Submitted by admin on Wed, 01/26/2011 - 8:22am
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Last week we talked about the various looks of love—how love comes in different degrees, just as a light can have various levels of brightness or intensity. We read Jesus' words...
34 A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. John 13:34-35
Today let's look some verses from John's first letter that provide further insights about love...
16 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. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:16-18
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. 1 John 4:7-12
It's hard to love God's way. He gave his all for us, even though we didn't deserve it! And now he tells us to love others just as much as he loved us! Wholly and unconditionally—without preconditions.
It's hard to love God's way. Loving sacrificially—as God loves—is not natural for self-centered human beings. Giving ourselves for others goes against our most basic instincts for self-preservation and survival. Human nature is always like this, even without considering whether the recipient of our love is deserving or not.
7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:7-8
More of him; less of me!
John the Baptist: "He must increase, but I must decrease." [John 3:30]
The more we become like Jesus, the closer we come to him, the more we are filled with his life, the more loving we will become. We can't really be loving until his nature takes over our own nature. It's the love of Jesus that must "compel" (NIV) us or "control" (NASB) us [2 Cor 5:14]!
When we are compelled—empowered and motivated—by the very nature of Jesus Christ, then his nature is going to come out of our lives—in the things we say, in the attitudes we have, in the things we do.
For instance, you don't have to tell an orange tree to produce oranges. It's the nature of an orange tree to produce oranges.
It's the same with us! We produce fruit in keeping with our nature.
Imagine you're a grapefruit tree and someone tells you, "Oh, I don't like your fruit. Your fruit is too tart. It's sour. It's bitter. It isn't sweet enough." As a grapefruit tree, you might feel self-conscious. You haven't measured up to that person's expectations. You've let that person down.
You might think you have to try harder to produce sweeter fruit. You look at the orange tree and say to yourself, "Why can't I be like that orange tree? Why can't I produce sweet, luscious fruit like him? People love to eat oranges! They never criticize the orange tree." And so you determine you will do your best to produce sweet fruit. You put all your effort into it. You study books about oranges. You go to orange conferences. You memorize verses about oranges. You meditate on oranges—all your concentration and work goes to producing sweet oranges.
But in the end, nothing changes. You can do nothing to produce sweeter fruit. Why? Because you're not an orange tree. You're a grapefruit tree. It is your nature to produce grapefruit! A grapefruit tree cannot produce oranges. It goes against its very nature.
Jesus said, "You will know them by their fruits... every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit." Matt 7:16-18 (NASB)
So can we do anything when our human nature—the bad tree—causes us to produce bad fruit? When we find ourselves to be self-centered and egocentric instead of loving and selfless like Jesus, what can we do?
Before I answer that question, notice Jesus gave us a command. He didn't say, "Here's a suggestion." He didn't say, "Why don't you try being more loving to each other." He didn't say, "If you feel like it, love one another." No, Jesus gave us a command.
Now, can you command a grapefruit tree to stop making bitter, sour fruit? Can you command a grapefruit tree to produce sweet oranges?
No, of course not! Commands do not produce fruit! It's the inner nature that produces fruit.
This leads us to two conclusions: (1) The sinful nature cannot do what's commanded; human nature cannot live up to God's standard. Therefore, (2) human nature must first be changed before it can do what is commanded; God's love and power must transform the bad tree into a good tree! Because you can't get good fruit from a bad tree.
In fact, this is precisely why Jesus came—the OT Law could not produce good fruit because it was never enough to transform human nature. Jesus had to come to fulfill or complete what the Law could never do.
For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son... Romans 8:3
So what good was the OT Law? The Law showed us our sinful condition. The Law showed us it's impossible for us to change ourselves. The Law showed how desperately we need a Savior. But the Law could never make us into different people.
This is why, when we talk about a new command, we must first look within—at our nature—not without—what we do. Before we can act in love, we must know love.
We must first encounter God's love before we can express God's love. We must live in God's love ourselves before we can give God's love to others.
If you have not surrendered to God's love... if your spirit hasn't been conquered by God's power... if your sins have not been washed away by Jesus' sacrifice—then you cannot love as he loves us because your nature has not been changed. Grapefruit trees cannot produce oranges.
On the other hand, if you've been transformed by God's love... if you now have a new nature and a new spirit within... if your tree is good, you still will need to battle the old nature.
The old nature hangs around. The old nature is on its death bed, but it's still breathing. You can die to self, but the old self somehow keeps clawing its way back.
What this means in practical reality is that our humanity still has some influence over us—even when we have a new, godly nature. Human nature still affects our feelings and our attitudes!
It's as though there is a battle inside our heads and our hearts! Paul wrote to the Galatians:
13 You...were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. 14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other [not very loving, is it?], watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. 16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. Gal 5:13-17
Perhaps this is why Jesus gives believers a new command. We have a new nature. We've been transformed. The fruit should come automatically from a good tree. But the reality is that the old nature still wants to regain control! The old fruit still wants to come.
Denny Robnik told me about a tree they have in their yard in Arizona. It's a lemon tree and it produces lemons (sour and tart fruit). But someone grafted in some orange branches, so the tree also produces oranges (sweet, juicy, and delicious). So you can pick two kinds of fruit from that tree—one with the nature of the lemon and another with a new nature, the orange.
It's the same with us. We have an internal conflict between the flesh and the Spirit. Some fruit we produce is good; other fruit is bad. But we can choose the kind of fruit we pick! We can choose to do the right things when the old nature is pushing for the wrong things. So we have to be vigilant in order to obey the command—the choice God gives us.
Jesus says, "Love one another," but we don't always feel like loving. We see someone whose old nature makes him or her pretty much unlovable—he or she has a "biting" and "devouring" spirit. And our old nature doesn't feel like loving that unlovable person. Our old nature wants to lash back, to protest, to get defensive.
Have you noticed how it's easier to "love" someone who is far away? It's easier to feel compassion for the orphan in Tanzania than it is to feel patience for the person closest to you, under your own roof! How do I love someone who is irritating my human nature? (Not to mention that my human nature is irritating those who are closest to me!)
But Jesus says, "I'm giving you a command. You must love one another as I have loved you." He appeals to our new nature, not our old nature. He urges us to draw on the power of the Spirit (within us) to win the battle over the old nature (also within us). He gives calls on us to do what we know to be right even though we don't feel like it.
We can do loving things even when we don't feel loving. If we've been changed from grapefruit trees (or lemon) to orange trees... if we are now good trees instead of bad trees... if we have God's Spirit within us desiring what is contrary to the sinful nature, then we can choose to DO loving things.
Love is more—much more than a feeling! Love is something you can choose to do. It's an act of the will.
- Loving means choosing to serve. Loving means doing, not just saying. "let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3:18)
- Loving means choosing to share. Love means giving—of yourself, of your time, of your resources.
- Loving means choosing to sacrifice. Love means giving up your own feelings and your own desires...and sometimes your own life.
- Loving means choosing to stand. Love means standing with someone; it means putting yourself in another's place; it means identifying with that person. My young children could identify better with the panhandler on the streets of Chicago than I could. They would tug on my sleeve and say, "Dad, can we put a dollar in his cup?" When we can stand in another person's shoes, we feel what he feels, and we can ask our Father for something to help.