David Bahn – Reflections

And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us.¹⁴ Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. ¹⁶ We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.

God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. ¹⁷ And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.

¹⁸ Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. ¹⁹ We love each other because he loved us first. – 1 John 4:13-19

My dad’s go-to verse was 1 John 4:18. In the King James it is rendered, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” It was important to him because for a period of time he struggled with panic attacks. He would become light-headed and anxious. The doctor told him to breathe into a paper bag – which he would do – bringing temporary relief.

Once I came to his furniture store to find him lying on a sofa breathing into his take-along paper bag. It was humiliating to him, I’m sure, and I didn’t know how to handle it well either. But when he discovered this verse and held to it tightly the relief came more permanently. In time the panic attacks went away: Perfect love casts out fear.

Perhaps you know those dark moments of the soul, those fearful moments of life. The sound in the middle of the night that stops your heart. The news from the doctor that makes your blood run cold. The call from the police with news that crushes your world and leaves you feeling completely vulnerable. The news on TV announcing financial ruin that evaporates your life’s savings. Fear comes to us in many ways. Sometimes there isn’t even a reason for it, but it haunts us.

Perfect love casts out such fear. That perfect love is God’s love. It is complete, perfect, full, lacking nothing. It doesn’t accuse, envy, boast, or rejoice in evil. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. God’s love never fails (cf. 1 Corinthians 13).

God’s love comes to us and assures us of his good will and hopeful plans. God’s love also directs our hearts to others’ good and favor. When we embrace God’s love for us, and focus that love toward others there is no room for fear. We can live confident, hopeful, gracious, and kind lives when the perfect love of God takes root in our hearts by faith, and flows from us into the lives of others.

Our own love will never be perfect. But God’s love in Jesus is complete, perfect, and absolute. It is a treasure thankfully to be received and richly to be shared.

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. ⁸ But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

⁹ God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. ¹⁰ This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

¹¹ Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.¹² No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. – 1 John 4:7-12

Our church staff experienced a significant blessing as a part of a 3dm learning community. We learned a lot together about being a disciple of Jesus. We discovered that an integrated lifestyle was one that balances love for God, life in relationships with other Jesus followers, and a commitment to God’s mission to save all people through faith in Jesus Christ. Our DCE pointed out that this was a matter of being intentional about being a disciple of Jesus.

Here John speaks of loving others intentionally as a show of our love for God. We are to “keep on loving one another” as an expression of our identity as children of God. It’s who we are: people who love because of God’s love for us. On purpose.

This is relatively easy to do when I remember who I am in Christ. When I am intentional about my identity as a child of God, a brother of Jesus, I am better inclined to love others. It’s just all too easy to become complacent about my identity, to lose sight of who I am, and to get pulled into self-serving actions and schemes. I’d rather not admit this, but I must confess: I am a sinner.

Give me a moment of Holy Spirit inspired intentionality, and I’ll go the extra mile. I’ll do the good deed. I’ll serve my neighbor. All this is not only a matter of living out my identity, though that is foundational. It is a result of God’s love to me. For I am not only a child of God, I am loved by God. And as John reminds us, “We love because he first loved us.”

God’s love was not merely a matter of disembodied good will and kind heart. It showed itself by his action. God sent his Son to atone for our sins and quell God’s wrath against us. The word John uses here is propitiation. Propitiation has the idea of a sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God. So not only does God love me, he has satisfied his own righteous wrath by punishing Jesus for my sins – and I’ve already admitted my need for that.

Perhaps I need to think about how my anger does not accomplish the righteous things God desires (cf. James 1:20). Certainly I need to be more intentional about who I am as a child of God. Thankfully I can receive God’s love and reflect that to my neighbor – intentionally.

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!

My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise! Selah

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.

They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.

O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah

Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed!

For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor.

No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.

O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you! – Psalm 84

Our cruise has been a mixture of fun and active excursions, and beautiful sights, down time, and fun distractions of entertainment, games and dining. Way too much dining to be sure. We’ve enjoyed three shows in the ship’s theater. After the first two we exited through the ship’s casino with its glitter, exciting lights, laughter, bells and buzzers. We figured out a passageway that avoided the casino the third night.

The bells and lights, glamor and laughter cover over the groans of losses and disappointment that must be stifled in order to keep the casino running as it does. The house never loses – even when it loses.

This was my thought today when I read this psalm. Indeed, “A day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” When I was a youth, I took on a self-assigned task at the end of each church service to help open the doors and engage a mechanism to keep them open. Once I suffered a severely mashed finger when a door was carelessly let fly as I was opening its twin. I resumed my self-assigned duties the next Sunday – although a bit more cautiously. It was something I felt honored to do.

Today I have the privilege of serving as a doorkeeper of a different sort. It is my hope that I am able to serve as one who opens the doors of God’s kingdom to others as we gather for worship. Through preaching, teaching, prayer, and sacrament, I have the privilege of opening the doors of God’s grace for all people. Even as the sparrow and swallow have found a home in the house of the Lord, God delights when we find our true home there.

If I may ever open that door to you it would be my great privilege.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. – Psalm 23

These past few days have provided a microcosm of my continuing struggle over this blog. We are on vacation – a cruise, in fact – and as such I have been significantly dis-connected from the internet. Cut off from the digital world, I have not been writing. This means that a key motivation (posting so others can read) is off the table. I don’t need to write for the sake of others. In fact, I cannot.

This puts me asea in regard to my own personal devotions. What am I to do? Today I decide to read the psalms in the fashion of five psalms a day, corresponding with the day of the month. Today is the 23rd of May. I began with Psalm 23.

As I read, I observed words easily overlooked in a casual reading. For sometime I’ve noted that David begins by talking about God (he), and when the issue turns to troubled times – valley of the shadow of death – he speaks to God (“you”). There is an important truth in that turn.

Today I noted the phrase: “He makes me lie down in green pastures.” Why, “makes me lie down…”? I am taking this very personally. I might not be as inclined as I should be to rest in the place of restoration and true pleasure of God. God may need to make me lie down in these places.

And so he has. Today in particular I am writing this because I must. For my own sake. I need to reflect in this manner on God’s faithfulness, love, and shepherding guidance. So even as you read this, dear reader, it is not as much today for you as it is for me.

Thus I am at the initial purpose of this exercise. I want my blog to be a personal reflection on God’s word for my own sake. I need this in order to be refresh in my faith. I need it in order to be grounded. And God has provided the green pasture of this moment to reflect on his goodness and love.

Now on to Psalm 53; 83; 113; and 143. Green pastures await us there!

Dear children, the last hour is here. You have heard that the Antichrist is coming, and already many such antichrists have appeared. From this we know that the last hour has come. These people left our churches, but they never really belonged with us; otherwise they would have stayed with us. When they left, it proved that they did not belong with us.

But you are not like that, for the Holy One has given you his Spirit, and all of you know the truth. So I am writing to you not because you don’t know the truth but because you know the difference between truth and lies. And who is a liar? Anyone who says that Jesus is not the Christ. Anyone who denies the Father and the Son is an antichrist. Anyone who denies the Son doesn’t have the Father, either. But anyone who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

So you must remain faithful to what you have been taught from the beginning. If you do, you will remain in fellowship with the Son and with the Father. And in this fellowship we enjoy the eternal life he promised us. – 1 John 2:18-25

Perhaps you’ve heard of Pascal’s wager. Wikipedia explains it this way:

Pascal’s wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not.

Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).

That is a major consideration, and the stakes are high. But it’s not the stuff of true faith. Faith is not the result of considering the evidence, weighing the odds, and landing on a conviction. Faith is a gift of God that is centered in the promises of God and the death and resurrection of Jesus. It has to do with the relationship of grace and love that we have because of God’s love and mercy.

Few people worry about heaven and hell these days. Popular spirituality today speaks of death as a peaceful release completely devoid of any connection with faith in God. Fewer still believe that Jesus is the only true embodiment of God’s love and salvation. The idea of an antichrist is foreign to most people – except if they are speaking of beliefs that cross the line of cultural political correctness.

Faith is a relationship with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s not a wager. It’s not a moral high ground. The implications of our faith and confession are great. Not only does it have to do with our eternity, but with the honor due unto Jesus. That’s no wager, it’s simply what is due to the true Son of God and Savior of the world.

Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity. – 1 John 2:15-17

I was looking today at a blog post from Digital Photography School about a do it yourself neutral density filter (NDF). It was interesting to me and pointed out some benefits and drawbacks to this idea. The main benefit was the low cost of the DIY option. The article also had a link to purchase a real NDF. That got me to looking at real NDFs. Those were not low cost options. Before long I had added a NDF and a filter holder to my Amazon wish list. The things of this world can pull us in and capture our imagination and affections before you know it.

I don’t think that material things – the things of this world – are evil or to be avoided. But like money, when they take up residence in our hearts we’re headed for trouble! The things of this world have a way of getting ahold of us and forming a web of wanting that leads us away from loving the things of God. This is the danger: love of things is not compatible with love for God. It’s as simple as that.

When John tells me not to love the things of the world, then mentions some specifics: “wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important.” These things have nothing to do with the father. Loving those things isolates us from God. They take up room in our hearts which ought only to belong to God. 

To some extent wanting is the great American way. We want so we work harder and try to succeed. We get and the more we get the more we want. It all goes well until we have so much that we no longer own our things, they own us. The wanting web is dangerous because it traps us in a vicious cycle of wanting, having, having to care for, wanting more, having more, and having to care more for the things we have. We become slaves to our satisfied wants.

I don’t know when or if I’ll get that NDF and holder for my camera. I actually do make use of such things in my photography hobby. But I’ll leave it on my wish list for some day when I decide that it can serve me and not make me servant to it. For I want most of all to serve God – the author and giver of life. Come, Holy Spirit, grant me a pure heart so that I may seek Jesus’ reign and rule first and most and not become tangled in a web of wanting!

I am writing to you who are God’s children
because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus.
¹³ I am writing to you who are mature in the faith
because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.
I am writing to you who are young in the faith
because you have won your battle with the evil one.
¹⁴ I have written to you who are God’s children
because you know the Father.
I have written to you who are mature in the faith
because you know Christ, who existed from the beginning.
I have written to you who are young in the faith
because you are strong.
God’s word lives in your hearts,
and you have won your battle with the evil one. – 1 John 2:12-14

Hanover Lutheran Church in Cape Girardeau, Missouri had a skating rink in their parish hall. Wooden floors. Clamp-on skates. Fun music. Popcorn, Milk Duds, Slowpokes, and Cokes. It had it all. There were some good skaters there, but most of the evening was all-skate: Anyone – no matter their skill level – was welcome on the skate floor. That was good for me. I was barely able to avoid falling, but little else. I couldn’t skate backwards. I didn’t dare ask a girl to skate with me. I was thankful for the all-skate nature of that rink.

In God’s kingdom all of his children have a part to play. In these verses John makes it clear that each of us has a particular reason to pay attention to what he writes. In the ESV (a much more literal, word-for-word translation) John names the groups: children, fathers, young men, and little children. The New Living Translation (above) names them as God’s children, young in faith, and those who are mature in the faith.

There may be something worth exploring in these various specific groups of people John names. Maybe you can delve into the depths of the specific distinctions. But the general idea is that each of us has something to claim as a child of God. Young or old. Immature or seasoned. In the battle, or reflecting on God’s mercy: we all have some manner that makes us particularly unique objects of God’s love, and his love particularly precious to us.

Children don’t often know what they don’t know. They are in need of forgiveness in spite of their outward innocence. The sin to which young people are particularly prone is hubris. Young people can easily overestimate their own strength. Older people, on the other hand, are easily swayed to self-righteousness. They know the way things ought to be, but too easily overlook their own faults.

God’s mercy, forgiveness and love is for all those kinds of people. Those who are young in the faith have slayed the dragon. Those who are mature have a deep appreciation for the nuances of God’s character. Children have the living word of God in their hearts.

We can each reflect on and rejoice in the unique station of life we’re in, and thank God for his faithfulness in every season of life. He is the constant against which the waves of life ebb and flow. That’s true for everyone. All skate! Everybody in!

Dear friends, I am not writing a new commandment for you; rather it is an old one you have had from the very beginning. This old commandment—to love one another—is the same message you heard before. Yet it is also new. Jesus lived the truth of this commandment, and you also are living it. For the darkness is disappearing, and the true light is already shining.

If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is still living in darkness. Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble. But anyone who hates a fellow believer is still living and walking in darkness. Such a person does not know the way to go, having been blinded by the darkness. – 1 John 2:7-11

A friend’s daughter recently got married. The wedding was truly delightful. Large beautifully-decorated church. Amazing organ. Wonderful music. Precious friends. A bride and groom handsome and beautiful. In the moments leading up to the wedding a search was made for “something old” in the spirit of “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” I’m not sure what that little rhyme is all about, but it was important to her that she find something old to carry with her as he embarked on her walk down the aisle toward a whole new life.

The commandment that John recalls here is nothing new. It is old. The readers had heard it before. Yet it was new. A new attitude of the heart. A new way of expressing their faith. A newly-rediscovered emphasis on loving God and loving their neighbor. They were reclaiming God’s primary commandments, that summarized the 10 Commandments: Love God. Love your neighbor.

This is an old commandment. But it is new in that it really does have to do with how we show our faith. No longer was it to be temple worship, ceremonial laws, Sabbath laws, or Hebrew identity. They were to take that which they knew to be true to a new prominence of their identity.

So it is with us today. We are commanded to love God and love our neighbor. We have the example of Jesus – perfect in every way. We also have the examples of heroes of the faith who came back again and again to the Throne of Grace, and repented of their sins, and lived out that repentance in lives that honored God.

The path we travel as followers is a well-worn path. As John Baille puts in his book, A Diary of Private Prayer,

O you who were, and are, and are to come, I thank you that this Christian way in which I walk is no untried or uncharted road, but a road beaten hard by the footsteps of saints, apostles, prophets and martyrs.

This is no untested path. It’s an old path on which we discover new realities of God’s mercy and love, and new ways we may express that to one another.

My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. ² He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.

³ And we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments. ⁴ If someone claims, “I know God,” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth. ⁵ But those who obey God’s word truly show how completely they love him. That is how we know we are living in him.⁶ Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.– 1 John 2:1-6

I love keeping my options open. I try to under-promise and over-perform. I want to offer options to people that cover all contingencies. “If you need some time to think this over, that would be fine by me. I can give you the time, or I can take your answer now.”

There is a little bit of that in John’s comments to his beloved children here. “I am writing this so you won’t sin. But if you do sin, we have you covered.” Just because we never do want people to sin, we don’t want anyone to despair of God’s forgiveness.

This is a remarkable contingency plan. This is the remarkable grace of God. God never wishes us to sin. He knows that sin kills. The soul who sins will die (Ezekiel 18:20). The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). You sins have separated you from your God, so that he does not hear when you call (Isaiah 59:2).

The additional fact that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) renders us in an impossible situation – unless God forgives our sins, and provides a righteousness to us that we have not earned or that we do not deserve. This is exactly the kindness and mercy of God. For the sake of Jesus forgives our sins. He has atoned for the by death of his Son. This is the message that John shares.

But the grace of God is never to be an encouragement to sin. God forgives us so that we may obey him from a pure conscience. He allows us to live free from guilt and shame so that our love for him may be not motivated by a desire to cover our shame or make up for our faults. That contingency greatly devalues God’s mercy and cheapens God’s grace.

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts. – 1 John 1:8-10

The father of a young boy called me and asked that he bring his son to see me. His son had a problem telling the truth. He would lie about various things: whether he had done his homework; whether he had done his chores; what the teacher had assigned; where he had gone – or not gone – with his friends. His father wanted me to explain to the young boy how bad it was to lie.

I tried my best. I explained that if I told him I had $10 for him, but had only $9, he would not like it at all. I told him about how we have to keep lying – even if we start with a little white lie – if we are to sustain the deception. I told him the story of Jimmy and the Little White Lie. This book is about a little boy named Jimmy, who lies after breaking a neighbor’s window with his baseball. His white lie becomes a white blob that grows and grows and grows. It shows children how a lie gets bigger with time. I think it helped.

Worse than a white lie, however is the danger John warns of in these verses. If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar! This is not saying we are lying – which we actually are doing. This is saying that we have assumed the place of God, judging him, contradicting him, saying what is true and false. It is an echo of Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve determine for themselves that which is good and evil.

There are many ways to call God a liar. Any time we choose a path other than obedience to God’s word, or disbelieve what God has revealed in his word, as though we know better, we call God a liar. I’m not ready to do that. I hope you are afraid to do that as well.