Ephesians 4:14 “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.”

            You used to be so cute when you were little. Do you ever look through pictures or old home movies from your childhood? Maybe you tried to help your mom do some baking, and you ended up with flour all over yourself, so that you looked like a ghost. Maybe you tried to help dad in the garage and you ended up with grease on your face like it was war paint.

When you drew pictures, they were little more than scribbles, but they ended up on the refrigerator anyway. When you started writing, you mixed up your capital and lower case letters, and your words didn’t follow the lines. The letters were all different sizes, and some were turned backwards. When you started walking, and you lost your balance, you would sit down right on your bottom without even bending your knees. It was cute and your parents loved you for it.

            None of that would look so cute anymore, would it. Our parents raised us, and our school trained us, so that we would grow up. They loved us when we were little, but they didn’t want us to stay that way. That is also true of our churches. It is even true of our Savior. God gives us people who preach and teach so that we will grow up. Then we will no longer be infants.

            Not everything about being children in the faith is bad. When Paul writes, “Then you will no longer be infants,” actually something more like toddlers or preschoolers, he isn’t necessarily criticizing us for going through that stage of life. Jesus even praises little children for their faith and holds them up as examples. “Unless you change, and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” he once told his disciples.

The point he was trying to get across to them is that as children, we tend to know our place with adults, especially our parents. We all have our moments, it is true. My parents tell me that I used to throw some real screaming tantrums when I was little and didn’t get my way. But I never thought that I should be running the whole family, dealing with all the bills, making all the decisions. When my parents told me something I believed them without question.

The childlike faith that trusts God without question, and let’s God be God, will serve us long after we have become great grandparents. Because he is our loving Father, he doesn’t mess around with us about the things he reveals. When he tells us he takes our sins away, we can be sure he does. When he promises eternal life, we don’t need to doubt.

But there are other voices we can’t trust so much. That’s why we don’t want to remain infants or children. We need to hear and learn more of our Father’s word–so that we will grow up.

            Paul warns us about the schemers we need to avoid. “We have more fun in our worship. It’s entertaining. It’s practical. It’s filled with pretty people. It’s all about you. And, oh yeah, we use the Bible, too.” “We don’t make people feel bad about their sins in our preaching. We just try to help them live better lives.” “We don’t just listen to the Bible. God gave us a brain, too. A little common sense tells you that you can’t take everything literally. You have to let your reason be your guide.”

In each case they promise something more, but we get something less–less Jesus as Savior, less help with guilt, less comfort of forgiveness, less presence of God in our Baptism or the Lord’s Supper, less certainty of heaven–all in all, less of the kind of spiritual food that actually nourishes faith.

            That’s why we need a thorough education in the basic teachings of the Bible. That’s why we need to keep coming to worship, and attend Bible classes, and dig deeper into the Scriptures–so that we will grow up. Then we will no longer be infants. And unlike our physical bodies, which stop growing someplace in our teens or early twenties, our heart of faith can keep on growing and becoming more mature as long as we live.

1 John 4:7b-8 “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

We have been born of God and know him like a child is born from his parents and knows them. John is describing the new birth and the knowledge of faith. By revealing his love to us, God has made us children.

            With our own children, don’t we expect a family resemblance? I could walk you through the features of my own face and tell you whose side of the family it came from. Eyes, ears, nose–dad’s side. Teeth and hair–mom’s side. The rest of it–some kind of mixture. I could do the same thing with personality traits, and skills that I have. Some it has been taught, that is true. But much of it is inherited, because I am my parents’ son.

            So it is that God’s kind of love fits us, not just because God’s love teaches us what to do. It is because God’s love has given us birth. It is part of the new life he has created in us. It is part of the family resemblance that comes with being his children. We have things to learn about loving the way God loves, that is true. But God’s kind of love comes with the change that is worked by faith. It’s our spiritual inheritance. Since it fits us this way, let us love each other.

            Now John becomes even more specific about the place God’s love has had in our lives, and why that urges us to love each other as well. You already know this, but can we get tired of hearing about it? God’s kind of love saved us. “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him (vs. 9).”

            God’s love sent his Son into the world. God’s love gave us Christmas. Have you ever considered how hard this was for him to do? When my daughter chose to stop commuting between our house and school, and I saw the apartment she had chosen for the first time, my heart sank. The neighborhood seemed a little iffy. The maintenance of the buildings looked substandard to me. The young man who lived across the hall was one of these guys who needed someone to staple his pants to his waste, if you know what I mean. I was concerned. Still, she had a good roommate. Other people from school lived in the same complex. The locks on the door were secure. We were only a few miles away. And today she is alive to tell about the experience.

            When God sent his one and only Son into the world, he sent him to a planet filled with his enemies. He gave him no special protections. He knew that he would die here. But this is God’s kind of love: He did this so that we might live through him. He did this not because he needed it, but because we needed it. God’s kind of love sent his Son into the world to save us.

            God’s love not only gave us Christmas, it gave us Good Friday and Easter, too. “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (vs. 10).” God’s kind of love sent Jesus to atone for our sins. Here, I am all out of stories and illustrations, because there is nothing else like it in all the world. All I can do is state the facts. This is a love so astounding that many even who claim to follow Jesus struggle to accept the full meaning of what Jesus has done. It seems so unbelievable. The entire human race lived under God’s anger because of our sins. If God were only fair and just, he could have demanded that we suffer the full penalty in hell. That is not what he did. He sent his own Son Jesus. He not only helped us pay for our sins. He paid the full penalty himself. He gave up his own life and died in our place. He suffered our hell on a cross to satisfy God’s justice and turn God’s anger away. Who would do such a thing? I know of no one else. But that is God’s kind of love, the kind of love that saved us.

            That kind of love calls for just one response: “We ought to love one another.” But our love will always be dependent on this: “God so loved us.”

1 John 4:7 “Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God.”

Literally, John’s “dear friends” is “beloved”– you know, like you hear preachers beginning wedding ceremonies in the movies, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…” We don’t talk that way in every day conversation. But it says something about the way God loves us.

            Right from the start, we are people God loves. Love, after all, is what distinguishes him. Unfortunately, many people don’t think of love first when they think of God. “Rules come from God.” That’s what many people think. And it is true, so far as it goes. God is the author of right and wrong, and this in no way contradicts his love. But to many people this is just an intrusion into their lives. “I’m a mature adult,” they think. “I can make my own decisions. Why doesn’t God mind his own business?”

            “Justice, and Judgment, come from God.” That, too, is true so far as it goes. But that never won God any friends. It scares people. It makes them run and hide from him, like Adam and Eve did in the garden of Eden.

Or it makes them shake their fist at God, because they don’t think he is being fair: “Why are you treating me this way?” Even God himself calls this his strange work, his alien work in the book of Isaiah. It’s the part of his job he likes the least. He doesn’t like to punish. But someone has to do it. Otherwise, our world would end up in utter chaos.

            “Love comes from God…God is love.” That is what God should be known for. To understand his love, we need to realize that it is not just any kind of love. It is not romance. The first thing I noticed about my wife was that she was pretty. It didn’t hurt that she had this bubbly personality I found attractive. God does not love us based on finding us attractive–not physically or spiritually. If we understand what our sins have done to us, then we know that they have made us unattractive to him. God loves us anyway.

            God does not love us like a consumer loves. Consumers buy things and own things to use them up. I “love” a juicy steak because it makes me happy to eat it. I “love” my car because it is comfortable and it makes me happy to drive it. Someday it will wear out, and then I won’t love it. But God doesn’t love us because we are objects he finds useful for his happiness. We are far worse than the broken down car. He is always putting more into us than he is getting out of us. God loves us anyway.

            If love comes from God, then how do we describe his kind of love? God’s love is unconditional. It is not based on our worthiness or response. It’s not like a contract in which we have to keep up our side of the bargain. You realize that you could never sin so much, or so severely, that it would make God stop loving you? I am not recommending that we try. Sin can still make our lives miserable and destroy our faith. But that is all on us. It is not because God ever stops loving you. His love is unconditional.

            God’s love is unselfish. It is about giving, not taking. Certainly he is happy when we start to love him and serve him in return. But this is not the reason he loves us. In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus has the father answer the second son, who is angry that his father is so generous with the little brother who wasted his father’s inheritance: “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” That’s how God loves us: Everything I have is yours. God’s love is unselfish.

            God’s love is unlimited. Nothing is too big to ask, nothing is too much for him to do, if it will truly help and serve us. You can look in the Bible and see that love led him to split the Red Sea in two, make the earth stand still, and become a man and sacrifice his own life to save us. Because this is love, you understand, this is not the same thing as giving us whatever we want. If helping you and serving your real needs meant giving you a billion dollars or miraculously healing your cancer, God wouldn’t hesitate for a second. But sometimes he knows we need the poverty or the disease even more, and because his love is unlimited, he is even willing to give us these things.

            God’s love is unending. The supply never runs out. It is never anything less than full. He will love you for the rest of your life, and through death, and for all eternity. There will never be a “when” that God doesn’t love you.

            This, then, is the kind of love that comes from God. Let that fact sink in, and know that you are loved.

1 John 2:2 “He (Jesus) is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

It’s always nice to have someone else on your side when you have problems. My wife has her girlfriends. When something is wrong I can bet that she will be on the phone eventually getting a little sympathy, or giving a little sympathy when the shoe is on the other foot.

Jesus listens to us with a sympathetic ear. But he does so much more. The hymn does not sing, “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our whines and gripes to share.” It goes, “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.” He carried, he bore our sins for us. In the words of John, “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Jesus has satisfied God’s anger by his sacrifice on the cross.

We had real reason for concern, because sin makes God furious. You remember the sinking, dreadful feeling you had as a child when you had done something dangerous or destructive, and now you were waiting to face the music? Did you ever pack a suitcase with thoughts of running away, maybe you even made it part way down the street, hoping that you might be able to avoid Judgment Day with your mom or dad?

The great and awesome Judgement Day of God would be terrifying for us to face if we had to do it based on our own sinful record. God’s wrath at sin isn’t merely a scary story told by old fashioned church people who want to control others with fear. It is a basic assumption of the whole message of Scripture. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men…” (Romans 1:18).

But Jesus replaces our fear with confidence because he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He paid the price that ended God’s anger. It’s not just the price he paid. It is the price he himself IS! Luther’s Small Catechism, borrowing from the Apostle Peter, says Jesus paid it “not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood, and with his innocent sufferings and death.”

There is nothing more precious or valuable, more powerful or effective, that could have been offered to pay the debt we owed. That single body and soul of God’s Son, that single life given in place of ours, has a value that far exceeds all the billions of bodies and souls that have ever lived, from one end of history to the other. We struggle to put a price on human life. Even more so, no one will ever be able to put a price on the life of God’s Son. That is why he can be the atoning sacrifice “for the sins of the whole world.”

God couldn’t love us anymore than to make this sacrifice. You can take the sum total of all the great acts of love through history– soldiers giving their lives to spare their friends; parents working themselves to the bone to give their children a better life; missionaries dying at the end of a spear to bring the gospel to those who never had it before; heroes of every kind who risked fire, drowning, bullets, teeth and claws to save people they didn’t even know. Add it all together, take the sum total of that love, and it still does not equal the love that led Jesus to offer himself as the atoning sacrifice for your sins.

Such a gift is proof that you are loved with a love we shall never be able to measure or exhaust.

1 John 2:1 “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense–Jesus Christ the Righteous One”

There it is. John didn’t want the people to whom he was writing to commit sin. Was that really any of his business? Is it any business of the pastors who serve you? You bet it is! “It’s my life, and I can live it the way I want,” may be a popular way of thinking. But it’s an attitude that needs to be checked at the door when we enter God’s house and become members of his family. It’s not that your pastor wants to become a snoop, and catch you in some questionable behavior. But Christian leaders are right to be concerned about the way people live their lives, just like the Apostle John was.

Why? Because sin hurts. When you visit your doctor or dentist, don’t they ask some personal questions about the way you are living your life? And don’t they have some straightforward, even firm things to say about what needs to change? They can make us feel uncomfortable, but we expect it. They are supposed to be looking out for our health. Whether or not you floss, what you eat, and how much you exercise can all have an effect on us for good or bad.

Sinful behavior works the same way, only the stakes are higher. Sometimes it literally destroys our bodies. Just ask the person who has been drinking too much, or who has had too many sexual partners, or even the person who has let worry create too much stress and anxiety. There is a reason God set his commandments up the way he did. He wasn’t trying to take the fun out of life. He was trying to keep us from destroying ourselves.

Worse yet, sin erodes faith. It is a cancer for our souls. In my home we have a cancer survivor, too. When my son was diagnosed, the doctor gave the chemotherapy about a 95 percent chance of success. That doesn’t mean we would have volunteered for the disease. It’s still a killer. So is sin. “The wages of sin is death.” It’s not reasonable to volunteer for this killer.

So your pastors preach, and they preach so that we stop committing sins–not just you, but the pastor, too. But you know how successful that has been. For thousands of years God’s people have kept committing them. That is why John follows up: “But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense–Jesus Christ the Righteous One.”

With these words John is putting Jesus in the role of a lawyer. He is our defense attorney, defending us in God’s court of law. It isn’t every day we cast a lawyer in the role of hero and source of comfort. We tend to be suspicious of them. People even accuse them of being interested only in our money, of having only their own welfare in mind.

So maybe it seems strange to us to have Jesus described as our lawyer. But when you are going to court, and you know that you are guilty (and so does the judge), you want the best lawyer money can buy.

That’s exactly what we have in God’s court of law, except we have him for free! The devil is prosecuting, and he has a solid case against us. His power and resources far exceed our own. But Jesus has committed himself to our case and speaks in our defense. He has taken our case because he has dedicated himself to defeating the other side. He will win for us at all costs. And in God’s court of law, he never, ever loses.

1 John 3:2 “Dear friends, now we are the children of God…

Now we are the children of God. That’s not so bad when you consider what we were. You know Paul’s words from Romans 5? “When we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son…” Really? Enemies? That seems a bit strong doesn’t it? Enemies? Yes! There is no other way to describe people who have taken their own Maker’s instructions, thrown them aside, and like a defiant little two-year-old looked him in the eye and said, “It’s my life. I’m going to do what I want. I don’t care what you say about sharing. I don’t care what you say about how I use my body. I don’t care if you don’t like my potty mouth.” Active little rebels–we were God’s enemies!

Or there is Paul’s other picture from Ephesians: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…” Dead ! A spiritual corpse! From God’s point of view, in our sin, without real love for anyone but ourselves, we were lifeless, hopeless, useless–done!

And that is what we were. It is hard to say which is worse, being enemies or corpses, but we don’t have to make a choice, because the Bible calls us both.

But on Good Friday Jesus gave up his life to remove our guilt and to forgive all our sins. Again, look at the quote from Romans 5, “When we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.” We are reconciled, not enemies.

By his resurrection from the dead on Easter morning Jesus conquered our death. As much as that means new life for our bodies, it also brings new life to our souls. “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ,” Paul wrote the Colossians. Now we have faith, we have hope, we have life.

It’s harder to say which is better, Good Friday or Easter, but Jesus gives us both. His salvation doesn’t leave us hard choices. It gives it all together as one beautiful gift.

That is why John can say, “Dear friends, now we are the children of God.” Now we are children! Do you know what that means? Children are not the same thing as employees–cheap labor for God because they are now “part of the family.” His main interest is not what we can do for him.

Nor are children the adult sons and daughters who stand independently and alongside God as his equals. One Christian writer compares our relationship to him to the relationship between a parent who has an I.Q. like Einstein, and a little child who is only two. To make a relationship possible, the father accommodates himself to the toddler he loves. The child will know her daddy, but she won’t completely comprehend him. What the father reveals to his daughter will be true, as far as it goes. But there will always be more.

You see, we are the children of God, and that means that we are dear, we are loved. God treasures us as his own.

As God’s children, we are simply enjoyed by him. He is pleased to laugh and play with his little ones. There is a beautiful picture in the last chapter of Isaiah of God enjoying his children like a parent bouncing a child on his knees. I can’t help but think of the Christian character in the movie “Chariots of Fire,” Scottish runner Eric Liddell, telling his sister that when he runs he “feels God’s pleasure.” God’s children are people in whom he takes delight.

“Now we are the children of God.” That’s not so bad now, is it, and Jesus’ death and resurrection have made it all possible.

Isaiah 55:7 “Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.”

Words like “wicked” and “evil” are strong words. We tend to reserve them for the world’s worst criminals and killers, men whose crimes against humanity bring death and suffering to thousands. Maybe it’s hard to see that they have any application to people like you or me.

But the Bible tells us: “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” There is no difference. Call it what you want. Sin, evil, wickedness infects us all. It may show itself in different ways. Some of them are more subtle. They can be more easily hidden. But there is no denying it, and the day of our death will prove it beyond any doubt. Sin is the reason we die–every one of us. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul wrote the Romans. That’s the ultimate proof that “wicked” and “evil” apply to us, too.

But Isaiah also promises us something better. “Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” God has turned us to faith in him as the source of mercy and pardon. Mercy is a “heart” word. It tells us that the Lord doesn’t merely follow some unbending rules or principles in the way he treats us. He isn’t merely following a formula in the way he runs our lives. When he sees our pain or our difficulties, it moves him. He feels for us and he intends to bring us relief.

That mercy starts with his forgiveness. “He will freely pardon.” We can create a lot of sin in our lives. The sum total of the world’s sin is immeasurably bigger. But God’s pardon, his forgiveness, dwarfs it all. There is no end or limit to it. It never runs out. How could it when we consider the price God paid to make it possible?

Your God knows what it is like to have a close member of the family die. He gave up his one and only Son. He sacrificed Jesus to pay for every sin you or I or any of the billions of people who have ever lived on this planet ever committed. If he loves us that much, if he has made that sacrifice to pay for our sins, he is not going to become stingy in actually applying his forgiveness to his people. If he loves us that much, he will not be stingy with any of his gifts.

Do you remember these words from Romans 8? “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, gracious give us all things.” God freely pardons. He freely gave up his Son to make it possible. This mercy and forgiveness that costs us not a penny is what we commonly call his grace. Would he love us so much, give us so much, and do so much for us, just to destroy us all in the end? No! He will freely give us every good thing that we need for this life and the one to come as well.

Matthew 10:8 “As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.”

Do you believe in “regifting”? Before anyone had even coined the term I had had some interesting experiences with it. When my wife and I got married, we received a number of small kitchen appliances, including five woks. Now, we like stir fries and Chinese food, just not quite that much. A few of them we took back to stores. We traded them in for other things we needed, like a toaster. But in addition to the one we used, for some reason we saved one more. We kept it in its original packaging, maybe to serve as a backup or a spare if the one we used stopped working.

About a year later a friend of ours was getting married. We didn’t have so much money then, but we had this extra wok. So we wrapped it up and gave it away as a wedding present. Only afterwards did it occur to us that we had probably left the original wedding card to us from the original giver in the box. We always wondered if our newly wed friends found it, and what they thought.

If we Christians understand the true source of our spiritual gifts and resources, then we know that any giving we do involves “regifting.” Paul asks the Corinthians in his first letter to them, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (4:7). Martin Luther’s last words were, “We are beggars, that is true.” All that we have and all that we are is a gift to us from God.

That means that all that we give is a matter of “regifting” what we have been given. There is no way around that fact for those who know their Creator and Redeemer.

Jesus connected this to the mission on which he sent his disciples. After a year or more of teaching, he was sending them on their first preaching tour. They went with gifts freely received from Jesus. First was the message they were to preach. This was a message that had gripped their own hearts first, had its way with them, and changed them. They hadn’t been looking for it. Jesus came looking for them, found them, and chose them to listen, believe, and spread the news. It all came freely. It was a gift.

Second, Jesus gave them power and authority to support their preaching tour. Disease, death, even demons would submit to them and to their words. This was not the work of magic spells they had discovered and practiced. They received power from on high. It was a gift they had freely received.

“Freely you have received.” Our faith, our gifts, aren’t so different. In one way or another the gift of the gospel freely found its way into your life. For some, our parents were sharing this gift when reading Bible stories to us or saying bedtime prayers with us almost before we could talk. Some stumbled on it quite by accident when they were looking for a place to be married, perhaps, and randomly chose a church. There are some who unsuspectingly answered a knock on the door one evening, and before the night was over forgiveness and life came flooding into their lives, and Jesus had found a permanent home in their hearts. It is a gift, pure and simple. Freely you have received.

On top of that, don’t overlook the way in which Jesus has freely blessed us with all that we need for body and life. By and large we have been gifted with more money and more stuff than any people in the history of the world. Not a single one of us created our own set of skills, or invented the nation or the economy that makes such wealth possible. Like our faith and the gospel that supports it, it is all a gift. Freely you have received.

Then comes the regifting. ‘Freely you have received. Freely give.” Don’t be content that you have received the gospel. Give it away! Here is a little boy or girl who needs to know Jesus as much as you or I ever did. Chances are they will be growing up in a world where open attacks on their faith are going to be more and more acceptable than they were when you were that age. Give them a chance! Be the parent or grandparent and teach them that word yourself. Support Christian schools and Sunday schools which can be their gospel oasis in a dry and dusty desert.

Give it away! Sacrifice your time, and set aside your treasure so that the church can have the resources it needs to do mission work in your community and around the world. I know it isn’t cheap. I know it consumes a lot of man hours. But the cost of failing to pass the gospel on is far costlier. That cost is measured in souls, not dollars. For the love of Christ and for the love of his children, put your God-given resources to work in this mission, and don’t let the gospel light die out with us.

1 Peter 3:21-22“It (baptism) saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand–with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.”

Sometimes people have a caricature of heaven as an extended vacation–a really, really long vacation in which we do little more than lounge around in a tropical paradise, as though we were living in an otherworldly spa and resort complete with hammocks and white sand beaches. Even for us that is a gross cartoon picture of our heavenly rest which will have as much to do with activity and service as it does with lazy naps.

For Jesus, heaven is not so much a place or escape or retirement as it is the place where he rules, even now. He “has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand.” God’s right hand is heaven’s highest place of honor for him, but it is even more than that. It comes “with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.” These are the most powerful spiritual beings in the universe. All of them live in complete submission to Jesus, because in heaven Jesus rules. And if all of these submit to him, then everyone and everything else in the universe must submit to him as well.

Do you note that Peter is not saying, “Jesus will rule,” but that “Jesus rules already”? That may not always be obvious to his waiting people, who suffer so much while they wait. I don’t always understand his plan. I look at the way he lets the world go, and I don’t get it.

But let’s not separate “Jesus rules” from “Jesus suffered,” “Jesus conquered and rose,” and “Jesus saves.” All of that has certainly turned out in our favor. As we have trusted his plan to save us, he invites us to trust the way he rules our world still today.