Faith Alone

How (Not) to Use a Reformed Slogan

Bethlehem College & Seminary Chapel | Minneapolis

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The greatest problem facing this world is that the Creator of the universe has sentenced every human being to everlasting condemnation because we have all committed treason against him by giving the allegiance of our greatest affections to other things and not to him.
We have exchanged the pleasures of our Creator for the pleasures of creation (Romans 1:23). There is none righteous. No not one (Romans 3:10). The natural human mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. And no one in this treasonous state can please God (Romans 8:7–9). We are all rebellious and ruined.
Therefore, all of mankind are by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3). The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, because we suppress the truth in our unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). The whole creation has been subjected to futility because of our sin and groans under the bondage to corruption (Romans 8:20–21). The book of nature, the human conscience, and the word of God make this clear, so that every mouth is stopped and the whole world is accountable before God (Romans 1:20–21; 2:14–15; 3:19).
A great and final day of wrath is coming on the world (Matthew 3:7; Romans 2:5; Colossians 3:6; Revelation 6:17).

The Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:7–9).
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31)
Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you? (Psalm 90:11)

This, I say again, with as much absoluteness and seriousness and sorrow as I can see and feel from God’s word: The greatest problem facing this world is that the Creator of the universe has sentenced every human being to everlasting condemnation, because we have all committed treason against him by giving the allegiance of our greatest affections to other things and not to him.

“All the infinite goodness of the Creator works without pause for us forever.”

Human Rebellion, Divine Solution

And from this rebellion on our part, and this holy wrath on God’s part, flow all the errors, all the ugliness, and all the miseries of this world. This means that every subject and every issue at Bethlehem College & Seminary, and every relationship in your life, and the life of this city and this world is distorted by this double reality: human rebellion and divine wrath. Their ruinous fingerprints are everywhere.
This means that the reversal of this rebellion and this wrath — wherever it could happen — would be personally, relationally, academically, socially, politically, pervasively, and globally relevant everywhere all the time.
This also means that, if you knew how the reversal of human rebellion and divine wrath could be brought about, and you spent your life savoring and showing the causes and effects of that reversal, you would have joined the greatest purpose in the universe. You would not have wasted your life. How could it be a waste to show the world the solution to its greatest problem, and how that solution affects everything?
And you do know!
God has acted in Jesus Christ to bring about this solution. And we are focusing today on one central, glorious, inexpressibly amazing stand-on-your-head-with-joy aspect of that solution: The justification of the ungodly by faith alone in Jesus Christ

God Is for You

In Romans 8:31, we see one of the most magnificent pictures of the reversal of the wrath of God.
“What then shall we say to these things?” — these things that have gone before in Romans 8, indeed in Romans 1–8. What is the great upshot of it all?
“If God is for us, who can be against us?” There is the reversal and one of its effects: God is for us and not in wrath against us. All his infinite power, all his infinite wisdom, all the infinite goodness of the Creator working without pause forever for us. And of course, for us does not mean for our harm or misery or evil. It means for our holiness and happiness, our goodness and our gladness. As much good and as much gladness — as much purity and as much pleasure — as an all-powerful, all-wise, all-good God can do and be for you. The infinite God for you — and not against you — bodes happiness beyond your wildest imagination.
And from this reality that God is for us, Paul draws out one result at the end of verse 31: “Who can be against us?” What’s the answer to that question? No one. Really? Look at verse 36: “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” So, what does he mean when he says, “No one can be against you”?

God Intends Good

He means, what they intend for evil God intends for good (Genesis 50:20). When they slaughter you like sheep, they serve you. You are not just a conqueror at that moment. You are more than a conqueror (verse 37). Nobody can ruin you. Nobody can destroy you. Nobody can keep you from the greatest joy. Nobody can successfully be against you because the infinite, good, wise, all-controlling God is for you.
Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” The proof that God is for us, and will not hold back any omnipotent effort to bring us into the enjoyment of all things, is that he did not hold back the giving of his Son for us. For us!
Romans 8:33: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?” What’s the answer? No one. Really? Jesus died under false charges. Paul was arrested and tried under false charges. Satan shoots his flaming arrows of accusation against us all day. And the Christian faith is spoken against everywhere.

God Declares You Innocent

So what does Paul mean? He means no charge against God’s elect will stick. Not one. All the enemies of the cross on earth and all the demons in hell may hurl their accusations against you. And none of them — not one — sticks.
Why? Romans 8:33b: “It is God who justifies.” Finally, here we are. Justification! What is it? The scene is the courtroom of heaven. There is a defendant — you. And you are guilty, ungodly, rebellious. And there is a prosecuting attorney with many witnesses against you. And their accusations are flying. You feel them. They are true. You remember them. And there is the judge — God.

“If I could believe that God was not angry with me, I would stand on my head for joy.”

And in that courtroom, none of those true and legitimate accusations are allowed to stand. They are all being overruled — all of them. The most petty and the most grotesque. For one reason: The judge has declared that you are innocent — not guilty The judge has declared you a law-keeper — not a law-breaker. You are justified. Even though in yourself you are none of those things. “It is God who justifies.”
Romans 8:34: “Who is to condemn?” Answer: No one. How can this verdict stand in this courtroom of perfect justice? No condemnation for the guilty? How can this be? Paul answers (verse 34b): “Christ Jesus is the one who died.” Look back to verse 3:

God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.

But he had no sin. Paul just said he was in the “likeness of sinful flesh.” When Jesus died, God condemned the sin of all who are in him. He did it in the flesh of Jesus.
Who is to condemn? No one. Why? “Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”
So the basis — the foundation — of God’s justification — declaring us not guilty, not a law-breaker but a law-keeper — is the death of Christ, which he holds before the Father in perpetual intercession.

Live in Paradise

And it follows then in verse 35 that there is no separation from the love of Christ — ever. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Nothing. This is the great reversal of wrath. God is for us and not against us. He is one hundred percent for us. Totally for us.

Who can bring a charge against us? No one. Who can condemn us? No one. What can separate us from Christ? Nothing.

Because God justified us. Christ died for us. Love keeps us.
Since God is for us, then no accusation, no condemnation, no separation. Martin Luther had said, “If I could believe that God was not angry with me, I would stand on my head for joy” (Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, 315) And when he saw this truth — really saw it — he said, “I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates” (Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings, 11).
I wonder if you live in this paradise? Study in this paradise? Sleep in this paradise?

“The only kind of faith that counts for justification is the kind that produces love, that bears the fruit of love. ”

Justified by Faith Alone

So now, at last, we ask the question: How do you get into this position where God is one hundred percent for you, and never, in the slightest, against you? Where there is no accusation that sticks, no condemnation that holds, and, therefore, no separation forever? How does one come to be in the courtroom of heaven as a sinner and yet justified? The answer of the New Testament is by faith alone. Follow me through a sequence of passages that make this clear.

Apart from Works of the Law

Let’s start with Romans 3:28: “We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” (If you want to dig into what the New Perspective on Paul — which is not new anymore and is fading away — made out of the phrase “works of the law” I recommend the short Justification Reconsidered by Stephen Westerholm.) I take “works of the law” to mean all efforts at law-keeping. This implies, as Luther translated it, that “one is justified by faith alone.” But it doesn’t say that explicitly, so let’s keep looking.

A Righteousness Not Our Own

Consider Philippians 3:9. Paul says his aim is to be found

in Christ, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law [or we could say “that comes from law-keeping”], but that [righteousness] which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

So again, Paul denies and affirms. He denies that the righteousness he needs in the presence of God is “my own that comes from law-keeping.” And he affirms that the righteousness he needs is found only “in Christ” — in union with Christ. It is “that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” So, again, “not from law-keeping, but from faith” implies faith alone.

All or Nothing

But it gets even clearer in Galatians. Look at Galatians 2:21:

I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

So, the righteousness we need for justification in the presence of God is not “through the law.” But might this not mean, not mainly through the law? And perhaps just a little bit of law-keeping is required for God to be one hundred percent for us? Maybe, say, just circumcision? Now see Paul’s radical answer in Galatians 5:1–3

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision [one little effort at law-keeping], Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. (Galatians 5:1–3)

This is simply astonishing. If you choose to rely just a little bit on law-keeping as a way of getting justified — as a way of getting into the position where God is one hundred percent for you — then Christ will be of no advantage to you. Paul says, if you want to go the route of justification by any law-keeping, you must go the route of justification by total law-keeping — perfection. Galatians 5:3: “I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.”

One Way

There are two ways of justification: the way of law-keeping, which requires your perfection, and the way of faith, which depends on Christ’s perfection. These two paths into the position where God is one hundred percent for you are so distinct that they cannot be mixed.
If you are trusting Christ for a righteous standing where God is one hundred percent for you, you cannot mix into that way of justification one ounce of effort to establish your own righteousness. And if you are seeking to establish your own righteousness — your own record of virtue — as your entrance into the position where God is one hundred percent for you, you cannot mix in the slightest faith in Christ as your all-sufficient righteousness. It is one or the other. Law-keeping to establish my righteousness, or faith alone to rest in Christ for righteousness.

“Love, the fruit of faith, is the necessary confirmation that we have faith and are alive.”

Faith Works

One last question: What is the nature of this faith which unites us to Christ for justification? It is a receiving of Christ for who he really is — the beautiful, supreme, all-satisfying treasure that he is as our divine Substitute and Sovereign. This is why genuine faith always transforms the heart and life.
James saw in his day those who were treating “faith alone” as a doctrine that claimed you could be justified by faith which produced no good works. And he said No to such faith. He said it is dead: “Faith without works is dead” (2:17). It is like a body with no breath (2:26). It is like an energy with no effect (2:20), no completion (2:22). If there is justifying faith, it has works (2:17). So, he says, “I will show you my faith by my works” (2:18). The works will come from faith.
Paul would affirm all of this because he said in Galatians 5:6, “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” The only kind of faith that counts for justification is the kind that produces love, that bears the fruit of love. The faith which alone justifies is never alone, but always yielding transforming fruit. So, when James says these controversial words, “A person is justified by works and not by faith alone (James 2:24), I take him to mean not by faith which is alone, but which shows itself by works.
Paul calls this effect or fruit or evidence of faith the “work of faith (1 Thessalonians 1:3; 2 Thessalonians 1:11) and the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5; 16:26). These works of faith, and this obedience of faith, these fruits of the Spirit that come by faith are necessary for our final salvation. No holiness, no heaven (Hebrews 12:14).

Christian Essentials

So, we should not speak of getting to heaven by faith alone in the same way we are justified by faith alone. Love, the fruit of faith, is the necessary confirmation that we have faith and are alive. We won’t enter heaven until we have it. There is a holiness without which we will not see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14).
Essential to the Christian life and necessary for final salvation is the killing of sin (Romans 8:13) and the pursuit of holiness (Hebrews 12:14). Mortification of sin, sanctification in holiness. But what makes that possible and pleasing to God? We put sin to death and we pursue holiness from a justified position where God is one hundred percent for us — already — by faith alone.
Because if we try to put sin to death and to pursue holiness from a position where we are not fully accepted, not fully forgiven, not fully righteous in Christ, and where God is not one hundred percent for us, then we will be putting sin to death and pursuing holiness as a means of getting into a position where God is one hundred percent for us. And that is the Galatian heresy.
Therefore, we are justified — we are put in a position where God is one hundred percent for us — by faith alone. A position in Christ where no accusation sticks, no condemnation holds, and no separation ever comes. Brothers and sisters, we have been shown the solution to the world’s greatest problem. We have entered paradise. We have stood on our head for joy. And everything has changed. Savor it. Show it to the world. And you will not have wasted your life.

THE SIGNS OF REAL LOVE

THE SIGNS OF REAL LOVE 

The Signs of Real Love 

Series: What's Real And What's Not (I John)

I John 4: 7-12

INTRO:

(A) John ... Been There --- Done That ... SERIES: WHAT'S REAL AND WHAT'S NOT!
1- The ministry of Jesus ... the miracles of Jesus ... the Cross ... the Resurrection ... Birth of the church ... expansion of the church ... writing of God's Word ...John was there!
2- The future ... Antichrist ... one world government ... Second Coming of Jesus ... Millennium ... Great White Throne Judgment ... the New Jerusalem and heaven ... John was there!
* 60 or more years after the crucifixion ... John living in Ephesus as an old man ... writes the final books of God's Word!
* John --- Qualified to tell us WHAT IS REAL AND WHAT'S NOT!

(B) John has 3 themes that run throughout his letter: LOVE, OBEDIENCE , and TRUTH!
1- Each time he returns to one of these themes ... he takes us more deeply into it.
2- Tonight ... we revisit the theme ..... LOVE!
3- We've been here before:
I John 2: 7-11 ... THE SOURCE OF REAL LOVE...read 2:7 ... Real love originated with God ... was introduced to the world by Jesus and is the source from which the Christian draws both his assurance of salvation and his purpose for living.
I John 3: 11-18 ... THE SCORNING OF REAL LOVE ... read 3: 10-11 ... Children of the devil do not display real love because they have not experienced God's love ... In fact, they hate those who have experienced God's love!
4- Tonight ... John reveals to us ... THE SIGNS OF REAL LOVE!

(C) The world is obsessed with this thing called ... love!
1- Secular music ... almost totally dedicated to it.
2- Romance novels ... always among the best sellers!
3- Television covered with it ... people all over the world ... glued to their TV sets watching their soap opera ...
a- Waiting breathlessly from Friday to Monday to find out -- "Will John get Mary, or will Mary forsake John for Luke. Or will Luk ...

ummary: Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is. If our songs, movies and poems (as interesting and entertaining to listen to, watch, and read as they are), are any indication, most of us don’t really know what l

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INTRODUCTION

Sermonic Theme

Notation: Today we will be taking a break from our Parables of Jesus series to celebrate love and marriage. I cannot miss this opportunity to address one of the most critical subjects of all…loving someone.

Opening Statement: Perhaps, our musicians who seem to be enamored by love underscore this the most. But even then, there seems to be some confusion on what love is and what we should do with love. Elvis sang, “I can’t help falling in love with you.” Tina Turner sings, “What’s love got to do with it.” And what about the movies? From “Sleepless in Seattle” to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” we are all led to believe that love is something that we fall into and live happily ever after. Many of the movies that we watch come from Hollywood, CA. I’ve driven through there and believe me; it’s not that impressive. In fact, it’s a little disappointing. And what about our poetry? We tell our beloved how we would climb high mountains to be near them, swim wide oceans, cross deserts in the burning heat of day, and even sit at their window and sing love songs to them in the moonlight, but when it comes to doing the dishes, all of sudden, we’ve been on our feet too long today and can’t quite muster up enough gusto to knock those dishes out.

Quotation: Poet Samuel Daniel, a contemporary of Shakespeare, said, "Love is a sickness full of woes, all remedies refusing." Love is the universal topic of writers, poets and singers. It is the subject of both highbrow literature and the lowly country song.

Observation: Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is. If our songs, movies and poems (as interesting and entertaining to listen to, watch, and read as they are), are any indication, most of us don’t really know what love is; we confuse real love with other experiences and emotions. Consequently, we have no basis on which to evaluate the relationships we pursue and the decisions we make in search of real love.

Key Word: What we need—and what we most want to hear-- is a realistic and Biblical understanding of true love. So let me suggest to you first what love is not, and then I’ll try to show you what love is.

Title: Real Love

Proposition:

Text: John 3:16; 15:13

Recitation: 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 15:13 No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends.

Sermon

Opening Statement: You weren’t expecting it. You never saw it coming. You were minding your own business when it happened. You were standing in front of your locker at school, just talking with your friends, when all of a sudden the door opened and --WHAM! BAM! SHAZAAM! -- through the door walked your dream come true, a combination of all the posters hanging on your bedroom wall, the embodiment of all your fantasies, the fulfillment of all your hopes, and you knew, like you never knew anything before, that you were in love, that here was the person you would marry, that you had just met. . . .your destiny!

Message on love, suitable for Valentine’s Day

                    Message on love, suitable for Valentine’s Day.

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·         REAL LOVE

·         “What is love, as defined by the online world?

·         Resisting a YouTube video of the 1993 hit song, the first click plunges you into a world of pink carnation- tainted tackiness. The website’s designer no doubt spends all afternoon baking cookies, sending chain emails and sighing at the "Home Sweet Home" sign on the living room wall.

·         Then I get a jolting, computer- generated version of Lionel Richie’s Endless Love that offends the ears.

·         Up next is a serious message: great philosophers could not touch love’s true essence. Which is why, obviously, this website quotes four to eight-year-olds.

·         Gems include: "Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday"; and "Love is when mommy gives daddy the best piece of chicken". (Finding love online

·         The Press | Tuesday, 10 February 2009)

·         Yesterday we celebrated Valentine’s Day, a time to reflect on love and what love truly is. Let me tell you, you will never understand what love is, what true love is, until you understand love’s source. You may have warm fuzzies, you may have sweaty palms, you may care about another person, you may be committed, or need to be, but you will never understand true love until you know love’s source.

·         I. LOVE’S SOURCE

·         - 1 John 4:7-21

·         First I want you to understand that love comes from God. God is the true source of all love.

·         It is amazing the work we put into love and relationships hoping things will work out, when so many people never realize that God is the source of all love.

·         > 1 John 4:7-8 Dear friends, let us love one another; because love is from God, … God is love.

·         It saddens me when I think of number of people who try to build loving relationships and loving homes and loving marriages that leave God out of the equation.

·         > Psalm 127:1 Unless the Lord builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain;

·         God is love’s source.

·         When we think of love however, we think not only of its source, but we also must remember how it is demonstrated.

·         II. LOVE DEMONSTRATED

·         - 1 John 4:9-10

·         If yesterday is like Valentines of the past, over $1 billion was spent on chocolate, $1 Billion on cards, and 218 million roses were sold in the pursuit of, or in an attempt to demonstrate love.

·         The Bible tells us that God sent the first Valentine. He showed what true love is. He demonstrated His love for you and me over 2000 years ago when He sent His One and Only Son to pay the price for your sins and mine.

·         Listen, God didn’t just love you enough to tell you about it. He didn’t just love you enough that He settled for having it written in the clouds by angels in flaming chariots. He didn’t love you enough that He stopped at sending you a love note, or a card, or calling you, He loved you enough that He sent His Son Jesus Christ.

·         You see, when it came to demonstrating love, FTD was not fragrant enough, chocolate was not sweet enough, and Hallmark couldn’t find the words to set you free.

·         The Bible says,

The Power of Real Love

The Power of Real Love

I John 4:7-12

 

I John 4:7-12

The Power of Real Love

Dr. Gilbert W. Bowen

If there is a more slippery word in the English language, I don’t know what it is. I love New York. Don’t you just love Margie’s new home? That ubiquitous red heart… saying” I love sailing,” saying” I love Michigan, “saying “I love pasta.” And I love “da Bears.” Donna White tells how one day her son came home from kindergarten and said, “Mom, I have a new girl friend. Patricia and I are in love.” Surprised at his use of the word, she asked how he knew he was in love. “She told me,” he replied matter-of-factly. A lot of us learned that way. And most of the music is about love, is it not, whether it is Schubert or country western, rock or rap.
James Thurber once wrote, “My pet antipathy is the bright detergent voice of the average American singer, male or female, yelling or crooning in cheap yammer songs about love. Americans are brought up without being able to tell love from sex, lust, Snow White or Ever After. We think of it as a push-button solution, or instant cure for discontent and a sure road to happiness, whatever it is. It is nothing of the kind. A lady of forty-seven who has been married twenty- years and has six children knows what love is and once described it for me like this: “Love is what you have been through with somebody.”
And love came down at Christmas; that kind of love. So let me give you three other words for it this morning that may help us stay clear about what it means and what is at stake. Since we are going to sing about it, let’s think about it, about what kind of love it is we sing. It is there eloquently in that Manger Scene. To say I love someone is to say that I care about them, their joys, their sorrows, their health, their well-being. I really care. That is certainly Mary and Joseph. And it is the human being he will become.
They care for and about one another deeply. The word suggests a serious and attentive interest in, concern about, compassion for another human being. I really love, means I really do care.
And I think the word is a good one because it suggests that in this kind of love the focus of my attention is out beyond myself and with the dreams and needs, growth and health of the other. Here is a feeling and attitude that is not first of all concerned with payoff, but with the other person, not on what I may want, but on what I can do and give.
Care. Simple selfless care. And says this old story from start to finish: that is what your God is all about, that is what he supremely is. God is love, this kind of love. The creator and ruler of the universe cares about us. The Greeks thought this was crazy. Everybody knew that God is supreme, intelligence, super-brain, cosmic genius, philosopher like Plato. “God thinks,” said the Hellenist.” No,” said a Jewish young man out of Nazareth. Most of all God cares, cares for sparrows and flowers and little kids and you, everyone of you, cares indiscriminately for all of us. And to make his point indelibly and unmistakeably he took his care for his people, his friends and enemies, even to the point of death so we would know it clear and clean and true. A cross hangs over that stable. And the difference is critical. If God is in the thinking business, to get close to him you go to the monastery or university and think. If God is in the caring business, to get close to him … well, you go where someone needs caring for.
This is not to say that care is without intelligence. Love does not mean submitting to the will of others. Real care for the other does not mean doing what they want. It means wise action or even inaction on the basis of what you think is truly best for them. It means to truly care about what is for their good and growth.

Margaret Hillis, the late director of the Chicago Symphony Choir, told the story of how when four she was playing by a pond near her home, she fell into water that was over her head. She remembers thinking that she must swim, and she did. Crawling up onto solid ground, already worrying about what her punishment would be, she saw her father sitting on the opposite bank. He had made no move to rescue her, just as he made no move now either to congratulate her or take her to task. “There was a strange comfort in it,” she says. “He had let me learn to depend on myself—yet he was there if I needed him.” To truly care is to do not the easy thing, the applauded thing, the wished thing, but the wise thing, the right thing.
Love is, therefore, not always soft or indulgent. It can mean gentle acceptance of the fallen. But it can mean driving the money changers out of the temple court. It all depends upon a judgment as to what is truly needed, what truly makes for health and life.
And this is not to say that caring always means liking. C.S. Lewis once said, “Thank God he did not command me to like everybody.” I may find my children, or my friend, or the colleague, or the stranger on the way distinctly unlikeable, on certain days given my own tastes and ways. But even if I am turned off by someone, I can still care for him or her as a fellow human being. In fact, one of the realities we need to face and remember, is that the person who needs our love and care the most may be the one who is not particularly likable at the moment.
And the old story says, that’s the way God cares, not by giving us what we always want. They wanted a king to bring the tyrants down. But coming to us in Jesus to be there for us in life and in death, no matter what comes and no matter what shape we are in and as we learn to both trust and live that kind of care we discover what God and real life are all about.
This kind of love cares. And so this kind of love also bears.
Bears big time. There is a story about the family that had to move. When they found themselves unloaded but barely, the husband announced that he had an important meeting and would be unable to help. So the wife set about, not too happily, to handle the rest of the move alone. She found herself standing in the living room surrounded by clothes to be unpacked, appliances to be hooked up, a screaming baby, and a five-year-old who decided to throw one of his metal toys through the picture window. She had about had it. Nobody was hurt, but the glass was scattered everywhere and a brisk wind was blowing through the opening. The wife was now so upset that she was determined to call her husband and fill him in. But the secretary, of course, told her that her husband was in a meeting and inquired sweetly as to whether she would like to leave a message. Since he was not very good at responding to messages, she thought for a moment and came up with this. She replied, “Yes, Just tell him that the insurance will cover all the damages, and he can call home for details.” It happens. It happens all the time. But love hangs in there, stays faithful, for better or worse. It takes bearing with one another. Thus to love in this way is always to suffer one another. In traditional language we talk about Jesus suffering for our mistakes, failures, sins. One might better say that Jesus presents us with the vision of a God who suffers our mistakes, failures, sins, who bears with us.
I offend you. Through carelessness or bad temper, or whatever, I deal badly with you. The result: an injustice has been done and the relationship has been violated. What can be done about it? You can, quite understandably, react by punishing me with your anger and rejection. You can strike out and hurt. And you have every right to do so. But the end result is the loss of one another. Or you can bear the hurt and go on caring about me. In the Old English meaning of the word, you can suffer me. We can suffer one another.
To trust ourselves to the love of God we see in Jesus is to believe that this is the way God deals with us. He bears with us. Puts up with us. And therefore between us also, this is the redemptive way to go, to believe that in the long run the caring that wins is the caring that bears.
The love of God comes in that Christmas child, it cares, it bears,… and it shares. Love that hangs in there, sooner or later shares the pains and suffering of the beloved. My favorite story of the way real love shares the inevitable struggles of life comes from a newspaper column that appeared in the Columbus Dispatch a few years ago, an article about Frank and Mary. Hospitalized, Frank was doing very poorly. His wife, Mary, returned to the room and drew a chair to his bedside. “I’m thirsty,” Frank said. Mary lifted the straw to his lips as he pulled his oxygen mask aside. The medicine was making him sick. She fetched the basin, wrapped a firm arm around his spasm-wracked shoulders and mopped the sweat from his forehead… So in the end love comes down to this … not some Clark Gable appraisal of Vivien Leigh or some sex symbol’s seductive pose across the dance floor, the clink of crystal, a leisurely picnic spread upon summer’s clover. No, it is instead the squeeze of a hand. “I’m here. I’ll be here no matter how long the struggle. Water? You need water? Here. Drink. Let me straighten your pillow.”
Now who is hurting most in that picture? Hard to say, isn’t it.? But that is what love is all about, sharing hurt. They are hurting that night in Bethlehem. They still are. Is this perhaps one reason why we find it so hard. Over-indulged, addicted to our own pleasure and comfort, inclined to believe in and seek easy answers, we have little tolerance for the pain and struggle, little patience for the hard way of real love.
Indeed, and this old faith insists that in some strange way God came in Jesus of Nazareth to share our human pain and struggle, reversals and suffering, not lifting them from us but going through them with us, so that we may know when it falls our turn that he is not absent, but very present in strength and peace and joy.
So God is love, love that cares and bears and shares, and that’s the love of which we Christians think and sing.