Love and Loving

February 13, 2015

“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another…” (1John 4:11)

The Apostle John points to Jesus dying on the cross and writes: “This is love… that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).  He follows that with the words quoted above – that if God SO loved us we ought also to love one another.

Hours before He was arrested and crucified, Jesus challenged the men He apprenticed 24/7 for three years to love one another as He had loved them.  He then prophesied that by this the whole world would know they were His disciples.  Peter wrote that by His death on the cross He gave us an example and a calling that we should follow in His steps (1 Peter 2:21).

The Apostle John is in alignment with Jesus and Peter when he gives us yet another reason we are to love one another.  In principle Jesus was instructing the apostles that the best way to reach out is to reach in. Essentially, Jesus was saying that we have a message of love to communicate to the world.  The best way to do that is to love one another and show the world a community of love.

If our churches were the colonies of love Jesus desires them to be, the love-starved people of this world would beat our doors down to be part of our spiritual communities because everyone has a need to be loved and to belong.  The love John is profiling is the greatest evangelistic tool our Lord has given to His Church.

Are you willing to reach in that you might reach out for His glory?

Dick Woodward, 20 July 2010

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Love First

August 19, 2014

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love… I am nothing.”  (I Corinthians 13:1-3)

In the middle of the first century, the Apostle Paul composed an inspired poem of love in which he declared that the agape love of God should be the number one priority of spiritual people. He wrote that love is greater than knowledge and more important than faith. His inspired words about love have been, and should be read in every generation of church history.  That includes you and me.

His teaching about spiritual gifts in the previous chapter concludes with: “Earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I will show you a more excellent way.”  (I Cor 12:31)  Paul begins the next chapter with his prescription for that most excellent way: “Let love be your greatest aim,” or “Put love first.” (LB, NEB)

A SUMMARY PARAPHRASE APPLICATION:

If we speak with great eloquence or in tongues without love, we’re just a lot of noise.  If we have all knowledge to understand all the Greek mysteries, the gift to speak as a prophet and enough faith to move mountains, unless we love as we do all those things, we are nothing.  If we give all our money to feed the poor and our body to be burned at the stake as a martyr, if we give and die without love, it profits us nothing.

Nothing we are, nothing we ever become, nothing we have and nothing we ever will have in the way of natural and spiritual gifts should ever move ahead of love as our first priority. Nothing we do, or ever will do as an expression of our faith, our gifts, our knowledge, or our generous, charitable, unconditionally-surrendered heart is worthy of comparison, or can replace love as we live out our personal priorities in this world.”

Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Love

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A Kinsman Redeemer

January 10, 2014

“And his name shall be called in Israel, ‘The house of him who had his sandal removed.’”  (Deuteronomy 25:10)

One Law of Moses stated that if a man died and had no son his widow could go to one of his relatives and ask him to marry her.  If he refused to marry her she could subpoena him to court.  If he affirmed that he was not willing to marry her, they had a ceremony: before the court she spit in his face and removed his sandal. He was then disgraced and boycotted in business.  The man who obeyed this law, however, was called “a kinsman redeemer.”

This law is the background for one of the most beautiful love stories in all of inspired and secular literature: the book of Ruth.  As a widow Ruth has the right to ask a man named Boaz to marry her.  Although they meet and he shows her he loves her and would love to redeem her, she has to ask him to be her redeemer.

When we understand the ways this story relates to our redemption we will realize that we must personally ask the risen, living Christ to be our Kinsman Redeemer. To redeem Ruth, Boaz pays off all her debts and marries her.  Our Redeemer pays all our sin debt through His death on the cross.  Then, through His resurrection He enters into a relationship with us the New Testament describes as a marriage to Him.

We also read in the New Testament that He is standing at the door of our life showing us, like Boaz, that He loves us and would love to redeem us.  Like Ruth we must have a “romance in reverse” individually proposing to Him, asking Him to be our personal Redeemer.

Have you ever done that?

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The Bulls Eye of your Priority Target

November 12, 2013

“Let love be your highest goal…”  (1 Corinthians 14:1)

What are your priorities?  Paul challenges us to let love be our highest priority at the end of his inspired love chapter.  We should follow after love, make love our greatest pursuit, and love should be our highest goal, depending on how the verse is translated in your Bible.

A practical way to make love our greatest goal is to take the 15 virtues in the middle of the love chapter and apply them in our relationships. It will not take long to realize we cannot love in these ways on our own.  These are the ways God loves.  The miracle is He can love in these 15 ways through us!

The love virtues are all others-centered, unselfish ways of showing unconditional love.  They are not natural, but unnatural for us, because they are supernatural.  They are the fruit and evidence that God lives in us and is expressing the essence of His character through us. The dynamic effect of His love upon those we love in these ways will convince us this love is God and deserves to be our highest goal.

I have been loved in these ways and by the grace of God I have loved in these ways.  I am committed to making this love my first priority.  I resonate with Joyce Kilmer who summarized the essence of the lives of the fallen who lie beneath poppies in French military graveyards when he wrote: “Loved and were loved, but now they lie in Flanders Fields.”

Paul prescribed these love virtues believing they could solve the problems in the worst relationships in his worst church.  I believe they can solve the problems in all our relationships if we will graciously apply them, through Christ.

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The Greatest Thing in the World

November 8, 2013

“There are three things that last — faith, hope, and love — and the greatest of these is love.”  (1 Corinthians 13:13)

What is the greatest thing in the world?  The Apostle Paul sifts his answer down to three things:  hope, faith and love.  Hope is the conviction that there can be good in life.  God plants hope in the hearts of human beings. People sometimes commit suicide because they lose that conviction.

On the positive side, hope gives birth to faith, and faith is one of the greatest things because faith brings us to God.  However, when Paul compares these two great concepts with love, without hesitation he concludes that love is the greatest thing in the world.  This is true because love is not something that brings us to something that brings us to God.  When we experience the special love Paul describes we are in the Presence of God.  There is a particular quality of love that is God and God is a particular quality of love.

To acquaint us with that specific quality of love, in the middle of this chapter he passes this quality of love through the “prism” of his Holy Spirit inspired intellect.  It comes out on the other side as a cluster of 15 virtues. All these virtues of love are others-centered, unselfish ways of expressing unconditional love. If you study these virtues you will find in them a cross section of the love that is God–and is the greatest thing in the world.

One reason Paul presents these three concepts as the greatest things is that they are the things that last.  Love is the greatest of the three because one day we will no longer need hope and faith when throughout all eternity we will love.

Therefore, pursue the greatest thing in the world – love.

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