Those Funny Church Words: LOVE

[This message was shared during the Sunday worship celebration of Friendship Lutheran Church, Amelia, Ohio, earlier today.]

1 John 4:7-21
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at funny church words, terms that only Christians use or which we use so uniquely that the world may need a translator to understand us. We may be tempted to think that everybody understands today’s word, love.

But I’m not so sure about that. Years ago, a young man spoke with me after a third consecutive romance had gone sour. “Pastor,” he told me. “I wouldn’t know love if it bit me in the backside.” That may be true for all of us, at least some of the time, whether we’re Christians or not.

So, what is love? My favorite writer, C.S. Lewis, once described four major types of love, using Greek terms to describe each.

The first of these is storge, the kind of love a loyal pet feels for its owner. The pet appreciates the care and the comfort the owner provides. It’s a bit like a warm blanket on a cold night. But ultimately, storge isn’t a terribly satisfying form of love.

A second kind of love is eros, which is romantic or sexual love. Eros may be the most exciting kind of love, at least in the short run. But men and women who try to build long-term relationships on only erotic love end up bitterly disappointed. Often, when erotic love is the only glue holding a relationship together, someone feels used. Besides, when the money runs low, or tragedy hits, or when depression happens, the person whose love for you is based only on eros will leave, looking for someone else who turns them on.

A third kind of love is philos, the sort of love that may exist between two loyal friends. Twenty-four years ago, when I had graduated from seminary and was still without a call, my wife was expecting our second child, the only work I had was that of a part-time janitor, and we were without a place to live, my old high school friend, Tom, invited us to live with him. Tom didn't need to do that. But that's the kind of thing that philos does.

A fourth kind of love, what’s known as agape, is well-described in a passage from the New Testament often read at weddings. Oddly enough, Paul, its author, wasn't writing about marriage when he dictated the words we find in First Corinthians in the New Testament. They were addressed to a congregation in which a supposed spiritual elite looked down their noses on those who, unlike them, didn't possess the spiritual gift of tongues; where wealthy Christians weren't sharing with poorer Christians; and where unrepentant sin was rampant. Listen to some of what Paul wrote in the thirteenth chapter and see if you recognize his words:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Often, if, during weddings, couples pay attention to anything other than their own nerves, they’ll listen to those words and the smug smiles on their faces seem to say, “That’s us to a T.”

It’s then that I feel duty-bound to remind them that, “Nobody I know is always patient and kind. No one I know is always free of jealousy or conceit. Nobody I’ve met or heard of is guiltless when it comes to keeping records of the wrongs done to them.”

And yet this selfless, self-giving, agape love is exactly what Jesus had in mind when He told us, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s the great commandment and agape love is what it’s about. Agape love is what we need to make all of our relationships become what we want them to be. And, Jesus says, loving like this is required of us. To live with agape love is the only way you and I are acceptable to God. Yet agape love is the only kind of love of which not a single person here is capable. What are we supposed to do with that? Fortunately, God doesn’t leave us to our own devices!

Instead, through Jesus Christ, God does three big things to help you and me to have a relationship with Him.

First, Jesus covers us with His agape love. Last week, I mentioned a passage from Romans in the New Testament, where we’re told, “while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Another translation renders it, “while we were still helpless Christ died for us.”

In a dream of mine, I’m back in college and given an assignment. The professor says something like, “Write a ten-page history of ancient Babylonia and write it in Russian. Turn it in tomorrow.” I’m terrified. I know nothing about Babylonia. I can’t speak, read, or write Russian. And even if I did, twenty-four hours isn’t enough time! I’m completely incapable of doing anything for myself, yet it never seems to dawn on me to approach my professor to explain my problem or to ask for help. To do so, would entail admitting my helplessness. Apparently, the professor can’t see or doesn’t care about the panic that must be written on my face. I usually wake up from this dream in a sweat, frightened out of my mind.

Fortunately, Jesus, the One Who gives us the required life assignment to love God completely and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves understands how incapable we are of doing this. In this, He reflects the compassionate understanding God has always had of our human nature. And so, Jesus does the assignment for us on the cross. He covers all who believe in Him with His agape love.

Why? Jesus explained it once to the Jewish teacher, Nicodemus, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (He also explains that God will never condemn us, but that we can condemn ourselves by refusing to follow Jesus. But God wants to cover us with His life-giving love!)

In another part of the New Testament, we’re told to “put on" Christ. This is more than a fashion statement. Putting on Jesus Christ is the only way you and I can have an eternal relationship with God!

Second: Jesus fills us with agape love. Once, I was visiting a hospitalized member of the church I served in northwest Ohio. A nurse came in with a stack of get well cards. “You must be from that church in Okolona,” the nurse said. “I am,” the patient confirmed, “but how did you know?” “Because,” the nurse answered, “the people of that church always send more get well cards than any congregation around.” Now, get well cards may not seem like such a big deal. As an act of self-giving love, it's certainly not akin to throwing oneself between a firing squad and its intended victim. But I took those cards as one strong measure of how deeply Christ’s love had penetrated the life of that parish. Because of Christ's agape love, many members of the church took the time to pick out and send get well greetings to others.

Back in the second century, an unbelieving Greek named Lucian remarked on the Christians he’d observed, “It is incredible to see the fervor with which the people of that religion help [others]...They spare nothing...[This Jesus seems to have] put it in their heads [that others are their brothers and sisters]...”

It’s precisely Jesus Who puts this idea in our heads. Christians voluntarily undergo a kind of brain transplant. I call it a holy lobotomy. It’s what Paul was talking about when he urged Jesus-followers to “let this mind be in you, that was in Christ Jesus.” We let Jesus into our minds and lives and He fills us with His love.

After covering us with His agape love, Jesus then fills us with His agape love. Writing in today’s Bible lesson, the apostle John says, “...everyone who loves is born of God and knows God [and]...In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” John also writes that, “God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.” When we surrender and believe in Christ, our behavior begins to reflect His presence in our minds, wills, and lives.

Finally: Jesus’ agape love never gives up on us! Years ago, I spoke with a couple, who were happy in what was a second marriage for both of them after both experiencing bitter divorces. The woman told me of how at her former church, her pastor had told her she was unfit to be a Sunday School teacher because of what she’d been through. But on the day I spoke with her and her husband, they both were involved in a church where they sensed the love and acceptance of Jesus for them. They knew that however others may have regarded them, the God we meet in Jesus Christ hadn’t given up on them.

Among the many things I love about Martin Luther, the founder of the Lutheran movement of which Friendship is a part, is how he saw the positives in the Bible that had been covered over or ignored by the Church of his day. For example, he noticed that the Ten Commandments don’t begin with the commandments themselves, but with a word of promise. “I am the Lord your God,” God says. “No matter what,” God is telling us, “through thick and thin, I am your God.”

And maybe more than anything else we can say, that’s what makes the love we find in Jesus Christ so unique. When God covers you with His love, fills you with His love, and then, never withholds His love, it gives you the hopefulness, the confidence, and the God-power you need to dare to love God and to love others with something of the passion and tenacity we see in Jesus on the cross. That may be what John is getting at in our Bible lesson for today when he says, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God...”

There are different kinds of love. But only one kind of love can change us from enemies to friends of God, bring us everlasting life with God, give us the power and the patience to forgive and live with others, and fill us with the power to fulfill Jesus’ great commandment to love. That’s the love that comes to us from Jesus Christ when we admit our helpless need of Him and then, take up the adventure of following Him.

Next week, we begin a new series of messages on Overcoming Worry.