What is love? How would you define it? If we were to ask people that question, many, maybe most of them would say, “Love is a feeling,” and then go on from there. But with God, love isn’t a feeling. With God, love is a verb, an action. For “God shows his own love for us in this way: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God shows His love by doing.
You and I are dying. We’ve been dying since the day the sperm and egg joined in our mother’s womb. We know it and our Lord knows it. Sometimes, we try to forget that we are dying and push that reality out of our minds. But our Lord never forgets. He sees dying people and feels deeply about their plight. He feels a sincere yearning for each of us to have a real life, forever.
To us, that sounds like love. But if Jesus feels all that for us but stays cloistered in heaven when He’s the only one who can help us, that’s not love. Easter love isn’t a feeling; Easter love is God in action.
When someone you know is coping with some tragedy and you feel sorrow and sincerely wish his hurt would go away, that sounds like love. But if you did nothing to help, if you didn’t visit with him in his time of need, if you didn’t encourage or point him to God’s eternal promises, that’s not love. Easter love isn’t a feeling; it’s an action.
When a child needs your attention, you may feel tenderness toward her and wish you had some to give. The world calls that love. But if you don’t make time for a child the Lord has brought into your life, that’s not love. Easter love isn’t a feeling; it’s an action.
When you are strongly and mutually attracted to another and want to consummate that physical attraction without the blessing of marriage, people may call that love, but that isn’t love. That’s just a feeling that wishes to have another person. Easter love isn’t a feeling; it’s an action.
Easter love doesn’t ask if you happen to like a person in need. Easter love doesn’t worry about whether helping someone else is convenient for you. Easter love does whatever another person needs–just like Jesus does for us.
So, what do you do when you look at your life and realize that what you thought was love is not even a poor reflection of it? For our love is often full of feelings but little action. Peter writes, “Love each other earnestly from a pure heart.” But looking at your inherited sinful self, you can say: “I was born with an impure heart. I can never love anyone earnestly since such love demands a pure heart. And I don’t have that!”
And what you would say would be true–but only half true! Oh, it’s true that real Easter love only comes from a pure heart. And it’s true that you were conceived and born with an impure heart. But your Father in heaven, through His Spirit, gives you a new birth, giving you a pure heart.
What does the Apostle Peter tell us? “Love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born anew.” How are you born anew, from above? Peter tells us that, as well. You are born anew, “not of perishable seed but imperishable, through the living and enduring Word of God.”
Do you get what Peter is saying? An egg and sperm begin a life that ends in death. That’s a birth from perishable seed. That’s the life of the fallen flesh that you’ve inherited from your parents. But God’s Word gives you a life that not even death can end. That’s a birth from imperishable seed.
God’s Word is an imperishable seed that sprouts within us and gives an imperishable life. Why is this so? It’s because that word brings to you THE Word, Jesus Christ. Look at Jesus. Oh, he looked perishable on the cross. There, the Jewish leaders conspired with the Romans to kill and execute Jesus. But Jesus came back to life. He’s imperishable. And because that’s what Jesus is, when you are connected to Him, that’s also what you are!
The love Jesus has for you is more than a feeling. It’s an action, an action that sees your need for forgiveness. And so He came down from heaven to be sacrificed in your place. His love was an action that saw your need to be raised from death. And so He came back from the tomb alive. His love was an action that saw your need to have eternal life in both body and soul. And so He ascended, body and soul, to heaven, 40 days after His resurrection. Jesus’ love is an action.
Do you see what your Lord is doing for you? He’s doing Easter love! He’s not just feeling Easter love for you; he’s doing Easter love for you!
God’s imperishable Word, Jesus Christ, became human. And the Holy Spirit tethers that Word, that God and man, Jesus Christ, to words that bring Him to you. And so we hear what Peter says to Christ’s own: “You were ransomed from your empty way of life inherited from the fathers” (1 Peter 1:18). If all you have is an earthly father, but not a heavenly Father, even the best love you could offer would be futile and empty. The best you could do would be a hollow imitation. But God has ransomed you from that futility and wasted effort.
Ransom: That’s a payment that sets you free. And it was a costly payment! In the Old Covenant, a lamb without spot or blemish was the ransom payment for each firstborn male Jew. The ransom payment for you and me is still a Lamb without blemish or spot. But this isn’t a lamb covered with wool. This is a Lamb covered with sin, your sin. This is the Lamb of God–the one named Jesus.
And that Lamb of God was killed, not as a Passover sacrifice, but on a Roman cross as THE Passover sacrifice. His blood causes eternal death to pass over you! You have a Lord who shows you so much Easter love that He is willing to buy you, ransom you, with nothing less than His precious blood, worth more than any amount of silver or gold. As we sang earlier in the service: “For the sheep the Lamb has bled, alleluia! Sinless in the sinners stead, alleluia!” (LSB 463, stanza 2)
When your mother physically gave birth to you, before the doctor cleaned you up, you were covered with your mother’s blood. When God the Father, through His Son in the Holy Spirit, gave you spiritual birth, you were also covered with blood. But in that spiritual birth, it wasn’t perishable blood that covered you. No; it was imperishable blood–the blood of Jesus. That’s what happens in baptism!
In our first reading, when the crowd realized their dire state before God, they cried out as we only know how: “What should we do?” And Peter said, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).
Yet, when we see our lack of love and ask, “What should we do?” the answer is slightly different. For those of us whom the Holy Spirit has already brought into the Church, the verb tenses have now changed. “Repent and return to your baptism, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, for you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit!”
You were baptized; you are baptized! Living in your baptism is a present-tense reality. And living in that present-tense reality as God’s baptized child, you can do more than feel love–you can do love!
That birth from above changes your life. Without Jesus, your eternity remains an eternal death. That’s your inheritance from your physical birth. But with Jesus, your eternity becomes one of eternal life. Life doesn’t change more fully than that!
Without Jesus, your heart is impure and cannot earnestly live out an Easter love. For no matter what you may do, your sin still contaminates all your deeds, making them unacceptable to God. Your sins keep your heart from being pure. But with Jesus, and His blood-given forgiveness and righteousness, God purifies your heart and fills you with Easter love. He changes your heart, making it pure, so it can carry out deeds of Easter love. Life doesn’t change more fully than that!
Your Lord’s Easter love and Easter blood are constantly purifying your heart. He even puts His love and blood in us in His Holy Supper. That makes your love, not just a feeling, but an action, an action that can help others.
Easter love listens to that person trying to cope with a tragedy. Easter love takes time for that child whom we might think is an imposition on life, when, instead, he’s a gift from God. Easter love will seek to speak kind words to others. Easter love respects someone else enough to wait until marriage makes us one flesh before we act like one flesh. Easter love is love in action.
But what if your love still falls short of Easter love? Many of you here are grandparents. Imagine your two-year-old grandchild drawing a picture for you. Now, that picture has only several squiggly, multi-colored lines on it. But for you, it’s a masterpiece. That’s how God sees you.
Your efforts to love may not look beautiful. But you have a Lamb without blemish whose beautiful love is counted as yours. God sees your actions and counts them as the most beautiful masterpiece of Easter love that He has ever seen! For Jesus’ blood, His imperishable blood, purifies your heart.
That’s because Jesus doesn’t just feel love for you. He does love for you: an on-the-cross love for you. He has a risen-from-the-dead love for you. And because Christ is risen, all eternity is changed–for you! Indeed, Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
