GRACE. LOVE. FELLOWSHIP. 2 Cor. 13:11-14 6/7/20 – Trinity Sunday Living Word, Montrose Taglines

Taglines have become very popular lately. Local businesses and new churches, large corporations and world-wide organizations uses phrases or a set of words or compact sentences to explain what they’re all about in a succinct way. And it’s not just to use in a commercial or a marketing campaign. Taglines are supposed to summarize who they are, what they do, what they offer, the reason they exist. In order to accomplish that goal, taglines are usually short, sometimes they’re clever, they need to be accurate of course, and they’re meant to be memorable. We have a tagline as a congregation. Years ago as we put together a new website, we came up with this phrase for Living Word that is still on our homepage: “Hear It. Learn It. Live It.” Our entire ministry revolves around the living Word of God after all and that seemed to be a decent way of conveying this defining characteristic of our congregation in an easy-to- understand way. But whether our tagline is good or not isn’t really the point here. The point here is that this isn’t a recent phenomenon. God gave himself a tagline thousands of years ago. And I want to be careful that I don’t give the impression that our almighty eternal God wants to be hip or trendy. He isn’t all that concerned about marketing himself to modern American sensibilities. But he does describe who he is, what he does, what he offers, and the reason we exist in short, succinct phrases all over the Bible. One of those verses is right at the end of 2 Corinthians. And it happens to be a blessing that most of you have heard dozens and dozens of times before: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” That’s a nice tagline! And if we were to shorten it up even more, we would say that God reveals himself to us in this way: Grace. Love. Fellowship. Our one God, comprised of three distinct beings, different from one another and yet so interrelated that each one is God and all of them are God even though there aren’t three gods and there aren’t three parts of god and there aren’t three types of god, but there’s just one God, this God describes himself in a profound three-fold way: Grace. Love. Fellowship. Each one of these words is connected to one of the persons or beings of the Trinity – the Triune – three-in-one – God. Grace is associated with Jesus, God the Son. Love is associated with God the Father. And fellowship is associated with God the Holy Spirit. Because although these three are one, they also function separately, carrying out their own responsibilities for the good of the whole. And although we can’t completely comprehend with our limited knowledge the inner workings of God, all of his work for us can be summarized with these three words: Grace. Love. Fellowship.

What Are You All About?

How would you summarize yourself? What are you all about? If you had to describe yourself to someone with a tagline, what would it be? Maybe you like to sow and you might enjoy baking and you spend a lot of time with your grandkids. That’s not very catchy, but maybe it could go something like: “Sow. Dough. Watch Them Grow.” How would you distill who you are into a bite-sized phrase? Would you just describe the things you like to do or would you try to define who you really are? What about this tagline: “Kind. Compassionate. Christian.” That’s a positive tagline, but how honest are you really going to be? Would you use words that depict what you try to be or would you describe the reality? I would like my tagline to be “Kind. Compassionate. Christian.” but I don’t know how accurate that would be if someone compared those three words with the way I live my life! I’m not always very kind to people. I don’t always demonstrate a lot of compassion. I don’t act like a Christian in far too many situations. So although that’s what I want to be, I couldn’t claim that it’s a factual representation of who I really am. If I were to be brutally honest, I would have to say I’m very selfish. I’m focused on what I want and what I need and what I like instead of thinking about others. And I am insensitive. I’m not always aware of how other people are affected by what’s going on in their lives and even when I do know, sometimes I just don’t care. But if I wanted to encapsulate everything about me I would have to use the word “sinful” as well. That word is so broad that it doesn’t really explain anything specifically, but it does at least get to the heart of the problem. What happens in my mind and in my heart, what affects my emotions and motivations, what comes bubbling out of me in the way I treat others and the way I conduct myself as I live in this world… it’s all contaminated with sin. Sin is anything against God’s will, anything contrary to his Word, anything even just a little bit off from what he has clearly expressed in the Bible. That’s me. That’s what I do. That’s who I am. It’s not an excuse; it’s a sad fact. I’m selfish, insensitive, and all-too-sinful. How’s that for a tagline? If we were in a Bible study right now and you had pieces of paper in front of you, I would probably give you a few minutes to write down your own tagline. I would want you to struggle with it a little bit, just like I did this week. I would want you to try to evaluate yourself as honestly as possible, capturing who you are in just a few words. Aren’t you glad I’m not making you do that? It’s never comfortable coming to terms with yourself, looking underneath the layers that you have so carefully applied over the years and admitting who you are beneath it all.

What Is God All About?

But we can’t stop here. We can never stopthere. Because who we are as sin-filled people does not tell the whole story. Sin doesn’t “define us” to use a current mode of expression. The Lord defines us. And what we are all about is inseparably connected to what the Lord is all about. And what is the Lord all about? Grace. Love. Fellowship. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ….” Free, no strings attached, no fine print, no bill or debt or obligation, no requirements or expectations, but a pure desire to give everything to those who have earned nothing. That’s grace. That’s Jesus. And you see that grace in action throughout his life. He healed, he comforted, he encouraged, he strengthened, he forgave, he saved, without expecting anything in return. And he didn’t just put in the effort for those who deserved it. He didn’t go through everything he went through just for those who would one day believe in him. That wouldn’t grace! He did it for everyone – whether they would ever appreciate it or not! The cross and the tomb, the blood and the victory, the death and the life, the torture and now the throne, all of it was for everyone and all of it was for you. That’s the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it all started with the love of God. The love of God is exemplified by one of the most famous passages in the Bible: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son….” God the Father’s love for you is his decision to sacrifice everything, it was a conscious choice to send his Son into the darkest recesses of hell so that the human race that had rejected him, abandoned him, and rebelled against him for thousands of years would be forgiven. God the Father’s love for you is so vast and so intense that he was willing to destroy the Son he had been with forever so that he could be with you forever. God the Father’s love for you is indefatigable. That means it doesn’t get tired, it doesn’t wear out, it doesn’t fade away, it doesn’t lose its strength over time. It is solid and sure and never-ending. That’s the love of God. And all of that leads to the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Fellowship is a special bond, an intimate connection, a tight relationship that we have with the Lord because the Holy Spirit has given us the gift of faith to believe in him. But we share this fellowship not only with the Holy Spirit himself, and not only with the Father and the Son, but also with each other. We have a unity together based on what we hold to be true in the pages of the Bible. We are like-minded and one in faith. We share the acknowledgement that Jesus is our Savior, but we also are in agreement about the other teachings of God’s Word as well. We are different in a variety of ways: our personalities, our backgrounds, our stations in life, but we are, as God says, part of the one body of Christ. That’s the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Grace. Love. Fellowship. That tagline helps us to craft our own. Because I no longer have to say that I am “selfish, insensitive, and all-too-sinful” – even though that’s still accurate. I can now say that I am “Fully forgiven and headed to heaven.” That’s who I am. That’s not just who I want to be, that’s who God has made me to be. God tells me who I am and God tells you who you are. You are “fully forgiven and headed to heaven” because of his grace, his love, and his fellowship. That tagline is never going to change. It doesn’t have to. God doesn’t have to reinvent himself or adjust to the culture or keep up with technology. Your Lord is constant and his truths are eternal. And when he says that he has chosen you by grace, when he shows you that he has saved you through love, when he promises you that you are part of a unique fellowship through the gift of faith worked in your heart through his Word, that will always be true. Because that’s who he is. And if that’s who your Triune God is, then you know who you are. You are his child, you are his own. You are fully forgiven and headed to heaven because of grace, love, fellowship. What a tagline. What a blessing. “May the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Amen.