God is glorified in sacrificial love.

 

Sermon for Easter 5, May 18, 2025

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.  His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence.  Amen.

John 13:31-35  ³¹After Judas left, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.  ³²If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify the Son in himself and will glorify him at once.”  ³³“Dear children, I am going to be with you only a little longer.  You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.  ³⁴“A new commandment I give you: Love one another.  Just as I have loved you, so also you are to love one another.  ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (EHV)

God is glorified in sacrificial love.

Dear disciples of the Lamb of God,

            This portion of John’s gospel presents us with a strange juxtaposition that seems incomprehensible to human reason: Jesus identifies the traitor, Judas, then immediately tells him, “What you are about to do, do more quickly.” (John 13:27)  However, we then read, “After Judas left, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.  If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify the Son in himself and will glorify him at once.’”  I suppose it is possible that some might see no connection between these two things, but because they come to us together, we learn that God is glorified in sacrificial love.

We need to recognize that Jesus knows Judas is betraying Him to the authorities who planned to arrest and kill Jesus.  Jesus knows full well the suffering, torture, and death He will soon endure.  Who could possibly assume that His suffering and death would be anything but shameful and a horrible way to treat any innocent Man?  The answer is found in this, that there is no such thing as a truly innocent person except Jesus.  Because all of mankind deserved the sentence of death on account of sin, both the sins committed as the person goes through life, and the guilt of omission of truly good works plus the inherited guilt of every person born with a sinful nature.

Yet, it is in this gift of His Son, promised throughout the ages since Adam and Eve listened to the devil’s deceptions, that God has shown His pure, unlimited love.  The Son God sent into the world to be our Substitute was completely righteous and holy before God.  Jesus deserved none of the punishment and death He received the day after He spoke these words.  Still, it is in this very suffering and death that Jesus and God are glorified.  How can that possibly be?  It defies human logic that anyone could be glorified in such a gruesome, shameful execution.  Normally, this couldn’t be reconciled, but here we see God demonstrate true love, because “God made him, who did not know sin, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)  God is glorified in sacrificial love.

The glory comes in that we had nothing to offer to God to buy His good favor.  No gold or silver or any other thing we find precious could satisfy God’s judgment, because it is all already His by right.  No action we could do on our own could be counted as good work, because at best, we would only be doing what we were already supposed to be doing without shortcoming or fault.  Perfect holiness, righteousness, and justice were required.  In all this and every other way, we only fell short.  Therefore, the Second person of the Trinity entered this world to live and be the righteousness we needed.  Then, because our guilt required payment, Jesus became that price, making Himself the holy, unblemished Lamb upon whom all the sins of the world were counted so that in Jesus’ death, our debt is paid, and God would count us as righteous and holy.  The glory to God comes in the sacrificial love shown to the world through His Son on the cross.

That night He was betrayed, Jesus spoke to His disciples, “Dear children, I am going to be with you only a little longer.  You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.”  Jesus was bracing them for the events of the next three days.  No person could help Jesus win our reconciliation with God.  No one else could bear any sins but his own.  The thief on the cross was dying there because he deserved death for his tremendous crimes, but we all deserved to die for every misdeed, every misspoken word, every wicked thought, and every time we failed to do the good things God has commanded—for all the times we fail the love and honor we are to show to Him always and the love and service we are to give our neighbor everywhere. 

Only Jesus could stand before the judging eyes of the Sanhedrin without guilt.  Only Jesus could go to that cross with no sin of His own yet carrying the guilt and shame of the entire human race of all time.  Only God’s Son could pay the penalty of death for sin, then enter the grave and Satan’s eternal prison to declare victory over that liar’s rebellion, yet rise from the dead alive and glorified to ascend and live forever at His Father’s side in heaven.

Jesus’ words came true as the disciples cowered in fear after His arrest.  They wondered and worried about what would come next.  In spite of their shortcomings, however, Jesus returned to them to show them the fulness of His victory over sin, death, and the devil.  Jesus returned to this world to teach them what they were to spend the rest of their lives doing, and then, He ascended to His Father’s side in heaven to enable them to live according to God’s will until such time as He returns to take us home to dwell with God forever. 

Here also is when Jesus tells us what our lives should be like.  “A new commandment I give you: Love one another.  Just as I have loved you, so also you are to love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  This statement needs almost more explanation in our time than almost any other command.  So much of our world today has no understanding of the kind of love Jesus is talking about.  At best, the natural mind tends to think of love as affection.  Modern minds often demand that love requires approval and acceptance of everyone and everything no matter how depraved and immoral they might be.  None of this is real love.

Jesus said, “Just as I have loved you, so also you are to love one another.”  How did Jesus love?  Jesus loved by being completely true to God above; by obeying every command and will of His Father in heaven.  Jesus loved by teaching the pure truth as it had been given through the prophets in the Old Testament and the evangelists and apostles in the New Testament.  Jesus loved by being completely honest with those around Him, calling out sin in friend and foe alike.  Jesus forgave freely every person who came to Him in repentance, yet then He says, “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.” (John 8:11) 

At the same time, Jesus condemned those who rebelled against God by not receiving Jesus as their Savior and Lord.  Modern fools want to imagine that all roads and all religions lead to God in heaven, but the truth is there is only one way to receive forgiveness and salvation and that is through trusting Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior and God.  Those who imagine obeying God yet rejecting Jesus need to deal with the Holy Spirit who had St. John write, “Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father.  But the one who confesses the Son has the Father as well.” (1 John 2:23)  Those who would follow any other god, religion, or philosophy must deal with the truth that God has declared, “I am the Lord; that is my name.  I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to idols.” (Isaiah 42:8)

So, where does all of that leave us?  How do we love our fellow man as we should?  The answer is found in our connection with Jesus by faith.  It is through faith that we are counted righteous and enabled to love others as we should.  Jesus tells us, “I am the Vine; you are the branches.  The one who remains in me and I in him is the one who bears much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)  St. Paul wrote, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were therefore buried with him by this baptism into his death, so that just as he was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too would also walk in a new life.” (Romans 6:3-4)  It is with Christ living in us and guiding us from His throne in heaven that we are motivated to love as we should. 

And how should we love according to the Christian faith?  God is glorified in sacrificial love.  Here is where we need to understand the kind of love Jesus was talking about.  This agape love is not motivated by emotion.  There is no selfish gain or reward expected.  It is holding God’s will and our neighbors’ welfare as the driving motivation in everything we do.  That means we abandon our own will to Jesus.  We give no concern to gaining the world’s approval because the world will always be driven by sin and the devil’s lies.  Instead, we serve God willingly and faithfully in all things because that is what Jesus did for us.  We show love by speaking the truth even when it hurts and even when it costs us our lives.  Sacrificial love recognizes that the world will hate us because it hated Jesus; then boldly clinging to our Savior because He has already won the victory that gives us eternal life and peace with Him in heaven, we continue leading other broken-hearted sinners to forgiveness and life in company with all believers in heaven.

Dear friends, as God made us His own dear children when He claimed us as His own through the water and Word of Baptism, and as His Holy Spirit has worked faith in our hearts through the hearing of the Gospel, God prepared us to please Him by living for Him.  He has washed away our sins and remembers them no more, but whatever we do out of faith in His Son and to help and serve our neighbor, those things God remembers and will remember at the judgment.  For the sacrificial love Jesus shows the world through those of us who walk by faith, we will hear Him say in the end, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 25:34)  Our place in God’s kingdom is prepared for us by our Savior, Jesus, who went to the cross and to the grave, to hell and back on our behalf, before ascending to heaven to prepare a place for us there, prepared for us, solely, because God is glorified in sacrificial love.  Amen.

For the LORD is good.  His mercy endures forever.  His faithfulness continues through all generations.  Amen.