7 – Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 – Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9 – This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.
10 – This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
11 – Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 – No one has ever seen God: but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.
19 – We love because He first loved us.
Do you remember the pot-bellied pig craze a few years ago when people were spending hundreds of dollars to own one of those exotic house pets imported from Vietnam? Well, this craze started when breeders of these particular pigs claimed two things: that these mini-pigs were very smart and that they would only grow to a weight of 40 lbs. For some reason, many people apparently loved the idea of a smart, mini-pig running around the house for, thousands of these pigs were sold.
Well, it turned out that the breeders were only half-right. These pigs were very smart. Some could even be trained to walk on leashes and use litter boxes. But they often grew to weigh as much as 150lbs or more! Our own Amber Livingston received one of these pigs as a gift and Dot tells me that it grew to weigh over 250lbs. Another drawback that the owners of these unique pigs discovered was that they often became openly aggressive — not at all pet-like.
So, what did people do with their unwanted pot-bellied pigs? Well, fortunately, according to an article in U.S. News and World Report, a man named Dale Riffle came to the rescue. Someone had given Dale one of these pigs as a gift and he fell in love with it — even though it never learned to use its litter box and in fact developed a tendency to eat carpet, wall paper, and dry wall.
Well, Riffle loved his pig so much that he sold his suburban home and moved with his new pet pig, whom he had named “RUFUS,” to a 5-acre farm in West Virginia…and then he started taking in unwanted pot-bellied pigs and before long the guy was living in “hog heaven”. When the article was written he had 180 pig residents on this farm! And these pigs don’t just live there…Riffle treats them to a luxurious lifestyle. The article states that these little porkers snooze on beds of fresh pine shavings every night. They wallow in mud puddles. They soak in plastic swimming pools to piped-in classical music. They wait in line for one of Riffles belly rubs. They even socialize in age-graded pig affinity groups….whatever that means. And these pigs never need fear that one day they will become bacon or pork chops. Believe it or not there is actually a waiting list for unwanted pigs wanting to get a hoof in the door at Riffle’s farm. Riffle says, “We are all put on earth for some reason and I guess pigs are my lot in life.”
Now, I’m sure you would agree that it IS amazing that anyone in his right mind would fall so totally in love with pigs! But listen to something even more amazing. The central theme of the Bible is that our majestic, all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly holy, God…is passionately in love with imperfect, sometimes openly rebellious, frequently indifferent people like you and me. You see, in many ways sin makes human beings even more unlovely than Riffle’s pigs. Listen to the bleak picture that Romans 3:10-17 paints of the human race,
“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways and the way of peace they do not know.”
So all human beings are flawed because of sin. We are fallen creatures. Isaiah said that even our best attempts at goodness are as filthy rags in comparison to the holiness of God. But God loves us anyway…..even to the extent of wanting to adopt us as His very own. I John 3:1 says,
“How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
So, while you and I are unlovely…we are NOT unloved! And you know….deep down inside, all of us desperately WANT to be loved. Ernest Hemingway wrote a story once about a father and his teenage son. In the story, the relationship had become somewhat strained, and the teenage son ran away from home. His father then began a journey in search of that rebellious son. Finally, in Madrid, Spain, in a last desperate attempt to find the boy, the father put an ad in the local newspaper. The ad read:
“Dear Paco, Meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon. All is forgiven. I love you. Your Father.”
The next day, in front of the newspaper office, 800 “Pacos” showed up. They were all seeking forgiveness. They all wanted to know that their father loved them. Love is a very powerful thing.
Did you know that love can make a person actually begin to grow physically more lovely?
This is true! Psychologists tell us that the excitement of being in love increases your heart rate so that your face glows, you lips look more red, and those circles under your eyes actually become less noticeable! Heightened emotions of love cause your pupils to dilate, so that your eyes look brighter and clearer. As Huey Lewis sang, “That’s the power of love!”
But you know so often we don’t have an appreciation of what genuine love should be like. Our understanding of love is just as flawed as we are. We tend to embrace the kind of love that looks for someone or something worth loving. The love we are most familiar with is a love that is drawn to a person or an object because it is expensive or attractive or lends status to the one associated with it. The Greeks called this kind of love “eros”. Our first response when we hear this word is to think of the term “erotic” but “eros” is more than just a sexual love. At its core “eros” is the kind of love I give to anything that satisfies my desires, wins my admiration, or fulfills my appetites. John Ortberg says, “Eros is love on a treasure hunt.” And we learn about this eros kind of love early on in our lives. Studies show that adults smile at, coo over, kiss, and hold “pretty” babies more than just “plain” ones. These same studies show that fathers are more involved with attractive babies than those judged unattractive by independent raters. Karen Lee-Thorp notes that even children’s stories reinforce this flawed kind of love. She writes:
“The prince was not enraptured with Cinderella’s intelligent, sensitive conversation;
he was smitten by her wardrobe and her teeny, tiny feet. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty netted their men while comatose. Rapunzel spent twenty years alone in a tower and never had a bad hair day.”
You see, EROS is a love that grows out of need and admiration and desire. But you know, it is not necessarily all bad. It’s good that a baby loves his or her mother because she provides milk and essential care. It’s good for a husband to celebrate the beauty of his wife.
So, EROS is not all bad. It’s just that it is not a love that is strong enough to build your life on when you are a flawed, unlovely person. You see, eros can trap us in an unwinnable contest to prove that we are loveable. Eros requires us to be smart enough, strong enough, or spiritual enough to deserve being loved. As beings flawed by sin, what we need is a stronger, purer kind of love…the kind of love that creates value in the one loved. And this is the kind of love that God has for you and me….it is a LOVE BEYOND REASON for it makes no human sense to love the unlovely but that is exactly what God does. In fact, this kind of love is why God created us in the first place.
God did not create us out of need. He created us out of His love. C. S. Lewis once said, “God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.”
But you know, the fullest extent of God’s love was not seen so much in His decision to create us. It was seen when we disobeyed Him and became sinful and unlovely and He chose to love us still. Paul put it this way in Romans 5,
“While we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man 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.”
God’s love is called AGAPE in scripture. It is a love that is undeserved and sacrificial…a love that is seen in our God who loved us even though it cost Him greatly to do so. And He not only wants us to know that He loves us in this unreasonable way. He commands us to embrace this irrational kind of love for each other as well. Oswald Chambers said, “There is only one Being who loves perfectly, and that is God, yet the New Testament distinctly states that we are to love as God does…” And on this holiday dedicated to love I think it would be good for us to gain a better understanding of this agape love in the hopes that it will be seen in our relationships with one another as God’s people. For…true disciples of Jesus Christ are not those who know most, but those who love most. John Ortberg, teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago points out that AGAPE love is built on three basic truths. Let’s examine them together this morning:
1. The first truth is this: AGAPE love sees POTENTIAL in the one loved and CHEERS the person on until they reach that potential.
This means that when we love someone the way God loves us, we have hopes and wishes and dreams for them. We are in “their corner” so to speak…we want them to flourish and blossom.
Paul describes this aspect of God’s love for us when he writes in Philippians 2:15 that God desires,
“…that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault, in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe…”
And it is wonderful to be loved in this way…to know that you have someone on your side… …someone who believes in your potential….especially when that Someone is God. As Paul said in Romans 8, “If God is FOR us, who can be against us?!” And this morning I hope you know that God loves you just as you are! He is on the sidelines of your life cheering you on….applauding your steps….shouting your name. God IS for us…He believes in our potential to become all He created us to be!
But you know, if you love someone in this way, then you must be willing to discipline them if need be. You may even have to do things that cause pain to this person if it is the only way to keep them reaching for their potential. You know, often love is confused with softness. When we speak of doing the “loving thing” we usually mean doing what the person would want us to do.
But this is not love….in fact, it’s not even sane. Try loving a three-year-old in this way and odds are she will never make it to four. And to say that Jesus loves people is NOT to say, He’ll always do what they want Him to do. Dan Allender writes, “If Christ had practiced the kind of love we advocate nowadays, He would have lived to a ripe old age.” Genuine love…pure love…agape love…is a love that is willing to offend, disturb, or even hurt those who are being loved if it is for their good. Being FOR someone is deeper than just wanting to spare them pain. If I am really FOR a person, then I am willing to risk confronting them with painful truth if it is the only way to bring growth toward their potential. Hebrews 12:6 says that “The Lord disciplines those He loves.” And in Romans 14 Paul encourages is to “admonish one another in love” or as J. B. Phillips’ paraphrase put it, “Love one another enough to keep each other on the right road.”
True love then is a willingness to warn, reprove, or confront when necessary. And isn’t it great to have someone in your life who loves you enough to be honest with you when you are doing something that will hurt you?! God loves us enough to discipline us when we need it!
You know, when we hear words like “judgement, command, statute” we usually have a negative impression. But in Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby points out that God’s commands are positive. His discipline is always for our good. In Deuteronomy 32 God referred to His commands by saying, “They are not just idle words for you…they are your life. By obeying them you will live long.” Suppose you had to cross a field full of land mines. A person who knew exactly where every one of them was buried offered to take you through it. Would you say to him, “I don’t want you to tell me what to do. I don’t want you to impose your ways on me”?
Of course not! And, when the Lord gives us a command. When He disciplines us — it is out of His passionate AGAPE love for us. In fact God will never express His will toward us unless it is an expression of His perfect love. He wants us to avoid painful consequences and reach our fullest potential in life.
So, in His loving discipline, God is not restricting us. He is freeing us to be all we can be.
If we love someone as God does, we may end up getting in their face or on their back. But only humbly, and reluctantly. True love never DESIRES to inflict pain for pain’s sake. Many of us slip into an almost perverse desire to hurt someone. We look forward to finding their faults and pointing them out. This is not Godly love. To be FOR someone, means to identify with them, to cheer them on…to celebrate their victories and mourn their setbacks. It means we deeply and sincerely want the best for them and we grieve when they fail in life. This is the way God loves us and this is the way He wants us to love one another.
2. And then, a second characteristic of AGAPE love is that it DELIGHTS in and ENJOYS the one who is loved.
Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord your God . . .will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing.” Imagine…the God of the entire universe…the God Who created the stars with the command of His voice… …rejoices over you and me with singing! God loves you and takes great delight in you. If that doesn’t cause you to smile, then you may want to check your pulse. God doesn’t just love you because He has to. He loves you because He wants to. God delights in you!
Of course this doesn’t mean that He delights in everything you and I do. Our own mothers don’t do that if they are at all healthy. But the fact that we even exist is VERY GOOD in God’s eyes. God likes to love you and me! In Psalm 17:8 David speaks of God watching him “as the apple of His eye.” This little phrase “apple of the eye” is used a number of times in scripture. It could be translated “the little man of the eye,” or “the daughter of the eye.” It is based on what happens when you look a person in the eye at point-blank range. When you do this, you see an image of yourself reflected in the eye of the other person. Applied to your relationship with God this means that if you were able to look God in the eye, you would see yourself reflected in His gaze.
You are “the apple” of God’s eye! His eyes are always fixed on us because in all of creation we are His favorite things to look at.
Oh, God does see that we are sinful…that we even reject Him…but He still looks at us in love with what Charles Williams called, “the gift of double vision.” It’s not that God is blind to our warts and our wickedness. It’s just that when God looks at us, our faults are not all He sees. He sees more than that. He also sees who we are intended to be, who we can one day become. You see agape love insists that the one loved OUGHT to be loved. As Lewis Smeades puts it, “It may be a very bad thing that I needed God to die for me, but it is a wonderful thing that God thinks I am worth dying for.” And God does think you are worth dying for. His desire is that all people would embrace His love for them in Jesus Christ and in this relationship fulfill all their potential in life. Larry Crabb says, “God delights in our status as forgiven children welcomed to the dining table, and He delights in what we will become as we eat more of the food He provides.”
So when we commit to love one another as God loves we are committing to letting God help us see one another from His perspective. We learn to see the good in people that is often buried beneath annoying pettiness and resentment. We even learn to jump up and down with excitement over what someone else can become. We don’t’ love simply out of duty or obligation. We learn to sincerely love and enjoy the all the people we encounter in life.
3. And then one final aspect of AGAPE love is this. It GIVES to and SERVES the one loved.
Giving is to love what eating is to hunger. Giving is how a Godly love satisfies itself. I John 3:16-18 says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us.
And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” You see, agape love is a verb of sacrificial action. Without acts of servant hood, agape love has no skeletal structure….nothing to support itself.
Now, eros finds giving easy at first…cards and flowers and candy and back scratches flow effortlessly in the early stages of a relationship. Eros may give in the beginning but only when it expects to get back. But agape love is always focused on giving even if is costly to do so.
And you know, one of the hardest places to flesh out agape love is in our own marriages.
So often when people enter marriage they think that for it to function at 100% of it’s potential then each partner must see it as a 50/50 proposition. You do your share and I’ll do mine. But that is not the way it works in marriage. In a happy, mutually fulfilling marriage, each partner must be willing to GIVE more than he or she expects to GET. Each person has to do a little more than what he thinks is his share.
So actually marriage is more of a 60/60 proposition. In fact, for marriage to work, there are times when one spouse may have to give 90% while the other gives only 10%….such as during a serious illness or death in the family or some other crisis. In a lasting marriage each partner looks out for “NUMBER TWO” not number one. I tell the couples that I marry that if they want to have a truly great marriage they have to be bad at math! Marriage is not a 50,50 = 100 deal. You have to put in more than your share! You have to commit to constantly express your love in sacrificial giving. The rules of modern math just do not apply when it comes to two people who commit to have an agape love for each other.
Randy Stonehill has been a popular Christian recording artist for 20 years now. In the current issue of Marriage Partnership, Randy shares his own experience of learning how to practice a love for his wife that focused on GIVING instead of GETTING. Their marriage was in crisis mode because he would return from concerts “…basking in the warm glow of applause and affirmation and ready for that heady experience to be fulfilled by romantic, verbal and spiritual intimacy…” with his wife, Sandi. But Sandi was coming from a much different experience. She had spent her day anonymously doing dishes, paying bills, and looking after their baby daughter, Heather. She wasn’t in the mood to rush breathlessly into his arms and greet the returning hero. She needed a back rub. She needed her husband to go to the grocery store to take their child off her hands for a while. She needed a giver not a getter. Randy confessed that their relationship was deteriorating until in one of his prayer times he asked for God’s help and God brought the words of Ephesians 5:25 to his mind,
“Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”
Randy asked God to help him learn to love Sandi in the agape way she deserved so that their marriage could once again be a source of joy for them both.
Well, a few months later Sandi discovered that a benign tumor had grown behind her kneecap that required surgery. For several weeks after the surgery Randy stayed home from concerts helping his wife through the slow and difficult process of healing. At times she would almost pass out from the pain as he helped her down the hall to the bathroom. Randy did his best to keep the household running…taking care of their daughter, preparing meals, doing laundry, etc. He writes, “I found myself delighting in doing little things to make Sandi feel better, and for once we had lots of time to just be together and talk.” A few weeks after she was back on her feet, Sandi turned to her husband and said, “You know, I fell in love with you all over again. You took such good care of Heather and me after my surgery and you never complained. You are a truly sweet man.” Randy writes that their relationship isn’t perfect. It is still work. But it is once again a constant source of joy and strength to them both because they are committed to love one another with a giving love. They pattern their love for each other after Jesus’ sacrificial love for them both. And agape love is like this. We love one another in a way that is focused on sacrificial giving because that is the way God loved us.
Like many of you, this past Friday night I attended the viewing of Doug Abel…the Magruder sophomore who died suddenly this past week. My son, Daniel was one of Doug’s friends so we went together….and God put two impressions in my head that night. First of all as I spoke with Doug’s parents I had this impression of profound sadness.
In the act of introducing my own 15-year-old son, Daniel, to Doug’s dad I realized that this father would never again be able to do that with his own 15-year-old son. I almost felt guilty for introducing my son to this man who had lost his own. And it hit me that we should never take for granted the ones we love for we never know how much opportunity we have to love them. We should grab every chance we have to show our loved ones that we love them with an agape love.
I think it would be a great idea for husbands and wives and families to spend sometime together on this Valentine’s day afternoon expressing their love for one another. My second impression came as I watched hundreds of teens grieving for Doug.
As I listened to their tears and the snatches of conversations around me, it became obvious to me that many, many of them did not know of Jesus’ love. They were like sheep without a shepherd….lost in a hopeless grief….absorbed in lonely ignorance of the fact that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. And I realized that there are so many people in our community who need to know that God loves them. They need to know that God is for them…that He sees their potential….and stands on the sidelines of life rooting them on toward it. They desperately need someone to tell them that God delights in them…that He enjoys them….that He sees not just their mistakes but also who they can become in relationship with Him. But most of all they need to know that God loved them with such an agape love that He send His only Son to die in their place.
I am saying that as a church we have our work cut out for us. We have good news to share and there are hundreds of people within a stone’s throw of this building who urgently need to hear it. If you are a Christian here this morning and you don’t have a local church home, then we invite you to join us in this task. If you feel so led, walk forward as we sing and I will be glad to tell you how you can move your membership here to Redland. And, there are other ways that God may be leading you to respond this morning. Perhaps today was the first time you realized how much God loves you and you want to respond to that love by asking Him to forgive your sin and come into your life as Redeemer and Lord. I would love to talk to you about that decision. If there is any way you would like to respond to God’s love we invite you to do so as we stand now and sing.