What Does It Mean To Love? ...

There are those who say “Love is cheap.”  To this I ask, “then how could God be love?”  What love motivated God to do for us on Calvary was anything but cheap.  On the contrary, it was everything He had.  The massive power and ability of God to control everything, escape everything, was held in check through the torture, through the pain, all the way into the grave.  He did nothing to save Himself from our punishment, but instead He bore it so we would never have to.  He endured a separation from His Father, the source of all love, that broke His heart and cost Him His life.  All for you.  Everything He had, He would lay down, only for you.  What does it mean to love?  What does it mean to love like God loves?  When Christ gives His disciples the commandment to love one another, how should we translate that into practical terms?  This direction to us was not about warm fuzzy feelings, or empty words spoken in passing without any thought behind them.  To love each other carries far more meaning than that.

Peter carried a passion in his ministry and counsel to the church of his day.  He knew that above all things, the success of early church would be defined by how it loved.  It is no different today.  The success of the gospel message will be defined by how those who proclaim it - love (not with their words, but with their lives).  In our study of Peter’s first letter to the church, we have reviewed the importance Peter placed on a humble submissive approach to the world around us, no matter how evil it might be.  After offering counsel to men and then women about how to reach the un-reached heart, melting it with humility and love, he now refocuses back to those who claim the name of Christ.  His counsel focuses back on what it means to love.

He begins in chapter 3 in verse 8 saying … “Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: [verse 9] Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.”  To be of one mind, one must be willing to become part of a collective, part of a family.  We need not lose our identity or sacrifice what makes us unique and adds value to the body of Christ.  But needs be, that we sacrifice the ego that would hold our uniqueness above the value of others.  If we are to be one, we must accept the uniqueness of others as having equal weight with our own contributions.  “Smart” is not the only virtue to value.  “Caring” means more, far more often.  “Approachable” will enable connections where its opposite prevents the sharing of love.  Every attribute, every gift, every unique contribution to the body of Christ carries equal weight, and is equally needed in the cause of Christ.  To be of one mind, we must see that all parts of the body are as critical to the cause of Christ, as is our own particular piece.

In our quest for unity of spirit, of goals to love the unloved, we must not lose sight of the opportunity and blessing of showing Compassion to each other.  To feel deeply for those in pain, to so care about someone else, that what happens to them, happens to you – is to love your neighbor as yourself.  To find pity for your spouse, or children, or parents might be easier, but to find it for your fellow parishioner might be quite a bit harder.  To find pity for an enemy, or for the “man on the street”, to so value his life and experiences that they carry equal weight with your own, is to begin to love like Christ loved.  This kind of love for one another is not natural.  It can only come through submission to Christ that Peter has already given significant attention to. 

Peter then adds the idea of practicing common courtesy to each other.  Imagine how often courtesy, allows the simple basic needs of another to be prioritized ahead of your own.  You are driving down the road, and someone needs to get into your lane – do you let them in front of you to be courteous?  You may find yourself delayed as a result.  If you do it for everyone who has a need it may take you a long time to get anywhere.  Those behind you are sure to be critical.  But those who you permit access ahead of your own need to get somewhere could be grateful.  Courtesy is only a simple practice of putting the needs of someone else ahead of your own.  It is being thoughtful.  A parent takes a small child out to eat at a crowded restaurant.  The child becomes agitated and disruptive, does the parent allow the child to run amok?  Or are they proactively addressing the needs of the child, while minimizing the disruption of the dining experience of others who have paid to eat out as well?  Courtesy, would see the parent take proactive and preventative action, even if it means their own food grows cold.  The experience of others outweighs their own.  That is courtesy seldom seen in the world today.

Then Peter gets back to his theme of what it means to love.  When evil is shown to you, when someone rails against your (whether deserved or not), your response is the choice you are faced with.  You cannot prevent someone else from taking evil against you.  You cannot prevent the hurtful words another may speak about you.  But your response defines your love – even for those who prefer to remain your enemy.  The blessing the Christian inherits in returning love for evil is no small thing.  It is the basis of conversion.  It is the reason to ask “why”?  Think about how your respond to Christ.  You spit in His face, and yet He loves you.  You hurt Him with what you do, yet He forgives you, and holds no memory of your slights.  You begin to wonder, “why” would God love you so much?  What is it about you that is “worth” loving?  You can’t see it.  But somehow He does.  And love begins the work of transformation within you away from the evil you once embraced, and into the unfailing love you have been shown.

Imagine for a minute though, what would have happened if when you spit at God, He happened to spit back.  That would have only been justice.  You throw rocks at Him, so He throws rocks at you.  After all you threw first.  He does not have to use His powers, He could exactly return to you what you have done to Him.  But He does not.  If He did, you would not see love, you would see justice.  People turn from the justice they are due.  No one likes to admit what their actions have earned them.  No one likes to suffer the consequences of the evil seeds they have planted.  Instead, they want to do evil, and see none in return.  Justice does nothing to inspire loyalty, it is only a factual response.  Love however is a mystery.  Why someone would return love for your evil, begins to gnaw at your mind.  It is aggravating not to be able to understand why someone responds to your evil, with good.  That response warrants investigation.  That response must be understood, and so the path of love begins.  The blessing we inherit, may be a small role in the redemption of another soul.  For us to even begin to point an erring soul back to the source of all love, is not inconsequential.  It is us, allowing God, to use us, for the benefit of mankind.

Peter continues in verse 10 … “For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: [verse 11] Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.”  Peter wants those who read his words to have a life worth living, a good life.  He is not just deferring a good life until we meet in heaven.  He is establishing how to have one here on earth despite being under unjust rule, and perhaps even the control of slavery and oppression.  To be happy and love life, keep your tongue in check.  Speak no mischief of others, speak no lies, speak no malice.  Instead of seeking evil, seek to escape evil and find something good to say or do instead.  Instead of allowing ego to foster conflict, seek peace.  Be humble enough to embrace peace no matter if you are “right” or not.  Seek peace and unity, speaking truth without malice, or harming others.  Mind how your words are heard, how they might be interpreted, take care so that love is ALWAYS heard in what you speak.  This is the recipe for a happy life in the here and now.  Evil seeds yield only an evil harvest.

Peter continues in verse 12 … “For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.  [verse 13] And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?”  First, it is important to understand that the problems in our prayer-life are not because is listening or ignoring us.  It is instead what we ask for.  Too often we ask for what “we” need, or what “we” want, and what we want is intended solely for our benefit.  The righteous asks for others, the righteous are like Christ seeking how to make the lives of others better in the world.  Those prayers are heard, as it gives God permission to intercede in the life of someone who might not have chosen it, in order that He answer our prayers on their behalf.  Those are the prayers God longs to hear, and answer.  The gimme, gimme, gimme, prayers are all too common, and have only one target to benefit – namely me.  God knows the needs of His people, and loves them.  He spoils His children in showering them what they truly need, even if sometimes it is hard to see that is what is occurring.

The things intended for our harm, will be turned into something that is for our good – because of the love of God for each of us.  It is OK to express our needs to God in our prayers, but remembering He already knows them, He is deeply concerned about them, and He has already made provision for addressing them.  Given that, do you really need to keep kicking the dead horse?  If instead, we focused the energy of our prayers on the deep needs of others, we might find a more productive use of prayer.  It may be that the one in need refuses to bow before our God, and his only hope is that you will do it on his behalf.  It may be that the one trapped in a sin you know they commit, has no desire to be made free from that sin.  Should you silently pray to God for that person, you might find it is both theirs and your own heart melted by love.  The prayers of the righteous carry a faith that already knows their own needs have been addressed before they begin.  They are free to pray for others, and take care to notice what God might wish to do for others, through them.

What does it mean to love?  For Peter, it means you put the eternal life of another so ahead of your own temporary needs and desires, that you become an instrument for their salvation.  It is not about finding warm fuzzy feelings and “chemistry” that would draw you to the homeless and those who reek from life in the gutter.  It is about seeing that mentally challenged chemically imbalanced soul, and seeing the face of God, and the love of God trying so hard to break through and reach that soul.  You may be His only instrument.  You may be His last tool, His last opportunity.  What a tragedy to waste that opportunity because we are so “busy”.  What a tragedy to deny love because those mentally imbalanced homeless souls are “incapable” of understanding what we might have offered.  They may have their problems.  But the love of Christ reaches deep, and heals a multitude of illness.  To pray for that person, to take action to show love to that person, may result in the miracle of healing that might have otherwise never been seen.  For all eternity, what gratitude might you be showing to those who helped bring you to the love of Christ?

What does it mean to love?  For Peter it means that we value unity in the church above the needs of our ego.  It means we value the life of an enemy so highly that we would seek their happiness despite how they treat us before, during, and after what we do for them.  It means we treat our enemies like our God treated us when we were His enemy.  It means we treat our spouse like the infinite unique treasure they have always been.  It means we treat those in authority over us, with respect, kindness, humility and love, even when how they treat us is nothing short of oppression.  It means winning the end game.  Sin will only be defeated when mankind chooses to seek freedom from it through the power of Christ.  Love draws mankind to that point.  Criticism drives man away from it.

Have you been so drawn by the love of Christ, to the point where you are willing to reflect it to others?  Have you asked yourself … what does it mean to love?

 

The Power of Prayer - Communion (part eleven) ...

The time for communion was at an end.  There were only a few fleeting moments left before those intent to kill Him would arrive and end this conversation.  But as He lived, so would He end His talk with those around Him, in prayer to His Father.  When all else is at an end, prayer remains.  When there is nothing left to face but death itself, prayer remains.  When what we all want to avoid becomes the unavoidable, prayer remains.  The power of prayer is not found in overcoming our fate, the power of prayer is found in meeting our fate.  There are more important things in the universe than life and death.  Our existence is not merely defined by our short time in this sin-sick world.  He came to give us a real life beyond anything we could have imagined in this context.  And so while evil exists, and while our choice to embrace it lives within us, the natural results of evil must continue to exist as well.  Christ came to pay our cost.  He would allow His life to be ended, so that ours would not end in an earthly grave.  As He would rise and conquer death, so one day, He would call us out from death as well, that through the power of His love, we would arise from death – from the death of our souls that comes from the corruption of self, and from the death of our bodies that comes from the decay in the earth.  But to do this He must face His fate.  His torture and death were certain.  He would not pray to see His fate altered; instead He would pray to see His mission completed.  This is the power of prayer.

John records in chapter 17 of his gospel, the last prayer Jesus would offer before His horrific ordeal of taking on our punishment would begin.  John must have remembered vividly this prayer Christ would offer.  It must have made an enduring impression on him.  It meant something to him.  Later in his gospel, John would write, that Christ did many more things than could be contained in this book or any other.  John acknowledged in his own gospel, that it was not a complete record of the life and ministry of Christ.  Love is truly difficult to catalogue completely in the written word.  However, these words of Christ still lingered in the memory of John as he recounts the last moments of Christ here.  And so in verse one, John remembers Jesus saying … “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:”  To be glorified is to perform love in action for another.  The Glory the Lord has earned has not come from the power of His might, but from the power of His love.  The hour had now arrived where the ultimate definition of love would be witnessed by the universe itself.  To meet this test, Christ asks that both He and His Father remain certain in the pursuit of this love.

Jesus continues in verse 2 … “As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.”  Power over all flesh was not to be defined in the establishment of an earthly kingdom where due to His might, He could rule over the lives of men.  Instead power over all flesh was to be defined as His ability to change us from within by the power of His love, it was His ability to alter our desires, our thinking, and our behavior as we submit ourselves to His rule over us.  Eternal life would be the result of His power over the evil that lies within us.  Eternal life would be the gift that results from the transformation.  And lest any doubt the love of the Father, Christ expressly identifies that each of us were given over to Christ, at the will of the Father to have us saved.  We who find ourselves saved by the mercy and love of Christ, find ourselves given this gift not of our own accord, but by the will of the Father.  For it is the love of the Father that must free us to even make the choice to be saved.  If left in bondage of self, we would not be free enough to choose to break the chains of our addiction, instead it would overwhelm us.  But the power of love of the Father, breaks that chain enough for us to choose without undue influence, whether to submit to Christ and be saved, or not.

Jesus then defines what this gift really means in verse 3 … “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”  Life eternal is defined in our relationship with the only true God, and His Son who was sent to us.  It is not measured in the number of our years.  It is not measured in the total of the things we acquire.  It is not measured by our physical fitness, health, vigor, or what we refer to as the quality of life.  It is not even measured in the love we reflect to each other.  It is measured at the source.  It is measured in the context of our discovery of who the only true God is, and in the discovery of His Son Jesus Christ.  To have power, wealth, fame, and influence has nothing at all to do with what it means to have eternal life.  The wealth of heaven is not found in its abundance of precious gems, gold, diamonds, and purity of nature.  The wealth of heaven only has value in its gift to His creation.  Our lives, our bodies, our senses, our health, are only gifts to help us come to discover what it means to truly know eternal life – to truly know God.  An infinite number of years of existence denied the knowledge and presence of God, denied His company, is the definition of pain.  Death would be better, than to live in that kind of pain.  Hell, is the opposite of eternal life.  Hell is not comprised of torture by fire, it is comprised of torture by separation and choice from the only true God.  The last mercy of God is to bring those who choose that pain to the point of non-existence.  Only then can death, be no more.  Without a knowledge of God, and of His Son Jesus Christ, there can be no life eternal.  The knowledge is not theoretical, it is instead a living knowledge, an experiential knowledge of love itself.  This is His gift to us.

Jesus prays on in verse 4 … “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. [verse 5] And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”  The acts of love Jesus performed throughout His ministry were always attributed to the love and will of the Father.  In so doing, Jesus has “glorified” the Father.  Now He asks the Father to show Him the love that they have always had.  His humanity needs the comfort and assurance of the love that predates our existence, and predates creation itself.  For what He must face, Christ wishes to be grounded in the love of His Father, sure in the knowledge of that love.  He now must risk permanent separation from the source of that Love.  It is possible that having been stained the with weight of our evil, He may not be able to return to the side of His Father.  He cannot see past the sacrifice He must make to see us redeemed.  But He must proceed, for the nature of the love within Him, cannot simply walk away and see us all left to the fate we had chosen.  So though the outcome may be at risk, He presses on nestled in the love of His Father.

Now, Jesus turns His attention, to those who are closest to Him.  Having made the decision to go forward with His mission of the revelation of the so-great-love of His Father God, those who stand near Him will face the extreme wrath and determination of evil.  So Jesus begins to pray for His companions, He continues in verse 6 … “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. [verse 7] Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.”  Jesus “manifested” the name of God to His disciples.  He “showed” them the love of God in action.  He made known the motives of the Father to save and redeem.  The work of Christ was not to condemn, but to offer us freedom from condemnation, freedom from the slavery of self that we embrace.  He points out again, that these disciples “belonged” to the Father and were given to Christ from out of the world.  They accepted the testimony of Christ, the word of Christ, of who the Father was, and who the Messiah was, and how we would see our salvation received.

Jesus continues in verse 8 … “For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.”  Our reception of the word of God comes from the belief in Jesus Christ.  It was only Jesus who rightly interpreted scripture to the disciples.  He did this, by living the law, by living the love, by showing what the point of the Bible stories was supposed to be – our redemption when we trust and rely on God instead of ourselves.  Every Old Testament story is rightly interpreted only through the lens of Jesus Christ.  When we see God in person, we see love in person, we see redemption in person, and we see an escape from the evil we are bound to when we give ourselves over to the person of God in the form of Jesus Christ.  It is impossible to accept the word of God, and deny the divinity of the savior the entire book is aimed at.  It is impossible to know God the Father, and then deny that His Son was our vehicle for redemption.  It is this distinction of submission, this distinction of trusting in something greater than our own ideas and wisdom, that leads us to see the perfection He alone can create within us.  Without submission to Jesus Christ, the word of God cannot rightly be interpreted.

Jesus then accepts His disciples, and us, as the gifts given to Him by His Father as He continues in verse 9 … “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. [verse 10] And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.”  We belong to the God who accepts us as His gifts.  He claims ownership of us, and draws a distinction between those who submit to His ownership, and the remainder of the world who refuses to trust in anyone but themselves.  This distinction is not defined by denomination, or proclamation, but only in depths of a personal relationship between you and Christ.  Only you and Christ know the extent to which you will submit your will, your decisions, and your desires over to Him.  Membership in a given church does not equate to personal submission to Christ.  A theoretical knowledge of scripture or acceptance of the idea that a God exists, is not the same thing as you living day to day, placing everything about your life in hand of Christ.  Your parents cannot do this for you.  Your spouse cannot attribute this to you.  To be owned by Christ, you alone must give yourself over to His ownership, and trust in where and how He leads you.  The distinction of those who are His, and the world, happens even within Christianity, as there are many who refuse to submit whether in or out of the church.

to be continued …