Unusual Love
I Peter 1:22
(From Reader’s Digest)
I was attending a junior stock show when a grand-champion lamb, owned by a little girl, was being auctioned. As the bids reached five dollars per pound, the little girl, standing beside the lamb in the arena, began to cry. At ten dollars, the tears were streaming down her face and she clasped her arms tightly around the lamb’s neck. The higher the bids rose, the more she cried. Finally, a local businessman bought the lamb for more than $1000, but then announced that he was donating it to the little girl. The crowd applauded and cheered.
Months later, I was judging some statewide essays when I came across one from a girl who told about the time her grand-champion lamb had been auctioned. “The prices began to get so high during the bidding,” she wrote, “that I started to cry from happiness.” She continued with: “The man who bought the lamb for so much more than I ever dreamed I would get returned the lamb to me, and when I got home, Daddy barbecued the lamb—and it was really delicious.”
That story is an example of fake love. It is relatively easy for us to smile and be nice and fake genuine concern for other people at church. Sad to say, it is possible for someone to have a heart for the church but not a heart for the people of the church. You can be devoted to the organization, but not show love to the people in that organization.
Notice that vs. 22 begins with “since” or “now that” = as the next step in your spiritual walk, demonstrate your salvation by loving one another.
When we get saved, we enter into a community where love is the rule of conduct. When they asked Christ what the greatest commandment was, what did He say? To love God and love each other. Peter expects churches to be filled with people who care about each other, look out for each other, forgive each other and give each other the benefit of the doubt. That doesn’t happen in a lot of churches today. We are concerned about ourselves and our own friends; we are concerned about our own needs; we are concerned about our own programs.
Notice the redundancy in vs. 22. Peter says since you have been purified and that leads to loving one another, then love one another. DO IT!
But there is something else here. This verse uses both of the common words for love— “philadelphia” and “agape” love. What he is saying is that it is natural for someone who has been born again to love the rest of the brothers and sisters in the faith. That comes from being cleansed from sin and purified and starting a new life and having a common salvation. But because you have this natural capacity to LIKE each other, take it a step further, take it a notch higher, take it deeper and LOVE each other.
One of the problems we have in America today is that we’ve been so brainwashed by Hollywood that we have lost connection with what true love is all about. Love is not the butterflies that you get when you’re around a really cute girl. It is not the feeling of happiness that you have when your boyfriend walks you home on a warm summer night. Love is not a feeling that you feel. It’s what we see in Mark 6 and Mark 8 when Jesus feeds the 5000 and then the 4,000. Christ said, I feel deeply for them because they are hungry. That’s love. It is not the heart shaped box of chocolates. It is not the diamond necklaces they have been advertising for a month. It is not the fancy dinner at a fancy restaurant—or the card that says just the right thing. It is
Seeing a need and meeting that need.
Years ago, a popular song said,
“Come on people, now
Smile on your brother,
Everybody get together,
Try to love one another right now.”
Love one another is something the hippie movement in the ‘60s made popular—but it was something the followers of Jesus Chris had been commanded to do for thousands of years.
In the context of the whole book, these Christians were going to face persecution and opposition. They needed to know that when they got back to church, the people there would love them. Love one another emphasizes the love we are supposed to have for each other inside the church. This is not about our attitude toward unsaved people. It is about how we treat other believers.
I want you to understand how important this is. Christian Schwartz, who works for an organization called Natural Church Development, said: “ …Our research indicates that there is a highly significant relationship between the ability of a church to demonstrate love and its long-term growth potential. Growing churches possess on average a measurably higher “love quotient” than stagnant or dying [churches]… Unfeigned, practical love has a divinely generated magnetic power far more effective than
evangelistic programs which depend almost entirely on verbal communication. People do not want to
hear us talk about love, they want to experience how Christian love really works.”
Why did the early church flourish? Because of the love they showed for one another.
John 13:35
When you get a group of people together who genuinely believe something, who practice it in their
lives, and who really enjoy each other, it’s such a contagious atmosphere that you can’t keep people
away from it.
Anne Ortlund, Up With Worship, says that the average church is too much like a bag of marbles –
we scratch against each other and make a little noise, but we really don’t affect each other much.
She says the church should be more like a bag of grapes that mesh together, producing a sweet-
tasting wine because of the interaction.
“How wonderful it is, how pleasant, when God’s people live together in harmony!” (Psalm 133:1)
This idea appears in every chapter in I Peter: 1:22; 2:17; 3:8; 4:8; 5:14
We know that agape love is a giving love; a sacrificial love. But these verses tell us three more things about agape love:
1. It is sincere.
The old word is unfeigned = not faked; not put on or pretended.
She wrote the letter: "Dearest Jimmy, No words could ever express the great unhappiness I’ve felt since breaking our engagement. Please say you’ll take me back. No one could ever take your place in my heart, so please forgive me. I love you, I love you, I love you! Yours forever, Marie... P.S., And congratulations on willing the state lottery."
Valentine’s Day is a day to express love. But there is a lot of feigned love today—pretend love. We say we love you today because everybody is doing it; because it is sentimental; because it is fun. Remember sending valentines to everybody in your grade school class? That is pretended love. Sending an insincere valentine to someone just because you are supposed to…
2:1 describes for us this sincere love – it has no guile (that’s an old word that means there is no
hook, no bait and no snare or hidden trickery), no malice, no deceit and no hypocrisy.
No underlying motives, no selfishness, no bitterness. There is no deception – just truth and honesty with each other. There is no playing church or putting on a show – just humility and submission. Hypocrisy means saying you love them when you can’t stand them or can’t get along with them—that’s hypocrisy!
2:1 also says we aren’t loving people when we talk about them—not just lying, but putting them down, making them look bad, or depreciating their value to the church. Gossip, talking behind their back or talking about people trying to stir up trouble – that’s not love. Call it prayer requests, call it sharing concerns, call it righteous indignation or call it telling the truth. No matter how you want to spin it, that isn’t love.
2. It is fervent; “strenuously, deeply” – the word refers to an athlete straining with every last muscle toward the finish line. A Middle Ages use of this word refers to someone being put on a torture rack!
Fervent love does not happen by accident. It doesn’t happen automatically.
Fervent love is not lazy love; it is not love when it is convenient; it is not mechanical.
Fervent love is not last minute love! Remembering after I have been reminded that I was supposed to help someone.
This word is also used in 4:8. Stretch your love. ILL: some people’s love is brittle. Some people’s love is like glass that will break is someone tries to stretch it. Our love is supposed to be like rubber bands that stretch and give and are flexible.
Vs. 4:8 says Stretch yourself way out so that your love graciously forgives and covers sin among believers. Proverbs 10:12 says love covers transgressions! We are to love in spite of injury, insult and misunderstanding from others. The unsaved world does not know how to love like this. It writes people off. It gets bitter and doesn’t forget. But Christians are supposed to be different.
I read an interesting sermon this week titled: Love is Forgetful. It talked about the curse of getting older and forgetting things. It talked about the fact that it isn’t just old people who forget things! And it talked about the fact that we have great memories when it comes to remembering the bad things people do. But God’s love dominating our lives means that we have the ability to forget and overlook when other believers do something wrong to us. True brotherly and agape love is forgetful!
We often think of forgetfulness as a weakness, as a problem. And more often than not that is true. But I Corinthians 13:5 says that there is a time when forgetfulness is really a spiritual act. Paul says that ‘Love – keeps no record of wrongs’ He says that love is forgetful.
That’s the challenge of the Christian faith. That’s the challenge of the type of love that Jesus Christ calls us to have for one another. Our challenge is to forgive and forget. We don’t keep records of wrongs. God does not keep that score in heaven and we’re not supposed to keep that score here.
3. It is from the heart – it is not external. It comes from deep inside us. Deep down in our hearts, we are to be loving people. God is love. And God is alive in us, so we ought to be loving people. That’s why I John 2: 9 says that the one who says he walks in the light, but hates his brother, isn’t saved!
In 1 JOHN 3:10 we are told who is and who is not a child of God.
‘This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.’
I John 3:14 By this will we know that we really are saved—if we love each other. If you don’t
love one another, you are still in death.
VS. 16,17 if you don’t put yourself out for each other and if you don’t give your stuff to each
other, your claim to be a child of God is only a claim. It has to show up in deeds.
Look at how vs. 19,20 say we can test our hearts and know what is in our hearts by the way we
give ourselves to each other.
Before we were saved, we were self-centered. Now that we are saved, we are love centered. We now have the capacity to love instead of being mostly concerned about ourselves.
That’s the essence of I John 4:19 We love because He first loved us.
We have two assistants to help us love like this:
A. The Word of God – vs. 23-25
B. The Holy Spirit – Galatians 5:22,23; Romans 5:5
Ezekiel 36:25-29 -- God says He’ll put a new heart in us and give us the Spirit so that we can walk in His statutes and observe His ordinances. We’ve been given the Spirit to enable us because we cannot do it ourselves.
A story in the Sunshine Magazine about a professor of psychology illustrates how difficult it is to love others. Although he had no children of his own, whenever he saw a neighbor scolding a child for some wrongdoing, he would say, "You should love your boy, not punish him." One hot summer afternoon the professor was doing some repair work on a concrete driveway leading to his garage. Tired out after several hours of work, he laid down the towel, wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and started toward the house. Just then out of the corner of his eye he saw a mischievous little boy putting his foot into the fresh cement. He rushed over, grabbed him, and was about to spank him severely when a neighbor leaned from a window and said, "Watch it, Professor! Don’t you remember? You must ’love’ the child!" At this, he yelled back furiously, "I do love him in the abstract but not in the concrete!"
That’s the challenge—to make our love go beyond the abstract into the concrete.
