Christ In, Christ Out

John 15:9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-- fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

I’m not very good at math anymore. And so, the Budget Committee doesn’t invite me to their meetings, because I would just slow things down. My wife takes care of our checkbook, to keep us out of jail. My girls take their math homework to their Mom to correct, so they can actually pass their class. I don’t even think that the calculator on my phone likes me very much.

That being said, I do know that in math there is a principle called the “order of operations.” Do you remember studying such a thing? In order to get the right answer, you have to perform the math operations in the right order. For example, 3+4x2 could equal 14 or 3+4x2 could equal 11. It depends on which order you do the problem. Wrong order, wrong answer. Right order, right answer. It’s a tricky thing and often trips students up (or pastors who are poor in math).

Well, there is an “order of operations” with God as well. An order which is very important to keep right. For in the Holy Gospel today, Jesus speaks to us of “obeying His commands” and “remaining in His love.” Those phrases came up a number of times. The question is: what is “the order of operations” with those two things? Does Jesus love us because we obey His commandments, or do we obey His commandments because He loves us? Wrong order, wrong answer. Right order, right answer. And unfortunately, many today get it wrong.

To begin to answer that question, let us go back to when God gave His commandments - back to the book of Exodus. The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt. They had been for over 400 years. But God rescued them from that slavery - not because they deserved it, or because they were the best, or the brightest, or the smartest, or the strongest - they were slaves! He rescued them simply because He loved them. The Egyptians and the other nations around them didn’t think that love made any sense, but nevertheless, God loved them, and brought them out, and said to them: “You are My people, My chosen nation, My holy priests” (Exodus 19). And then, God gave them the commandments (Exodus 20). For this is how those who are chosen by God, set free and given life by God, made holy by God, and filled with the love of God, now live. They love others as they have been loved.

Note the “order of operations” closely there! God did not give His people His commandments while they were slaves in Egypt and say: OK. Keep these, and if you do good enough, then I will love you and rescue you. No - God loved them and rescued them first, and then said: Now, love as you have been loved. And here’s how. Ten ways how. Or, this is what love looks like.

That is the “order of operations” that is also happening in John’s Gospel. Did you hear it? “Love each other as I have loved you. … You did not choose me, but I chose you.” When Jesus spoke these words, it was just a few short hours before He was going to do His own exodus - to rescue us from our slavery to sin and bring us out of our captivity to death in His resurrection. In just a few short hours, He would ascend the cross. And for whom? The best, the brightest, the smartest, and the strongest? No. For sinners, rejects, doubters, deniers, power-grabbers, fishermen, tax collectors, schemers, thieves, adulteresses ... or in other words, for folks just like you and me. For people entangled by sin and caught in webs of guilt and shame. For people wracked with doubts and fears. For people who are living in darkness and the shadow of death. For people whose bodies are breaking down, and whose minds are slowing down. He didn’t wait until we were good enough, He came because we weren’t. Because if He didn’t – like Israel in Egypt – we were doomed to a life of slavery forever.

To many, that love doesn’t make sense - for who loves sinners and slaves? But that’s what makes it so wondrous. That the Son of God would come down from heaven, become a man, and then take upon Himself our sin and death to rescue wretches like us. And that, just as Israel passed through the Red Sea, that we too now pass through the waters of Holy Baptism to a new life. For at the font, the resurrection and life of Jesus are given to us, and our enemies of sin and death are swallowed up. And there your Lord said to you: “You are my child, My chosen, My holy priest” (1 Peter 2). You are free. Not free to sin - that’s what you have been set free from! No, you are free to live, and free to love.

The question is: what does that life look like? What does that love look like? Jesus had been showing them all along, but they were now about to see its culmination. In just hours now they would see it - on the cross, as Jesus laid down His life for the life of the world. To make friends out of enemies, and saints out of sinners. He gives His life that we might have life, and gives His love that we might love as He has loved us. The “order of operations” flows from Him to us, and then from us to others.

That is even more clear when you remember that these words that Jesus spoke today are a continuation of His words from last week - that He is the vine and we are the branches. Or in other words, as we live in the life and love of Jesus, His life and love will explode into your life, bearing fruit in you and through you. His Spirit a stream of living water flowing out from your heart (John 7:38). His life and love not just an example for your life and love, but as the source of your life and love. That when it comes to your life, the old saying be true: Christ in, Christ out. For just as Christ went into the tomb dead but came out alive, so He has entered the tomb of our spiritually dead and lifeless bodies to raise us to a new life. That it be no longer for us: sin in, sin out; but now Christ in, Christ out. His love in, His love out. His forgiveness in, His forgiveness out. That means you can’t get Christ out by demanding, by laws, by force; you can only get Christ out by putting Christ in.

So if there has been a shortage of “Christ out” in your life - a shortage of love, a shortage of forgiveness, a shortage of patience, a shortage of kindness, a shortage of care, a shortage of compassion, a shortage of faith, a shortage of strength, a shortage of trust … (and who among us does not have those things!) - the answer is not to beat yourself up, or try to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, but to repent, and come, and receive. To receive the love, forgiveness, faith, strength, and all that we need to give. To drink from the true vine, abiding in Him and He in us. To reverse the trend of “Garbage in, Garbage out” with “Christ in, Christ out.”

That’s why you’re here today. You’re not here today because you did so good this week and are waiting for your pat on the back! No, you’re here because you didn’t do very well at all. Because there was (again) a shortage - or maybe an absence - of “Christ out” in your life. And probably because there was a plethora of “Garbage out in your life.” Because you did not live as the Christian you are. Your fruit has not been the best, in fact, it’s been kind of moldy and rotten lately.

Though we break with our Lord in sin (as Israel often did, too, in the wilderness), our Savior does not break with us. He was with Israel in the Tabernacle, to forgive them and give them what they needed - and He has promised to be here for you in His Tabernacle on Olive Street. That returning in repentance, we receive those greatest words of love ever spoken: “I forgive you.” And He who laid down His life for us on the cross, now comes and lays that same body and blood for you on the altar, and says: “Take and eat, this is My body; take and drink, this is My blood.” And eating and drinking His body and blood, we again receive His resurrection and are filled with His life. And we bear fruit. The fruit of Christ in, Christ out.

And this is what John meant what he penned these words in his letter that we also heard from today: “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Have we overcome the devil and his antichrists because our faith is so strong? No. We have overcome the devil and his antichrists because the object of our faith is so strong – Jesus Christ. On our own, we are defeated. But with faith in Christ, we overcome. With faith in Christ, we love “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. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:9,10). With faith in Christ, we live – like Tabitha being raised to life in our first lesson from Acts 9, this morning.

When we think of love, we often think of the love a young couple has for each other. One such couple was Betty and George. They had been dating for a while and were getting very serious. One day, Betty asked him, “Will you love me even when I get old and wrinkled?” “Of course, dear,” George answered, “You know I love you with a love that cannot fade with time. My love can only grow with time’s swift passage. I love everything about you … but …. um … you won’t ever look like your mother, will you?”

Young couples, bride and grooms, all of us, really, like to profess our true and undying love for others. Unfortunately, most of us, somewhere in the back of our minds, seem to have an escape clause or two. We secretly say to ourselves, “Yes, I will love you as long as you don’t …” and then we fill in the blank. We put conditions on our faithfulness, our future, and our love.

Thankfully, God does not love that way. There are no conditions to His love. There are no clauses to His love. There is only an “order of operations” for His love. He loves us enough to lay down His life for us. It is such a simple equation that even those of us who are math-challenged can receive it and believe it. And because that equation always works, now the second part of that order of operations follows that we love each other.

Christ in, Christ out. Amen.