels our love for others. When we realize how greatly He has loved us—he who is forgiven much loves much—His love at work in us and through us compels us to love other people.

Because of our brokenness, we sometimes don't fully understand what love is, so God gives us a description in 1 Corinthians 13:4–8: "Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails."

Those who grew up in the 1960s know the song "What the World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love"—a hit in the summer of 1965. Two years later came the so-called Summer of Love in 1967, and our culture from the mid-1960s on declared that the primary expression of love is sexual expression. We've seen the result. Has our culture been progressing in a good way for the glory of God? I'd say not so good.

So the thesis that "what the world needs now is sexual love, and that will fix everything" has been tested for the last fifty or sixty years—thank you, baby boomers—and it has not made everything better. What the world needs is this kind of love: patient, kind, humble, sincere, God's form of love. There is a sexual love in the Bible—eros—important for marriage, but that is not the love with which God has loved us. He has loved us with the love of 1 Corinthians 13, and that should permeate our lives.

Loving in Tangible Ways This Christmas

As we approach Christmas, my prayer is that those of us who have received God's love—who therefore have grace from God, peace with God, and hope in God—would be stirred by His love to love Him and to love others with a love that is patient, kind, humble, and sincere. When the world sees that kind of love in us, it screams of the character of God, because patience, kindness, humility, and sincerity are at a deficit in our nation.

Let me share one small, tangible way to show this love. There is a family in our church whose son is in the military. A young man in his unit, Private Angel Diaz, was preparing to deploy. His wife had gone to live with his mom along with their two-year-old son and three dogs. In the middle of the night there was a fire; his wife did not get out and died, though his mom escaped with their little son. This church family has been reaching out to Private Diaz, who doesn't know the Lord, and bringing him to church. After the service, if you'd like to write a card of encouragement, we have cards at the connection point. We don't know him in person, but we can still reach out with the kindness and love of our God and Savior.

That's one small, tangible way. This week God will give you many other tangible ways to be patient, kind, humble, sincere, and joyful with people at a time of year when those things are lacking. When we do these things, we bear what the Bible calls the fruit of the Spirit toward others—and all of it because of what Jesus did for us in His love.

Closing Prayer

Father, we pray right now for Private Diaz. We pray for his son, his mother, and the rest of his family. It's hard for us even to fathom the grief and sorrow at this time of year as he has lost his wife. We ask, God, that You would be with him and be to him the God of all mercies, the Father of mercies, that You would comfort him by the presence of Your Spirit and by the body of Christ coming around him. Encourage and strengthen his heart in You, that he would come to find hope and joy and peace through Your grace and by Your love. Pour out Your love upon him this moment.

And God, as we have received Your grace, and as a result have peace with You and hope in You—all because of Your love demonstrated toward us—I pray that You would so affect and infect our lives by Your love that we would love You and love others as You have loved us. As we sing these songs of praise and prepare our hearts for communion, remind us of the greatness of Your love. In Jesus' name, amen.