WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
Tina Turner asked this question but for a different reason than what I’ll be focusing on today. In fact, in her song, she downplays the significance of love; calling it a ‘second-hand emotion’ and a ‘sweet old-fashioned notion'. She couldn’t be more wrong. However, she was right in one sense-the way love is so flippantly used in society it could be categorized as simply a second-hand emotion. But, for those of us who understand the true essence of love and its depth of meaning it means considerably more. What’s love got to do with it? Everything.
1) What’s love got to do with my salvation?
1st John 4:9-10, “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
We didn’t love God and we didn’t know what love really was until God showed us what it looked like. John 3:16, God so loved the world…” The world is an enemy of God; the world does not love God. We can’t love God until we are born-again. Then, we have the spirit of God living in us enabling us to be able to love. God loved his enemies.
God loved those who didn’t love him. That is the most extreme sense of love and that’s who God is. But that’s not the case in other religions. Take for instance Islam. In the NIV the specific word, ‘love’ occurs over 500 times. In the Koran it occurs less than 100 times. And most of those times it’s referring to man’s love for things or man’s love for each other but not a lot about God’s love for man. And when it does refer to God’s love it only talks about God’s love for certain people-either those who do what’s right or those who love him.
Therefore, from the Koran's perspective, God is no better than man because that’s what we do. Luke 6:32, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them.” But the reality is that’s not who God is. The Koran falls far short of capturing the true essence of God’s love.
God showed us pure love: unconditional, unwarranted, undeserved, unmatched. God showed selfless love in letting Jesus go from being at his side in the glory of heaven to come to earth; knowing what was going to happen to him-all for our benefit. Jesus showed us his unmatched love when he was willing to be tortured, face death and be spiritually separated from the Father so that we would be born-again and not have to face the spiritual death that he went through in paying the penalty for our sins.
God could not have shown a greater example of sacrificial love than sending his son as an atoning sacrifice for us. Jesus could not have shown a greater example of love than to die for us. If not for love there would not have been salvation. Salvation could not have been accomplished without love. What’s love got to do with salvation? Everything.
2) What’s love got to do with my relationship with God?
2nd Cor. 5:14-15, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”
Paul highlights that because of Jesus’ love in what he did for us there should be a response. If we understand the love behind Jesus’ sacrifice and we understand how that afforded us the opportunity to escape eternal destruction and current depravity then we will be compelled. It might take us a while to really fathom and grasp the depth of what Jesus did for us but we need to understand that what Jesus went through for us, his enemies, is something no one would ever have done for us (or could have done for us).
Therefore, our appreciation and gratitude for our rescue and adoption into the family of God should put a fire in us that drives and fuels us to do everything we can to please him. And it’s not merely out of a sense of duty or obligation. It’s not merely out of a fear of consequence if we don’t. Our devotion and obedience need to stem from our love for God because if it’s driven by any of the other things I mentioned it will no doubt be superficial and short-lived.
Jason Gray has a song titled, More Like Falling in Love. “Give me rules, I will break them. Show me lines, I will cross them. I need more than a truth to believe, I need a truth that lives, moves, and breathes; to sweep me off my feet. It's gotta be more like falling in love, than something to believe in. More like losing my heart, than giving my allegiance. Caught up, called out; come take a look at me now. It's like I'm falling; it's like I'm falling in love.
Give me words, I'll misuse them. Obligations, I'll misplace them. Cause all religion ever made of me was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet. It never set me free. It's gotta be more like falling in love, than something to believe in. More like losing my heart, than giving my allegiance. Caught up, called out; come take a look at me now. It's like I'm falling; it's like I'm falling in love, love, love; deeper and deeper. It was love that made me a believer in more than a name, faith, or creed. Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me.”
It’s true. My relationship with God needs to be based in my love for God. I already know the basis for his relationship with me is built on love. I don’t ever have to be concerned whether or not God loves me; he has loved me from the beginning. The question is-what is my relationship with him built on? If it’s built on anything less than love then it won’t stand the test of time.
If the reason I’m a Christian is merely to escape the flames of hell it’s not going to work. If the basis for my relationship with God is what I can get from God then it’s based in something other than love. If I think God is great when things are going great but when life gets tough I find myself wondering if I want to continue to serve a god who’s going to allow these things to happen to me then my relationship with God is based in feelings, not love.
Love doesn’t change with varying circumstances; it’s constant. I might not like my circumstances; I might even be upset at God over them, but if I love God then I will stay with God knowing that God is good all the time and he loves me all the time. If my relationship with God is based in love then I will love what God loves and hate what God hates. I will be zealous for the cause of Christ and I will want to tell others about Christ. What’s love got to do with my relationship with God? Everything.
3) What’s love got to do with my relationship with others?
1st John 4:11, “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”
Now that we know what love is; now that we have been compelled to love him by putting him first in our lives then that should also change how we operate in our relationships with others. Where before Christ, before we understood what real love looked like, our love for others was based on a lack of ability and understanding. Our love for others was tainted-it may have been conditional, it may have only been reciprocating (love those who love me first), it may have been based only in feelings; things like that. But now my love for you needs to be based in the kind of love that I’ve experienced from God.
1st John 3:16-18, “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. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”
When John writes that Jesus laid down his life he wasn’t just referring to the cross. It wasn’t just his dying on the cross it was his dying to self on a daily basis. Jesus said in Luke 9:23 that if we’re going to follow him we must deny ourselves and take up our cross daily and follow him. Taking up our cross means dying to self. That’s what Jesus did-every day in every way. He humbled himself and washed feet. He said he did not come to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom.
Before we came to Christ our love may have just been lip service. Love is so flippantly used; we can easily just say it without meaning it. It’s become so watered-down. The same word we use to describe how we feel about our kids we use to describe how we feel about ice cream. The Greek language actually had different words for love based on the different kinds of love. Agape (parent&child), Phileo (brotherly/friend), Eros (husband&wife).
Agape love is the love that God has toward us. It’s the love that needs to be a part of all my relationships because it’s the deepest, most sacrificial and unconditional aspect of love. John is telling us that love is a verb. I can say, ‘I love you’ but if it’s real I will be showing you. It will show in how patient we are with others, how generous we are, how forgiving we are. It will show in how much we’re willing to be inconvenienced. It will show in how well we’re doing at applying the Golden Rule. What’s love got to do with my relationship with others? Everything.
4) What’s love got to do with my service to God?
1st Cor. 13:1-3, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
Paul’s point is if I do any of these wonderful things without the motive of love it is of no real value. It doesn’t mean these things have no value. A faith that can move mountains is of great value but not if love is missing. If I give all I possess to the poor but without love as my motive then they will benefit but I won’t; there will be no reward from God for it. There can be great emphasis placed on the things Paul mentions quite possibly without the thought or mention of love. But Paul wants us to know that if we leave out love we leave out the most important part.
It’s possible that Paul is using exaggerated speech here to illustrate his point since I’m not sure someone could have a faith that could move a mountain and not have love. But it’s like he’s saying, “I don’t care if I can speak the language of the angels if I’m not doing it in love then it’s not angelic; it’s annoying. I don’t care if I’m prophetic and can solve the most difficult riddle or mystery or if I’m more knowledgeable than anyone else, if there’s no love driving me then I’m nothing.
No matter how strong my faith is-if love isn’t in my heart then it doesn’t matter. If I’m the most generous person in the world and sacrifice my very self for the good but love is not the factor and basis for such activities then I have gained nothing. If there is no love for God or for my fellow man then no amount of good deeds will do me any good.I can say it’s all for God and I can look godly and have people acknowledge my contributions but in the absence of love I am no better off personally in the eyes of God than if I had done nothing."
Mark 12:33, “To love him [God] with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
We can be serving God and doing spiritual things but that’s not what he’s interested in if our devotion and service isn’t done in love-in fact if it’s not I think he’s more disgusted than pleased. In the OT there are various places where God talks about his displeasure over his people’s religious activities when they were living in sin.
We’re fooling ourselves if we think we are pleasing God simply by doing godly things. When love is not there then it’s tainted-I’m doing it for some other purpose with some other motive. I’m looking to get attention or I’m doing it for the purpose of getting something from God in return. This shows that I don’t really care about God or others I care about me. Why should I think God’s going to honor that? What’s love got to do with my service to God? Everything.
CONCLUSION: Bible commentary writer William Barclay wrote, “More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from the church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all the doubts of the world.”
Theological arguments are important but not more important than love. They will know we are Christians not by our bible knowledge, not by our church attendance (although these things are important) but by our love. Love will be the most convincing factor in winning someone to Christ. It’s easy to see how important love is. What’s love got to do with it? Everything.
