The
deepest cry of the human heart is to be loved without condition, no matter
what. The gospel of grace announces that you are.~Tullian Tchividjian.
The cry of the heart is so deep that when it is not met the body
resorts to anything at all to try & meet that emptiness within: drink,
drugs, sex, partying, extreme sports, the entertainment industry with its
adulation, the sports field with its hero worship … on & on we go & yet
the emptiness remains. The hunger remains unabated. The craving for love is all
consuming.
Oh, we call it other names: narcissism, ego, attention seeking; in
a child we call it a temper tantrum or rebellion but whatever we call it, it is
the heart crying out for love, for the reassurance that no matter how badly we
have screwed up, no matter how awfully we behave, no matter what mistakes we
have made or how out of control our tongues have been, there is a way back to
love.
The gospel announces that God showed his love for us while we were
still sinners by dying for us. Romans 5:8 We have done nothing to earn it. There is no way we can pay him back. There
are no conditions attached to His love.
Oh, but… ~ you say. Aren’t Christians supposed to:
· Not drink
· Not smoke
· Not do drugs
· Not do sex
outside of covenant marriage
· Be generous to
the poor….long, long list & many people have their own ideas of what a
Christian should look Like & how they should behave.
So we have a
problem, don’t we? A whole lot of people
running round saying they are Christians yet behaving in ways that really make
you wonder. I suggest to you there are 2 reasons for this.
The first is
simply that their flesh is in control of their spirit. They have not learned to renew their mind by
the washing of the Word. Nor have they
learnt to crucify their flesh. You see when we become a new creation our spirit
is renewed by God immediately & all the benefits of the Kingdom life are
ours but there are things we have to learn to do:
· Walk in the
spirit
· Obedience
· Crucify our
flesh
· Renew our
minds
When we do this consistently we see evidence of the fruits of the
Spirit manifesting in our lives. Does
God love us more or less? NO!!! God is
faithful. He has entered into covenant
with us. He does not change towards us
but until we align ourselves with His will we will constantly miss the mark.
Which brings us to the second, & most important, thing: Baptism
in the Holy Spirit.
Without the Holy Spirit it is, quite simply, impossible to live the
Christian life. See these are just some
of the things the Holy Spirit does in us & for us:
·
The Spirit regenerates us (John
3:5-8; Titus 3:5).
·
The Spirit glorifies and
testifies of Christ (John 15:26; 16:14).
·
The Spirit sanctifies us (2
Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2; Rom. 5:16).
·
The Spirit teaches us to pray
(Rom. 8:26-27; Jude 1:20).
·
The Spirit bears witness in us
that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16).
·
The Spirit enables us to obey the
truth (1 Pet. 1:22)
·
The Spirit Shed’s God’s love
abroad in our hearts (Romans5:5)…
Without the Holy Spirit we don’t even
get off first base. Without His help we
can do nothing. We may have head
knowledge, we may give lip service, we may believe with our intellects but we
cannot walk the walk & if we cannot walk the walk we do not know the love
of God & we certainly can’t show it to others! (1John 4:8)
The Holy Spirit is the foundation of
us walking out our salvation. Our
salvation rests upon the shed blood of Jesus but understanding what that means
& how to accept, abide & live in the love of God is the work of the
Holy Spirit. If we quench Him, if we
grieve Him, if we silence Him, He cannot do the deep work in our hearts &
lives that break bondages of rejection, isolation, fear, anger, depression
because it is love that castes these things out. 1 John 4:18 says that perfect
love casts our fear: fear of rejection, fear of being isolated, the anger
generated by fear, the depression resulting from fear. The cure for everything
that ails the human condition is Love ~ the love of God.
Remember we have discussed the
definition of God’s love over the past few weeks & one of the things we
discussed was the letter samech, the middle letter of the Hebrew word for love,
hesed.
We said the circular shape of
the samech can be seen as a
picture of God, our support, who has no beginning and no end. This centre
letter is seen by the Sages as a picture of the heart of God where one can
reside and be protected by the strong outer circle.
There is no safer
place to be than encamped at the centre of God’s love. It is the Holy Spirit
who shows us how to abide there. It is
from the place of deep security that we are enabled to minister to others the
love that they so desperately crave.
Now I am going to
spend the rest of our time discussing what God’s love looks like when we allow
the Holy Spirit to exercise it in our lives.
None of us will do this perfectly all the time but we should be growing
in our ability to walk in God’s love & thus exercise His love through us to
others.
Matthew 7:12 says "Do to others whatever you would like them to do to
you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.”
1st Corinthians 13 explains how we would all
like to be loved & thus how we should also love others.
We know this passage
very well ~ so well we may have stopped *listening* to it when we hear it.
This is not a
lovey~dovey passage despite the fact it is commonly read at weddings. It is actually a stinging rebuke to a church
that was out of control & exercising all the spiritual gifts yet behaving
way worse than the pagan culture around them.
Paul starts out by examining 6 spiritual gifts in the light of love
& concludes that each & every one of them is useless if they are not
exercised in love. Throughout the passage the Greek word agape is used to define this as God’s sort
of love. The gifts are tongues ~
yes, speaking in tongues, not simply eloquence~ prophecy,
knowledge, faith, giving, and martyrdom.
Love is patient… Here the Greek, makrothumeō, means to be patient with
people, as opposed to circumstances. It
is one of the fruits of the Spirit found in Galatians 5 so we know that it is
not a gift but the result of character development & character development
is something we do; something we practise; something we train ourselves to do
in order to become more Christlike ~ & we do so with the help of the Holy
Spirit because without His help we cannot do this consistently.
Love is kind ~ chrēsteuomai ~ gentle, benign,
bearing in mind Kindness means to withhold what
harms, as well as give what heals. [Keith Krell] This is a verb so
its extended meaning would include acts of charity, the good works that God has
prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10
Love is not jealous ~ envious, spiteful.
This is why we are enjoined to pray for our enemies & those who
despitefully use us. It helps us keep
our hearts clean before the Lord so that when we are *squeezed by our enemies,
the love of Jesus comes out.*
Love does not brag ~ or boast~ perpereuomai. This is a great Greek word, like our
windbag: pompous, overinflated, self~important, looking for praise, the result
of being insecure.
Love is not arrogant. This implies
disrespect & disdain for others.
Arrogant people do not care how they use others in their quest for
power. It is proud & vain & we know how much God resists a proud heart.
Love is not rude: aschēmoneō. This actually means
to behave in a way that causes others to censure you; to be indecorous as well
as tactless, discourteous & impolite.
Love is not … zēteō. This is usually
translated as self~seeking, wanting one’s own way, but it also means it doesn’t
seek another’s life. Not revengeful. I have
included this definition because we see a lot of *wanting justice* when someone
has received a great hurt but that is not the way of love. We who have received
such great mercy need to extend that same mercy to others. This is not easy
when dealing with unlikable people, people with whom we profoundly disagree or
who are diametrically opposed to us. The
scripture I have found most helpful in dealing with these sorts of people is
Ephesians 6:12: For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies,
but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty
powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Our fight is not against people. It is against those things that control them
& cause them to act in ways contrary to being made in the image of God.
Love
is not easily angered ~ paroxynō.
This
means to not irritate or provoke as well as to not become irritated or
provoked. Love is not going to tempt others to sin through provocation, nor
will it be quick to take offense.
It keeps no account of wrongs: Logizomai
Is a bookeeping term, so you don’t keep track,
you don’t enumerate over & over, you don’t think about wrongs done ~ so
much easier said than done but again, this is why we need the Holy Spirit to
help us. This is why we must seek to abide within the protective circle of
God’s love. When we are secure in the love God has for us we will find it so
much easier to allow the Holy Spirit to control how we deal with other people.
It takes no pleasure in wrongdoing: injustice
falsehood, evil of any kind. There is a reason many Christians limit their
intake of the News. Too often it focuses
on & broadcasts peoples’ sins. This
should be a cause for grieving, not something to be ogled on National T.V. It
is why we are ordered not to gossip.
We then come to a set of positive
confessions:
·
Love rejoices in the Truth.
·
Bears all things ~it doesn’t
expose another’s failings, criticise in public, nitpick. Rather it becomes a
covering which protects & shields another.
·
Believes all things. This is
our word for faith, pisteuō. We take the
word of God very seriously & so we believe what it says about God &
what it says about people. We believe that it is the kindness of God that leads
people to repentance[Romans2:4] & we will do our outmost to ensure we do
nothing that would hurt another’s understanding of how much God loves them
because no~one is beyond the reach of God.
·
Hopes all things~ that is,
it is confident & trusting. We are
not to give up on people because God never gives up on people. After all, He
didn’t give up on us & I can assure you I was a pretty hard chestnut to
crack.
·
Endures all things; remain
constant; perservere. Hypomenō is a military term that means to hold your ground at all cost ~ even
unto death, as Christ did for us. Those
of us with children running from God, deep in rebellion, the very prodigal of
prodigals, should take great comfort from this. We are to stand in the gap for
our loved ones until the very end. Never
give up hope. Never waver. Love Never
ends.
I would remind you
again that the first Christians were renowned for their acts of love, for
succouring the sick & dying that even their own families would have nothing
to do with.
Our world can be a very scary place but I want to
remind you of something Fred Rodgers once said: "Always look
for the helpers, There's always someone who is trying to help." I did, and
I came to see that the world is full of doctors and nurses, police and firemen,
volunteers, neighbours and friends who are ready to jump in to help when things
go wrong.
At no time
is love needed more than when things go wrong but we have to prepare our hearts
for great acts of love by practising in the daily grind of unlovable
neighbours, pesky children, grumpy, elderly parents, the sinkfuls of dishes,
& dirty toilets, when our children rebel, our witness is rejected, &
our world turns catawumpus.
As Victor
Hugo said “You can give without loving, but you can never
love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are
habitually performing small acts of kindness.” Go ye forth & do
likewise because we are to be doers of the word, not hearers only.
