Love and the Divine Dance
Attributes of God • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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As we have studied the attributes of God during the past couple of months, I have intentionally saved the last attribute that we will study for today, because I think we can understand something about the God who is love through the lens of the mother who loved you.
Now, I should qualify from the start that this is not going to be your typical -woman Mother’s Day sermon.
In fact, I almost switched topics to avoid the Mother’s day link entirely, as I recognize that for some women here it may be a hard topic. Some may have tried in vain to become mothers, and for them sermons about godly mothering are hard to hear. And some may still have hard memories of mothers who were less than godly.
But the point at which all of us who are here today can connect is that each of us had a mother who loved us enough to bring us into this world.
When we recognize that an estimated 55 million abortions have taken place in the United States since Roe v. Wade made the practice legal throughout the nation in 1973, we must give due credit to those women who choose to deliver their babies, even when the circumstances seem, from the world’s perspective, to give them reason to terminate their pregnancies.
Indeed, it is because of our culture’s lies about the value of life that we here have such a heart for the work of the Crisis Pregnancy Center, and I am working with that organization to see how we might help them more as part of our evangelistic outreach.
Now, this is not a sermon about abortion. I simply bring up the matter to note that, whatever your relationship with the woman who gave you birth, there is the undeniable fact that she did something incredible for you, something that goes against the grain of the selfishness that characterizes this sinful world.
You may have heard her put it this way: “I carried you for nine long months.” Maybe she said it in the context of wondering why you were being so disrespectful at some point. Maybe she even followed it up with something like, “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.” Or maybe it was your father who said the last part.
Anyway, there’s a selflessness that is inherent within the act of childbearing. A woman must put aside many of her own desires and habits for those nine months in order to bring forth the life that is within her, a life that literally and figuratively depends entirely upon her.
She must make sacrifices for her unborn child. She must submit herself to the needs of the baby. She is subject to its needs, even as she maintains her own individuality.
This kind of submission may not always be evidence of the mother’s love for her coming child — some women have their children simply because they feel they have to do so — but I am going to suggest to you today that submission, this “being subject to” someone else, is at the core of what we know as Christian love, and it is a reflection of what is at the very center of God’s character.
During His last Passover meal with His disciples, Jesus talked quite a bit about His love for them and how they were to show their love for Him.
We’re going to look today at a part of His prayer for them in , but before we go there there, I want to start earlier in this Upper Room Discourse and draw your attention to a few threads that Jesus will pull together in our focus passage today.
Picking up in Chapter 14, Jesus has said that He is going to prepare a place for His followers and that they know the Way there. Thomas says to Him in verse 5, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how do we know the way?”
5 Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. 7 “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.”
John 14:5-6
So they knew the Father, because they knew Jesus and had seen Him.
Philip, however, was slow on the uptake — and maybe feeling he was a little more spiritual than the rest — so he said “Lord show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
John 14:9
10 “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.
John 14:10
John 14:11
11 “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.
Jesus is not saying in verse 10 that God tells Him the specific things He is to do. This isn’t God saying, “Jesus, go heal that guy” or “Jesus, turn right here.” What Jesus is saying is that the relationship is so close He knows what His Father wants Him to do.
When Annette goes shopping at the grocery store, sometimes she will call or text me and ask if there’s anything I would like her to get. I don’t normally have anything to add to the list, because I have no clue what’s in the refrigerator at any given time.
But she always brings home a case of Monsters, because she knows that’s what I like. I don’t have to ask for them. It’s just a given — pick up Monsters, because Res wants them.
Jesus knew what His Father wanted, and He did it.
Now
16 “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;
17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. 18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will come to be with His disciples. It was a beautiful promise intended to give hope to a group of men who would soon feel there was no reason for hope.
Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will come to be with His disciples. It was a beautiful promise intended to give hope to a group of men who would soon feel there was no reason for hope as they learned of His death on the cross.
But note here what He says about the Spirit. They already KNOW Him, because He abides with them. Well, the Spirit as we know Him was not yet living within the followers of Jesus, but he had abided with them in the Person of Jesus. They knew the Holy Spirit the same way they knew the Father — because they had known Jesus.
20 “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
This is such a beautiful verse, and I do not want you to miss its significance.
Jesus is IN the Father. There is no closer relationship than to be IN something. He and the Father are one.
But here, He is telling us that as His followers, we are in Him, too. He is inviting us into that perfect relationship. If we are in Him and He is in the Father, then we are also in the Father.
And furthermore, He is in those of us who follow Jesus in the person of the Holy Spirit.
Now, this relationship among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is something truly unique. In fact, scholars have given it a name: perichoresis.
Perichoresis describes a mutual indwelling. The Father is in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. The Son is in the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in the Father and the Son.
We have a hard time picturing this kind of relationship, but it might help if you recognize that one of the roots of the word “perichoresis” is common to the word “choreography.”
What Jesus is describing here is the divine dance among the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
This dance is characterized by a mutual selfless and submitting love for one another.
We hear a reference to that kind of love later, when Jesus, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, says, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours.” We hear of it when God says He will glorify His Son. We hear of it when Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will not speak on His own initiative, but will say what He hears from God.
Each of the three persons of our triune God is distinct and individual, but each of them submits to the other in selfless love.
So when the Apostle John writes in his first epistle about God’s defining characteristic, we can now have a new perspective about it.
8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
God is love. We hear even non-believers repeat this verse when they’re trying to justify sinful lifestyles. Why would God judge them when, after all, God is love?
But when we understand what love means in this context of the divine dance — when we as believers understand what it means for us to have been invited into this dance through the indwelling presence of God within us, perhaps then we can better understand what part our obedience to God plays.
Jesus said that if we love Him, we would keep His commandments. In other words, if we love Him, then we will submit ourselves to Him — we will be subject to His calling, putting our own desires aside as we become more like Him.
We see this concept of love as a matter of being subject to the object of our love in Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus.
As he gives direction to this church about leaving behind the things of the flesh and pursuing the things of Christ, Paul says something that’s hard for some of us to hear:
21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
Your translation might read, “submit to one another.” The greek word means to subordinate to something or someone, to submit to one’s control, to yield to one’s admonition or advice. It was originally a military term meaning “to arrange troop divisions in a military fashion under the command of a leader. In non-military usage, it came to mean “a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility and carrying a burden.”
Imagine that kind of expression of love within the church. What would it look like if we were all submitting to one another in this fashion? It would look something like the divine dance among the persons of the Trinity.
And that’s important, because there’s a reason that Jesus calls for this kind of love among his followers.
Turn to , and let’s take a look at how Jesus pulls these threads together in his High Priestly Prayer, the prayer he prayed to His Father at the table with His disciples hours before He was betrayed and taken into custody in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Read
The last part of this passage is often used to explain why we are called to have unity within the church.
Indeed, unity is exactly what the church is called to demonstrate, but this passage is describing how we are called as individual believers into the divine dance, the perichoresis, with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is asking His father to set His followers apart in Truth so that we might be in Him and in the Father and in the Spirit, just as they are in us.
Remember that this love that Jesus has spoken of during much of the Upper Room Discourse is a sacrificial, selfless and submitting love, reflecting the kind of love each of the Persons of the Trinity shows for one another.
Jesus showed us this kind of love on the cross. His Father showed us this kind of love through His gracious act of sending His son to die for our sins so that we who follow Jesus in faith could avoid the punishment that we deserve for them. The Holy Spirit shows us this kind of love by comforting us and teaching us and drawing us closer to God.
We are called to show this kind of love to God by submitting ourselves to Him, by setting aside our own desires and putting His Kingdom first in our priorities.
And look what Jesus says will happen when we love in this true manner:
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.
As we participate in this divine dance, the world might believe in Jesus. Our submission to God — and even our submission to one another — is evidence of Jesus Christ. This is an evangelistic work.
Now, take a look at verses 22 and 23.
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As we exercise this love, we become perfected in unity with God, with Jesus and with the Holy Spirit. And the world may know that Jesus was sent.
And don’t miss that last bit of verse 23. Not only will our submission to God be evidence of His Son having been sent, it will also be evidence of the fact that God loves us, even as He loves His Son.
Folks, it doesn’t get better than that.
The God of all creation loved the world so much that He sent His Son so that anyone who believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.
And for those who do believe — those who follow Jesus in faith and make Him their Lord — the promise is even greater: God loves us like He loves Jesus.
Can you fathom how wonderful that is? Can you see how beautiful this dance is that we’ve been invited to join?
I hope that each of you had a mother who loved you with all her heart.
But not even your mother’s love can compare with the love of Jesus Christ, who died for your sins. Not even your mother’s love can compare with the love of your Heavenly Father, who loves you the way He loves His own Son.
God is love. We could spend a lifetime trying to wrap our minds around this kind of love.
God is love. Rest in that. Have peace in that.
Join the dance.