Sunday, December 07, 2008

Love is supernatural

My post the other day, We All Wanna Be Loved, was inspired by several thoughts that I've had over the past few weeks and months, as well as by the conversation that happened on Day 5 of the week that Steve McVey was a guest on the Canadian program It's A New Day (a couple of weeks ago). I enjoyed every program that week, and if you haven't checked it out I highly encourage it! If nothing else, do take some time to check out the link and take in all the wisdom, vulnerability, brokenness and love shared on Day 5.


Jesus was put down, criticized, persecuted and hated for eating and drinking with tax collectors, prostitutes and all kinds of other "sinners." He loved the unlovable. He spent time - eating and drinking - with "bad" people. He had loving, close, friendly fellowship with them. He wasn't afraid of being contaminated by them! He didn't care what people said about Him. I believe He was compelled by LOVE to love them, touch them, heal them, accept them, befriend them, share wisdom with them, sit with them, hug them, talk with them, listen to them, give to them, mourn with them, defend them, take their burdens, take their guilt, take their shame.

He was so unlike the religious people of the day. The religious people were there to make sure the people stayed in line. They wouldn't dare be seen with the "sinners," but they sure laid down the rules for the sinners. They put heavy burdens on people. They condemned people. They pointed fingers and pronounced people guilty. They even added their own rules and laws and stipulations onto God's laws. You know what? It's EASY to do all of that! It's easy to talk about how bad other people are and how good you are. It's easy to protest the sins of others and even pass laws against their sinful behavior. (Your own sins, of course, don't need laws... right?)

What's hard, though, is loving others unconditionally! In fact, "hard" is too soft a word. Loving people unconditionally is impossible. The commands to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself, are impossible commands to obey. I've heard people quote these commands quite nonchalantly, as if true love for God and others is so simple. To love as Jesus loved - and really He was showing the love of the Father - is something that can't be done through trying to obey commands.

Love - that is, agape love - is supernatural. It's not of this world. It's not of the flesh. It's of the Spirit. No law or rule can cause love. No set of disciplines or principles produces love. The kind of love that loves unconditionally doesn't come from obedience to a command. It comes from the very love and life of Christ in us. Love cannot be faked. If you have to "fake it till you make it," it's not love.

To love others like Christ loves others is a supernatural act of God that wells up from inside a weak clay jar and overflows miraculously into the lives of others and back to God. To be vulnerable, and to be real and authentic is the same. As I look at the list of various people on my We All Wanna Be Loved post, I see that I've carried some fleshly fears, prejudices, pride and self-righteousness - and quite simply, a lack of true love - into the way I view others. I can't deny any of it... but I also can't fake any of it away! In order for me to love others as God loves them - without conditions - it can be nothing less than a supernatural, miraculous work of Christ in me. And it can't be rushed, so I rest peacefully in Him knowing His love is working a perfect work and bears its fruit in due time.

11 comments:

  1. Great Post. I have struggled with this. If we are supposed to be known by our love, than why am I so bad at it?? Jesus sums it up by asking us to love people and to love God. I can do stuff for God and people all day long, but deep down inside what I struggle with is loving. Sometimes I don't even love the lovable, let alone the unlovable.

    Than I realized that without Christ we CANNOT love. Our flesh is not capable of Agape love. But it is not up to our flesh to love. Flesh is dead in me. He is love. He is in me. He is me. So then I can love. I can love people that are truely unlovable because I see them as Christ sees them not as my flesh used to see them.

    Supernatural Love indeed

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  2. Joel,
    This post is beautiful. Simply containing the absolute Truth. It is Papa/Son through the Holy Spirit within us that enables us to Agape Love!

    Wonderful post, again, my friend. Cut to the Heart of it.

    Blessings,
    ~Amy :)
    http://amyiswalkinginthespirit.blogspot.com

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  3. This so speaks to me:

    "No law or rule can cause love. No set of disciplines or principles produces love. The kind of love that loves unconditionally doesn't come from obedience to a command."

    Dang, is this one hard for me, in learning how to show/teach love to my children! This is HUGE for parents, and I have a feeling it either makes or breaks our parenting.

    And:
    "If you have to "fake it till you make it," it's not love."
    How many good christian sources teach this (fake it till you make it)??
    I've heard it more times than I can remember. And, man doesn't it leave the christians feeling guilty and hopeless. It's yet another a rotten formula, that leads to a major dead end!! I know, I've been down that road too many times!

    And this is potent:
    "Loving people unconditionally is impossible. The commands to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself, are impossible commands to obey."

    Lastly:
    "In order for me to love others as God loves them - without conditions - it can be nothing less than a supernatural, miraculous work of Christ in me. And it can't be rushed, so I rest peacefully in Him knowing His love is working a perfect work and bears its fruit in due time."

    Thank you for speaking truth, and the reminder that HE is doing it in me; and His work can't be rushed!

    What a poignant message for this holiday season, when I often find it hard to love those that rub me the wrong way (and seem to be around 'em more).

    Thank you, Papa, for giving us Your loving heart!!

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  4. One of the hardest things for me to believe is when I look in the mirror at myself, knowing me like I do, and believing God loves me. Also, I think this "fake it until you make it" is kind of right. We sometimes forget where we came from and that we will have our old nature until we go home. We really were sinners and none of really understand what that means. Salvation is "we got saved", "we are being saved", and "we will be saved"! It is truely a process.

    Penn State Fan

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  5. Socoteanu,

    Great thoughts. You said something here that I've thought about a lot, and it's part of what has led to my current thinking. "I can do stuff for God and people all day long, but deep down inside what I struggle with is loving. Sometimes I don't even love the lovable, let alone the unlovable."

    If our actions toward others and God are not borne of His love, then what are they borne of? (Even our "good" actions). Along the lines of one of your more recent posts, even our flesh can be "good" but yet it's still flesh.

    And so for me the whole thing goes back to everything being based upon God's love and grace working in and through us. Since the only 'love' our flesh produces really only amounts to dead works (as good as they may appear), then we need to rest in and trust in supernatural love that is Spirit-produced. You're so right - "without Christ we CANNOT love."

    Amy,

    Yes! Agape love is nothing less that Papa/Son/Spirit working in and through us!

    Free Spirit,

    Yeah... applying this to raising children... what a HUGE thing! The thing is, we can't teach it unless we really know it, so it's good to get ourselves grounded in it ourselves in the first place. We truly need to know God's love in order to be able to show it or teach it to others.

    I've also been down the dead-end fake it till you make it road! Even after having come to a much better understanding of grace, I was still applying the fake it till you make it principle in my marriage. I've shared about it on my blog in the past. In short, it led to a very tough time, but it was the releasing of myself from faking being a good husband that started the process of truly loving my wife from my heart and not from a performance- or works- or principles-based place.

    God is love (agape), and the only thing that truly animates a Christian in pure holiness and godliness is pure, supernatural agape.

    Adam,

    :)

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  6. Penn State Fan,

    What I hope you and others will get from my blog is the hope and truth of the gospel (good news) that we have been made new creations, and the old has gone and the new has come. When we were in Adam, our sinful nature is what defined us. We identified with Adam, having been born according to his nature. In Christ, we have died to the old sinful nature. We have died to Adam and are born again and made alive in Christ. Our nature is now righteousness. Our sin nature (Adamic nature) was crucified with Christ, and no longer lives, but Christ lives in us and is our very life. Christ took away our sin and we became the righteousness of God in Christ.

    When we sin, our sin no longer defines us. When we sin, we have simply lived out of the flesh - not out of our sinful nature (again, it died and is gone forever). We have one nature - the new creation nature of righteousness. According to Paul's words in Romans 7, we happen to live in bodies that are indwelled by sin - but our bodies are corruptible and temporary, and our bodies are not who we are.

    To fake it till we make it is to live not from the New Life that we've been given, but rather it's to live from the flesh. The flesh can never and will never produce the fruit of the Spirit. It may produce a very cheap (and perhaps good looking) imitation, but it's absolutely not of the Spirit.

    The sanctification process we go through is not a faking of becoming better people! Rather it's an ongoing appropriation of the reality of the true Life and righteousness and holiness that is ours as a gift from God. It's a slow process, and I realize that we're tempted to fake it, and to make it happen through our own efforts, but the true outward expression of the inward reality can never, ever be faked.

    God's love for you is not based upon your actions by any means. God loves you because God is love. (God is agape). He can't not love you! If His sending Jesus to the earth as a man and on the cross to His death for your sins doesn't prove it, I don't know what will!

    Forget looking in the mirror. Look at Christ!

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  7. Joel, just a question for you. Did God send His Son for Esau? Does He love everyone? He said Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. If He hated Esau than how do I know that He doesn't hate me?

    PSF

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  8. PSF,

    Context, context, context! (And original language!) What is Paul's overall point in Romans 9, and in bringing up Jacob and Esau?

    Side note: the word "love" here is not "agape." And the word "hated," according to the original language and the context in which it's used, means something closer to "rejected." And there's a reason for all this... and it has nothing to do with you or your behavior. :)

    Paul is somewhat hard to understand at times, including here, but I think he gets to his point beginning in verse 30:

    Rom 9:30-33
    30 What shall we say then? [In other words - What is the point of all this?] That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; 31 but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. 32 Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. 33 As it is written:

    "Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense,
    And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame."

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  9. Joel, You speak a fantastically profound truth in a beautiful and understandable way here. There is something I read recently (I can't remember where though) which goes like this : Jesus's love wasn't cautious.

    In love, there is always risk. There is threat and danger. And so, we tend to love cautiously. We always look for our safety first.

    Last Saturday We were traveling from Chicago to Detroit on the Express way. It was snowing, night time our van skidded and took a 360 degree turn on I-94. A very crowded freeway (a lot of trucks!), but when this happened there wasn't a single cars near us. If there were other cars close to us, it would been a multi-car accident. Our car hit the median-fence and stood there facing in the opposite direction. Nothing happened to us but the car was damaged badly. I called 911. While we were waiting there for the police to come, a car stopped at the shoulder on the other side, a lady in her 50's crossed the high way running to our car and asked "Is everybody okay". I was stunned. It was dark, windy and heavily snowing and there was at least a 3 inches snow on the shoulder, I don't even know how she managed to stop there. Then she literally crossed the highway by running. I said we are okay and she said "I just wanted to make sure" and left immediately.
    My wife later told it would have been an angel.

    Now hear this: If it was I who saw a car in accident in such a scenario, I wouldn't stop. I will immediately think about my safety - a whole lot of questions would rush into my mind...

    Love (in its true meaning) has to be supernatural. It's possible only by Jesus and as we walk, as Jesus life in us revolutionizes us, we start showing some risky love to others... But it's humanly impossible.

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  10. Bino,

    I can imagine that would've been a scary situation to be in! I'm glad everyone is ok.

    Yep, you're right... each of us in our natural mindsets would react to seeing your situation in different ways, and I think most people would drive on by, most likely with the same fear and questions going on in their minds as what you're talking about. A few times I've stopped to see if people are ok or if they need a phone but most of the time I've driven by. Sometimes I've felt very guilty for all those times I've not stopped.

    But I've come to see that growth in grace is a supernatural process. There are so many things that the church could not humanly do, but yet God is working in each of us all the time and somehow He builds His church and makes His bride beautiful! Bottom line, as you say, true love is humanly impossible. It has to be supernatural.

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