(Text Only)
Title: Real Love
I think you’d all agree with me this morning that the word “love” is one that is tossed around a bit too freely in our society today. Last Fall, when I preached a sermon on I John 2:15 (“Do not love the world, or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”) I went to great lengths to explain that, because English only has one word for love, and in the original language of the N.T. the Greek uses five different words (Agape, Eros, Philia, Storge, and Thelema) to express love, that it can be tricky sometimes to capture the right vibe for “love” when translating from Greek to English.
Today as our focus is again on the word love, I want to look at a different perspective, and that is the issue that yet another way we convolute the world “love” is to water it down and apply it in context where it really is not appropriate.
To make my point, I first got online and went to iTunes,the world’s largest online music store. I simply did a search for the word “love” in song titles…any guess how many hits I came up with? Me neither, I stopped at 1000. 1000 songs with “love” in the title alone!
Then I decided to turn the investigation inward. I then searched my own personal library of songs on my computer. Every CD I’ve ever bought is logged on my computer. It’s a total of 2959 songs…and 205 have “love” in the title. That is 7.5% of my songs have the word “love” in the title. That doesn’t even begin to count the number of songs that are about love, but have a different title.
You get my point. If you’d believe the world “love” is everywhere. If you’d believe a popular Beatles song, “All you need is love.” And I agree with that. Provided it’s the right love. Let us read.
(read/pray)
- This love is “Agape”
As we begin today, let me start by telling you I’ve done some of the tedious work ahead of time to make our time here smoother. Every o in this passage of the word love, is from the Greek “Agape”. Which essentially denotes being contented in something. It is fulfilling you and your needs.
James begins and ends this passage with the same thought: Essentially he says: “Brothers and Sisters, we should love each other, because real love, true love is from our master. Furthermore everyone who truly loves is born of God and knows God. And anyone who does not love does not know God. You cannot truly love and not know God.”
So, obviously John is talking about something greater than our current earthly definitions of love. We all know people in our lives that are unsaved, and they would confess readily that they’ve known love. They’ve committed themselves perhaps to spouses, perhaps to their children, and they have loved these people, they have nurtured them.
So how can what John says here be taken seriously? I think it falls to this: John tells us that if they haven’t really known God, they haven’t really known love. And how did God teach us what love really was?
- God didn’t just say he loved us. He showed us.
Months ago I spent an entire sermon in I John explaining that “love” by definition is a verb. So to say you love someone is to say, “I do something because of my feelings for you.”
Well, God did the ultimate something is his expression of love for us. Verse 9 reminds us that God sent his only begotten son into the world, that we might live through him.
Three Truths of Love:
Real love is selfless.
Real love is sacrificial.
Real love changes the situation.
I could tell you this morning that “I love the Cleveland Cavs” (I was originally going to go with the Cleveland Browns, but I don’t want to talk about it…we’re on a break.)
Anyway, if I say, “I love the Cleveland Cavaliers” I’m not lying. It’s a correct English expression. But when we apply the truths of love, it just doesn’t work.
Is my love for the Cavs selfless? No, it’s totally selfish. It’s about my enjoyment, my pleasure, my desire for the Cleveland Curse to be lifted. Is my love for the Cavs sacrificial? Not really. I set my DVR to record the games. I watch the games. I read articles on line, but none of that really “puts me out,” or costs me things that I didn’t really want to part with it. Does my love for the Cavs change my situation? Would I be a different person if I didn’t love the Cavs, but rather, loved the Lakers? No. Not really. My wardrobe might change slightly, but that’s about it. There’s nothing truly unique about my love for the Cavs.
But when we apply this filter to Christ dying on the cross: all three of these truths is verified instantly.
- Pay attention to the verb tense.
Look closely at the verb tense change in verses 10 and 11. John tells us flatly that the issue of origin isn’t that we loved God. (We couldn’t love God, scripture makes that abundantly clear.) The issue is that he first loved us, making us able to love God in return.
And that, as a result of his love for us, he sent Christ to be a propitiation for our sins. Propitiation is a fancy word that means “to make peace with.” Essentially, the blood of Christ pacifies the righteous wrath that God rightly holds against us.
All of that to say, that John circles back and ends his message right where he began. He says, “If God loved us so much to send his only son to die, to appease His Wrath against us, then that knowledge should unite us as a people. We should, therefore, in rightly serving our master who taught us what love really was, turn to each other and express that same love.”
And my practical tip to all of you this morning is simple: Don’t measure the genuineness of your love for another person by worldly standards. Instead ask is it selfless? Is is sacrificial? Does my love for this person change the situation. That is love, brothers and sisters, and you can’t find that in a pop song. It’s only found in Christ.