The best of Christians make their share of mistakes, but John
Turner was apparently trying to get a large portion of his quota of
mistakes out of the way all in one day. John was a conscientious
pastor who got to his church early one Sunday morning, and he
discovered that he had left his sermon notes at home. He thought it
was no problem. There was plenty of time to correct his first
mistake of the day. But when he got home, he discovered his second
mistake. He had left his notes on the table right where his 18 month
old daughter eats breakfast. The notes were sopping wet from a
glass she had turned over. It was no problem he thought, for he
could wipe them dry in time. The words were blurred somewhat,
but still readable.
He finally left for church as he corrected his second mistake of
the day, and all was still under control. Out of the house he
bounded with all he needed, except for one thing. He left his car
keys in the house, and also the key to the house on the same key
chain. Mistake number three was staring him in the face. He didn't
have time for mistake number 3. Church was about to begin and he
was several miles away locked out of his house, and with no keys to
the car, and his family had already gone to church.
Desperation drives one to desperate measures. They had a dog's
door on the bottom of their back door that led to the back yard. It
was for the dog to be able to come and go, especially to go. Pastor
Turner was not so proud that he would not lower himself to getting
into his house by Woofy's door. He shed his suit coat, and got on his
knees and proceeded to squirm into mistake number 4. He was
bigger than the dog, and when he got half way in he was stuck, and
could not move either way. There he was half in and half out, and
his congregation was probably already singing, "Stand up, Stand up
for Jesus."
His dog was deeply impressed with the new game, and was
licking his face the whole time. It seemed like an eternity that he
was stuck there, but he finally was able to twist around and reach
the door knob. He even eventually got to church, but due to his
lateness he had to share the whole embarrassing story of his comedy
of errors. His experience proves that reality can be funnier than
fiction, and that there is always room for improvement in our lives
as Christians. And not just in the trivialities of where we put our
notes and keys, but in the tremendous areas of life like what do we
do with our love?
Is it possible to ever make mistakes with our love, and follow up
life with a poor use of the highest of all virtues? If not, why would
Paul pray that the love of the Philippians would abound more and
more in knowledge, and depth of insight, so they could discern what
is best. The implication is that love can lack knowledge, and when it
does it can chose what is less than the best. In other words,
uneducated love can make foolish choices.
J. Vernon McGee in his famous Through The Bible Series tells of
when he first became a pastor of a church in downtown Los Angeles.
He did not know that there were people who loved to see new
preachers come into the area, for they tended to be such suckers.
One Sunday morning a man came forward in the service, and he
refused to talk to anyone but the pastor. The personal worker told
pastor McGee, and the pastor showed the man the way of salvation.
He was so interested that tears came to his eyes. He got on his knees
and prayed the sinner's prayer. Then he told pastor McGee that he
needed money to get his suitcase out of a hotel. They were holding it
until he paid for his room. McGee felt obligated to help him out and
so he gave him the money for the hotel. He felt good about being
such a Good Samaritan. But then, six weeks later, he saw the man's
picture in the paper. He had been arrested. The article told of how
he had been living for six months off the preachers of the city. His
comment was, "They are the biggest saps in the world." McGee
knew he was one of them, and he learned quickly that love has to be
discerning, or it can be used for folly.
McGee focused on this verse for his own life, and he wrote, "Paul
says to let your love abound more and more, but let it abound in
judgment, let it abound in being able to discern. Over the years
when I would drive to my study in Los Angeles, I use to say to the
Lord, "I'm going to meet new people today, and I don't know them.
Some of them I will be able to help. Others of them will put a knife
in my back. Lord, help me to be able to distinguish between the two.
Show me which I should help." Actually this verse rescues a
Christian from being naïve and gullible. His love is to abound in
knowledge and discernment."
Like most loving people, he had to learn by experience that love
alone is not enough, for love can be uneducated, and when it is it can
do stupid things. Love has to abound in knowledge. It has to get
educated if it is to make wise choices that lead to the glory and
praise of God. Feelings alone can set you up for a fall. A young boy
wanted to go swimming but his mother said no because it is to cold.
He said, "Can I just go and look at the swimming hole?" She said,
okay to that. He came back and his hair was all wet. She said, "Did
you swim?" "No, I fell in." "Then why are your clothes dry?" "I
felt like I was going to fall in, so I took them off." His punishment
made him realize that he allowed his feelings to lead him into
making a wrong choice.
Paul's point here is, if love gets educated and abounds in
knowledge, it will be able to discern what is best. Uneducated love
chooses what is less than the best because it is not able to discern.
Uneducated love goes too much by feelings alone, and this leads to
unwise decisions. I love music, for example, but if I went by my
feelings alone and decided to give my life to music, I may waste my
life trying to do what I am not gifted to do. Wise love seeks for
confirmation of feelings. If other Christians do not feel the same,
then I have to recognize my feelings may not fit the evidence. If
there is no abounding evidence to support my feelings, they must be
seen as love on a very low level of education, and not mature enough
to make major decisions. "It is not the calling of cats to plow, or
horses to cat mice."
Every Christian needs to do for God what they are gifted to do,
and it is growing in knowledge that helps them discover their gifts.
My mother had less than an 8th grade education. She would be
what many would call a non-gifted Christian. But at her funeral I
was impressed by the service of my mother. For 46 years she did
what she could. She loved other people's babies in the nursery at
her church. There are all different levels of love, and all of them are
good, but they are not all the best. Kindergarten love is good, for it
is a loving feeling of caring about people, but it is like the tiny bean
spout, and not the full grown bean ready for harvest. All love has to
begin here just as all beans have to start as mere sprouts. Christian
puppy love is positive, for all love has to start somewhere, but it has
to press on and get an education is what Paul is getting at. Light is
good, but there is candle light, moon light, and sun light. There is an
enormous difference in the power and value in these different
degrees of light, and so it is with love.
Paul is not knocking the love of the Philippians. Kindergarten
love is not bad, but it is no place to level off and be content. A child
who does not progress beyond kindergarten is greatly handicapped,
and so is the Christian whose love does not abound more and more
in knowledge. Why is it that Christians can do every stupid thing
man is capable of doing stupidly? It is because their love has not
abounded more and more in knowledge, and so they choose what is
second best, third, or tenth, or even worse. If there is no limit to
how wise love can be, then there is no limit either as to its lack of
wisdom. If love does not go the way Paul prays it will, and abound
in knowledge, it can become a drop out, and abound in ignorance or
lethargy. This can lead to all the folly Christians have proven
themselves capable of in history.
Christians have supported tyranny, persecution, intolerance,
slavery, and every form of non-loving oppression you can think of.
It was because they had a kindergarten love that did not abound
more and more in knowledge. But to the credit of Christians, it was
those Christians who did what Paul prayed for who did so abound,
and who became the key leaders in history for the victories over
oppression. Christians with educated love have given us a world
with rights and freedoms that make us the richest and most blest of
peoples.
Abraham Lincoln was opposed by many Christians with
kindergarten love, but those who had abounded more and more in
knowledge gave him their support, and he came to appreciate the
church as his strongest ally in the fight to end slavery. The same
thing happened to Albert Einstein in Germany. There were so many
baby Christians who supported Hitler that Einstein hated
Christians. But then he found out there were also mature Christians
with a degree in discerning love, and he came to treasure the church
as the key ally in fight against Hitler. He wrote, "I'm forced to
confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."
There were Christians who loved Hitler; Christians who loved
slavery, and there have been Christians who loved every form of
folly in history because their love was feelings without knowledge.
In a previous message we saw that Paul was an affectionate Apostle,
and the ideal Christian is one who, like Jesus, was full of affection
and deep feelings that can be expressed. But now we see those
feelings have to be guided and controlled by knowledge. So we have
in the Bible the wedding of the heart and the head. Christians are
forever trying to separate the two, and when they do they put
asunder what God has united, and they create a monster.
Christians who stress emotion without the mind, and say that the
heart is to lead, produce fanatics. Those who see this as folly, and
reverse the focus so that the head leads without the heart, produce
dead intellectualism which is an equal curse. What God has put
together we should not separate. Just as God made it so that your
body cannot be alive and well if both the heart and head are not
functioning together, so he has made the body of Christ the same
way. The heart of love must abound in the knowledge of the head,
or there will be a very inadequate expression of the love and wisdom
of God.
I love the suffering people of the world. I have some degree of
pity and compassion, but my love is mere kid's stuff of feelings. But
there are Christians such as the World Relief Organization who
have abounded more and more in love with knowledge, and depth of
insight, on how to choose what is the best way to meet the needs of
these people. I give my money to them because I have not done the
research to make a wise choice as to how to show love. I could go off
and try something based on mere feelings, and give my money to
someone who will spend 10 cents on the dollar to meet the need. I
could give my money to con men all over the place, and be a sucker,
and support evil rather than good. I would be operating on my
feelings of love which is good and noble, but because it would not be
informed love, it could end up being very ineffective in achieving the
goals of love. By supporting a well-known, and reliable Christian
organization, my love will be making a wiser choice.
The point is, my love has to be more than a feeling. It has to be
informed by facts and knowledge of what is truly a wise way of
loving. I can love foolishly or wisely, and the only way to love wisely
is to abound in knowledge more and more. Love cannot just feel its
way to right choices. It has to study and learn, and get educated as
to what is the best way to love. The issue is not, do I feel right about
people and needs, but do I care enough about people to find out
what is the best way to express love. Do I take a hundred dollars in
ones and throw them off the roof of an inner city building, or do I
buy one hundred dollars worth of books on poverty, or do I give it to
the Union Gospel Mission where they can get nearly two hundred
dollars worth of goods and services to needy people. The first is a
heart plan; the second is a head plan, and the third is the heart and
head combined to do what is best for the people you claim to love.
Paul made it clear in I Cor. 13 that love is the greatest of all
values, and without it nothing else is of value. But he does not
intend us to conclude that this means that love needs nothing else as
if it alone can be sufficient without all the other things that would be
nothing without it. He says in 13:2, "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." This is
not to say that prophecy, knowledge, and faith, are of no value. It is
to say that their value comes from their being linked with love. But
love which has not the gifts of prophecy, faith, and knowledge, is
puppy love, and will not be able to make mature choices for the
glory of God. Knowledge without love may be nothing, but love
with knowledge is more than something-it is the best.
The history of medicine is full of examples. Doctors have always
loved health and hated disease. They love to see people get well, but
if this love is not coupled with knowledge, they can very lovingly kill
the people they seek to help. In 1837 four out of every ten women
died in child birth. Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian lad at the
University of Vienna, the most advanced center of medicine in the
world of that day, was determined to find the cause for this fever
that took so many lives. He gave his life to get the facts, and spent
all his time seeking for an answer. What he learned was that
doctors were spreading the disease by not washing their hands. He
was thought to be a fool and a madman, but he persisted in his
crusade to get doctors to wash. It took a generation to change
things, but in 1906 his home town in Hungry erected a statue in his
honor. His love had abounded in knowledge more and more so that
doctors could choose what is best.
Their love and caring was just as real before their knowledge, but
because it was ignorant love it hurt rather than help. It was
knowledgeable love, or educated love, that made the difference.
History is full of such examples, and so is each of our lives. We
cannot know what is the most loving choice to make in many areas
of life without a head that is willing to get all it can to help our love
be informed. Christian education is simply helping Christian love
know what is the best choice. The more you know, the more likely
your love will make the best choice. The bottom line is, Christians
are never done with their education. Christians are to be students all
of their lives, and ever learning so they can be intelligent and
effective lovers of the world, the church, their families, and
themselves. Love motivate us to care; knowledge helps us care
wisely.
Why did Paul have to pray that good Christians like the
Philippians would abound in knowledge? Because there is nothing
automatic about this. You don't pray for what is inevitable. You
don't pray that sun will rise in the East, or that the river will run to
the sea. You pray for what will not happen unless people choose to
let it happen, or make it happen. If Christians say, I am loving
enough, and I am content with the level I've reached, they will
plateau right there, and growth is over. If 4th grade love is your
bag, and that is what satisfies your ambition, you will stay right
there the rest of your life. But it is a rejection of the biblical goal of
never ending growth. We are to love God with all of our mind, and
that means love is to grow in knowledge forever, for there is infinite
room for growth.
Jesus healed a leper, and then told him not to tell any man of his
healing, but the man was so happy, and so convinced that Jesus was
the best thing that ever happened to him that he went out and told
everybody. It seems like a loving thing to do, and it came from a
grateful heart, but it was foolish love, for Mark 1:45 tells us that
because of the publicity of this grateful man Jesus could no longer
openly enter the city. His love was real, but it was self-centered and
ignorant. He hindered the ministry of Jesus, and deprived others of
the very healing that he experienced. The man was not bad. It was
just that his love was not educated. An educated love would have
recognized that Jesus had good reason for His request for silence.
Educated love would have obeyed the Master, and would have been
a blessing instead of a hindrance.
Paul does not teach that love is the greatest thing in the world.
He teaches that educated love is the greatest thing in the world.
Love alone is not enough. It is not enough in marriage; it is not
enough in medicine; it is not enough in Christian service, and it is
not enough anywhere. Men of God in the Middle Ages loved the
people they served, and so when the great plagues struck they urged
people to assemble in the churches to pray. The result was that
infection spread with a greater rapidness. It was uneducated love,
and it did great harm to the people. Love has to be educated, or it
can be harmful, and that is why Paul prays for the Philippians, and
why we need to pray for each other, that we will be a loving people
whose love is abounding more and more in knowledge.
The reason the love of money is the root of all evil is because it is
stupid love. It is immature love that does not grow. It is like a small
child that loves a toy, and all of life revolves around that toy. But
the child grows up and discovers there are greater things to love like
God and people. The lover of money does not grow up, but goes on
all his or her life locked into infant love. Any love that loves things
more than persons is stupid love. Educated love is love that loves
according to God's value system. Things are loved according to the
measure of their value. Creation deserves to be loved, for it is God's
gift, but when men love the creation more than the Creator they
become fools. They are like one who falls in love with the pretty
jewelry box, and throws the ring away, or one who falls in love with
a letter, and rejects the writer of it.
If I love my car, that is fine, but if I love it to the point where it is
more important than my mate, child, or even my neighbor, it is
stupid love. It is uneducated love that does not go on to higher
learning, but got to the 3rd grade and stopped. Smart love is ever
moving on to be loving on a higher level. The degree to which your
love grows in knowledge is the degree of your Christian maturity.
The goal is to get love so smart and well educated that you can
choose the best, and so be pure and blameless. The way to
Christlikeness is the way of educated love. Educated love is love
that loves everything and everyone with a measure of love that it
deserves. That is wise living, for it puts all of reality into it proper
perspective, so that God is loved supremely, and then mate, family,
church, country, and things all fall into their level of priority where
the best gets your best, and the lesser gets the lesser commitment of
your life.
If we link love and learning we will have life with a capital L, for
it will be the abundant life Jesus came to give us. Educated love will
love according to priorities. If number 47 on the list of loves gets
80% of your time, that is stupid love. The purpose of every sermon
and Bible study, and every discussion of Christian values is to
educate our love so it can lead us to make the best choices in all
areas of life. In heaven we will all get our doctor's degree in love,
but in this life the goal is to get as many degrees as possible. We are
to be love scholars for life, and that is why Paul prays that God will
motivate us to be such.
Why? Because life is not a matter of choosing the good or the
bad. Christians think that when they can do that, they can quit
learning and growing in knowledge, but this is a major mistake.
Choosing the good is not the goal of the Christian life, for there is
also the better and the best. Having the knowledge to choose the
best is to be our aim, and the only way we can ever get to love on this
level is to have a love that abounds more and more in knowledge and
depth of insight. Educated love is "more and more love." It is not
content to just grow. It abounds in more and more knowledge, and
more and more insight, so it is more and more able to choose the
best, and be more and more pure, and more and more blameless,
and thus, more and more fruitful, and, therefore, more and more
productive of glory and praise to God. Paul prays for the
Philippians, and we need to pray for one another, and for ourselves,
that we might be abounding in educated love.
