Love
Notes
Transcript
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Or as Mr. T would say, “Happy Balentine Day!”
Love is the highest of all virtues. Faith and hope are right near the top, but love is still the greatest. More on that at the end of the sermon.
The world doesn’t know what love is. And too often, even we Christians have a misguided understanding of love. Sometimes, love hurts as the band Nazareth said back in ’75. Our problem is that we have associated love with certain feelings, and we wrongly think we are loving when we say or do something that makes us feel good about ourselves. When our feelings become the standard of what is and what is not love, we are in a bad place. What’s even worse is that in our culture today tolerance has risen to the top of all virtues. Can you imagine getting a card from your spouse or parent or child that says, “Happy Valentine’s Day! I tolerate you”? It wouldn’t go well.
To be sure, tolerance is a virtue. There are times where we find the views of others to be strange, wrong, or even abhorrent, but we can still live peaceably with that person. That’s true tolerance, and it is good to be tolerant in that sense. But when the word ‘tolerance’ is used today, that’s not what people usually mean. Today, ‘tolerance’ has come to mean that you endorse or affirm opinions or ideas that are totally unbiblical and unnatural, and if you don’t, you are labeled as ‘intolerant.’ We could do a whole study on the hypocrisy of that mindset, but we’re not going to do that today – at least not directly. Instead, we are going to talk about love in the truest sense.
Love is what this world needs because true love is in short supply. Thankfully, the Scriptures repeatedly show us what true love is, what true love does, and what true love does not do. This text from 1 Cor. 13 is one of the best definitions of love. In v. 4-8a, we are given sixteen different aspects of love – seven describe what love is and nine describe what it is not.
Just to run through them quickly, and I will encourage you to take your Scripture insert home and use two different-colored highlighters to mark what love is and what it is not.
Here is what love is. Love is patient and kind. Love rejoices with the truth. Love is bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. When you consider the seven things that love is, you and I can quickly see that we are not loving because we are not those things.
Here is what love is not. Love is not envious, not boastful, not arrogant, not rude, and not insistent. Love is not irritable and not resentful (the Gk. there is literally love does not ‘count up wrongdoing.’ I like how other translations do it there, ‘It keeps no record of wrongs.’). Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing. Love does not end. When you consider those nine things that love is not, again, you and I quickly see that we are not loving because we are those things.
So, again, Scripture tells us what love is, and we recognize we are not those things. And Scripture tells us what love is not, and we recognize we are those things. Let us all repent.
There is One who is all the things that love is and who is not all the things that love isn’t – God. God is love (1 Jn. 4:8, 16). We see this most clearly in Jesus. 1 John 4:9-10 says, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (the ‘atoning sacrifice’) for our sins.” If we want to see the love described here in 1 Cor. 13 in action and what it looks like in real life, all we have to do is look at Jesus, God in the flesh – embodied love. So, we’re going to play a game here. Let’s consider how Jesus interacted with people and ask if He was loving. I promise there are no tricks here, but there are wrong answers. The purpose of this little exercise is to help us understand how to live a life of love.
First question. Was Jesus loving when He repeatedly taught the disciples that He must be betrayed, go to the cross, suffer, die, and rise again – even though the disciples didn’t understand it (Lk. 9:22; 9:43b-45; 18:31-34)? Yes, Jesus was loving. He was being patient, and He was bearing with the disciples’ misunderstanding.
Next question. Was Jesus loving in our Gospel text (Lk. 18:31-43) when He restored the sight of blind Bartimaeus? Yes, He was being kind. Was Jesus loving when He healed Peter’s mother-in-law of her fever (Mt. 8:14), when He forgave and healed the paralytic who was lowered through the hole ripped open in the roof of His house (Mk. 2:1f), when He cleansed lepers, cast out demons, gave hearing to the deaf, fed the hungry, and raised the dead? Yes, Jesus was loving. He was being very, very kind.
Good job! You’re doing well at our little game. Let’s keep playing and see how many imaginary points you can get.
Was Jesus being loving when He went into the wilderness to fast and be tempted (Mt. 4:1-11; Lk. 4:1-13)? Was He loving when He believed God’s Word rather than the devil’s lies in that temptation? Was He loving when He hoped in God’s provision of food at the right time? Was He loving when He endured those temptations? Yes! Jesus was loving. Remember, love believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
Let’s go to round two and make the game a little more difficult here.
Was Jesus loving when He preached the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7)? Jesus taught there that no jot or tittle will pass away from the Commandments. He taught that anger is the same as murder – it’s just murder in your heart. Same with lust. Lust is committing adultery in your heart. Was Jesus loving in that sermon when He teaches you how to love your enemies, how to give, how to pray, and how to fast? Yes, Jesus was loving. Remember, love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.
Taking a quick break from our game here to bring this to your everyday life. There are times where you are going to have to correct others. Parents, this duty regularly falls to you, but it isn’t only for parents. If you love your children, you will have to teach your kids right and wrong. You will have to teach them how to deal with people who hate them, how to be generous, how to pray, and how to give up things that are harmful to them.
Let’s step the difficulty in our game up a notch and make it a little harder. Remember, there’s no tricks in this game. For this round, think back to the list of things that love is not. Love is not envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, insistent, or irritable.
Was Jesus loving when He cleared out the Temple (Mt. 21:12-17; Mk. 11:15-18; Lk. 19:45-46; Jn. 2:13-22)? Yes! Jesus was loving. But you might wonder when He saw the sellers and moneychangers and flipped their tables, when He made a whip to drive them out of the Temple, when He was consumed with zeal for God’s house and said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” wasn’t Jesus being envious, rude, and irritable? No, He wasn’t. He was still being loving even though those acts certainly made the sellers and money-changers uncomfortable.
How about when Jesus clearly taught, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me,” (Jn. 14:6) was Jesus being loving there? Isn’t that being boastful, arrogant, and insistent? No, Jesus wasn’t being any of those things. He was loving. Again, He was rejoicing in and teaching the truth.
We need another break from our game here to apply this to our lives. I hope you all remember Abdi, the leader of the Islamic center just a couple blocks from here. A few years ago, the Islamic center had an event to introduce themselves to the community, who they are and what they do. The people there were extremely kind. They provided a good meal to everyone who came. But one of the presenters that day took a lot of time trying to say that Muslims worship the same God that Christians worship. Which is absolutely false. Sure, they will say that they trace their pagan religion back to Abraham which we do as well. They will point to passages in the Koran that say Jesus is a good teacher who should be listened to. But they deny the fact that Jesus is God in the flesh who died and rose again for the forgiveness of sins. Islam is a false, pagan religion of works not grace.
During that gathering, Abdi invited me to introduce myself, and I wasn’t really prepared to say anything. So, I had to make a split second decision of how to love these people who were being kind and generous but teaching things that are false. I don’t exactly remember what I said, but I simply thanked them for their hospitality and mentioned that I hope to get to know them better and work with them to help the people of our community. I didn’t go on a diatribe of how Muslims will go to hell unless they convert to Christianity. I didn’t rant about the evil, violence, and oppression that Islam promotes. It wasn’t the time to do that. But I was wearing this cross which confesses that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It confesses Jesus’ death and resurrection. I know some people there noticed the cross. And I hope and pray that how I conducted myself there will open the door for opportunities to talk more with those people for whom Jesus died so they too can believe in Christ who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
And I will readily confess, that may have not been most loving thing to do. I admit, there was some cowardice in that moment on my part. God forgive me if anything I did or said was misleading the Muslims there to think I was affirming their pagan beliefs. I don’t think it was misleading in that way. But I hope and pray what I said and did there will open the door to develop good relationships and grant opportunities to point them to Christ. All of this is to say, dear saints, you are, at times, going to be put into positions where you need to be loving and it isn’t crystal clear what the most loving thing to do is. For the time being, we see in a mirror dimly. But know that your words and actions must confess the truth that Jesus is the only way of salvation. That is always loving.
Back to our little game, and this is the final, and in my opinion, most difficult round.
Think back to when Jesus was talking with the woman at the well in Samaria (see Jn. 4:1-42). There are other moments that would work here. But this is my game, so I get to make up the questions. As Jesus talks to her, He offers her the water of eternal life, and the woman is extremely interested to learn more. Then Jesus says, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” But the woman responds, “I have no husband.” And Jesus comes right back saying, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” If love, as defined by Scripture, says that “love is not resentful” (and remember that literally, that means “love does not count up wrongs”), was Jesus being loving there? I mean, Jesus brought up a detailed record of her sins. Was He loving when He did that? Yes, Jesus was being loving. The woman’s adultery was a sin that needed to be addressed and dealt with. She needed repentance and forgiveness, and Jesus gives her both repentance and forgiveness (for God being the source of repentance see Act. 11:18, 5:31).
Dear saints, it is unloving to endorce or celebrate people harming themselves in their life of sin. Parents, it is not loving to allow your children to continually ignore your rules and treat your rules as though they do not matter. It is not loving to repeatedly warn your child of consequences but not follow through on them. For example, if you threaten to punish your kid for standing on the couch but never actually dole out that punishment, they will think that your words aren’t important. And when you warn them that running into the street without looking first is dangerous, they might think you aren’t serious about that either.
Another example, I don’t think any of you are dealing with this specifically – God be praised. But I want to use this example to set up something else. If there is someone in your life who is slowly killing themselves with an addiction to illegal drugs, is it loving to provide a home and access to your money (even if it is by them stealing it)? No, it is not loving. You might need to kick that person out of your house. That person might say that you are being unloving by making them homeless. They might not see your actions as loving, but know that it is not love to help feed that addiction. That sets me up for this:
The same goes for sexual sins. And I’m going to talk about the LGBTQ movement for a moment here. It is not loving to say that it’s ok for two men or two women to pretend to be married. God invented and created marriage to be a man and a woman. And don’t fall for the lie that those relationships don’t harm anyone and aren’t your concern. People who chose to live a homosexual lifestyle are harming themselves and others with diseases and depression. They are harming others by not having children who will become productive members of society. The same goes for men who think they are women and women who think they are men. The hormones they inject into their bodies and the surgeries they may have do irreparable harm. It is not loving to say that those choices aren’t the concern of anyone else and promote them. We do need to correct these things in as kind a way as possible. We do not harangue or yell. We need to let love guide the way in which we correct these things. Build relationships, look for open doors, and speak in kindest and most loving way – always.
Dear saints, I hope this little game we’ve played has been helpful to give your love direction. Know that following and keeping God’s commands and speaking the truth about what God commands is love. When Jesus summarizes the Ten Commandments, He boils it down to this, “Love the Lord your god with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk. 12:28-31). And Romans 13:10 distills it down even further when it says, “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.” How we love others in a specific situation isn’t always going to be perfectly clear. But the Commandments and our relationship with others gives us a guide as to how to love others. There will be times where you will have to use your God-given wisdom to know if you need to be patient or kind or speak harsh truths that may not be welcomed or received. And know – know beyond a shadow of a doubt – that you will fail in your love for God and your love for others.
But also know that God hasn’t failed in His love for you. Even though the disciples didn’t know what Jesus meant when He plainly told them that He would die and rise again for them, He did it anyway. Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Well, Jesus went even further. He laid down His life for wicked, unloving sinners. He laid down His life for you.
Love is not one virtue among many. It is the only virtue. The chief virtue. The virtue from which all other virtues flow. When this passage says that love never ends, know what that means for you. Christ’s love never ends, which means that Christ’s love embraces you with a love that will change your mortal body into a resurrected, glorious body. Christ’s unending love for you is why you believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
In this life, our love will always fall short of the real standards of what love is. But Jesus’ love for you doesn’t. God’s love for you in Christ is perfect, complete, and whole.
And the day will come when you will also love perfectly. Your impatience, your cruelty, anger, pride, envy, and bitterness will disappear from your heart. What you now see in a mirror dimly will become crystal clear. God’s pure love will flow through you forever.
That’s why love is the greatest. Faith will cease because it will be replaced by sight. Hope will no longer be needed because it will be exchanged with experience. That’s why love is the greatest of the three. It will never end. God’s steadfast love for you in Christ never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new each and every morning. Now, and unto eternity. For that, God be praised. Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.