Sermon preached at Faith Community Fellowship Church, Mount Vernon, WA on February 14, 2021
Text: Mark 12:18-34 Luke 6:27-28 John 13:34-35 PDF Download
Good Morning!
What a pleasure it is for me to preach for you again this morning. Thank you, Pastor Matt!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I realize the title of today’s message is a little risqué, but being the day that it is, I figured it would be okay. So I took advantage of this being Valentine’s Day to address the subject of “love”.
There’s so much that could be said about “love”, so many different directions this could be taken. But there is one direction in particular that I do want us to consider...and it’s not an easy one. It’s something I’ve been mulling over for quite a long time, so being able to do so in sermon format is an incredible blessing for me.
I remember long ago, a pastor used a hand with a pointed finger to illustrate that if any of you feel that an accusatory finger is pointed directly at you, just remember that 3 fingers are pointed directly back at him. I felt that way putting this message together – 3 fingers pointing right back at me.
Biblical love. Loving the way God calls us to love. Even scratching the surface, we know that this kind of loving is hard, don’t we?
Really hard.
Here now the Word of God from three of the four Gospels:
Mark 12:18-34
Luke 6:27-28 … Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount: the Sermon on the Plain (v.17)
John 13:34-35
The Word of God … for the people of God … thanks be to God!
Let’s have a word of prayer, shall we?
Almighty God, to Whom all hearts are open,
All desires known, and from Whom no secrets are hid.
Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
By the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit,
So that we may perfectly love You
And worthily magnify Your Holy Name,
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen
I love that prayer. I grew up with it as a boy in England as part of our weekly worship service in the Church of England.
I wasn’t a Christian at the time, but once the Lord took hold of my stony, dead heart, breathed new life into it and raised me from spiritual death to spiritual life, I have reflected back on this prayer many times. And if you study it closely, you’ll see it has many elements that can be found in the Lord’s Prayer…a topic for another time.
But the thing I like about it, especially, is that it acknowledges our sinful condition before a Holy God, and that our obligation to love Him can only be met by grace. His grace.
And He gives it to us freely and extravagantly so that our loving will also be freely given and extravagant in nature.
In our reading, you can see there are four clear and unambiguous points we need to consider about biblical love:
- Love for God
- Love for our neighbor
- Love for our enemy
- Love for one another
But before we can even do that, we need to clarify “love” – what does the bible mean by this?
CS Lewis wrote a book many years ago, entitled “The Four Loves” in which he outlined different levels of love:
- Storge … Affection Love
- Phileo … Friendship Love
- Eros … Romantic Love
- Agape … Divine Love / Charity
I don’t want to spend a lot of time here, but it is helpful to understand these as we look deeper at the topic of love.
First of all, “storge” is “Affection Love”. That love we all have for something or someone in a general sense. For example, love for a pet, love of a certain food, love of being among people with a shared interest (sports, music, etc).
Secondly, “phileo” is “Friendship Love”. That love we have for close friends, or a best friend. Just like the friendship David had with King Saul’s son, Jonathan.
Third, “eros” is “Romantic Love”. That love that has deeper feelings attached to it. As Lewis says: “This is also the love that creates the hottest of fires in our emotions. It can be a wonderful light, or a scorching fire”. He calls this “being in love.” And, obviously, the closest physical expression of it is sexual intimacy.
And the fourth, “agape” is “Divine Love” or charity love. The highest form of love that is unselfish, and therefore unnatural. It goes against our natures. It loves the unlovable, the undeserving, the ugly. It gives all and asks for nothing in return.
Now, of these four loves, which is the most often-used Greek word for “love” in the New Testament?
Agape – right!
But while agape is a love primarily of the will, rather than emotions, it is not disconnected from emotions.
Let’s go back to the four points from the texts we read earlier:
- Love for God
- Love for our neighbor
- Love for our enemy
- Love for one another
Okay, the first one: love for God. We all know the greatest commandment given to us by God, don’t we?
Mark 12:30 ... “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind and all your strength” ESV
How many of us here – or watching in remotely – have loved the LORD our God with ALL of our heart, ALL of soul, ALL of our mind, and ALL of our strength even within the last 5 minutes?
Not one of us have ever come close. And yet Jesus affirms it – right here – to be the greatest, the highest, the uppermost commandment of all: that we should love the LORD our God with everything we have – our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Again, not one of us has ever come anywhere close to loving God that way. We don’t, because we can’t. Sinners are incapable of loving that way.
Every single one of us has fallen short – seriously short … indeed, hideously short! – of that mark. Yet how many of us really take that seriously? Even as Christians...
Dare I even ask this … how many of us really don’t care? After all, we have far more important things to deal with right here, right now...
- I’m out of work…
- My wife’s just been in a car wreck…
- There’s a pandemic going for Pete’s sake!
Besides, God knows me. He knows my frailty. It’s not really that big of a deal … after all, God loves me unconditionally, right?
…oh, I wish I had time to elaborate on that, but not today…
But even though the issues we face in the here and now are real, powerful, and super important to us, the first and greatest commandment is in no way back-burner material.
You SHALL love the Lord your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and ALL your mind and ALL your strength.
In what way are we to love God, then? …Storge? Phileo? Eros? or Agape?
If you really think about it, the answer is “YES”. All of them.
Not in the same fashion as we do or should do for people, but if agape is primarily a love of the will, how do we love God with all our heart? Plainly, the command to love God with ALL our heart includes our emotions.
And God is Spirit so physical intimacy is neither reasonable, nor expected. But a deeply emotional love from the depth of our souls for the God who knows and loves us intimately IS called for. This is more “eros” love than agape love, isn’t it?
And it’s with our minds that we understand things. With our minds we understand who He is and what He has done for us. We love Him by diligently applying our minds to His word, learning ever more and more about Him.
Bottom line – we are to love God with everything in us, holding nothing back.
The second greatest commandment is that we shall love our neighbor as ourselves…Mark 12:31.
How SHOULD we love our neighbors?
Okay, yes, we can look at the second table of the law:
- Honoring our parents
- Not murdering people
- Refraining from acts of adultery
- Not stealing from them
- Not lying to them, and
- Not being jealous of what they have that we don’t
Or we can look in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) where Jesus expounds the law:
- Holding back expressions of anger because it could lead to murder
- Refraining from looking at a woman with lust because there’s no real heart difference between that and the act of adultery
- Honoring our vows
- Leave justice to God
- Give to the needy
- And so on…
Or we can look at Jesus’ answer in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37):
- A man was going to Jerusalem from Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, beat him half to death and stole his clothes
- Nobody wanted to help him, not a priest, not a Levite, who passed by on the opposite side of the street
- Only a despicable Samaritan took pity on the man, took care of his immediate needs, and then spent his own money to put him up at an inn where he could rest and be healed
Only the Samaritan was the neighbor to this man. He cared for someone he didn’t know.
He showed compassion to another human being who was in need.
And that’s the point in loving our neighbor. It doesn’t just give what we can to meet the need. It’s not just throwing money at something – at a person or at a worthy cause – and walking away assuming we have done our duty in loving our neighbor.
No – it comes from a heart of compassion. Emotionally connected with the external act of doing love.
Let’s be honest, though … it doesn’t necessarily take a Christian to practice this kind of love, at least at one level. There are humanistic philanthropies all over the place, aren’t there?
But when we take this to a deeper level, as Jesus did in Luke 6: 27-36, what is the ultimate expression of loving our neighbor?
That’s right – loving our enemies. Not just abstract or distant enemies – the terrorist, the rapist stalking the city streets, the bank robber.
No, I mean the one who is a personal enemy:
- The person who despises me
- The boss who undermines me
- The backstabbing coworker
- The thief who stole my expensive bike
- The creep who tried to kidnap my daughter
That actually happened, by the way. When my daughter was a young child, barely old enough to go to school, I saw a car pull up on the street and someone in the back try to entice her into the car with candy. Fortunately, she knew enough to not to talk with strangers that she turned and came running down the street back to me and told me what happened.
My blood boiled. And to be honest, it still does when I really think about it … I have to confess there have been many scenarios that have played out on the inside of my skull about what I’d like to do to people like that. Not healthy outcomes for them, to say the very least.
And I make no apologies for being very protective of my daughter, either … she’s all I have in the whole world.
I’m also a guy. And I must admit there are certain genres of escapism movies that I like. The action movie is one of them, particularly the vengeance-themed kind. You know what I mean … where a catastrophic bad thing happens and the hero chases down the bad guys and deals a swift blow of defeat, usually with death and mayhem along the way before concluding with “justice”.
Fortunately, in real life, vengeance is not up to me. The bible makes it abundantly clear that – what? “Vengeance is mine; I will repay” says the Lord …Hebrews 10:30
Romans 12:19-21 ... Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
So how DO we do this?
Well, to start with, we have to acknowledge that it isn’t natural. We’re incapable of doing it. And the philanthropist is incapable of it, too. We CANNOT love this way.
This is something only God can do. And He proved it, didn’t He?
Romans 5:6-8 ... “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
While we were His enemies – sinners – hostile to God – Jesus Christ willingly went to the cross and took the penalty for that sin so His enemies could become children of God.
John 3:16 ... For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Compassion and agape-love action! God the Father had so much heart-compassion for His enemies, He GAVE His only Son.
Hardly a surprise, is it. After all, the bible tells us that God IS love (1 John 4:16).
That does not mean, by the way, that love IS God. “Is” here is not an equal sign (“=”). God is so loving – love is so much part of His nature – that, metaphorically speaking, the bible says God IS love.
So God the Father GAVE, and God the Son willing went.
And now God the Holy Spirit applies this work by raising the spiritually dead to spiritual life and implanting new hearts. Hearts that now beat with a love that is utterly foreign to natural sinful humanity.
And so, to love as God calls us to love, we absolutely MUST depend on the power and strength of God the Holy Spirit Who is within us now.
Remember the earlier prayer:
Almighty God, to Whom all hearts are open,
All desires known, and from Whom no secrets are hid.
Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
By the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit,
So that we may perfectly love You
And worthily magnify Your Holy Name,
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen
That’s why I love this prayer so much. It reminds me every single time I pray it that I am a sinner with a heart in need of regular cleansing by the Holy Spirit if I am going to love God or any human being, especially my enemy.
And what is the first fruit of the Holy Spirit?
Galatians 5:22-23 ... But the fruit of the Spirit is LOVE, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Love is the first thing the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts. Love for God and love for people.
And what does this love look like?
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 ... Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…
But if love for God and love for people is the first thing that the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts, why, then, did Jesus issue a new commandment for us to love one another?
John 13:34-35 ... A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” ESV
The simple answer, I believe, lies in Jesus’ qualifier “just as I have loved you”.
Well, how had He loved them?
At this time, Jesus and His disciples were in the Upper Room about to partake of the Passover Feast and Jesus was well aware He would be with them no longer.
John 13:1b ... "...Having loved his own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love”
Jesus then proceeds to wash His disciples’ feet, then asked: “Do you understand what I have done for you?” (v. 12)
He acknowledges Himself to be their Lord and Teacher and instead of emphasizing title and position – as His disciples had been doing earlier, squabbling like children vying for position in His kingdom – He now stresses servant leadership.
The master – Adonai! – was willing to stoop to the level of a servant … humility on full display.
Indeed, Philippians 2 speaks directly to that, too … Jesus humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. For the sake of time, I won’t read it, but please do read Philippians 2 again.
Jesus is now preparing His disciples for the time when He’d no longer be with them and He had to emphatically stress their need for humility as they deal with one another following His departure.
It’s the same spirit of humility that WE need to have for one another ... and by this, all people will know we are His disciples, if we have love for one another.
The point being: to love one another, we need to humble ourselves. And in that position, God extends to us His grace:
James 4:6: ... “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”
God does not give grace to the proud. He does give it to the humble. And grace is what compassionate, agape-lovers desperately need – Grace For Lovers! ... especially as we consider a little more closely exactly who “one another” is.
I know I’m not alone in this, but some of the most painful events, hurtful people, bitter pills I’ve ever had to swallow have not come from distant and remote persons. They have come from those closest to me, especially from within the church:
- The gossiper after a confidential conversation
- The person in the pews who gave me a verbal gut-punch
- The one who ended our friendship because we don’t share the same political views
- A brutally harsh email on a Wednesday after a smile and hug on Sunday morning
- A rude awakening about a close friend who has a horrendous backdoor hypocritical sinful lifestyle
- The backstabber
The list can be lengthy, can’t it?
In recent months with the massive political upheaval in this country, love seems to have all but vanished. I read the posts of some Christians on social media and, quite frankly, I’m disgusted. From all sides of the political spectrum.
Social media is anything but social in nature any more. Twitter is a cesspool. And Facebook is just as bad.
I’ve given up posting anything on Facebook anymore, apart from an occasional funny cat video or an Andre Rieu musical piece, just as a sign of life. For the most part I just watch and listen.
Don’t get me wrong … there's a time and place for honest debate, even fiery debate, but HOW we do it really does matter.
Jesus was fiercely angry when He overturned the moneychangers’ tables in the temple. And Paul was as blunt as anyone could possibly be when addressing the gospel versus a false gospel situation in the first Chapter of Galatians.
There’s a time for that, but what comes through on social media is anything but that. Instead, abject hatred is the order of the day!
So how should we deal with it? Whether it be disgusting social media commentary, or the one who hurt me so deeply?
…A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.
That’s precisely where the rubber hits the road. In my pride and even in my righteous indignation, I am called to exercise compassionate, agape-love to “one another”.
If the person with whom I am so offended and hurt has been redeemed by God, forgiven by God, who do I think I am to withhold forgiveness. I would be literally placing myself in God’s shoes declaring with my actions: this person doesn’t deserve forgiveness.
You should be very glad that I’m not God.
…A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.
Jesus, do you really know what you’re asking here? Do you know what Person X did?
And Jesus is saying: Yes, I do … and I gave you another Counsellor – the Spirit of Truth – who will cleanse your heart afresh so that you will love me. And if you love me, you will obey me.
(John 14:15-17)
We must humble ourselves, receive grace from above, and extend the love of God back to Him, to our neighbor, to our enemy, and to one another.
And, as has been very well stated: we are never more like our heavenly Father than we forgive someone.
And for those who won’t repent, or don’t believe they need to, forgive them anyway and give them over to God – let Him deal with them. He’s much better at it than we are anyway.
Finally, and to close, I’d like to read a portion of an article for you by Corrie Ten Boom that illustrates this better than I ever could. She was imprisoned at the at Ravensbrück concentration camp during World War II in which her sister died and Corrie obviously survived.
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Guideposts: (Read full article here)
In this story from November 1972, the author of The Hiding Place recalls forgiving a guard at the concentration camp where her sister died.
It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear.
It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.
It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown.
“When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.”
The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.
And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones.
It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!
Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent.
Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”
And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?
But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.
“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”
And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality.
Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.
And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.
“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”
And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”
For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.
(Source: https://guideposts.org/positive-living/guideposts-classics-corrie-ten-boom-forgiveness/)
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Forgiveness.
Real, genuine forgiveness.
The ultimate expression of compassionate, agape-love.
Which is what we received from our Lord when we turned to Him in faith from a heart now beating with spiritual life.
It’s a love we can express to God, to our neighbor, to our enemy – and with one another.
May God grant us a spirit of humility, fill us with grace and give us the strength to extend our hands of forgiveness to those, who in our sinful selves, we’d rather not.
Amen.
