If We Only Do This!

Photo by Laura Vinck on Unsplash

Growing up I heard my grandfather say countless times that “you just gotta love people!” Even when I was deep into my days of theological training, that is, going to seminary, he would tell me, “Jeff, you just gotta love others.” And as he would tell me this very simple truth, I would think in my head, “Yea, yea! I know. But I’m in the deep stuff in my Bible classes.” Oh how much I still needed to learn at that time in my life. Perhaps it was my grandfather who was talking about the weightier matters of the faith. Perhaps it was him who was trying to teach me that one can’t go much deeper than learning to love another. As the lyrics in the epilogue of Les Miserables say, “To love another person is to see the face of God,”

Listening to my grandfather tell me to love others puts him in some good company with the saints in the past. Specifically, consider the apostle John. In his commentary on Galatians, the church father, Jerome, said that when the apostle John was in his extreme old age, he was so weak that he had to be carried into the church meetings. At the end of the meeting he would be helped to his feet to give a word of exhortation to the church. Invariably, he would repeat, “Little children, let us love one another.” The disciples began to grow weary of the same words every time, and they finally asked him why he always said the same thing over and over. He replied, “Because it is the Lord’s commandment, and if this only is done, it is enough” (see John Stott, The Epistles of John).

Now if you’ve read through this Substack of mine, you will perhaps see a theme. It’s obvious in some places and more subtle in others. But regardless, how we treat others finds it’s way one way or another in my writing. Why? Because it matters. Actually, it more than matters. My grandfather is right. “You gotta love people.” And again, as John supposedly said, if loving others is the only thing we did, it would be enough.

Now I know we question these words of John some because there seems to be so much more that we need to do to be the people who follow Jesus. I go to conferences teaching me about evangelism, apologetics, leadership, preaching, studying the Bible, worship, finances and more. The list could go on. But I wonder if we need to have a few conferences on learning to love. I write this not saying that these other things we do (evangelism, etc…) are not important, they are. But the words of Paul still haunt me when he writes that If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).

The Corinthian church to which Paul wrote these words had quite a few problems. Pride, disunity and sexual sin top the list. Yet Paul seems to believe that love for each other helps solve these problems. Now this love that Paul talks about is quite specific as you will discover if you continue to read 1 Corinthians 13. It involves one’s whole being. It involves action. And it involves the cross, meaning that this love is cruciform. It’s not for the faint of heart. I know we can utter “I love” quiet easily. Yet to really love another is hard. I don’t think me writing such is saying anything new to you. In fact, for me, to write these few words concerning love today is much easier than actually having to walk through my day and be patient and kind and forgiving to those I meet. I can also say it’s easier to preach about love than to love as well.

Here’s the bottom line: people are messy! And so is ministry. We bring our past and present and our desires for the future with us wherever we go. Our joys and hurts we also carry with us. All this makes us who we are. So living out an active cross-centered love is vital. It is most important. And it means specifically that we are slow to judge and quick to forgive. Why? Because behind every face there is a story (I wrote about this in The Cross-Shaped Life). You never know what’s behind the eyes of another. You never know what pain someone else might be harboring. Well, actually you can—but you have to learn to LISTEN!!!

Yep, this loving stuff is quite difficulty. I might say it’s impossible. So how do we do it? Recently, I was with a group of folks who seemed to insinuate that we love in order to get God to love us. In other words, we perform all the ritual religious deeds—of which one is loving others—and as we do so, God likes us more and we work our way up to him. But this is not how it works according to my understanding of the goodness of God. First of all, the story of God is about him coming to us. He meets us where we are. The Christmas story is at the heart of God getting close. And the cross takes it to the next level. Second, we love not to be loved but because we are loved. Perhaps you are familiar with the verse that says “we love because he first loved us.” So maybe, just maybe, our learning to love must first come from a deeper understanding of God’s love for us! Thus, our prayer today needs to be what Paul prayed for the Ephesian church:

I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.