Love: the best thing of all
‘…and finally you will grow to have love for everyone.’ 2 Peter1:7
Introduction
On the wall of my 'in-laws house is a little picture that looks like it has been passed from one generation to the next. On it are just three words.
We, Because, He.
It is an interesting little phrase that is designed with 2 purposes. Firstly, it is intended to remind Christians of something, and secondly it is intended to provoke those who don't understand it to ask what it means. It's means is based upon a very clear Christian principle. The only reason we, as Christians can live and love like Jesus is because he did first. We Because He.
Deep in the middle of the NT is an extremely powerful story that stirs my heart every time I read it. It is the sort of story that would stir anyone’s heart, whether they would call themselves a Christian or not.
Shocking behaviour
Jesus is invited for a meal at a religious leader’s house. He accepts the invitation, attends the man’s home and sits down for a meal. Word got out that Jesus was in town at the leader’s house, but it is not just the circles of civilized folk who hear – the information found its way into the circles of those undesirable folk that any religious person, let alone religious leader would seek to avoid. And so, halfway through the meal she turns up.
We don’t know much about her except that she was an immoral woman – and that people knew it. She was 'that kind' of woman.
She just walked in, right up to Jesus and knelt down before him. She was devastated about something and as she cried the tears ran off her face onto Jesus dirty feet so she knelt lower and wiped his feet with her hair. Then she started to kiss them. But that was not the end of this outrageous display of affection. She took out of her gown a beautiful little Alabaster perfume jar and began to put perfume all over Jesus’ feet.
The Religious leader just looks on critically. Jesus should have known what kind of a person she is and therefore how wrong an inappropriate it is that she behaves like that.
But Jesus rebukes the man for his thoughts tells him a parable to make clear what he is doing and then says to the man -
“I tell you, her sins – and they are many – have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little (looking at the religious leader) shows only little love.” Luke 7:47
We have been working our way through 2 Peter Ch 1 and have arrived at the last quality Peter mentions in his list as he explains what it means to be apprentices of Christ, people who seek to be and live like him. We have also reached the climax of these verses as we think about love.
Love is understandably popular, and is much talked about in our culture and society. But sadly genuine love, on a community level at least is seldom seen.
Peter speaks of three different kinds of love in these verses.
Firstly love for God, the word used being Godliness (v7). This he tells us, produces love for other Christians – Brotherly love, which is of course what holds the Christian community together. Finally, Peter says, you will grow to have a genuine love for everyone.
Agape
The word Peter uses to speak of this love for everyone is a very special word – agape. The word Agape was one of the least frequent words used in classical Greek writing outside of the Bible in the New Testament era. It expresses that highest and noblest form of love that sees something infinitely precious in its object. It is love involving sacrifice. So it is no surprise that in contrast to the secular greek writings, in 95% of the times the New Testament speaks of love, including here in 2 Peter it is agape – selfless, sacrificial and spontaneous love.
Peter and the rest of the New Testament writers are talking about something very special – selfless, sacrificial and spontaneous love towards everyone. How can Christians show, express and live out this love? By knowing what it means to be loved and forgiven with this love. Just like the woman who washed Jesus feet. She came knowing her guilt, knowing her inadequacy, knowing her broken past, but found acceptance from a Saviour who loved with a different kind of love – selfless, sacrificial and spontaneous. And “I tell you, her sins – and they are many – have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.”
Before you and I can even think of expressing love to others – inside or outside of the church we need to be like this woman – broken, and forgiven. Just like Peter.
In John 21:15-19 we see Peter's experience of this love. Just a few days previously Peter had sat around a different fire and denied he knew Jesus 3 times, with cursing. Butnow, Jesus restores Peter by 3 times asking him if he loves him.
Do you truly love me more than these? Do you truly love me? Do you love me?
It must surely be true that by the third question, Peter cannot have seen Jesus repeated question as mere coincidence. This was a response to his three times denial.
Jesus knows that Peter’s task is to feed the sheep – and in order for him to do this he must love much. This means he must grasp how much he his loved and therefore how much he is forgiven.
Because the task of loving is not easy. C.S.Lewis once wrote -
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken, If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” C.S.Lewis, The Four loves (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960) 169
But you and I are to love everyone, a selfless sacrificial love that is spontaneous towards everyone – including those who are not a part of the church, not Christians, who don’t see themselves as belonging. There can be no greater thrill – and no greater challenge to the Christian than living in this way.
People have often said to me – ‘Isn’t it interesting that when the writers of the NT tell us to love one another they almost always refer to other Christians.” This is, at face value true, but verses like this show that that is simply because, a love for everyone should be second nature to us. It is who we are, what we are about.
On the Hope 08 DVD, Joel Edwards (who leads the EA) speaks of Hope 08 not being about 1 million fingers wagging, but about 2 million arms outstretched.
In John 15, Jesus says this –
“I command you to love each other in the same way that I love you. And here’s how to measure it – the greatest love is shown when people lay down their lives for their friends.” John 15:12-13
This is Sacrifice
Our vision statement is to 'live and love like Jesus and get the people of Sunderland into Heaven'. This, if we are as a church to do it, is going to cost. At times it may hurt us – meaning giving up comfort and security for the sake of loving those who need loving.
For each of us it will mean giving up something different. it might be holidays, it might be time to relax on our own, it might mean changing our lifestyle, it might mean travelling halfway around the world leaving all our creature comforts in order that we can love those who need loving. But we won't be the first, or only ones.
Medicine for the poor
John Boot was born in Radcliffe-On-Trent in 1815 and his early life was spent as an agricultural labourer on local farms. He travelled to attend services at the Wesleyan chapels in the Lace Market area of Nottingham and by the time of the 1851 Census he had moved to Woolpack Lane in Hockley. It was a poor area and John Boot became involved in chapel work and ministry and local schemes to improve living conditions within his community.
Herbal remedies were popular with the labouring poor, who could not afford the services of a physician. John Boot's mother had used herbs for healing and he may also have been familiar with remedies published in John Wesley's herbal Primitive Physic. In 1849, with the assistance of his father-in-law and the support of the local Methodist community, John opened The British and American Botanic Establishment at 6 Goose Gate, hoping to provide physical comfort to the needy, as well as a reasonable living for his family.
In addition to giving consultations and serving in the shop, John and his wife, Mary, prepared many remedies themselves. However, after years of hard work and ill-health, John Boot died in 1860, at the age of 45. Mary took over management of the shop, with the help of her ten year-old son, Jesse, who gathered and prepared herbs as well as serving behind the counter. And the outcome...the famous Boots pharmacists!
But even for John Boot, Love was vulnerability. Things sacrificed, things forsaken for the love of others – those outside the “family”
Gospel for the Auca's
Operation Auca was an attempt by five Evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States to make contact with the Huaorani people of the rainforest of Ecuador. The Huaorani, also known as the Aucas (the Quechua word for "naked savages"), were an isolated tribe known for their violence, against both their own people and outsiders who entered their territory. With the intention of being the first Christians to take the good news of Jesus to the previously unreached Huaorani, the missionaries began making regular flights over Huaorani settlements in September 1955, dropping gifts. After several months of exchanging gifts, on January 2, 1956 the missionaries established a camp at "Palm Beach", a sandbar along the Curaray River, a few miles from Huaorani settlements. Their efforts came to an end on January 8, 1956, when all five—Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian—were attacked and speared by a group of Huaorani warriors.
...in Sunderland!
There is a Christian in Sunderland – it could be any of us who takes Gods’ command to love others seriously. They are a quiet, not an up front kind of person, but that doesn’t matter. They know what it means that they have been forgiven by Jesus. They know what it means to be loved – and so they love others. They regularly spend time with those who don’t really have other friends – always on the look out for the disenfranchised and lost. They have a really good reputation amongst their friends and neighbours – particularly those who are not yet Christians. Sometimes they get fingers pointed at them by other Christians for appearing worldly and not at every Christian meeting going. It hurts them, but they want, with a passion to live and love like Jesus. They are prepared to sacrifice, make themselves vulnerable in order that others might know they are loved, even by just one individual and the God they love and serve.
And you know what is great – there are lots of people like that. Christians who are driven to love becasue they have been loved. In big ways, in small ways. There is no better way to be apprentices of Christ than selfless, sacrificial and spontaneous love. And I don't know about you, but considering what Christ has done for me just throws more logs on the fire, that I might love like him!