Hopefully the message is getting through 🙂 It’s all about love!!
So we hear more again this week from John – in fact some of it is repeating what should be familiar by now: Jesus says “remain in my love; keep the commandments; you are my equals not inferiors”.
There are however two new elements. First is the recognition from Peter that God does not work in terms of the categories of people that we set up: “in every nation whoever fears him (God) and acts uprightly is acceptable to him “. Now this should really not have come as a surprise since it’s completely clear in Isaiah and other prophets. Unfortunately not only the Jews of Jesus’ time had overlooked this point, so people have continued to do so down to today. The human need to create categories and judge some as better or more worthy than others seems very hard to overcome.
The second point is connected but not quite so overt – and in a way more fundamental. It’s not we who get to choose, it’s God who does the choosing. Perhaps it’s inevitable that we start from our own egocentric perspective. When we think about love it’s natural that we think about us doing the loving. But John tells us: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us”. Or as he has Jesus say: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you”.
It is hard to accept that we are not the center of our own life, that our own will is not primary, that we don’t get to be in control. But that is the basis of the commandment that Jesus is teaching – that God comes first, that God is the one who chooses, who makes the decisions. If we insist on being in control then we are not “remaining in Christ”. Only when we fully accept this and give up our illusions of control or power can we relax into the peace that he offers us.