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We are in the final days of waiting before Christmas. I’m so grateful for Jon Dart leading us in reflecting on the Apostle John’s powerful telling of the incarnation in John 1 on Sunday. I’ve always loved John’s gospel. It resonates with how my mind likes to work. But more and more, it is some of John’s conclusions that I find most powerful and compelling for how I understand God and what Jesus came to bring. Because, as much as John uses powerfully imagery and metaphor, there are times he speaks very plainly. And love is one of the topics he speaks most plainly about. After today, I’m going to take a couple weeks off from Covenant Weekly, but today, let’s consider John’s plain teaching about God, which always centres on Love. This is the Covenant Weekly for December 23, 2025.

Jesus, the Word, came as God with us, God in the flesh. Hebrews talks about how God had spoken through prophets and in various times and places, but in Jesus came the exact representation of God’s being. It is clear reading through scriptures that humanity has always had a bit of a hard time fully grasping the reality and heart of God.

But the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” John, gives a consistent summary of the heart of Jesus’ message and what Jesus revealed about God.

In 1 John, we read this statement who God is and the implication for how we should live.

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 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. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

This conviction and teaching comes from one who walked with Jesus for three years–who faithfully listened to Jesus’ teaching and watched how Jesus lived. He came to this conclusion about God and how we should live in response to God because he watched Jesus wash his disciples feet, even the feet of his betrayer, and tell them, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

I pray that as we get to Christmas this week you will, first and foremost, remember that you are loved. Not because you are so loveable, but because God assures us of divine love, because that is God’s very essence. And I pray that you will enjoy sharing and receiving that love with each other…even those around your table who you may struggle to love. This is, as John says, how “God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

Merry Christmas, Covenant Family.