Putting On Love

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What do you want? — first, last, and foundational question to Christianity and following Jesus.

The first question, last question, and most fundamental question of discipleship: What do you want?

That question is foundational to Jesus’ entire ministry… this is one instance and I could show you dozens more that what he does and what he says is done and said with the aim of appealing to what you want.Note what he doesn’t ask:What do you believe?What are the most noteworthy mistakes of your life?What do you know?

It is the first question, last question, and most fundamental question that Jesus asks YOU — like he did John’s two disciples: what do you want?

How do they answer the question: the same way you and I do: by bumbling and stumbling… “Ummm, what hotel you staying at… that’s what we want to know. Ya. Your hotel.”Gift and the giver... this food and the hands that prepared it… to win the game… and “WHY???!!!”

The challenge of this series will be its focus of my assertion regarding Jesus’ focus on and appeal to our desires… our loves… our heart.

To be clear, what we think and know and learn matter:

ESV5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,
ESV2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
ESV2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
We should learn and think and study and meditate… the Bible is clear on that.

The problem: the translation from and integration with what we know to what we do is never clean and consistent.

What if we have been hood-winked? What if we aren’t bobble heads? What if we aren’t primarily thinking things?

ESV9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Could be read — if you read it too quickly or through the lens of being a bobble head — that the focus of this prayer is knowledge.
Read it again.
James K. A. Smith says it this way:
. Our loves establish the gravity and weight of our lives… our loves move us to their appropriate settings…

What if more than we are thinkers, we are lovers? What if our lives are driven more by what we desire than what we know?

Not only could that explain the gap between our knowledge and our behaviors… it would also explain why Jesus first, last, and most foundational question to those who want to become like him is this question: What do you want?It could also explain his greatest command to be centered on who and what we love.And it would then take that great command and put it at the heart of how virtuous disciples are made and less of an impossible concept we have to think our way toward.

Saint Augustine (354-430 a.d.), outside the pressures and presence of modernity, wrote about this alternative view of what it means to be human — that we are lovers more than thinkers.

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit Orienting Desire: The Quest to Be HumanA body by its weight tends to move towards its proper place. The weight’s movement is not necessarily downwards, but to its appropriate position: fire tends to move upwards, a stone downwards. They are acted on by their respective weights; they seek their own place. Oil poured under water is drawn up to the surface on top of the water. Water poured on top of oil sinks below the oil. They are acted on by their respective densities, they seek their own place. Things which are not in their intended position are restless. Once they are in their ordered position, they are at rest.
Augustine goes on to conclude in his Confessions, “My weight is my love; wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me.”

If Augustine is right, then

Divine love isn’t only what God offers to us… Great love isn’t only what Jesus commands from us… But that which we desire to love is the first, last, and most fundamental aspect of what “carries us” toward becoming like Jesus.

We are what we love. Our loves establish the gravity and weight of our lives… our loves move us to their appropriate settings…

You were created to know and love God… and when loves have supplanted the Lord… WE ARE… RESTLESS.

When your desires, affections, and love is focused on the Lord… and our love is in its intended position, we are at rest.

ESV28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

What do you want? — first, last, and foundational question to Christianity and following Jesus.

More than we are “thinkers,” we are “lovers.”

What we want, desire, love… those are the matters that determine who we become — NOT what we think.
When we are wanting, desiring, loving anything we weren’t created to love, we are restless. But when we love the One who made us, redeems us, and makes us new, we cease to be restless and our souls come to rest.
Mark 12:29–31 ESV
29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

This is a very different focus for our following Jesus than only or primarily focusing on the next class or study you need to hop it… to increase your knowledge base of the Bible so your gap between what you know and what you do will disappear. Stick with me...

What is love?

1 Corinthians 13:4–8 ESV
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
Paul uses a clothing analogy… to “put on” virtues — which are best understood as good, moral HABITS. (Bad moral habits are called “vices”)Good moral habits — virtues — are woven into your internal inclinations… they are who you are which offer a “tell” to the kind of person you are.Virtues are different from laws and rules — which come from the outside. Virtues come from within.And the Bible commands us in this passage in Colossians to put all these virtues on in increasing and integrating measure.
“Love is the will to do good. Encouragement and actions on behalf of a person’s good are love, and give life. One who loves promotes the good, or wills the benefit and strength of the beloved; this is the nature of God. God’s love — God’s wild and constant willing of our good — and our trusting knowledge of it enables our own love of others.”
From God… to spouse… to kids… to friends… to ourselves… to enemies, love wills the benefit and strength of the one they are loving.
Colossians 3:12–14 ESV
12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

“How do I acquire virtue, Ken. I can’t just think my way toward a compassionate heart, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, being forgiving, and — above all — loving!”

Exactly. You can think about all those things… but thinking does not guarantee the gap shrinks even one inch. Putting on virtues does guarantee the gap shrinks.

You acquire virtues — you put them on in the power of the Holy Spirit — two ways:

1. Imitation

Finding Forrester — William Forrester and Jamal Wallace
This cuts against the grain of being “authentic” and “individualistic.”
Ephesians 5:1 ESV
1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
1 Corinthians 11:1 ESV
1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
Matthew 4:19 ESV
19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
1 John 2:6 ESV
6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
ESV1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
ESV1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
ESV19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
ESV6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
“How do I become the kind of speaker/preacher/teacher I desire/long/yearn… would LOVE to become?
Imitation: Calvin, Jerry, Phil, Dallas — imitation...
Calvin, Jerry, Phil, Dallas — imitation...
Isn’t this how all sorts of disciples are made from all walks of life?
Who has the life you want? (knowledge which resides on the foundation of love is observed and experienced and offered before it is explained.)
Not a hypothetical question — who has the life that you want?
Would you “mentor” me? Would you “disciple” me? Would you “teach” me?
We have to stop thinking that this is primarily about what we know or what we do…
More than transaction… transformation!

2. Practice

Virtues are learned and acquired through imitation and practice. So are vices.
1 John 3:1–10 ESV
1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. 4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
Matthew 23:2–3 ESV
2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, 3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.
1 Timothy 4:11–16 ESV
11 Command and teach these things. 12 Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. 13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. 14 Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. 15 Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. 16 Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
Discipleship driven by love is not some type of spiritual voyeurism… like you are watching something intriguing or impossible for you.
=16
You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit An Erotic Compass: Love Is a HabitNow why is all of this important for our project of sketching an alternative model of the human person? Because if you are what you love and if love is a virtue, then love is a habit. This means that our most fundamental orientation to the world—the longings and desires that orient us toward some version of the good life—is shaped and configured by imitation and practice.
We don’t find someone to imitate so we can gawk… when we find someone to imitate, we practice.
We have mastered desiring, longing for, and loving deadly things, relationships, patterns.
All of that can be put off and love, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, forgiveness...
Who are you going to imitate?
What are you going to practice?

This is how you put on both virtue and vice.

And what if who and what we love — more than what we know or can articulate — is who we actually are?

And what if the greatest need you have in your Christian life isn’t to find your next 4 Bible studies to attend or avoid, but it is to put on virtues through the imitation of people you know who follow and love Jesus as they live life in the Kingdom of God practicing day in and out — longing to become more like Jesus?

Don’t look now, but you are sneaking up on some awesome answers to the question, “What do you want?”

Who has the life you want? Who has “the good life”?

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