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Choosing to Love
1 John 4:7-21 9 November, 2008
“Choosing To Love”
In some ways we could make this sermon very short. I won’t! But we
could. We could simply repeat the last verse, verse 21. “And he has
given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his
brother (or sister).” It is that simple. It is that direct. It is not an
encouragement. It is a command. It is not a suggestion. It is an
order. And if we are soldiers of Jesus Christ (which is one of the
definitions of being a Christian), then it is clear that we have received
an unambiguous directive from our Master, and it is ours but to obey.
Sir, yes sir!
But wait a minute, someone might object. You are using all this
military language, all this chain of command stuff; and you are talking
about love. Love isn’t like that. Love is something you either feel for
someone or you don’t I mean, you could say, I command you to love
so-and-so!” But that doesn’t mean I will actually love that person. I
could go through the motions, I suppose, but you cannot command
someone to love other people any more than you can command
2
someone to like the taste of brussel sprouts. You cannot tell
someone that from here on out their favorite flavor of ice cream will
be licorice. I mean, you can say it, but that won’t make it so. And you
can tell someone to love other people, but you can not make it an
order.
Aye, but there’s the rub, my friends in Christ: God has made it an
order, a command. And we are stuck with it whether we like it, or not,
whether we agree with it, or not. And unless we are feeling awfully
full of ourselves (dangerously cheeky, in fact) we can no more begin
to debate the issue than we could reasonably respond to the
commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, by saying, “I am
really on board with that, Lord, unless I meet a really attractive
person, and if they are interested…. Well, I have to tell you, all bets
would be off. I mean, let’s be realistic, Lord! You see, we wouldn’t
say that. We don’t debate the relative merits of the Ten
Commandments. They are commandments! And brothers and
sisters in Christ, so is our obligation to love one another. It is not up
for debate. God is not waiting for our input. He is waiting for our
obedience. He did not ask us to reflect and respond to it as though it
3
was some kind of policy initiative currently under consideration. He
said we must. And therefore, we must.
So now what? We have been raised in a culture that has insisted in
ten thousand movies and books that love is a feeling. You either feel
it or you don’t. And that feeling has an inexorable quality that cannot
be stopped. It is as undefiable as gravity. And that is how we talk
about it. “I couldn’t help it: I fell in love!” And how can anyone avoid
falling in love? And conversely, if you don’t love somebody, it is
hardly a feeling I can manufacture. I mean, that wouldn’t be real. And
let me tell you something: our culture is exactly right … if love is
primarily a feeling.
But that is not, what the Bible says. The Bible makes it clear, over
and over again, that love is primarily a decision we make; not a
feeling that overcomes us. Love is a decision we make with regard to
how we will interact with other people. Now look, I think I am an
unabashed romantic. I love love. I love poetry. I love great, sweeping
stories of epic relationships. But I think God is saying to folks like
me, “Look, if you want romance, read ‘Romeo and Juliet’. I am not
4
askign you to fall in love with anybody. I am telling you to make a
commitment with regard to how you will interact with your brothers
and sisters in Christ, for the rest of your natural life.
So, you see, the issue has shifted. In order to get this passage right,
we have to stop thinking along the lines of our cultural programming,
and start thinking like men and women who are under the tutelage of
the Word of God. Paul wrote in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any
longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve
what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” So that’s
what we are about here, folks. We are being trained to shift our
perspective from love as an uncontrollable feeling, to the biblical
perception that love is a decision we make and a commitment we liveout
in our moment-to-moment interactions with other human beings.
And maybe another way to come at this would be to consider the
mature reflections of one of the twentieth century’s most influential
Christians; C.S. Lewis. Lewis, as you might already know, was not
raised in a Christian home. His mother died when he was young. His
5
father was a somewhat formidable and distant figure, who sent him
off to British boarding schools, and wasn’t inclined to coddle him with
affection. By the time he was in his mid-teens, C.S. Lewis was a
convinced atheist who had little truck with the preposterous myths of
Christianity. To make a long story short, it wasn’t until he was thirtyone
years old, that he finally became profoundly convinced that the
remarkable thing about Christianity – the “myth” that God became a
human being and died on the cross in our stead – actually, really
happened. But once he became convinced, he became what one
close friend described as “the most thoroughly converted man he had
ever met.” (Don’t we wish that could be said of us?)
At any rate, while Lewis became a profoundly changed man, and
wrote some of the most persuasive books and arguments for
Christianity in his generation, he nevertheless remained a somewhat
emotionally reserved Oxford professor of Medieval and Renaissance
Literature. Then, in his fifties, after long decades of confirmed
bachelorhood, he became friends with Joy Graham a divorced
American woman with two children. It sounds bizarre, but, in order
for her to be able to stay in England, he agreed to marry her, knowing
6
that their relationship would remain strictly platonic, and that they
would live in separate households. Well, two things happened that
they didn’t expect. She came down with a terminal case of cancer,
and he grew to love her, deeply and profoundly. When her cancer
went into a miraculous remission, they were married again – this time
by an Anglican priest, and enjoyed three or so years of rapturous love
as husband and wife, before the cancer reasserted itself and she died.
In a wonderful movie about their relationship, called “Shadowlands”
Lewis (played movingly by Anthony Hopkins) concludes the firm with
a voice-over narration that goes, “Why love, if losing hurts so much?
I have no answers anymore, only the life I’ve lived. Twice in this life
I’ve been given the choice, as a boy, and as a man. The boy chose
safety, and the man chose suffering. The pain is part of the
happiness. That’s the deal.”
You see, what Lewis came to realize as he matured in his Christian
faith, is that love isn’t primarily about hearts and flowers and Hallmark
greeting cards. Those are all fine as far as they go, but in the end,
love is about a decision we make with regard to how we will interact
with another human being. And while we may reap some benefits
7
from that relationship, loving someone isn’t primarily about what we
will get from the relationship in terms of an emotional pay-off. It is
about a decision to value that person’s life, to recognize their worth in
God’s sight, even at their least attractive and most terrible moments.
Talk to the parents of a newborn baby just home from the hospital.
They would without hesitation be willing to lay down their lives for
that baby, but let’s be honest, it isn’t because at that point the baby is
capable or even interested in meeting their emotional needs. They
value that child’s life and they recognize his or her worth in God’s
sight, even though in those early months and years the child is not
exactly contributing to the family’s savings or helping out much
around the house. Or talk to the parents of a teenager, on one of
those days when the teenager is not, perhaps, exhibiting their
greatest degree of, shall we say, other-centeredness. The parents, on
those days, might be seeing cross-eyed or lapse into moments of
temporary insanity, but I would lay you odds that even at those
terrible moments, the parents would still walk through fire for that
child, because they have a deep, internal valuing for that young man
or woman that goes way beyond the behavior being manifested at the
moment. And, we should say, when our children are able to forgive
8
us for those hopefully rare but ugly moments when we act like jerks, it
isn’t because they have developed an affection for our jerkiness, but
because they, too, hold a deep, often unspoken love for us, that
transcends our worst days and our least attractive behaviors.
So the question is, why? Why are Christians persuaded that loving
people in this “in spite of” way, is the way God would have us love
other people? John says it in verses 9 through 11; “This is how God
showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the
world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved
God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for
our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love
one another.”
Well, there you have it. In other words, God didn’t fall in love with us
because he found our sinfulness adorable, or because our rebellious
ways kindled his affection. God chose to act in a loving manner
toward us, because his valuation of us was such that he was not
willing that any of us should perish – no, not one. His love, in fact,
proved to be the most costly love that can be imagined. Greater love
9
hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for another. That is
God’s kind of love. It is an “in spite of” love that doesn’t wait for us to
be worthy of it. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. That
kind of love isn’t about waiting for us to be loveable. It is a decision
God made toward us when we were the least likely candidates for his
love. You see, the world tells us that we should only love someone if
we think they deserve it. And the Bible says, that is not the way of
love. God’s love for us was expressed on the cross, when the cross
is precisely what we deserved. Instead, God made the decision to
love us in a personally costly way, without any guarantees that you or
I would give a fig, let alone love him back.
This is why the mature C.S. Lewis wrote, “To love is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be
broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give
your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round
with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up
safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket –
safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it
will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative
10
to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only
place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the
dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
Are we getting this? Love is a risky business. It will most certainly
cost us more than we imagined. We will inevitably sustain hurts
along the way. It cost God the life of his Son. But what is the
alternative? To refuse to love is to place ourselves in our own selfmanufactured
hell. If we will only and ever choose safety over
suffering, we may wind up with less scars, but we will just as certainly
be smaller human beings, and possibly run the risk of not being
recognizably human at all.
Remember that great quote from “The Velveteen Rabbit?” One
child’s toy is talking to another and asks, “What is real? Asked the
Rabbit one day. ‘Does it mean having, things that buzz inside you and
a stick-out handle?’ ‘Real isn’t how you are made’, said the Skin
Horse, ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a
long, long time – not just to play with, but really Loves you – then you
become real.’
11
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit. ‘Sometimes’, said the Skin Horse, for
he was always truthful. ‘When you are real, you don’t mind being
hurt’. ‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up’, he asked, ‘or
bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once’; said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It
takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who
break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.’
‘Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved
off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very
shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are
real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Word of God pleads with us to
choose to live out (right here in River City) the only kind of love that is
worthy of the name Christian. We are being talked to here by God
himself. “I’m talking to you”, he says to each of us. “Watch your
mouth. And, yes, treat every person here even better than they
deserve. Choose to behave toward them in a loving manner, because
that is exactly what I have done for you, even when you were at your
12
worst. I’m not asking you to love this way. I’m telling you to do it.
Today. All the time. From now on. Period.” Amen? Amen.
“Choosing To Love”
In some ways we could make this sermon very short. I won’t! But we
could. We could simply repeat the last verse, verse 21. “And he has
given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his
brother (or sister).” It is that simple. It is that direct. It is not an
encouragement. It is a command. It is not a suggestion. It is an
order. And if we are soldiers of Jesus Christ (which is one of the
definitions of being a Christian), then it is clear that we have received
an unambiguous directive from our Master, and it is ours but to obey.
Sir, yes sir!
But wait a minute, someone might object. You are using all this
military language, all this chain of command stuff; and you are talking
about love. Love isn’t like that. Love is something you either feel for
someone or you don’t I mean, you could say, I command you to love
so-and-so!” But that doesn’t mean I will actually love that person. I
could go through the motions, I suppose, but you cannot command
someone to love other people any more than you can command
2
someone to like the taste of brussel sprouts. You cannot tell
someone that from here on out their favorite flavor of ice cream will
be licorice. I mean, you can say it, but that won’t make it so. And you
can tell someone to love other people, but you can not make it an
order.
Aye, but there’s the rub, my friends in Christ: God has made it an
order, a command. And we are stuck with it whether we like it, or not,
whether we agree with it, or not. And unless we are feeling awfully
full of ourselves (dangerously cheeky, in fact) we can no more begin
to debate the issue than we could reasonably respond to the
commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, by saying, “I am
really on board with that, Lord, unless I meet a really attractive
person, and if they are interested…. Well, I have to tell you, all bets
would be off. I mean, let’s be realistic, Lord! You see, we wouldn’t
say that. We don’t debate the relative merits of the Ten
Commandments. They are commandments! And brothers and
sisters in Christ, so is our obligation to love one another. It is not up
for debate. God is not waiting for our input. He is waiting for our
obedience. He did not ask us to reflect and respond to it as though it
3
was some kind of policy initiative currently under consideration. He
said we must. And therefore, we must.
So now what? We have been raised in a culture that has insisted in
ten thousand movies and books that love is a feeling. You either feel
it or you don’t. And that feeling has an inexorable quality that cannot
be stopped. It is as undefiable as gravity. And that is how we talk
about it. “I couldn’t help it: I fell in love!” And how can anyone avoid
falling in love? And conversely, if you don’t love somebody, it is
hardly a feeling I can manufacture. I mean, that wouldn’t be real. And
let me tell you something: our culture is exactly right … if love is
primarily a feeling.
But that is not, what the Bible says. The Bible makes it clear, over
and over again, that love is primarily a decision we make; not a
feeling that overcomes us. Love is a decision we make with regard to
how we will interact with other people. Now look, I think I am an
unabashed romantic. I love love. I love poetry. I love great, sweeping
stories of epic relationships. But I think God is saying to folks like
me, “Look, if you want romance, read ‘Romeo and Juliet’. I am not
4
askign you to fall in love with anybody. I am telling you to make a
commitment with regard to how you will interact with your brothers
and sisters in Christ, for the rest of your natural life.
So, you see, the issue has shifted. In order to get this passage right,
we have to stop thinking along the lines of our cultural programming,
and start thinking like men and women who are under the tutelage of
the Word of God. Paul wrote in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any
longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve
what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” So that’s
what we are about here, folks. We are being trained to shift our
perspective from love as an uncontrollable feeling, to the biblical
perception that love is a decision we make and a commitment we liveout
in our moment-to-moment interactions with other human beings.
And maybe another way to come at this would be to consider the
mature reflections of one of the twentieth century’s most influential
Christians; C.S. Lewis. Lewis, as you might already know, was not
raised in a Christian home. His mother died when he was young. His
5
father was a somewhat formidable and distant figure, who sent him
off to British boarding schools, and wasn’t inclined to coddle him with
affection. By the time he was in his mid-teens, C.S. Lewis was a
convinced atheist who had little truck with the preposterous myths of
Christianity. To make a long story short, it wasn’t until he was thirtyone
years old, that he finally became profoundly convinced that the
remarkable thing about Christianity – the “myth” that God became a
human being and died on the cross in our stead – actually, really
happened. But once he became convinced, he became what one
close friend described as “the most thoroughly converted man he had
ever met.” (Don’t we wish that could be said of us?)
At any rate, while Lewis became a profoundly changed man, and
wrote some of the most persuasive books and arguments for
Christianity in his generation, he nevertheless remained a somewhat
emotionally reserved Oxford professor of Medieval and Renaissance
Literature. Then, in his fifties, after long decades of confirmed
bachelorhood, he became friends with Joy Graham a divorced
American woman with two children. It sounds bizarre, but, in order
for her to be able to stay in England, he agreed to marry her, knowing
6
that their relationship would remain strictly platonic, and that they
would live in separate households. Well, two things happened that
they didn’t expect. She came down with a terminal case of cancer,
and he grew to love her, deeply and profoundly. When her cancer
went into a miraculous remission, they were married again – this time
by an Anglican priest, and enjoyed three or so years of rapturous love
as husband and wife, before the cancer reasserted itself and she died.
In a wonderful movie about their relationship, called “Shadowlands”
Lewis (played movingly by Anthony Hopkins) concludes the firm with
a voice-over narration that goes, “Why love, if losing hurts so much?
I have no answers anymore, only the life I’ve lived. Twice in this life
I’ve been given the choice, as a boy, and as a man. The boy chose
safety, and the man chose suffering. The pain is part of the
happiness. That’s the deal.”
You see, what Lewis came to realize as he matured in his Christian
faith, is that love isn’t primarily about hearts and flowers and Hallmark
greeting cards. Those are all fine as far as they go, but in the end,
love is about a decision we make with regard to how we will interact
with another human being. And while we may reap some benefits
7
from that relationship, loving someone isn’t primarily about what we
will get from the relationship in terms of an emotional pay-off. It is
about a decision to value that person’s life, to recognize their worth in
God’s sight, even at their least attractive and most terrible moments.
Talk to the parents of a newborn baby just home from the hospital.
They would without hesitation be willing to lay down their lives for
that baby, but let’s be honest, it isn’t because at that point the baby is
capable or even interested in meeting their emotional needs. They
value that child’s life and they recognize his or her worth in God’s
sight, even though in those early months and years the child is not
exactly contributing to the family’s savings or helping out much
around the house. Or talk to the parents of a teenager, on one of
those days when the teenager is not, perhaps, exhibiting their
greatest degree of, shall we say, other-centeredness. The parents, on
those days, might be seeing cross-eyed or lapse into moments of
temporary insanity, but I would lay you odds that even at those
terrible moments, the parents would still walk through fire for that
child, because they have a deep, internal valuing for that young man
or woman that goes way beyond the behavior being manifested at the
moment. And, we should say, when our children are able to forgive
8
us for those hopefully rare but ugly moments when we act like jerks, it
isn’t because they have developed an affection for our jerkiness, but
because they, too, hold a deep, often unspoken love for us, that
transcends our worst days and our least attractive behaviors.
So the question is, why? Why are Christians persuaded that loving
people in this “in spite of” way, is the way God would have us love
other people? John says it in verses 9 through 11; “This is how God
showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the
world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved
God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for
our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love
one another.”
Well, there you have it. In other words, God didn’t fall in love with us
because he found our sinfulness adorable, or because our rebellious
ways kindled his affection. God chose to act in a loving manner
toward us, because his valuation of us was such that he was not
willing that any of us should perish – no, not one. His love, in fact,
proved to be the most costly love that can be imagined. Greater love
9
hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for another. That is
God’s kind of love. It is an “in spite of” love that doesn’t wait for us to
be worthy of it. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. That
kind of love isn’t about waiting for us to be loveable. It is a decision
God made toward us when we were the least likely candidates for his
love. You see, the world tells us that we should only love someone if
we think they deserve it. And the Bible says, that is not the way of
love. God’s love for us was expressed on the cross, when the cross
is precisely what we deserved. Instead, God made the decision to
love us in a personally costly way, without any guarantees that you or
I would give a fig, let alone love him back.
This is why the mature C.S. Lewis wrote, “To love is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be
broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give
your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round
with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up
safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket –
safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it
will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative
10
to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only
place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the
dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
Are we getting this? Love is a risky business. It will most certainly
cost us more than we imagined. We will inevitably sustain hurts
along the way. It cost God the life of his Son. But what is the
alternative? To refuse to love is to place ourselves in our own selfmanufactured
hell. If we will only and ever choose safety over
suffering, we may wind up with less scars, but we will just as certainly
be smaller human beings, and possibly run the risk of not being
recognizably human at all.
Remember that great quote from “The Velveteen Rabbit?” One
child’s toy is talking to another and asks, “What is real? Asked the
Rabbit one day. ‘Does it mean having, things that buzz inside you and
a stick-out handle?’ ‘Real isn’t how you are made’, said the Skin
Horse, ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a
long, long time – not just to play with, but really Loves you – then you
become real.’
11
‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit. ‘Sometimes’, said the Skin Horse, for
he was always truthful. ‘When you are real, you don’t mind being
hurt’. ‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up’, he asked, ‘or
bit by bit?’
‘It doesn’t happen all at once’; said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It
takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who
break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.’
‘Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved
off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very
shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are
real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Word of God pleads with us to
choose to live out (right here in River City) the only kind of love that is
worthy of the name Christian. We are being talked to here by God
himself. “I’m talking to you”, he says to each of us. “Watch your
mouth. And, yes, treat every person here even better than they
deserve. Choose to behave toward them in a loving manner, because
that is exactly what I have done for you, even when you were at your
12
worst. I’m not asking you to love this way. I’m telling you to do it.
Today. All the time. From now on. Period.” Amen? Amen.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 14 June 2009 19:13 )