What the World Needs Now
A famous lyric from a 1965 Burt Bacharach song says, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of; what the world needs now is love, sweet love; No, not just for some, but for everyone.” Thirty-nine years later, I can honestly say the world still needs love, sweet love. It remains the only thing that there is just too little of. Relationships at all levels today are unraveling, suffering and eroding away because of the lack of this love sweet love. Half of all marriages and 39% of Baptist marriages end in divorce (Barna Research Group). My God help us! What is worse is that most relationships are approached today as if it is only a matter of time until they are dissolved. Pre-nuptial agreements are predicated upon this expectation. Commitment seems to be a dirty word or only defined to exist in the context of when everything goes well. Sadly, this lack of love sweet love has grieved the heart of God and caused loneliness and mental illness to reach an all time high in America. Although we live in the so-called communication and pharmacological age, we really do not communicate or relate to one another anymore.
The Lord can rightfully say to our disgrace, “Where is the love and care my people should have for one another? Where is your sacrifice in relationships that I so often use to bond you together as one? Where is the commitment you promised to each other and to me? You have failed to take note of my child, Ruth who displayed this sweet love for Naomi, her mother-in-law. She knew this love sweet love. Listen to her pledge to Naomi and learn from it the secret of my love: “…Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. "Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me." (Ruth 1:16-17)
I believe the Lord is troubled today by what He sees in the area of Christian relationships. He knows the love He offers is not just for some but for everyone. He knows you can personally know this love Ruth lived out in her day for love is eternal (1 Corinthians 13:13). Yet, many Christians ignore the application of the Word of God to their life. They never experience the deeper joy of love sweet love. Superficially, Christians may acknowledge love is from God and believe with head knowledge “God is Love” (1 John 4:7-8) but they do not understand how to make this love operational in their lives and daily live it out in their relationships. Therefore, mankind strives in his own power looking for love in all the wrong places -- finding pleasure perhaps for a season in sin but when the season passes emptiness is the one who wins.
So I encourage you in the Lord to stop, look and listen! Take to heart what I am about to say. Love demands it! Hear God’s truth and apply the principle Ruth understood and the Apostle Paul teaches in his epistle to the Ephesians. It will transform your relationships. The eleven words that follow contain the answer for what the world needs now: “and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.” (5:21)
Contrary to the wisdom of your day, being subject to one another in the fear of Christ is the secret to finding this love sweet love the songwriter’s heart longs for. Submission to Christ and his order of things unleashes the love that escapes so many in failed relationships today. It is the love Ruth found against all odds in her relationship with Naomi because it flowed from her love relationship with Israel’s God. I encourage you in the love of Christ to apply these eleven words to your life and see what God will do (Jeremiah 33:3). I can assure you, it won’t be easy for the enemy always resists the application of God’s truth to your life. But as Pastor Adrian Rogers would say, “Love [Is] Worth Finding.” As your flesh wages war with your spirit, remember, “With God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26) Subjection goes against the logic and will of human nature. The flesh is resistant to having another’s will impose upon it. Our carnal weapons are activated for battle and ready to defend against any attacker that encroaches upon our will. But God will give you the victory He has already won for you at the Cross and you will discover a love that abounds more and more.
You will experience a sweet love that isn’t contingent upon the response of people or your current circumstances. You will be liberated in this love. But, we have to be willing to lay down our carnal weapons in a relationship and put on the spiritual armor God provides. We are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17). We have to trust in God and that He really loves us, cares for us and knows what is best for us. We have to trust that God will defend us and show us great and mighty things we know not of. Ultimately, you must trust the Lord to the point you are well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when you are weak (reliant and dependent on God’s strength), then you are strong (2 Corinthians 12:10). Do you believe that? If you do, you will act -- for faith works (gets its energy) through love.
To overcome what Beth Moore calls the default button of the flesh, a person’s love for Christ must be great enough to exercise faith in Him and His truth concerning relationships. Your love for Christ must motivate a voluntary act of subordination in your heart. Through baby steps of “trusting and obeying”, you grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and learn to take bigger steps of faith. You yield more of yourself to Him until, finally, you entrust your relationships and your very self to Him. This is walking by the Spirit as Paul describes it to the churches of Galatia: “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.” (Galatians 5:13-17).
Subjection does not mean you are a doormat. It is not submitting meekly to domination or mistreatment by others. The term subjection comes from a Greek military term "hupatasso" meaning "to arrange [troop divisions] in a military fashion under the command of a leader". Remember, God is a God or order. In non-military use, subjection was "a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden". It is to submit to one’s control or to yield to one’s admonition or advice. Therefore, subjection involves obedience to the One you are trying to please. As a disciple of Jesus Christ, you are to be in a state of “subjection” to one another in the fear of Christ. Christ is the One you are trying to please in every relationship. This is the principle Paul is teaching the believers in Ephesus and Ruth lived in the days of old so that “through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” (Romans 15:4)
The words of Ephesians 5:21 are simply stated yet profound to a world longing for love sweet love. Paul makes it clear that you are to “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves;” (Philippians 2:3). The Apostle Peter also agrees: “You younger men, likewise, be subject to your elders; and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (1 Peter 5:5) However, the key to unleashing love’s power is in the phrase: “…in the fear of Christ.” Ruth knew the fear of God as did Paul when he told the churches at Corinth: “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are made manifest to God; and I hope that we are made manifest also in your consciences.” (2 Corinthians 5:11)
The catalyst is the fear of God. He is the object of your affection and the One you want to please in every relationship and circumstance. The Greek word for fear in verse 21 is “phobos.” It means to fear, dread or that which strikes terror. It comes from a primary “phebomai” which means to be put in fear. I love God but I also fear Him. Like a son loves his father, there is also a fear when growing up that if you cross the line with your father you will suffer the consequences of loving discipline. Paul says when you are filled with the Spirit, it will show by your mutual submission to each other; and the submission will be done in the fear of God, not the fear of man. It has been written, “Submission because of the fear of man is coercive; submission out of the fear of God is a beautiful act of love.”
True love always involves discipline. The Lord says to you: "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him; for those whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives." It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” (Hebrews 12:5-11)
If you fear the Lord, you will respect or submit to his order and control of your life. Can you say as Paul, “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died;” (2 Corinthians 5:14)? The commitment is at the level of your will and the catalyst is your love for God.
How beautiful is the love for God in your relationships? The Bible says, “but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7) Are you enjoying the fellowship, the love sweet love God, wants you to know? Because I love God and trust his truth, I submit to Him realizing He is the one I am trying to please in every relationship. He is the third member in every relationship I need to acknowledge before I speak and act! “What would Jesus do?” is the lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path (Psalm 119:105).
When you are obedient, there is an added loving kindness God will grant you. You realize the truth that God is in control of your relationships. God will teach you through your faith in Him to look beyond the person and the circumstance and trust Him and His unchanging truth regardless of what your temporal eyes may see. God will use your obedience and faith in Him to develop godly character in your life – what the writer of Hebrews calls “the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” You will be blessed and, as a result, fruit will be your offspring and the sweet love the world needs will overflow from your life into the lives of others. “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve.” (Colossians 4:23-24)
Therefore, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.” (Colossians 4:17) May you personally know this love sweet love -- it is what the world needs now. Jesus paid it all, all to Him we owe,
Give Him the Glory!
