Eucharistic meditation

1 John 2:5: Whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

As we saw in the sermon, John emphasizes the necessity of obedience in the Christian life. If we say we know God, but don't obey Him, we are lying. Obedience is the pathway toward assurance and the full experience of fellowship with God. We know we have come to know Him when we keep His commandments.

John describes this somewhat differently in verse 5: Whoever keeps word, in Him the love of God perfected. What is love of God? Our love for God, or God's love for us? 1 John 4:12 says that perfected love comes when God abides in us. In that verse, John is talking about God's love for us, personified in the Spirit, remaining in us and that love coming to perfection. And it seems reasonable that he means the same thing in 2:4. The love of God that is perfected is the love of God for us, brought to us through the Spirit, coming to perfection through keeping the commandments.

Through much of Scripture, "perfection" does not mean sinlessness but maturity. The love of God comes to full and complete expression in us as we keep His commandments. Obedience is the path of assurance; it is also the path of maturity.

That is relevant to our celebration of the Supper in a couple of ways. We come here to a table that celebrates the death of Jesus, His supreme act of obedience to His Father. When we eat the body of Jesus and drink His blood, we are committing ourselves to walk as He walked. Each week we renew the pledge we made in baptism that we are the Lord's and that we will live as His disciples.

But this meal is also an act of obedience. "Do this," Jesus said, and each time we do it, we are keeping one of the New Commandments of God. Because this meal is an act of obedience, it is one of the moments on the path to assurance and to perfection, to maturity. As we eat and drink in obedience to the Lord’s command, we are growing up in all ways into Him, who is the head, even Christ, who causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. As we do what Jesus commanded at this table, we reach for the maturity to which God calls us.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, October 08, 2006 at 08:55 AM

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