Tag Love

For God So Loved the World

Todd R Leave a comment

If you asked a random non-Christian to cite a Bible verse, not quote, but just cite a chapter and verse, there’s a good chance they’d say John 3:16.  It’s as good a summary of the gospel as one verse can provide, and it’s one of the verses I’ve quoted the most on this blog.  In response to a reader suggestion, I’ve figured out what Bible verses I’ve used the most and am writing a series about those verses.  Today’s post is #3 of the series, covering the verse quoted the 3rd least out of the 10 most quoted:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Reading back over the posts where this verse has appeared, I see three ideas I tried to share: what God’s love means for us, what love has to do with “eternal life”, and what “world” God loves.

The first idea is that we would all be eternally lost if not for God’s love.  Since we all fall short of God’s standards, what we deserve is to be banished from God’s presence forever.  In His holiness, He can’t be near us, and in His justice, He must judge our sins.  However, Romans 5:8 tells us: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Without God’s love we would always be sinners, but because of His love, we have a way back to a right relationship with our God.  In one post here, I wrote “Christianity is not judgement, but the only way of escape from it.”

Second, what is this “eternal life” that we can have because God loves us?  I’ve written that “If man had not rejected love, Christianity wouldn’t be necessary; but also, if Christianity does not restore mankind to agape love, it’s pointless.”  When we are brought back into a right relationship with God, it puts us on an inevitable course toward a new world where we will all love perfectly, as Jesus loved perfectly.  Unless heaven is going to be full of loving people, it’s not going to be the perfect place that God is preparing for us.  So, “eternal life”, given to us because of God’s love, is our future, perfect selves living with God for eternity.  The possibility of this is so amazing that God decided it was worth dying for!

Last, I’ve also written that “when I’m struggling to face the world as I see it, I ask about [John] 3:16, ‘Exactly which world did Jesus love enough to die for?’  The answer is this one.  The world He died for is the one where sex, anger, bitter tribalism, and political partisanship sells.  The one with a lot of sarcastic, angry, and bitter people.  The one with a lot of people who are more like us than we’d usually like to admit.”  God didn’t love a world full of His people because without His love, He would have no people.  He loved a world full of sinners, as Romans 5:8 told us.  If God had decided that this world was hopelessly lost, He wouldn’t have bothered to send Jesus to give it hope.

This is the same world that God calls us to love, and to bring hope in the name of Jesus.  While we are in this world, God is already making us like Him, more loving, and in sharing that love with others we share a hope in a world where love is all there is.

So, remember, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Compassion for the Harassed and Helpless

Todd R 3 Comments

“And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” – Matthew 9:35-36

Jesus lived under the greatest empire the world had yet seen, and in a deeply religious Jewish culture developed over centuries.  The people had powerful leaders, both political and religious.  Why then were the people seemingly without a shepherd to lead them?

The Roman Empire touted widespread peace and prosperity due to the Caesars and their government.  But the people still had many unsolved problems and no hope.  “Throughout all the cities and villages” were diseased, afflicted and helpless people, and Jesus could help them all in ways the Romans could not or would not.

The Jewish Pharisees, jealous of Jesus’ ability to solve problems they could not, claimed “He casts out demons by the prince of demons.”  They rightly described His power as supernatural, but they called it evil.  Even as He was performing life-saving miracles, they could not tolerate Him as a rival, and so rejected the people’s only hope.

So, the people remained “harassed and helpless,” not knowing who to trust.

Is your culture also faithless?  Your workplace?  Your community or household?  Jesus encouraged His disciples to see rampant lack of faith as an opportunity to show the crowds the compassion of Jesus: “Then He said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’” – Matthew 9:37-38

Today, pray for workers to bring in the harvest.  Also, know that God might make you and I those workers.  As in Jesus’ day, it is up to individual disciples to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom – through compassionate action and often in spite of what those in charge of other kingdoms might prefer.  Harassed and helpless sheep can be frustrating and difficult, but only humble disciples know the problems on the streets of their cities and villages best.

Pray for the compassion of our Great Shepherd who can work miracles. Is there a need He can meet through you today?

Photo by Erik-Jan Leusink on Unsplash

Presents of Presence: A Holiday Quint of Quotes

Todd R 3 Comments

Dear fellow travelers,

With mere days remaining until Christmas, here is a Quint of Quotes, five sayings for the holidays!

Photo by Stéphane Juban on Unsplash

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity” – Simone Weil

“The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world” – Plato

“When given the choice between being right or being kind choose kind.” – from the book Wonder, by R.J. Palacio

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” – Paul, in Ephesians 4:32

“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?” – guardian angel Clarence Oddbody, in It’s a Wonderful Life

Merry Christmas to all my readers – first timers, occasional passersby, and a handful of regulars!

All You Need is Love, But What is Love?

Todd R 2 Comments

A recent survey said that only 9% of American adults have a “biblical worldview.”  I’m generally skeptical of polls unless I know how they were done.  After looking into this one, I wonder if I fall in to the 91% of American adults who don’t have a “biblical worldview.”  Why?  In their definition of “biblical worldview” the word “love” was nowhere to be found.  Maybe they thought “love” was too hard to define to base a survey on.  If so, I can understand because love is a complicated thing.

In this survey, “love” was not in the definition, but “absolute moral truth” is, which bothered me not because truth is a bad thing, but because moral law is what condemns us.  Moral law would still exist if Christ had not died for us.  The Gospel, or Good News, of Christianity is that we can be saved despite failing to follow the law. Truth without love is like describing Easter and leaving out the Resurrection.  If we have not love, we have nothing but condemnation.  Love is essential.

But what is love?  Love means many things to different people and is a word people like to leave undefined or use to mean whatever sounds good.  Often people agree that “we should all love each other” without knowing what exactly they’re agreeing on.

Photo by Christopher Beloch on Unsplash

Confusion about what love is has been around for a long, long time.  The Bible itself talks about several different kinds of love, making a “biblical worldview” definition harder.  In English translations of the New Testament, the word “love” shows up over and over again, but the Bible wasn’t written in English.  I’m no Greek scholar, but what follows is how I personally understand “love,” and I hope it clarifies rather than confuses.

In Greek, there are at least 4 words for love, including these three:

  • Eros – sexual or passionate love
  • Phileo – this is a root of “Philadelphia”, literally the city of brotherly love.  Loosely, phileo means an affection for people who are “brothers,” who we like because we admire something about them, or because they are like us.
  • Stergo – This is a love toward kindred or family, typically between parents and children.  This love is like a loyalty to those we are related to by blood.

These words and ideas were part of the culture in which Jesus lived, died and rose again over 2,000 years ago.  However, the writers of the New Testament Bible couldn’t line the meaning of these words up with what they wanted to say about Jesus.  Therefore, they took a little-used word – agape – and poured new meaning into it.

A Better Love
Agape is epitomized by the act of Jesus dying on the cross, but also by His selfless love for others repeatedly demonstrated in the gospel records of His life.  Agape is putting the interests of others above the interests of yourself, even if there is no benefit to yourself, or even if there is a significant cost to yourself.  Even if those others don’t love you.  Agape motivates acts of benevolence or charity.

Why is love so important to a Christian worldview?  Not only because if God didn’t love the world, He wouldn’t have sent His only son, but also because if individual Christians leave love out of their worldview, they use “absolute truth” as a reason to judge.  Love that requires sacrifice may be less popular than love that doesn’t, but without it there is no cross.

As I see a Christian worldview, this kind of love is absolutely essential.  From it comes a framework of the entire history of God’s relations with man in three phases: love rejected, love redeemed, and love restored.

Love Rejected
While vague “love” is popular, true agape love is not.  When I took a college class on Interpersonal Psychology, one of the topics was the multiple meanings of love. The professor explained the multiple Greek words used for “love”, but when he got to “agape” he asked if anyone in the class could explain because he didn’t “understand” it (or so he said).  I raised my hand, answered by describing the self-sacrificial love of Jesus, and was snickered at by much of the class.  The professor smiled at me and moved on to the next topic.  He probably set up the same situation every semester.  So, yes, not only does the world often not know what “love” means in a Christian sense, but they actively ridicule it when it’s explained to them.

From Adam and Eve right to the modern day, agape love is the bonds that mankind seeks to break and find their own way.  In an earlier post, I wrote that the “bonds” and “cords” that the world tries to break free from in Psalm 2 are the laws of love for God and for our fellow man.  Jesus summarized all the commandments of the Bible as: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”, and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[1]

I recently wrote that “the problem with every person individually is that they are unable, no matter how much external pressure is put on them, to treat other individuals the way they should be treated.”  People like to ask or demand that others practice agape love, but usually for the benefit of themselves.  It is not in our nature to demand it of ourselves first whether or not anyone else reciprocates.

Love Redeemed
People also usually like the idea that every person gets what they deserve – but we are less likely to talk about that for ourselves than for others.  The justice of God demands that anyone who refuses – at any time – to love Him and to love their neighbor should get what they deserve.  He does not miss anything but is perfect in His justice.  Jesus had to live the perfect life of agape love, under the loving guidance of Our Father, not so we won’t have to, but because we can’t.  Without Christianity and without love, the world would never be able to overcome the “Love Rejected” stage.

Christianity is not judgement, but the only way of escape from it: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16). If man had not rejected love, Christianity wouldn’t be necessary; but also, if Christianity does not restore mankind to agape love, it’s pointless.  Jesus, by willingly giving the ultimate sacrifice of Himself, satisfied God’s perfect justice and perfect love simultaneously.

By rising from the grave, He is able to share with us the power of agape love, which governs and redeems the other loves:

  • Eros – So many of the personal and societal problems in the world are driven by unconstrained eros.  In agape, God provides boundaries within which eros benefits, rather than harms, humanity.  See an earlier post on Godly Offspring for how God prevails over unconstrained eros even when we fail.
  • Phileo – Unconstrained phileo, which can become what we call tribalism, is behind a lot of the racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other group conflicts in the world.  This also is nothing new – God through His Son will redeem us.  I wrote about agape overcoming tribalism in an old post about Jesus reaching out to Zacchaeus the tax collector.
  • Stergo – Families might be expected to be the easiest places to love each other, but they are often where passions run hottest.  James 4:1 says “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?”  Only agape provides what is needed to bridge the divide, a love to govern stergo.

A Christian in our world has a restored relationship with God but is only able to practice agape love imperfectly while awaiting a new body in a new heaven and a new earth.

Love Restored
The Bible does not contain a lot of specifics about the eternal life that Christians inherit and it is often misunderstood.  For example, those who think of Christianity as a set of rules that make us “perfect” think they are right to ignore the hope of heaven.  C.S. Lewis says sometimes “our notion of Heaven involves perpetual negations: no food, no drink, no sex, no movement, no mirth, no events, no time, no art.”[2]

But thinking of heaven as love restored helps understand it better.  Elsewhere Lewis reframes heaven as: “When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.”[3]  By obedience he means obedience to loving God and man, and in heaven every person’s ability to love will be as the laws of nature, as reliable and predictable as the rising of the sun every morning or the return of leaves to the trees in the spring.

Also, we will not become something entirely other than what we are now, like an angel, but will be transformed and perfected, while retaining our individuality.  Pastor Tim Keller explains that “Our future, glorified selves will be continuous with who we are now, but the growth into wisdom, goodness, and power will be infinitely greater.”[4]

This is a future worth having.

How to Have This Love
For those who agree that the agape love we lost is the love we need back, Jesus alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  He offers a world where every individual person uses their individual talents, gifts and creativity in the best interests of others.  All you have to do is agree to do the same, redeemed by His sacrifice and empowered by His Spirit to do the will of the Father.

How do we accept this offer?
“…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” – Romans 10:9-10

If you haven’t already, ask Him to be your Lord and Savior.

Nobody is more or less Christian than Jesus makes them.  No doctrine or experience can replace a loving, personal relationship with our Maker and Lord, who guides and empowers us to love as He does.  If we have not love, we have nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).  Fortunately, in Christianity we have His agape love if we will accept it above all other, lesser loves.  Christianity is not Christianity, and we are not fully ourselves, without it.

[1] From Matthew 22:37 and 39
[2] Lewis, C.S.  The Weight of Glory (1941).  P. 107
[3] Ibid.  P. 43
[4] Keller, Timothy.  Making Sense of God (2016).  P. 170

The Jesus of Love and Wrath

Todd R 1 Comment

Some people talk about their willingness to accept the God of the New Testament, but not the God of the Old Testament, believing that the NT God, in the person of Jesus, is a God of love, but that the OT God is a God of wrath and judgement.  However, there is plenty of God’s love in the Old Testament, and plenty of God’s wrath in the New, and all of these aspects are part of the character of Jesus Christ, who shows us a perfect image of God the Father.  There aren’t two Gods, but all of His characteristics aren’t obvious at all times.

A good illustration comes from Luke 4:18-19, when Jesus announced His public ministry by quoting Isaiah 61:1-2a aloud in the synagogue on the Sabbath:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
            because he has anointed me
            to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
            and recovering of sight to the blind,
            to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

After reading this, Jesus stopped and rolled up the scroll, and said to those assembled: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  (Luke 4:21)

Jesus announced here that He would be the one to overcome every form of poverty, captivity, blindness, and oppression.  He would be a God of love.  But some of those listening, especially the religious leaders, would have been familiar with the further context of what Jesus was quoting.  Isaiah 61:2 reads, in full:

“to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor,
            and the day of vengeance of our God;
            to comfort all who mourn”

Jesus didn’t accidentally stop reading in the middle of the verse; He intentionally stopped reading right before a phrase on vengeance.

Isaiah was saying the Messiah would come to proclaim both God’s “favor” and “vengeance,” but why didn’t Jesus read the next part?  The full verse shows Jesus as both a God of love, and of vengeance, but I think He left it out because the vengeance part was not being fulfilled “Today,” but later, which might have been a surprise to people based on their expectations of the Messiah.

Many expected a conquering Messiah that would overthrow Israel’s oppressors, which was Rome at the time.  In contrast, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem shortly before his death was described in John 12:15:

“Fear not, daughter of Zion;
             behold, your king is coming,
            sitting on a donkey’s colt!”

The people were glad to celebrate Jesus’ arrival, but Jesus came to Jerusalem humbly with no intention of defeating Rome, much less conquering the entire world.  Many Jews were disappointed in this peaceful Messiah, and this was part of the reason He was crucified.  This image of love and humility was the Jesus of His first coming, proclaiming “the LORD’s favor” and offering peace to anyone who will have it.  2,000 years ago, Jesus was focused on winning the spiritual battle for souls.

But Jesus will not always arrive in peace.  Later, in Revelation 19:11-16, Jesus is shown as the conqueror coming in vengeance:

“I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.  His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself.  He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God.  And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.  From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.  On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”

This time Jesus isn’t riding into the city on a donkey, but the image is similar with the expectation many had that the Messiah would be a conquering king.  This is the Jesus of His second coming, but really the same Jesus just in different circumstances.  Having won the spiritual battle on the cross, in the end He will be victorious in every way.

So, Jesus is a God of love, but He is also a God of wrath and vengeance.  He spoke much of forgiveness during His time here 2,000 years ago, but he also spoke much about how God’s patience will eventually run out and He would come again in a much different way.  He also tells us that if we know Him, we also know the Father, so the Father has the same aspects to His character as well.

What could this separation of Jesus’ mission into two parts mean for us today?

I think it means that the primary purpose of our witness before He comes again is “to proclaim the year of the LORD’S favor” in love.  The church shouldn’t hide any parts of the character of Jesus, including His role as judge, but the mission of His church excludes taking vengeance, because He will take care of that Himself later.  Love is the way we win the spiritual battle, the fight for men’s souls, and mirrors what Jesus emphasized during His first advent here.

Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:12 that the spiritual battle should be our focus: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

We don’t win this battle in wrath, pursuing vengeance on this world’s sinners (which is all of us).  We win it by following the path He has laid out for us.  In the end, He will be the judge of all.