That Pesky Love Thing

We can understand God’s power on a limited basis because we have a very tiny amount. Of course we compare it to physical power which is only one part of God’s omnipotence. We can understand God’s eternality on a finite mental basis, but here again our understanding is greatly wanting. We comprehend God’s holiness on a “sinless” understanding, but there again we greatly underestimate that attribute. But I want to deal with one of God’s attributes that the Scriptures teach actually IS God.

Love.

The greatest of all commandments are to love God with everything, and the same to our fellow man. Sounds simple enough, right? Well let us see how this is both taught in the Scriptures and how it must be measured in our practice. Buckle your seat belts because on this issue we seem to be such pitiful spectators instead of selfless, uncomfortable, and painful lives that exhibit a love that appears very strange to our fellow earthlings. When was the last time someone remarked about us, as did the apostle John, “what manner of love is this?”. We are very good at observing and dissecting the redemptive love of the divine Love Himself, but how good or even desirous are we in being a sacrificial conduit of God... Love?

Make no mistake, love is much more than an emotion and love is many times extremely painful. Do you love someone with whom you have no horizontal reason for love, or do you love an enemy? Many of us have watched as one of our children leaves the teachings of Christ and heads to the pig pen. Did I stop loving? Did I disown them? No, but during those awful days my love was as painful as anything I’ve ever experienced and my love was more painful than any physical discomfort. And tears can not only indicate sadness, or pain, or joy, they can show forth genuine love. Jesus wept over Lazarus, and the people said "Look how He loved him". Oh yes, real love can be excruciating and the flesh begs to let it go.

Did the Father’s love cause Him pain? Gaze at a wooden crosspiece and see the agony of the ages, the infinite pain exhibited in one prepared body, and if you look close enough you will see how “God so loved the world”. Agonizing love, torturous love that is so fierce and severe that it refuses to depart even unto death. This love grits its teeth and goes forward carrying with it the pain of humility, the appearance of compromise, and the verbal barbs of both friends and detractors alike. Oh yes, do not think that you and I can get away with all these “cotton candy” definitions of love that are nothing more than conscience salves. God isn’t so impressed with how you love your wife, His test is much deeper and much more selfless than that.

God isn’t interested in how you love those who appeal to you, He observes how you feel about and treat your band of men and women who have fallen on their way to Jericho. Do you pass over on the other, more unobtrusive doctrinal side and avoid any real painful interaction? As a matter of fact, have we made that type of love a badge of personal pride? I have sensed that God isn’t very impressed with my love for John Wesley, He wants to know do I love Rick Warren. Oh look out now, I told you to buckle your seat belts, there is turbulence ahead.

OK, God taught us that if we did not have love everything else was nothing. So instead of delving deeper into that abject commandment of our Master, we set a course to redefine and de-fang the very essence of the Love we are supposed to not only exhibit, but live. Here is one of the most pitiful and self serving definitions of love:

When I tell you the truth I am showing you God’s love.

God not only told us of our situation, He gave of Himself to provide a way out while continuing to provide sunshine for the just and the unjust. The Good Samaritan didn’t just stop at the street and holler, “Hey, you are in a bad way. Why in the world did you walk this way?”. No, he carried him to a place of restoration and gave of his own money to pay for it. That is unconditional and sacrificial love. How do we treat and feel about a person who refuses advice and warning and walks right into the path of thieves and robbers? What multitude of sins does love not cover? And at what point in my Spiritual walk do I become the arbiter of God’s love through me? And is it not true that the tougher the object of love the greater the revelation of the Savior’s love as opposed to my own?

How do I love Brian MacLaren? How do I love Rob Bell? Rick Warren? You know what, just the implications of those questions do despite to the depth and quality of God’s love. If God loves them and I do not, then I am no longer a conduit, I am a self righteous dam. And let me openly admit that many times I am more of a dam than a conduit, and my struggle reveals my flesh, certainly not God’s love. Man’s pride and self righteousness is a repugnant poison that so misrepresents the love of God that sinners and saints alike are placed as objects in the cage of our carnal assessments and looked upon with our own judgments to see if they are worthy of God’s love through us. This love does not need compromise in order to reach those who God has offered it, and where in God’s own communication does He say that love compromises doctrine?

What would happen if John MacArthur (for example) sent a thanksgiving gift to Brian MacLaren simply to express his profound and confounding love for him. And in this act what would have to be avoided is that it publicly represents to others that you have love. That must be a by product, and any act of love must emanate from a genuine source within us and not a manipulative attempt to convince others as well as ourselves, and actually God Himself. We either love or we don’t. And if we do not, we are either struggling or we’ve created our own pitiful safe house complete with self indulging definitions of love. We are openly afraid of showing love to those we disagree with, and in that smug lack of divine affection for our brothers we have become sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

There are some who have seared their conscious by refusing to even admit they do not really love their fellow man, to say nothing of their brothers and sisters. Go ahead, read the blog-o-meter and see if God’s love flows like a river in whatever “camp” you find yourself in. I can see people running to secure a reasonable position that will release them from Spiritual culpability in the matter of love. We’ve been sold a bill of goods that says we can “love their soul and hate their guts”.

I personally believe there is a narrow but glorious path of discipleship that can confront and love, chasten with love, and just plain love with no strings attached in moments of respite from the doctrinal road rage. I did not say I was the tour guide for that path, I said I believe it is God's will. If loving a person with God's love means you cannot be orthodox, then orthodox theology is an idol in our hearts. God's love requires us to love in conjunction with our fundamentalist views, and if love isn't a fundamentalist view, then fundamentalism isn't Christian. (I may lose my membership card for that statement) And if we seek the Lord’s face concerning His love, we may not agree on everything, even on important things, but the world will see that we love one another. And if loving someone obscures the differences we have, well, I guess we might have to rely on the Holy Spirit to open other's eyes as we obey Christ. It just might be that men will be drawn by the Spirit of Truth by the love they have observed in the hearts and lives of the followers of Love Himself.

Because without that all we have is opinions, doctrines, truths, perceptions, enthusiasm, and words, words, and more words.

Or as God has said, we have nothing.