8/31/08 Love Pt. 2

We started something last week

that we very much need to complete today

in order to see accurately

what our God is really saying to us about love.

For a number of months now

we have been walking our way through the first few verses of II Peter chapter 1,

a passage in which Peter reveals to us

some of the projects our Lord shares with us

in order to help us grow in our friendship with Him.

What Peter does in this passage

is remarkable both in its simplicity

and in its ability to give us a perspective on what’s going on in our lives and why.

He begins where we all begin in our union with the King - with our simple faith

that Christ’s death really was total payment for all of our sin forever.

Then, building on that foundation,

Peter says, 2PE 1:5-7 “Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge; and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.”

And during the past few months

we’ve walked our way through each of those progressive steps of growth

until last week we came to the highest expression of the life of Christ within us - love.

And last week we looked at the foundation upon which all true love relationships are built.

We looked at Paul’s remarkable words in Romans 13:8-10 where he said,

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.

In those words Paul reveals to us

that what God was doing for us through the Commandments

was revealing to us what it really means for us to love another person.

To act toward another person

within the moral framework given to us by our God

is to love them,

and to build a love relationship with them.

And this inseparable union between Biblical morality and love

is the only foundation upon which any true love relationship can be built.

That is where we start in our understanding of love.

Love is not simply a gooshy emotional feeling,

it is first of all

our choosing to relate to another person with absolute moral integrity,

choosing to place their needs above our own

sometimes in direct contradiction to what we may be feeling at the moment.

And we spent all of last week

wrestling with that truth.

But having said that,

there is more that needs to be said.

Because, you see, even though love must be rooted in our choices,

built upon the foundation of strong moral purity and integrity,

that is not even close to the whole picture.

When our God says to us, JER 31:3 "I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness...”,

and when John tells us that JOH 3:16 " God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son...

and when Paul tells us that ROM 5:8 ... God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us...,

these are not simply affirmations

that our Creator always acts toward us in perfect righteousness.

And knowing that God is always righteous in His actions toward us

certainly isn’t what our spirits long for -

at least it isn’t the only thing our spirits long for.

What we long for from our Creator,

what we hope for,

what our spirits hunger for and yet find it so hard to believe

is that this God who created us

loves us with the kind of love

that causes Him to delight in us,

to hurt when we hurt,

to walk with us each step of the way

through every aspect of our life.

I was rereading the book of Revelation recently

and came once again to that statement near the end of John’s account,

that statement in which he describes

the kind of relationship our God longs to share with us,

the relationship He will share with us when all this mess is finally put to rest.

REV 21:3-4 And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He shall dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be among them, and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away. "

You can hear it, can’t you...

not just the righteous choices of our God toward us,

but the depth of His heart love for us -

a God who longs for the time

when He will wipe away every tear from our eyes,

when He will remove from us everything that brings us mourning, and crying, and pain.

That’s the kind of love our spirits hunger for from our God,

and it is the kind of love He has for us.

But here is the amazing thing -

it is also the kind of love He seeks to build between us and the people around us.

And I’m telling you nothing you do not already know

when I tell you that it is also the kind of human love

that we so desperately long for

and yet so rarely experience.

But it is in every way

exactly what He is seeking to create through His people here on this earth.

JOH 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

We are so quickly

and so easily deceived by the religious lies around us.

We think the proof of God can be found in purity of doctrine,

or in great movements or meetings,

or in mighty signs and wonders,

or in recognition and affirmation from the voices we respect.

And when did we stop listening to the simplicity and clarity of the voice of our God...

By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.

How often have we heard strong, authoritative voices from the church world

promising God’s POWER to cure every disease,

to heal every deformity,

to free from every bondage those who come to Him.

And to our minds it seems only reasonable

that these would certainly be the things that will serve as the ultimate proof

of the credibility of our message

and provide the absolute validation of the reality of our God.

And yet, even at those times

when we can and do offer the verifiable proofs

so few are convinced

and so few respond.

But if we’ve read the Gospel records

we shouldn’t really be surprised.

All we have to do

is to look at the history of our King’s few years with us

to see the inability of signs and wonders

to bring people into submission to Him.

During His time with us

Jesus healed literally thousands of people,

people who came to Him with every sickness, every deformity, every kind of brokeness.

And Jesus didn’t just promise to heal them,

or offer them healing in exchange for their submission to His Lordship in their lives.

He simply gave healing to all who came, without strings, without charge.

And yet, even in the presence of such amazing signs and wonders,

in the end nearly all of them walked away healed in body and yet still unchanged in spirit,

and a few months later many of them even joined in that crowd

that cried out, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

Because, you see, we simply can’t get there that way,

because from the very beginning

it has never been about forms or systems or power or might or signs or wonders,

it has only, always been about love -

first about our discovery of our God’s love for us,

and then about our learning how to love one another.

And nothing can more powerfully proclaim the reality of our God

than when we love another human being,

right where they are,

just as they are.

Immediately following his most extensive discussion

about all of the supernatural gifts of the Spirit

given by the Spirit to God’s people Paul writes these words.

1CO 12:3-13:3 And I show you a still more excellent way. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

What Paul is talking about in this passage

is not simply our choosing to act in righteousness toward those around us.

What he’s talking about

is a kind of relationship between us and the ones we love,

a relationship in which we see past the external facade of the one we love,

past their physical appearance,

past their carefully crafted external image,

into their need, or their pain, or their confusion, or their fear

or perhaps simply into the true nature of the person God created them to be.

And what we see

causes us to reach out to the need we see within them,

or maybe it just causes us to delight in the wonder of who they are,

or of who they could be.

It is at those times

that we become more like our God,

more conformed to His image,

more effective in demonstrating His truth, His reality then at any other time.

Do you want to offer the people around you

a proof of the reality of your God that they cannot escape, cannot deny?

Risk allowing God to love them through you.

Do you want to change another person’s life,

to literally alter the course of their own personal history,

enabling them to become

so much more than they could ever have become

had you not entered their life?

Then love them - just as they are, right where they are,

with no agenda for them,

no expectations.

1CO 13:4-7 Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I am nearly 61 years old

and I have been mucking about in the world of religion

for more than 40 years now.

And one thing I have learned with painful clarity in those 40 years -

religion is our favorite hiding place

from the painful, messy business of learning how to love.

Religion is highly skilled

at teaching us how to create the appearance of compassion

without ever having to allow real love relationships to disrupt our lives.

It’s easy to pray pious, moving public prayers for the troubled youth in our community,

and to fund programs,

and to organize rallies,

and to keep track of how many came,

and how many were “reached with the gospel”.

It’s a very different thing

to put a name and face to those troubled youth,

and to look past their language,

and their appearance,

letting them into our hearts,

and our homes,

and our cars,

and our lives,

investing our money, and time, and tears into one life at a time.

And it’s an easy thing

for us to talk earnestly about the troubled marriages in our community.

It’s a very different thing

to reach out to our own marriage partner

wrestling deeply with the hard questions

about what is truly best for them,

what moves them closer to their Lord

in kindness, and compassion, and very practical acts of love.

EPH 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her...

EPH 5:22, 24 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

And right here is the great sticking point,

the thing that terrifies us so much about love,

and yet at the same time the thing that gives that love such tremendous power in human experience -

love can only exist on an individual basis,

one person at a time.

There simply is no other way to love.

We cannot love a group of people.

We may love the feeling that group gives us.

We may love the sense of belonging,

or the affirmation,

or support we receive from a group,

but that isn’t even remotely the same thing as love.

Real love relationships,

the kind of love our God talks with us about,

the kind of love He calls us to,

the kind of love that has the power to prove our union with Him

and the reality of His existence

can only exist in our lives one person at a time.

And it never ever comes without risks,

or without cost,

or without the potential for pain.

But for the very same reason,

because true love can only exist one relationship at time,

it has the power to impact our lives for good

as nothing else can ever do.

This whole thing is bound up with...

well... let’s just call it our natural sense of unworthiness.

Everyone of us are broken in some areas of our lives,

flawed,

damaged by our own sins and by the sometimes terrible lies given to us

through the sins of others against us.

And no matter how frantically

or how successfully we try to coat ourselves

in an external image of worthiness,

inside we all wrestle with the fear

that we are not really worthy either of God’s love

or of the love of those around us.

Which is what makes love so powerful in our lives.

When we get past all of our religious baggage and assumptions

to the place where we can begin,

at least a tiny bit,

to hear what our God is really saying when He says,

ROM 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us...

that truth has the power to reshape our concept of ourselves

as nothing else can do.

It communicates to us

a sense of value,

a dignity and significance that’s rooted in our identity,

apart from anything we’ve done or haven’t done.

It tells us our existence on this planet

matters to the One who matters more than all others.

And when we see God’s love

mirrored in a human relationship

it can have the same powerful healing effect in the lives of those we love.

And I need to prepare you for a few things

if you’re really open to allowing your God

to teach you how to love.

The first is to let you know that the first big step in God’s teaching us how to love

is to allow Him to remove our relationship filters from our life.

Everyone of us here this morning

have a highly refined system of relationship filters -

tests we apply to each person we meet

to decide whether or not we think love is an option.

It begins with their physical appearance -

how old are they?

how do they dress?

how do they take care of themselves?

how long is their hair?

do they have tattoos?

is anything pierced?

From there we go on to their speech.

Do they use the right words in the right way?

Do they use the wrong words?

And then, if we get a little closer to them,

we run them through our idea and belief filters.

Are they a Christian by our definition?

What are their political positions?

What are their doctrinal beliefs?

What are their positions on critical social issues?

How do they respond to my ideas, my values, my input?

What are their ideas about correct schooling?

Do they hunt?

Do they fish?

Do they fly?

Do they go to my church.

Do they come to my Bible study?

Do they like the right kind of music?

How will my contact with them affect me socially?

Financially?

And of course the filters we bring to each relationship we enter

differ dramatically depending on what group we’re playing to,

what life-style we’ve chosen,

what fears we wrestle with,

what wounds we carry with us from our past.

But when God begins to teach us how to love,

one of the first things He does

is to remove our filters.

You see, God’s love has no filters -

if it did, none of us would ever know His love.

And the loving He seeks to do through us

has no filters, either,

and not only does it have no filters,

but it has no expectations.

It has hopes,

in fact it hopes all things and believes all things.

But it has no expectations.

Expectations cause us to pull away

when the other person fails to fulfill them.

Hope causes us to keep loving no matter what.

You see, here is the truth God is seeking to bring us to,

the only one that can give us a starting place for love -

every single person we meet

is equally worthy of being loved

and equally in need of it.

The half-drunk or high 14 year old hanging out in the Safeway parking lot,

the little kid running around our feet,

the militant extremist whose political views epitomize to us what is most wrong with this nation,

the homosexual pushing his social agenda,

the elderly who seem to have outlived their “usefulness” to society,

those who aren’t cute, aren’t beautiful, aren’t handsome by our standards,

those who say it all wrong or don’t say it at all,

those who say it too much and way too often,

those who desperately need the “truth” we see so clearly and yet refuse to receive it...

all of them are equally worthy of our love,

and equally in need of it.

I was in a conversation with a teenager several weeks ago

in which he was passionately trying to communicate to me a perspective I didn’t agree with at all.

When I asked him why he was telling me this

he said, “Because there are some things you really need to know!”

To which I said, “Ya, and there are some things you really need to know, too. But I love you way too much to tell you.”

And from there we agreed

that our friendship mattered far more

than either of us trying to set the other one straight.

But here’s the other thing I need to tell you about love -

it has the power to change the course of both our lives and the lives of those we love

as nothing else can ever do.

During the past year

I have come into repeated contact with a young man in his early 20's.

It would be hard for me to imagine a more extreme social opposite to myself.

His body is so covered with tattoos that I could hardly see any unstained skin.

He smokes constantly, desperately, endlessly.

He’s already been in and out of jail numerous times,

and by his own admission up until a year ago supported himself through selling drugs.

All of my initial social filters

told me that love was just simply not an option here.

But our paths continued to cross,

and I had some opportunities to buy him an occasional lunch,

to give him rides when he needed them,

and a few times to just take him for a ride and listen to him talk.

I found out some things I would never have guessed.

I found out his dad was a big man in his church,

a worship leader and very public “Christian”.

And I learned, too, about the extreme physical abuse he poured out on his son in the name of “discipline”.

A few weeks ago he needed a ride to Sterling and wanted to know if I could help him out.

When we got there

he got out of the truck,

then walked around to my side,

opened the door,

reached in, wrapped his arms around me and hugged me.

I know I haven’t said well what I really wanted to say today,

but if I were to try again I’m not sure I could do any better.

I understand why we so often choose religion over love.

Religion keeps us in control,

it keeps us looking and sounding so good, so spiritual, so faithful and right.

And most of all,

it insulates us from the pain that always comes when we dare to love.

But at this point in my life

I know some other things as well.

Mostly I know where satisfaction, and fulfillment, and purpose in life really come from.

They do not come from people knowing our name,

or from “financial security”,

or from looking back over a “successful” career.

True fulfillment in life comes from the degree to which

we have allowed our God to teach us how to love,

one person at a time, one day at a time,

no matter what the cost or what the return.

Because, you see, when our God calls us to love,

He does so most of all not for the sake of those we love,

but for our own sakes

because learning to love is the only thing that has the power

to define our existence in a way that truly makes sense of our lives.