MONDAY
We took a break last week from our campaign to serve at TLC. As we get back into our campaign this week, remember our campaign is The Things We Say. We’ve been exploring the phrases that should season the vocabulary of Christians.
This week our phrase is “I love you.”
Now I get it, there is plenty of cheese to go along with this phrase. Perhaps you’re imagining a poorly acted scene from a low-budget, Christmas, rom-com. Perhaps you’re imagining a rather pathetic declaration of love made on the part of man who just met a beautiful woman. In any case, the phrase is overused and abused in our culture today. But as we talked about in our week on blessing, this is a phrase that we cannot afford to cede to the culture. It’s too important to the faith.
Because this phrase is so overused in culture there are many different definitions of the term. Therefore, let’s begin by defining the term. The definition I prefer is from Dallas Willard. Love is an inner movement of the heart that leads one to act in the best interest of another. I love (pun intended 😉) this definition because it removes the sentimentalism and romanticism from the word. Moreover, it is much closer to how the New Testament authors us it than we tend to today. Love originates in the heart. It is not merely an emotion, but a result of a transformed heart and will. It originates at the center of our inner life. Genuine love necessarily results in action. This action is acting in the best interest of another. It requires us to put aside our own self-interest and do what is better for another. This type of love is defined by God and sourced in God.
1 John 4:8 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
1 John 4:19–21 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
1 John 3:16–18 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 and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
This is one of John’s main themes in his first letter. Love for one another is the second greatest commandment.
Matthew 22:36–40 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Of course, we must first love God with all of our being and so we should express that love to God as well. The Psalms, Israel’s hymnal during the exile, give us great examples of this.
Psalm 18:1 1 I love you, Lord, my strength.
Psalm 116:1 1 I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy.
Love, then is the basis Christian relationships with God and with one another. If this is true then we must express it. The most common way that the Scriptures refer to the relationships of believers is brothers and sisters, as we saw in the 1 John passages above. Therefore, the love we are to share is a familial love. When love is not shared or expressed between siblings that relationship is dysfunctional, ie. not in proper order. In the same way we should first and foremost be sure that we view one another in the church as brothers and sisters. Then we must be sure that our love for one another is genuine from the heart. Then we must express it to one another.
Reflection
Walk through the questions that I just asked.
- Do you view other believers as brothers and sisters?
- Is your love for them, properly defined, genuinely from your heart?
- How have you expressed your love for your brothers and sisters in Christ in the past?