What is the Love of God
Jude 21 - Keeping yourselves in the love of God...
Have you ever stopped to contemplate (uh..oh) just what is love? Now on an earthly level love comes first as love for our mothers and fathers. This is kinship love that comes from an innate, God given quality and also the connection with nourishment and protection. Then comes the love we learn to have for our extended family members because of their kindness and also that we are taught to love them. Love for a mate and love for our children and grandchildren naturally follows. But what is God’s love exhibited through a believer in Jesus Christ?
Some say love is telling people the truth and of course it contains that essential component, however it goes much deeper and more personal than that. Love doesn’t just point out the wounds to the wounded, it binds up those same wounds. Love doesn’t just speak the gospel and feel you’ve accomplished your religious responsibility, love grieves for those who reject it. Love doesn’t revel in its orthodoxy, love intercedes for those who have strayed. Love says like Moses, kill me and let them live. Love says like Paul, I wish I was accursed and not others.
God’s love flowing through a human being reaches, reaches, and reaches further still to those objects of God’s love. God’s love renders its recipients as undone and broken, and those who truly understand the colossal ramifications of Christ’s love in their lives can never be prideful or self righteous. We who have never deserved one microscopic sliver of God’s love must exhibit that same love to others. True love, real love, eternal love, God’s love. We are prone to either exhibit conditional love which in God’s vernacular isn’t love at all, or we exhibit a reasonable facsimile of what we have constructed as “God‘s love“. Jesus said if we just love those who love us then we are just like the heathen.
God’s love did not just inform sinful man of his condition, it interceded for us sinners and ultimately took our place. All this while we yet sinners. It is unfathomable, and against that gracious truth I am stretched to find an example of that kind of love in my own life. Love that dies for its enemies, love that intercedes for those who hates it, love that knows no partiality and is always the whole and never in part. What kind of love is that? Can you not see that we have settled for a comfortable and doctrinal love, one that requires little if any sacrifice, one that can be preached with many “amens” but few tears, and whose ecclesiastical expression falls infinitely short of the Messianic exhibition revealed in the pages of Holy Writ?
We guard our exhibition of love so that we are never accused of compromise because of the nature of our love’s object although that sums up the entire narrative of the incarnation. Read the blog comments and see some say “I love you” as a mock and without the corresponding demonstration that those words should, no MUST, require. Months ago I felt led to participate on a blog that most orthodox and reformed believers consider liberal among other things. Now I do not agree with many of the positions but with, hopefully, a different heart. I was criticized and castigated not because I had changed my Biblical views, but because I had the audacity to rub shoulders with brothers in Christ with whom I disagreed.
I contend it is impossible to love people with God’s love unless you get to know people and that love is tested. Words are meaningless and can be spoken by Manson as well as a Christian. My report card on that venture is mixed but it showed me where I was lacking, revealed to me elements of my own pride, and that saved sinners seem to exhibit the same traits around the theological spectrum. It also should allow the Spirit to expand the eyes of our understanding in that we no longer view people, and especially brothers and sisters, as enemies. Those with whom we disagree have mates, children, wounds, imperfections, heartaches, and some have a heart for Jesus even if we consider it misguided in areas.
You can love MacArthur but can you love MacLaren? Maybe we would never allow some unsaved metal band to rent our church building but can we love them and reach out to them? And when those same precious souls become aware of the discussion about them, one that they cannot understand, do we carelessly print the words of their songs for public disdain and ridicule? I would not rent a church building to them but neither would I uncover their sin which love should cover. It is so easy to print objectionable words of sinners but much, much harder is it to shed tears and go before Christ on their behalf. We surely want to flaunt our separation before the church so that everyone is aware that we disapprove of sinner’s sins! And to name them personally is unconscionable. I think I remember a story about people posting an adulteress’s sins on a blog before Jesus and they didn’t seem to get the response from Him they were looking for. Jesus knelt down and wrote a post of His own on His own earthen blog and there were no comments from the contributors. Well, Jesus is still the same.
Loving the sinners of the world is risky business and the church has used their sins to promote our own self righteousness. Watch this year as the evangelical world posts the sins of the politicians with whom they disagree and in so doing they stir up hatred for these men and women. Does our heart break for their eternal predicament or do their particular sins agitate us? How many criticisms have I read about Rosie O’Donnell, or Madonna, or many other lost people who walk in the kingdom that you and I used to call home? We have received God’s grace but have now demanded God’s law to our former spiritual roommates, and we have exposed their sins for all to see as a disfigured expression of our love but certainly not God’s love. God’s disfigured expression of His love is magnificent and is in and of itself a covering of sins. The cross displays the eternal love of God by exposing and covering our sins simultaneously in one confounding and passionate act of inexhaustible love.
So how do we correct and reprove while remaining in the love of God? I have no formula, I only know we are falling short of that goal and are content with our pitiful definitions of love. Words are not love, they are…um…words. The Scripture declares that God proved His love that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Where is our proof? Words? Maybe if we were gathering two and three times a week at the same building we would never rent out and crying out to God for those who we refused rent, and for those who offered rent, maybe then we could claim some kind of deeper love. Maybe if we stood outside the concert doors and offered free coffee and cocoa to the lost metal heads, maybe then we could claim a God like love. Maybe if we bought a ticket and endured the music in order to speak the gracious gospel to some inside, maybe then we could claim an unconditional love. “I would never do that, that would be compromise”, you say. Remember Jesus bought a ticket in Bethlehem to attend a world wide death metal concert so He could reach everyone inside. Praise His wonderful Name, I WAS ONE OF THOSE LOST CONCERT GOERS! Perhaps God saw me in an Alice Cooper death metal concert. Jude exhorts us to stay in God's love and then he says that through that we can make a difference in the lives of sinners. God's love does more than talk, it makes a difference.
I would never rent the church building to the unsaved, but I would encourage us to go their building. Love doesn’t insulate itself feeling smug about its separation, no, love gets dirty and contaminated and even…bloody. I have often felt good about my standards, but those are not my standards they are His and for His glory. Although I would disagree with people allowing church buildings to be used inappropriately, I would also strongly disagree and reprove those of us who would not only close our church doors but also walk on the other side of the street so as to avoid these wicked Samaritans. I have been so blessed to see the conversion of a man named Brian Welch who was a former member of a heavy metal band named Korn.
Someone loved him. Someone didn’t print his lyrics on a blog or make fun of his tattoos. Someone prayed for him and brought him to church to hear the gospel. Someone overlooked his sins and reached out to his soul. Someone took a risk and made friends with him, not considering what others might think, and in so doing the Spirit opened his heart one glorious night and he came to know the One who really loved him. I had tears in my eyes as he expressed his love for Jesus Christ. That my friends is unconditional love.
I am still on the journey…
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