There’s a kind of love..

In my last post, we talked about Agape love; the unconditional kind of love that comes from God. Let’s continue exploring this subject by considering briefly what this agape love implies in our relationships with God, with one another, and with self.

1. God and agape

   Sometimes we fail God and love Him imperfectly, if at all, but He loves us unconditionally. The apostle Paul put it this way in his letter to the Romans:

   “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” — Romans 8: 38-39

   I once heard of a preacher who shared the following at a church on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. He read the words in Romans 8:35, shortly before the ones I just quoted, where Paul asked: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Then he said, “I’ll tell you what can separate you from Christ’s love,” and proceeded to make a list of all the things that made people ineligible for God’s love. One wonders if he ever bothered to read on to the end of the chapter!

   

   Of course, most Christians would never be so bold as to blatantly deny Paul’s words in these verses, but unfortunately there are plenty in the world who deny them by their attitudes. Sometimes Christians exclude certain people because they believe that their particular sin makes them ineligible for the church. The impression is given that God’s grace is for almost everybody.

   But God’s love is for everybody.

   We’ve all got junk in our lives, but that’s part of why Jesus died — to pay the price for our junk so that we can be forgiven. His death was an act of unconditional love; a love made available to all.

   That means that when you or I start to think that we’ve gone too far, that we’ve messed up too many times, that God is going to finally just give up on us and turn His back on us…we’ve forgotten who the God of the Bible is.

   God’s kind of love never fails.

2. Other people and agape

   Here’s where the challenge part of this agape thing really starts to kick in.

   That boss who treats us like dirt?

   That friend who lied to us, betrayed us, gossiped about us, stabbed us in the back?

   The person who rubs us the wrong way and tempts us to walk across the street to avoid him every time we see him?

   Does this mean we should love him unconditionally?

   Yes.

   That’s a hard one.

   It’s not one I always do perfectly. Do you?

   What about the really bad people? The man who murdered my friend? The rapist? The one who nearly destroyed your life?

   Um, yeah. It doesn’t mean we have to like him, but somehow God wants to give us the power to love him — to pray that he’ll be changed, rescued from his destructive ways, made into a new person — to long for his redemption.

   How?

   That’s a hard one. I don’t have all the answers to that.

   One thing I do know is that it’s only possible when we are filled with God’s love. In our own strength, there are things we simply cannot forgive, and there are people we will never be able to love.

   But somehow, when God really gets a hold of our life, He can begin to pour His love into us and through us…even toward the people who are hard to love.

   Just like He loved us when we were pretty hard to love.

   Have you ever known anyone who loved like that?

   I have.

   But not a lot of people like that, unfortunately.

   Many church people actually spend more time not loving people. Fighting amongst themselves. Rejecting people who don’t think like they do; turning people away because they don’t approve of them, putting the very people out the door that Jesus loved to hang out with.

   When they do, they’re not even coming close to demonstrating God’s kind of love. They are demonstrating the kind of love that fails.

   But God’s kind of love never fails.

   I’m not going to go into a deep discussion right now about how this kind of love might be developed in our lives. This is just a quick overview. However, I will say once again that it’s the kind of love that can only demonstrate itself in our lives with God’s help.

   When we spend time getting to know Him. When we let Him change us on the inside and reshape our views of what life and love are really all about.

   Only God’s kind of love never fails.

3. My Self and agape

   Here’s another challenge. A lot of us hate ourselves. We beat up on ourselves and have very low estimations of the person we were made to be.

   But when we are filled with God’s kind of love, there is no room for hate — not even toward ourselves. We have to love what God loves…and the truth is that God loves me.

In my next post, we’ll turn to this last aspect of love. I’ve heard a lot of sermons about our love relationship with God, and I’ve also heard a lot of sermons about the kind of love that God wants to develop in us toward one another; but I’ve not heard so many about our relationship with our self. In that next post, I want to hone in on this aspect of love and begin to explore what it means in regards to the relationship with the one person we can never get away from: ourself.

How does God want us to relate to ourselves? And what does it mean to love self with the love that never fails?

We’ll consider that next,.

Love never fails?

“Love never fails.” — 1 Corinthians 13:8a

In a world where love often seems to fail us, this seems like a funny thing to say. After all, we’ve almost all of us been failed by love at some time or another. We’ve had people who said they would be our friends forever turn around and forget us, in some cases even betray us. Many of us have had relationships with someone of the opposite sex that have ended in disaster, perhaps even marriages that have ended in a broken heart.

So how can anyone say that love never fails?

The key, I believe, is in understanding what kind of love the Apostle Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 13. He’s not talking about just any kind of love. He’s talking about God’s kind of love…a perfect, unconditional love that remains the same throughout the changing emotions and circumstances of life.

In Ancient Greek, the language the New Testament was written in, there are three words for love. Each word describes a different kind of love.

1. eros

   The first word, eros, refers to a passionate love, with sensual desire and longing. This kind of love can be very emotionally charged and exciting, but it doesn’t always last. Romantic relationships usually begin with this kind of love, but if they are to last through a lifetime of marriage they have to progress to something deeper.

   I’ve heard it said that eros hardly ever lasts longer than two years. If this is the case, it probably helps to explain why a lot of people go from relationship to relationship, and sometimes even from marriage to marriage. If we depend on a love that is so dependent on passion and sensuality, it’s sure to fizzle out eventually.

2. philia

   The second word, philia, refers to a general type of love. In modern Greek, it means friendship, though in ancient Greek it could simply be a general term for love that you would have for anyone; a friend, a family member, etc. The term eventually came to be used by many to refer to brotherly love. The name of the city of Philadelphia comes from this word, which is why the city is referred to as the city of “brotherly love.”

   This kind of love has also failed us from time to time. We all know what it’s like to have a friendship deteriorate, and sometimes even brothers fall out with one another. This love also is a kind that we cannot truly say never fails.

3. agape

   The third word, agape, is the one that we have come to associate with unconditional love. Though originally in Ancient Greek, this word simply meant a general affection, in Christian thought it has been given a higher meaning and, for Christ-followers, has come to mean an unconditional love of a kind that only God can give. This kind of love is impossible without God, but it is the kind of love He gives us and that He wants to develop within us for him, toward each other, and even toward ourselves.

   The kind of love that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13 is the only kind of love that never fails.

This reality is one that can bring us great comfort and assurance, and it also presents us with a major challenge. We can find comfort in knowing that, no matter how far we have strayed from our Creator and no matter how badly we have failed, his love for us is unconditional. However, for those of us who call ourselves Christians, this truth also presents us with the challenge to live this same kind of love out in our relationships both with each other and also toward ourselves.

Too often we put conditions on our love, but God’s kind of love is unconditional. It is of this kind of love that the Apostle Paul speaks when he says that love never fails.

In my next post, we’ll consider briefly what this love implies in our day by day relationships…with God, with each other, and with our selves.

Social concerns:

Do they REALLY matter to Jesus?

OK. In my last two posts, I said Jesus wants us to not just preach a Gospel about life after death but also to live out his Kingdom in the here and now. I indicated that part of the way we were called to do so, if we’re to call ourselves Christ-followers, is in doing things like help the poor, feed the starving, etc.

Some Christians, however, may think that I’m wrong. They might think doing these kinds of things is just giving in to some kind of “social gospel” and forgetting about the things that really matter to Jesus. Whose right about this?

Let’s just see what Jesus has to say about it and leave it at that. The following are his words from Matthew 25: 31-46:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.“

This 3-part series starts with
The Forgotten Mission of the Church
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TWO Gospels?

In my previous post, I raised the question at one point: Why have so many Christians abandoned the social aspect of the Christian mission? I want to suggest that part of the reason is something called dualism.

In the late 19th Century, a movement arose that was called The Social Gospel movement. This movement was perceived as being all about social movements in the here and now, with no emphasis on God’s plan for eternity. People believed that it was all about “the material” and ignored “the soul.” In order to try to fix this perceived mistake, many Christians went to the opposite extreme and focused only on “the soul,” coming to believe that the material was irrelevant.

Yet, in ancient Hebrew thought, there was no distinction between the soul and the material. People were seen as a whole and meant to be loved as a whole. Remember, the world in which Jesus lived was dominated by Hebrew thought and every indication — when one looks at his teaching and life — is that he never chose to love “the soul” to the detriment of the body, nor did he ever love “the body” to the detriment of the soul. He loved the whole person.

Much of ancient Greek thinking did distinguish between the body and the soul. In fact, many of the greatest Greek philosophers believed that the soul is the only part of us that lives forever. In this way of thinking, the soul is trapped within the body and will only truly be free at the time of death.

True Christian teaching, however, teaches the resurrection of the body (See 1 Corinthians 15 to read more about this belief directly from the Bible). Jesus didn’t come just to save “the soul.” He came to save the whole person. People who believe the Bible’s teachings believe that, when we die, we will rise again; body and soul. The body will be changed, of course. All the sickness and brokenness that are part of this life will be taken away and our bodies will be perfect…but we will still be completely ourselves.

The belief that the body and soul are separate and that God only cares about one part or the other is a form of teaching called “dualism.” Thankfully, however, Christ-followers do not have to choose one or the other. In truth, if we follow Christ’s teaching and example, we don’t even have that option. We are called to love the whole person. That means telling people about what we believe to be God’s plan for eternal life in the future, but it also means loving people body and soul in the here and now.

We are not called to choose between “the social Gospel” and “the gospel of the soul” because it’s all part of the same Gospel.