Remember "The Dating Game"? Where contestants asked eligble bachelors or bachelorettes questions to determine which one they would want to go on a date with. What if we did like "The Christian Game?" Like the Pastor or Administraitive Board had to ask potential members questions before they could become Christians?
- Christian #1 I’m looking for new members of my church, what would you do if you found someone beaten up and bleeding by the side of the road? And the Levite Priest answers: "Well it depends, if it was someone that I thought was unclean or unworthy of my help, I would cross over to the the other side and pass on by"
Alright! ...Well potential Christian #2, I’m obviously still looking for new members, and I want to know what you would do if you were wronged by someone or found out about someone else’s faults? He answered, well me, I would get a bunch of my friends together and we would drag that person to the feet of Jesus and accuse them of their sin, like say "adultery".
Okay? Well Christian #3, I haven’t made up my mind yet, but you might be able to determine if you are the next new Christian if you could tell me what you would do if you found out someone needed a coat, or was in prison, or hungry? ...The contestant answers back: "Let them get their own coat, and they messed up and deserved prison"... You get the point!
The point is - how can we be a Christian without the character of love? And how can we claim to be Christians and not show love? It is a fruit of the Spirit? It is a sign that we have truly been empowered by the Spirit of God.
(1) Kenneth Emerson Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA tells that "At a men’s retreat a truck driver told about the change Christ had made in his life, and he was asked to think of some specific way in which he was different. After a pause, he said: “Well, when I find somebody tailgating my truck, I no longer drive on the shoulder of the road to kick up pebbles and rocks on them.”
What becomes clear, is that love is not so much a "Feeling"... "Oooo you make me feel so good" and "O you make my heart race and pitter patter" BUT love is an action. If you rely on feeling then your spouse better get out of the way most of the time. Of if you rely on feeling, you could easily say "Well I have fallen out of love with you". But this love is "agapao" or "agape" love. It is "unconditional love". It can’t be lost, or fallen away from because it is "unconditional". It is active love. Jesus said "If you love me keep my commandments", not "if you love me be all hot and mushy". He told Peter "If you love me, feed my sheep"... "If you love me, tend my little ewe lambs". (John 21)
And Paul addresses to the Church, "If you have everything, but don’t have love, then what do you have?" If you have a new car but can’t forgive someone of there sin, then what do you have? If you have a great job but don’t show love to your neighbor, it is like a loud gong or a clanging cymbal. What do you have if you don’t have love? It is and should be our character as Christians. In fact Paul writes "If I didn’t love others then I would be of no value whatsoever".
Paul goes a step further to tell us what love is and what love is not. What actions represent love, and what actions do not.
Love is patient: Just think how patient Jesus was with the disciples or with the multitudes coming to be healed! How patient he was with Peter! And we have to be patient with one another in the Church! Patient with one another in our households! In our communities.
Love is kind: (1) "If someone were to pay us ten cents for every kind word we’ve ever spoken about people, and then take back five cents for every unkind word we’ve ever spoken about people, would we be poor or rich? Kindness costs no money. It’s as easy to go around with a smile as it is to go around with a frown. Kindness is a big step in the Christian aim to “overcome evil with good.” To pay a visit to someone, to say a kind word of cheer or comfort, to convey friendliness by a handshake…
Love does not criticize the work of others. It does not attack worship styles of others even if you don’t like it. That isn’t love, and isn’t the character of a Christian.
Love is not jealous: (1) It is impossible for love to covet……in fact, love is the complete opposite of that depraved attitude. As John Wesley wrote: “Love cannot be upset over God’s bestowing any good gift upon any human being. If people who love have received God’s blessings, they do not bemoan others receiving the same benefits.
Love is not boastful: I am not better than you and my actions should not intend that I am. Like the Levite priest you cannot simply pass up the badly beaten man because he is different than you. I always love what is said in the closing few minutes of an Emmaus Walk that that "Because of your Emmaus Walk you may be a better person, but it does not make you better than someone else".
Love is not proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irratable, and it keeps no record when it has been wronged. Are you staying with me on this? If you are in a marriage, or if you are in a relationship, or if you are claiming to be a Christian and you are rude; proud; demand your own way or are keeping a scorcard of wrongs... Let’s see I remember when she did this to me, and she was very curt at the Sunday School meeting, and my husband didn’t pick up his socks last week ... and your keeping score that isn’t love. Love is gentle. It is not self seeking.
(1) "The Germans have a word that can’t be completely translated into English……but it’s meaning is to take a kind of malicious delight in the misfortunes of others. Christians should never take pleasure in the problems of others… …we are to leave that to the minions of hell!" It is not the character of a Christian.
Love is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Think about that, don’t rejoice in injustice. Jim Barker at the Presbyterian Church was telling me about their summer camp he was at. The first day when someone dropped their tray at lunch time everbody in the cafiteria clapped. Ha-ha-ha, you big clumsy ogf. No said Jim, he quickly told the kids, you do not clap at someone else’s suffering, but you get up and go over and help them pick it up.
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever: Do you realize that? Love is not down trodden, or beaten! Love is not defeated or dejected! Love is in the hope of a samaritan that passed by and did a good deed. Love is in the forgiveness of a brother or sister, not seven times, but seven times seventy. It is when Jesus looks up to find the accusers of the adulterous woman have all left because they could not judge her without judging themselves. They in love could not cast the first stone.
(1) "No one is beyond the redeeming love of Christ. No one whom the world thinks of as worthless…is worthless through the eyes of Christians."
Nothing can stop the power and action of love! Nothing that is, unless you choose not to have it. Choose not to live it. Choose not to share it!
There is no end to the love of Jesus Christ.
(1) www.sermoncentral.com "The Most Excellent Way" by Kenneth Sauer
