I told you a couple weeks ago that I was going to start teaching through Romans but I've changed my mind because I think a much more pressing issue has come up that I feel the need to deal with it and that is the subject of love. I heard a sermon last week that began by using some of my own words. The Pastor said: Ideas have consequences. I know most of you have heard me say that probably a 100 times. And it is so very true and very important. Nowhere is that more important than with the idea of love.
But what does this word love mean exactly? This is where the rubber hits the road. You see when someone says Ideas have consequences it extends back to everything we think: Our presuppositions about the world, about scripture, about God; everything. Differing presuppositions lead to completely different consequences from the same ideas and it’s no different with love.
I want to once again state my presuppositions to you. Number 1: I believe that there is one God whose name is Yahway. He has always been and he will always be. He never changes. Number 2: He is so different from created beings, from us, that in order for us to comprehend him he had to condescend to our level and reveal himself to us. He chose to communicate through creation itself and with words that we could understand and he chose to have some of this revelation written down. The words that he chose to have written down we call the bible. Number 3: I believe that God is big enough and strong enough to have his word pass down through the centuries through the hands of men and still be close enough to the original that the meaning is still understandable and comprehend-able by human beings. Number 4: I believe that God is love because that is what God has chosen to reveal to us about himself. Number 5: I believe that it has not been left to us to define what love is. I believe that God has in his word defined love; he has defined himself, as fully as it is possible for us to understand. And it is from these presuppositions, this foundation of belief that I want to begin today. I want to begin there because if these presuppositions are not true then love can be whatever you want it to be because the individual becomes the interpreter of what reality is – you are your own God -determining what is right and wrong for yourself.
When I started thinking about this I wanted love, biblical love to be something out of the ordinary. I liked the idea of the King James calling it charity. But I have this thing about the Hebrew meanings of words being the foundation for the New Testament words especially in Old Testament quotes and so to my chagrin the Hebrew word for love simply means: To desire or to breathe after. When the Psalmist writes: As the deer pants for the water so my soul pants for you oh God’ he is saying how much he loves God. In scripture love is not segregated: you love whatever you pant after. Solomon panted after women. Esau panted after food. David panted after God's law and Bathsheba. We live in a time where we can pant after both life and death, love and death. We are not forced to do anything. As Paul writes everything is permitted but not all things are profitable.
What does the scripture say about love? In Matthew 22 starting with verse 36 we read: "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. "This is the great and foremost commandment. (Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 6:5). He continues on and says, the second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Jesus is quoting Leviticus 19:18) "On these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets." In this statement I believe that Jesus sets forth the nature of reality and the nature of His Father who is love. He doesn't add to the law. He is not giving a new commandment. It's there in the heart of the mosaic law – god's law; the law of love. We are commanded by law to love God and love our neighbor. It is not optional if we want to live. Living, however, is an option.
Jesus says that all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. I think more often than not we miss the depth of meaning of that statement. Listen to this: God who is love has laid out what love looks like for us. We are to be panting after God and after our neighbor. He tells us that all the rest of the word of God hangs on those two things. You see there is nothing in both the old and new testaments that is not either of the law or of the prophets. Every word in this revelation is therefore a word about both loving and panting after God or our neighbor. The biblical revelation is therefore the love manual. The whole revelation of God to us Hangs on Love. Loving Go with all your heart soul and mind and loving your neighbor as yourself is the hanger on which all of life hangs on. The psalms call it the path of life. If we want to love the way that God expects us to love then we had better start doing what love tells us love looks like. If you love me: Keep my commandments.
I want to begin to examine what love looks like in the revelation we have been given and I want to do so from the very beginning. The revelation begins by saying: In the beginning God. You could just as easily say; in the beginning Love created the heavens and the earth. The world was built by love for love. From the very beginning God condescended to his creatures. He walked with them in the garden. He told them what love would look like: taking dominion over the garden and the animals, being fruitful and multiplying; and oh yeah, don't eat of the fruit of that tree over there.
Love told his creation to walk in the ways of the commands of love and if they did so they would abide in love and life. If they did what love said to do they would continue to live. If they chose to hate Love and step out of the path of life laid down by God for them to live in then they would die. God is the originator of the concept of ideas having consequences: walk this way and live, walk that way and die. God doesn’t say you have to do it his way. His own word of love tells us that all things are permitted you can do what you want BUT he clearly says some things are profitable and some are unprofitable, some choices lead to life and some to death. Our first parents chose to turn their backs on love and in doing so they discovered the path of death. Their own actions condemned them to death.
It's important that we understand that we don't have to condemn anyone because of the sin we find them in. That is not our job. John writes in his gospel: He who believes in Jesus is not condemned; he who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. The moment that Adam and Eve sinned the human race was judged by God and it died. As a paraphrased CS Lewis says in The Great Divorce: Those who refuse love will be able to look back and see every day of their life as death.
Here is another vital presupposition that the revelation of God makes: Because Adam sinned every other human since has been born dead in sin in relationship to God; they are born condemned. I know that sounds harsh but that is what the revelation of God says in first Corinthians 15: in Adam all die. The Psalmist clearly says: Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. Things like this are why it is so important to begin with the presupposition that the scripture is the revelation of God to mankind. You see if this is not true, if people aren’t born in sin, then they really have nothing to be saved from. They don’t need Jesus – his death was waste of time.
This concept of the deadness of the human race is an idea with consequences. It is the reason that we are not all brothers and sisters. We are all created by God that is true but not all are his children. That is evident when Jesus tells the Pharisees that they are of their father, the devil, in John chapter 8. Let’s go there starting with verse 31: So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." 33They answered Him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, 'You will become free'?" 34Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. 35"The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever. 36"So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. 37"I know that you are Abraham's descendants; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. 38"I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father." 39They answered and said to Him, "Abraham is our father " Jesus said to them, "If you are Abraham's children, do the deeds of Abraham. 40"But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do. 41"You are doing the deeds of your father " They said to Him, "We were not born of fornication; (they are implying that Jesus was) we have one Father: God." 42Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me. 43"Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. 44"You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45"But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. 46"Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? 47"He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God."
The scriptures says that there are two creations, two races of humans: those who are dead in trespasses and sin and those who are of the first born of the new creation, Jesus Christ. Again I understand that these things can sound harsh but the truth is we chose to die in Adam. We chose to rebel against life and choose death. We chose to stop being children of God. In Romans Paul tells us that the commandments are written on everyone’s heart and that everyone knows the one true God and their own dead condition but they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They despise love so much that they deny its very existence. Love doesn’t owe us anything. We deserve death because of our love of death and God will give us what we want as long as we refuse to humble ourselves before him. This is the condition of the human race because of their mutiny against life and love.
The very fact that God lets us live at all proves that he is a graceful God. We chose death but he continues to give us life that we might turn back to life and learn to love. Anyone that wants to can embrace love but as John so eloquently writes: This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
Yet, … while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Before Adam and Eve were forced to leave the garden of love as a consequence of their hatred of God; God provided the promise of future restoration. The New Testament calls it the old covenant because it was simply the foundation for a future means of redemption in a new covenant that would replace the one broken and abandoned in the garden. It was laid out in in seed form Genesis 3: 14-15: The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life; And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel." This was the first prophecy that hung on the love hanger: God is going to provide a way of redemption.
What a glorious thing. Here are a people who have already been judged. They are already living in eternal death. They are separated from God because of their own hatred for love and the ways of love. And yet, God in his great mercy begins to lay out a plan of redemption so that anyone who wants to leave death and walk in life can do so. He lays forth the promise of a new creation where love rules and life is lived to the fullest.
But even with the promise of redemption most people refuse to stop dying. They refuse to walk in love. So much so that by the time of Noah and an estimated population of easily around several hundred million people only one person chose to walk in love. Only one person found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Only one person rejected death. The stench of death was so great that God gave the people 120 years more to turn to life but they refused. They were warned of the coming judgment every day with every pounding of the nail while the ark was being built. They all spoke the same language. Most of the people had heard the story of the rebellion first hand from Adam and Eve. Many of them probably saw the original couple die physically. Yet they loved death more than life and God gave them what they wanted. There came a time when the door was shut and no one could partake of grace. Love refused to let the spilled blood that cried out to him day and night go unheard and death was increased for the rebellious. They were given what they wanted.
The stories throughout the Old Testament are stories of grace; Grace that provides redemption, Grace that offers redemption but is rejected, Grace that is revealed in consequences. No one will be able to say: ‘I didn’t know’. No one will be able to say God is unfair. We chose death over life. Everyone, everywhere in all ages before and after Christ knows the truth; that is what the revelation of Love tells us. The majority of people will pant after death instead of life. They will refuse redemption because they will refuse to submit to the ways of love and life.
That’s how the story begins. Love has been rejected but love continues to persevere. Love provides a way for the haters to become lovers. Yet the saying is true: Haters gonna hate. In spite of that Love will be victorious. Every knee will bow and declare that love personified in human form, Jesus Christ is Lord.
Anybody got a question?
Let’s pray. Oh father, teach us how to love like you do. Help us to understand and believe that everything you do and command you do for love. Help us to love you, ourselves and our neighbors. That is a huge request for each and every one of us. Have mercy on us and save us from ourselves so that we might learn to pant after your love and the life that you offer. In Jesus name we ask these things, Amen.
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