The End Is Love Series

Someone has said, "You can never win in the game of life if you

don't know where the goal posts are." You can't win in any game if

you don't have a goal. Great men in every walk of life have been

those with a goal, and a determination to reach it. It is difficult to be

determined if you are not certain where you are going, and so the

end must come before the means. The goal must be established, and

then comes the best means for reaching that end. I remember a

successful businessman who spoke to the students at Bethel one day,

and he said that the very first rule in being successful is to set a goal

and then strive to reach it. Studies show that the one thing they all

had in common as America's most successful men was the ability to

set a goal and pursue it. This principle applies to the spiritual realm

as well.

Matthew Henry, the well-known Bible commentator, was not

successful in producing the works he did because he was uniquely

gifted. It was because he was a man who set goals and persisted in

using every means necessary to reach them. He set out in 1692 to

deliver a series of lectures on the questions on the Bible. He began

with God's question to Adam, "Where art thou?" Twenty years

later he finished the series on the last question in Revelation. When

he set a goal he persisted to the end.

Paul wanted Timothy to be this kind of a pastor, and he wanted

the leaders and teachers of Ephesus to be like this as well.

Therefore, he writes to Timothy and tells him to put an end to the

nonsense of Christians getting all wrapped up in fables and

genealogies. He urges them to make love the primary goal of their

ministry. He then gives the three means necessary to arrive at this

goal. They are a pure heart, a good conscience, and a genuine faith.

Verse 5 in the RSV reads, "Whereas the aim of our charge is love..."

Phillips has it, "The ultimate aim of the Christian ministry, after all,

is to produce the love which springs from a pure heart, a good

conscience and a genuine faith."

Paul is giving a standard by which we can measure the success

of our ministry. Whatever else we have done, if we have not aided

men to move closer to the goal we have failed. The end is love, and if

teaching and preaching does not make Christians more loving it is

an ineffective means, for it is not doing what God intended it to do.

If all the lessons and sermons you hear, and all the books and papers

you read do not increase your love, then they are all for nothing, for

that which does not move toward the primary goal is of no true

Christian value. If your Bible knowledge only makes you clever in

winning arguments, but does not increase your ability to love the

unlovable, you are making no progress at all. The end is love says

Paul. The goal of the Christian life is to be a channel through which

the love of God can flow.

Paul took very seriously the exalting of love to the supreme place

in the Christian life. In all of his letters it is the supreme goal, for to

be filled with agape love is to be filled with Christ. To love and to be

Christ like are synonymous. In Gal. 5:14 Paul writes, "The whole

law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as

yourself." The Old Testament is not to be used as a source of

material for speculation, but as a source of material to be fulfilled by

love. Alexander Maclaren, the famous English Baptist preacher,

wrote, "The Apostle here lays down the broad principle that God

has spoken, not in order to make acute theologians, or to provide

material for controversy, but in order to help us love."

The number of persons won to Christ by argument and

condemnation is from small to non-existent, but the number one

through love is legion. No wonder Paul said that knowledge,

eloquence and sacrifice are nothing without love. None of these

things can open a man's heart to Christ. Love alone is the key to the

human heart, and so it is the goal of the church's ministry in the

lives of its members. Our lack is not power, but love. Paul said you

can have all kinds of power and still be nothing without love. Love

is the key factor in every situation.

Paul was the greatest theologian of all time, but his goal was not

to be a great theologian, but rather, to be a channel of God's love.