What Jesus said about Love

Last month our focus was “What Jesus Said About Money” and money is something that affects all of us in one way or another.  Some of us because we have it and others of us because we don’t.  And last week at the end of the series we had Step Up Sunday and we asked folks to make a financial commitment for the upcoming year.  And many of you took the challenge and committed to increase your giving over last year, thank you so much. 

Now we are going to take a wee bit of a turn, over the next month and a half I’m going to be looking at “What Jesus Said About Our Emotions”.  And we are all emotional creatures.  Some more so than some but we all have emotions.  And sometimes it makes us question one another when others don’t feel like we feel.  And so questions are asked like “Do you have to be so emotional?” or the converse “Don’t you have any emotions?”  And the answers are “yes” and “no”. 

For those who wear their hearts on their sleeves they do have to be so emotional, that’s the way they are wired.  And for those who don’t show their emotions all the time, that doesn’t mean they don’t have emotions they just don’t show them. 

People who have no emotions are sociopaths, they don’t love, they don’t grieve, they don’t feel joy or sorrow.  But that isn’t the way it is supposed to be, we were created as emotional beings.  From the very first stories of creation we see Adam and Eve as creatures of emotion.   God created man, but then said it was not good for man to be alone.  So there was the emotion of loneliness, then God created woman and the man felt joy, and probably other emotions too but we won’t get into that.   They ate the forbidden fruit because of envy, they wanted what they didn’t have and what God did, then after they realized they had been deceived by the devil they felt afraid, and when they were confronted over their behaviour they felt guilt and then shame. 

And it is emotion that moves us to action, whether good action or bad action is up to us but action nevertheless.  It was Carl Jung who said “There can be no transforming of darkness into light, and of apathy into movement, without emotion.”

So from now until the middle of June we are going to be looking at “What Jesus Said About Emotions”  Love, anger, joy, fear and self-esteem.  Because we can’t ask Jesus to be in control of our lives unless he is also in control of our emotions.   We can’t just box that area of our life up and call it out of bounds to God.  We can’t tell God “You can have control over all areas of my life except for my emotions.”  We can’t declare our emotions “out of bounds” or “off limit” to his Lordship.   We can’t justify how we feel about things and how we react to things as simply “The way I was made” or the “Way I was born, I can’t help myself.”

Remember when we commit ourselves to a life of following Jesus that he defined it as “Being born again”, so while we may justify our behaviour as “the way I was born”  it doesn’t have to be part of your new birth.  And the excuse of “I’ve always been like that” doesn’t cut it in light of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5:17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

So, where should we start?

Almost thirty years ago Tina Turner had a hit song with “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”  In the case of Christianity love has everything to do with it. 

Christianity was birthed in love was shaped by love and continues to be defined by love.  But what is love? 

If you asked a dozen people what love was you would probably get a dozen different answers.  And most of those answers would relate to how someone feels about someone else.  It was Woody Allen who said “I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.”  And so for most of us love is a feeling, an emotion and it’s hard to control or harness our emotions.  And that’s why people can fall in love with someone and then fall out of love with the same person.  And so if we don’t have an emotional bond with someone than we don’t feel that we can love them. 

We bandy the word love around like it’s just a collection of letters but it is so much more than that.   And you will hear people say they love this or they love that.  But they can’t really love a reality show the same way they love their mother.  They can’t love pizza the way they love God. 

The Greek language however has several different words that are used to convey love for different things.  First there is Eros, which is a sensual love, a passionate love.  So my love for Angela is Eros.   The next form of love was Philio and this is the warm fuzzy feeling we have for those nearest and dearest to us.  It is Philio that I feel for Reg Thomas who has been my best friend since 1974.   This is friendship.  Have you ever wondered why Philadelphia is called the city of brotherly love?  Then there is Storge, and this is affection, what you feel for your family members.  This is the emotion that I feel for my parents and my children. 

When Jesus talks about loving my neighbour, and loving other Christians and loving my enemies he doesn’t expect me to love them like I love Angela, or Reg or Stephen and Deborah. 

Instead he uses the word Agape.  And agape is less a feeling of the heart and more a feeling of the mind.  It is as much an act of the will as it is an act of the emotions.  It is a choice we make.   It is why Jesus can tell us to love our enemies.  It is a conscious action, something that you decide to do and something that you cannot do without the power of the Holy Spirit in your life. 

Remember the sum of Jesus teaching is to Love God and to Love Others.  Which is why when there is a disaster, on the other side of the world, happening to people we don’t know and might not like if we did know them Christian relief organizations are there firstest with the mostest.  And you have to wonder what would happen if everyone lived by those principles?

It was Napoleon Bonaparte who wrote “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.”  And the foundation of Jesus’ teaching?  Love for God and Love for People.

So it goes back to: what is love?  And I think we all know what love is supposed to be but that seems way too hard so we try to define what love is and what love isn’t. 

Do you remember the story of the Good Samaritan?  Do you remember how it started?  A man came to Jesus and asked the question Luke 10:25 One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”   And so Jesus said you know what you are supposed to do, what is it the Law says?  And the man replied by saying Luke 10:27 The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”   

Simple enough right?  That must be what Jesus thought because he replies by saying Luke 10:28 “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”   Simple, right?  Apparently not because in the next verse we read Luke 10:29 The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”   And that’s when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan ending with the question Luke 10:36-37 “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbour to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked. The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”  Simple, right?  Obviously not as simple as one would think because throughout the New Testament love is constantly being defined, spelled out and clarified. 

Jesus told those who choose to follow him in John 14:15 “If you love me, obey my commandments.”   So what are those commandments?  Luke 18:20 Jesus said “But to answer your question, you know the commandments: ‘You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother.’”

And so Jesus told us that You Love People By Not Doing Things to Them  This is probably the easiest way to define love and the easiest way to display love.  Love does no wrong to others. 

We have all heard about the Hippocratic Oath, even if we don’t know what all is in the Hippocratic Oath, and what we do know is delivered through television and is wrong.  We hear TV Doctors say “remember what it says in the Hippocratic Oath “First do no harm””  but that isn’t in the Hippocratic Oath, that is just an old Latin saying. 

The Hippocratic Oath is the Oath historically taken by Doctors and it was written by a Greek Doctor named Hippocrates 400 years before the birth of Christ.  And the first part of the oath states:  I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

So really if we took a similar oath to never harm anyone we would be well on the way to being a loving person.  A good part of Love is not harming people.  Physically or emotionally. 

When Paul was defining love for the early Christ Followers in Rome he reached back into the Ten Commandments and pulled out four of the last five commandments Romans 13:9 For the commandments say, “You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.” These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”  So from this reference anyway love seems pretty simple.  You demonstrate your love to your spouse by not sleeping around on them.  You show you love to your annoying neighbour by not choking them to death while they sleep or poisoning their strawberries.  You show your love to the rich man down the street by not stealing his shiny new car.  And you do this by not coveting what doesn’t belong to you, not his wife, not his life and not his possessions.    

But when you stop and think about it, if that is all there is to loving someone all you would have to do is avoid them.  If you have no contact with people then you will not steal from them, lie to them, murder them etc. etc. 

By that definition of love the first two men who came upon the traveller in the story of the Good Samaritan loved the man, because they did not kill him, they did not steal from him or lie to him or rush home to sleep with his wife.

So the most loving people in the world would be the hermits who retreat from society, and maybe that’s why they do it.  It’s just easier to be nice to people when there are no people around to annoy you. 

But for most of us that’s not an option.

So in the real world our love is not only defined by how you don’t behave, more importantly it is shown by what we do do.  Luke 6:27 “But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you.”  And so Jesus told us that  You Love People by Doing Things For Them  If it was just in not doing bad things then we could love our enemies by ignoring them, but Jesus actually tells us to do good to those who hate us.   Probably the greatest definition of love written is in 1 Corinthians 13 and this is what Paul writes 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

This is how we show love in the everyday, nitty-gritty world we live in.  This is how we display the love we show to our family our friends and the strangers we come in contact with every day.  Maybe it could simply be redefined as respect. 

It is more about what you do do than what you don’t do. In this case love becomes work.  It goes beyond avoiding a problem and it corrects the problem.

It is love that forgives, it is love that goes the extra mile, it is love that prepares meals for Ronald McDonald House, and love that puts on work clothes and helps clean up the back yard at Phoenix house or helps paint rooms at Adsum house.  It’s love that writes the cheque for World Hope or World Vision when there is a need on the other side of the world.

And it’s the little things, holding the door for someone when you go into a store, from my vantage point at Tim’s I am amazed at how few people exhibit even that basic common courtesy.  Giving someone a break in traffic, giving the homeless guy a buck and not lecturing him on his behaviour, how about giving someone a smile.  Carol Burnett said that her philosophy in life came from Beverly Sills who said “I’m not always happy, but I always try to be cheerful.”

It’s easy to love those who love us, Jesus tells us that in Luke 6:32 “If you love only those who love you, why should you get credit for that? Even sinners love those who love them! Hitler probably loved his mother. 

But this isn’t about loving the high profile sinners, the Paul Bernardos in life, or the crazy pig farmer from BC, well it is kind of but that is pretty abstract. 

This is about demonstrating the love of Christ to those we come into contact with every day, the staff at Tim Horton’s, the homeless guy on the street, the person you work with, your spouse and your kids. 

How about the parent who abused you?  The boss that passed you over for promotion?  The bully who picks on you?  What about the jerk that cuts you off in traffic or has 12 items in the 10 item express lane.   

Luke 6:33-35 And if you do good only to those who do good to you, why should you get credit? Even sinners do that much! And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, why should you get credit? Even sinners will lend to other sinners for a full return. “Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked.  Not just avoid doing them harm but do good to them.

That’s tough, and it will be a choice that you make, you will either do it or you won’t do it.

Lets’ go back to the scripture that was read earlier, where Jesus told his apostles John 13:34-35 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

And finally Jesus said Your  Love Defines Who You Are  People will recognize you by what you do and don’t do.

Jesus told us that when people see our love they will know that we belong to him.  Do they?  And John writes in 1 John 3:14 If we love our Christian brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead.  And Peter wrote in 1 Peter 4:8 Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.

And I know as Christians that we blow it from time to time and there are always people around to point a finger and say “and you call yourself a Christian”.  And that’s good because we need to be reminded occasionally that we do call ourselves Christians and with that comes responsibilities. And the greatest responsibility that we have as a Christ follower is to demonstrate his love through the way we live.  “Your love will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” 

Because ultimately Jesus said that people would know that we follow him, not by our wealth, and not by our theology, or by the translation of the Bible we read, or the church we attend or the T-shirt we wear but by the way we love.  And you say “that sounds hard.”  It is hard; if it was easy everybody would be doing it. 

So the bottom line is this “If people had to guess who you were following by your life and your behaviour what would their first guess be?”

Every one of us is older today then we were yesterday, and yesterday is gone, you can’t change how you loved people yesterday but you can decide how you are going to love them today and tomorrow.

And so I close with the words of Anne Morrow Lindbergh  “Love is a force that enables you to give other things. It is the motivating power. It enables you to give strength, freedom and peace. It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product, it produces. It is a power, like steam or electricity. It is valueless unless you can give something else by means of it.”