What Love is Not

Faith in Christ.  Living the Christian life. Loving God and being loved by Him. How does anyone sum it up in a short sentence?  So often, we use John 3:16.  We see it everywhere--car bumpers, tee shirts, placards at football games.

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.--John 3:16

And so He did.

We think of our own children, of how we could possibly care enough for anyone or anything to give our children over to death for them.  We cannot conceive of it.  We love our children.  We hold them in our arms. We know their smell, their feel.  Their smiles bring us joy.

But it was not that kind of love that motivated God the Father to hand over Jesus to His executioners.  I am increasingly convinced that God does not act according to emotion.  Ever.

God feels emotion.  Jesus wept, after all, but God's feelings do not drive Him.  God knows that what He feels, and by extension what we feel, is not true love.

We tend to look at John 3:16 from our human perspective of sacrificing our own children's lives, of making them suffer for someone else's benefit, and it's true that God did that.  But a divine transaction also took place on Calvary.

God did not appoint Jesus for the cross, and Jesus did not climb onto that wood or accept the nails out of emotional love for us.  Emotional love is the way we most often try to understand Christ's sacrifice, but emotional love did not drive it.

Something else drives God, an eternal motivator determined from His own character and designated before time began.  God does what He does because His actions emerge from His character, His very Self, His holiness.  

Christ died not because God felt sorry for us but because God is God: righteous, powerful, sovereign, just.

God says He is love.  God's love is God's own Self, not feelings--not pleasure or displeasure, not likes or dislikes, not happiness or sadness.

God's love is determination to work out who He is.  He does what He does because He must.  He made His plan before the creation of the world.  "I will do this," He said, and does.

We can learn to do this, too.  In fact, He commands us to.  We have to, however, shift our eyes from our emotional heart to God's heart.  I love my husband not so much when we kiss or when I feel the rush of emotion but when I enact God's righteous plan for me as a wife.  I love my children more when I set my eyes on God than when I bake their favorite cookies.  I become a godly friend or employee when I look for God's unemotional, righteous heart in all situations and act accordingly.

I have to learn to unpack my idea of love from how I feel.  When we emotionally love, we are looking at one another.  Eternal love is seeking and finding God. 

This is love: not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Since God loved us, we also ought to love one another.--1John 4:10-11


Try reading the above passage like this:
This is love: not that we (feel emotion for) God, but that He (righteously acts toward) us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Since God (acts righteously toward) us, we also ought to (righteously act toward) one another.


And we can do this by fixing our eyes on Jesus and keeping them unwaveringly there.  This is true love.

Unbroken

Sometimes, shapes are just perfect.  Take the rainbow.  God made the rainbow with intent, following a pattern, encircling the world with an arc already encircling Him.

Rainbows call to mind the unbroken line that runs from the covenant that God made with the great patriarchs, extending through Jesus directly to us and beyond into eternity.  

The rainbow we see in the sky today is the same one Noah and Abraham and Moses and David saw; that rainbow a delicate echo of the rainbow encircling God's throne in heaven.

Whenever a rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures.--Genesis 9:16
And the one they saw had the appearance of jasper and carnelian.  A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.--Revelation 4:3

We are connected to God both to ages past and to eternity by bonds even He cannot break.

What He says He will do, He does.  This is why we can know security.

He has made us sons and daughters and will keep us. His promises last forever.  He has drawn an unbroken line in the sky to show us . He has given us the rainbow, a vanishing wisp, to remind both us and Himself of a connection that lasts forever.

Why the News is Good

Every Sunday, we sing about how God forgave our sins. Adam and Eve sinned.  I sin.  But Jesus came, sweet Jesus, and died for me.   

Jesus died because God wants us to live.  This is the good news, isn't it?  Knowing this, don't we have something to rejoice over, something wonderful to sing about?

Yes, we do.  But if that is as far as we go, we are missing the point. Jesus says He stands at the door. He stands at it crucified, risen, and waiting. But, the door to what?

He told us.  He showed us.  At the moment of His death on Calvary, the curtain of the temple split.  He opened the door to what lay beyond it...Himself. 

 The body of Jesus hung on the cross, but His nature, the holiness He shares with His Father and His Holy Spirit, had been confined to the darkness of the Holy of Holies behind an impenetrable curtain.  Our forgiveness through His death lets us in.

It's Him.  He is the Good News. 


Since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way opened for us through the curtains, that is His body...--Hebrews 10:19-20 (emphasis mine)


Jesus admits us to His own presence.  He tells us to follow Him to Himself.

This is why we sing.  He ushers us in, and there is no other way.

Trying to Kill Obi Wan

He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you..."--2 Corinthinians 12:9a
 My grace is sufficient for you, says the Lord.

No, I say, it's not.

I don't like getting free stuff.  What I get for free doesn't belong to me. I didn't earn it.  Let me DO something for this, I tell God.  I can't accept this gift.

In saying this, in listening to my heart, I know that I am ruled by pride.

Again and again, the duel between pride and grace stymies my Christian life. They thrust and parry constantly.  I just can't let grace win.

But life provides lots of good examples of why my attitude is wrong, why pride deceives, why it directs me to destruction.  Do you remember when Darth Vader tried to kill Obi Wan Kenobi?  They fought for awhile, then Obi Wan just smiled a little, lifted his light saber, crossed his arms, and stepped back and let Darth deal the killing blow.  He fell into a pile of wrinkled robes and we thought him dead. But he wasn't.  He became transcendent, even more powerful.

That's grace.  It will let pride toy with it, but it will hang around and hang around until, finally, when I finally give in, give up, grace wins.  Every time.  Like the good guys.  Like Kenobi.

He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."--2 Corinthians 12:9

Gotta love a happy ending.

Growing Up Together

I want justice and I want it now.  I can't tolerate hucksters who get rich.  I don't want criminals to go free.  I cry out against liars who gain a following.  I revolt at thieves peacefully enjoying their spoils.  Surely God can stop these people, but He doesn't always do it.  Why not?

Why do the wicked prosper?  Why do the faithless live at ease?--Jeremiah 12:1

Because I am looking at their situation from my perspective, of course.  I keep forgetting that God loves them.  Yes, He does.  He loves the thieves, the murderers, the liars, the cheaters.  He made them, after all, just the same as He made me.  Then I remember:

He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.--Matthew 5:45
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.--Exodus 33:19

While we live, we all experience God's mercy according to His perfect will, not according to our limited, prejudicial vision. 

Maybe, for those not chosen for His everlasting company in heaven, the mercy He extends is even greater. For those who will not share God's eternal pleasure, it will be the only ease they will ever know.  Perhaps God is loving them the only way He can given the circumstances.

Let both (weeds and wheat) grow together until the harvest.  At that time, I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barns.--Matthew 13:30

The world looks backwards when we consider only the world.  It makes more sense when we include the concerns of a loving and benevolent God.  He knows already who He will save.   Those who He will not, He may, when He chooses, give rest and comfort here.  They will know none later.

The Company I Keep

We know that our life is a journey and that Jesus promised to show us the way to go.  It occurs to me, though, that there are different ways to travel.

Christ wants to be my companion.  He does not want to find me lingering on the path so that He has to walk ahead and urge me to get moving.  He does not want me to be preoccupied with my other companions so that I lose focus.  He wants me to stay close so that I can hear Him.

I need to pay attention.
God will tell me where to go, but the voice I hear should come from behind me.
Whether you turn to the right or left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, "This is the way.  Walk in it."--Isaiah 30:21

Every day, I choose where to go and with whom.  I look down the various paths to see on which one Christ waits for me, but I err in this.  My Jesus should be constantly near so that He gives only a gentle nudge from beside or behind, not down some far off road calling, hoping I have ears to hear.

The journey we take with our God is not supposed to involve slowing down or catching up or pulling at a lead or lingering behind.  He wants us close enough so that we can know His arm around our shoulder and expect a  sweet whisper in our ear. 

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.  I will counsel you and watch over you.  Do not be like the horse or mule which has no understanding but must be controlled by a bridle or they will not come to you.--Psalm 32: 8-9

We make this journey not as master and servant, but with Father, Brother, Friend.  We make it with the sweetest of companions.

Going Out to Fish

Like you probably do, I start each day with a fair idea of what I am going to do in it.  Even when I don't make a list, I usually know whether I will go to work or the grocery store or to lunch with a friend.

But God switches life up sometimes. 

Like a couple of weeks ago, when I started the afternoon visiting with a young mom and finished it in the emergency room.  Once the dust settles, you just kind of look around, shake your head a little, and wonder, "Now what?"

I think that Jesus' disciples  felt the same way during the weeks following the resurrection.  They'd been traveling with Jesus for years.  They knew what He wanted them to do every day.  "Follow me," He told them and they did.

But now they couldn't. Overnight, their life and mission evaporated.  They couldn't follow Jesus where He was going.  Most of the time, they didn't even know where He had gone.  The heck with it, they thought.

"I'm going out to fish," Simon Peter told them, and they said, "We'll go with you."  So they went our and got into the boat...--John 21:3

Why not?  They didn't have anything else constructive to do.  Jesus hadn't given them any other direction.  Might as well go back to the one thing they knew they were good at.

Jesus had told them once that He would make them fishers of men, but without Him, they didn't know how to begin.   Jesus had already accomplished salvation.  His work was done.  Was theirs done, too?

Then, just as suddenly as their work looked over, Jesus again lit their way.  Before the night was out, they had a boat full of fish and they were having breakfast with Christ again.  Even better, by the time they were done eating, He had begun to explain what they were to do.

Feed my sheep.--John 21:17

Peter and the gang were off and running again.  And it works the same way for us.

Sometimes, God shifts our gears and in the pause between, we feel at bit at a loss, somewhat out of focus.  But it won't last.  Just wait a bit.  At some point, He'll tell you what to do. 

And, in the meantime, you might as well go fishing.