Such love!

We have never experienced love that is comparable to God's. Human love is conditional. 

Unattractive people are hard to love. Even though it was my first visit, the lady at the post office counter greeted me with a very friendly smile. I visited that town after 30 long years. She acted as if she is meeting a friend, but her appearance scared me so that I did not greet her or smile back. The left side of her face was charred, and she had lost the left eye. Her gums and teeth were visible since the left portion of her lips were burnt too. Her smile was frightening. 

A young man, envious of her relationship with another person, threw sulfuric acid at her face, disfiguring her. As a result, her real lover abandoned her since she was no longer as beautiful as she was before the accident. It turned out that we were friends at school thirty years ago, which explains her friendly smile. At school, I remember her as a vibrant and winsome girl. One of the conditions we set for people to deserve our love is their physical attractiveness.

A morally acceptable behavior is also a requirement for our love. Criminals, muggers, women who sell their bodies for a living - who will love them? She is not even beloved by her own customers, even if they hire her body for the evening.

We tend not to love people who are not useful despite their physical beauty and moral uprightness. My friend is an engineer who moved with his family to another country to find a better life. His preferred job was not available. He became a burden to his family since he was dependent on his wife and daughter, who were the only earners in the family. Therefore, the wife turned hostile, the daughter joined in, and they conspired to send him back to his country of origin. As soon as he landed, they revoked his visa, so he cannot return. His wife and daughter live in the land of promise while he lives on charity. Her marriage vow of love was only valid if he helped her.

God's love, however, differs from ours. God loves those who are unlovable by human standards or even by his own standards–sinners. God loves us even if we do not love ourselves!

 

The cross is the greatest display of God's love. The Bible says that "in this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him"’ (1 John 4:9).

The love of God does not have any conditions, so he loves everyone regardless of their appearance, their purpose, or how useless they are. In Romans 5:8, Saint Paul addresses this aspect of God's love. "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." In other words. "God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…." (Eph 2:4).

The love of God is unparalleled, unsurpassed, and all-surpassing. It has not been fully explained or understood. Christ's love "surpasses knowledge" (Eph 3:19), according to Paul. God's love is self-initiated, without riders. John the apostle of love, declares in a note of jubilation: "In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).

Most importantly, it is not outdated, but it is still relevant today. "To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever" (Revelation 1:5-6). Even though the King James Version translates all the verbs in a sentence to align them with the past tense – “freed us” and “made us.” The Greek uses the present tense, as in, “loves us,” currently.

In the first century, the present reality of God's love was relevant to the communities suffering persecution for their faith in Christ. They need to know that Christ still loves them. God does not abandon Christians when they go through pain. They suffer, but God's love is not diminished. Yet God continues to love them despite everything. Love from God is a reality now. God gives us this assurance even when we find it difficult to love ourselves.

The Grammar of Love

'Love is a verb, not a noun.' That was on a T-Shirt. What it stressed probably is to really love than talking about love.
However, in the Bible, just two verses apart from each other the word 'love' is used both as noun and verb. That is in 1 John 3:16-18. In the first case (in 1 John 3:16) it is a noun. 'By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.' The second occurrence is in 3:18, 'Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.'
Love cannot be just a verb. At the same time, unless love is quantified and displayed it cannot be a verb or an action. In fact, the act of loving comes from love. The reason for the exhortation in verse 18 is the direct result of the experience of love that verse 16 talks about.
Love is quantified as 'laying down our lives for others.' That is the breadth and depth of love. It can reach a point where a person loves another person to such an extent that his life is not more important than the life of the other. The life of the loved is more important than that of the lover.
That, however, seems to be humanly impossible.
Though it seems to be impossible, it was proved to be possible by Christ Jesus. He defined love by laying down his life for us. That is love as the noun.
Now, the verb is possible only if the noun is known through our experience. That is to say, Christ's love for us must be experienced in order to love others. Experience of any other form of love is certainly inadequate.

Fathers' Day Surprise

I stared at that bouquet of flowers handed over to me feeling little uneasy. It was Fathers’ Day and I was reminded of it early in the morning by my two children who had wished me already before I went to church. In my church I have made it a policy that we will pray for fathers on Fathers’ Day and mothers on Mothers’ day in the church but will not have any celebration of such days on Sundays. My reason is simple. Nowadays, almost every day is ‘some day’ and it distracts our attention from the real business that we are supposed to do on Sunday: the Lord’s Day. I don’t encourage celebration of such days to make sure these celebrations do not eclipse the day that is of paramount importance: the Lord’s Day.

However, one of the youth took the initiative to buy a bouquet of flowers and when I had said the benediction at the end of the service, shot in front of the pulpit with the flowers saying, ‘today is Fathers’ Day. And we would like to honor our pastor who is our spiritual father with these flowers.’ She also announced that an elderly lady in the church will pray for all fathers in the church. It was gross disobedience and violation of rules! However, I accepted it on behalf of all the fathers in the church.

I was busy after the service: Had to meet a lot of people, especially the new-comers. After all the meetings, I left the church in a hurry leaving the flowers in the church. In an hour’s time, some youth in the church turned up at my door with the flowers that I left behind in the church. One of them with a grouchy face said, ‘Uncle, you left the flowers in the church!’ And she trespassed into my house and placed it on the coffee table at the center of my living room. And others looked at me as if they have revenged me for a crime. I apologized and thanked them for bring it to me. Now, there it is on my table.

I stare at it at least three or four times a day since it has been there. When I look at these flowers, I see the younger faces of my congregation and God speaks to me powerfully. I see faces of young people who have come to the city to get an education or job leaving their parents. Most of them came immediately after leaving high school and get to see their parents only once in a year. We try our maximum to get most of them to our home on Sundays for a meal and fellowship. Some of them have lost their fathers when they were young: some were just 12 when their fathers passed away. Some have fathers but they are absentee fathers. Not really interested in their children. They drink, spent all their time at workplaces, or in socializing with their friends and hardly have any time for their children. Some belong to single mothers, their fathers have left them or are no more!

These flowers bother me a lot. They tell me there is quite a big-sized crowd who have installed me at the place that their biological fathers have vacated! I need to fill in that place! Pastor as father is a discomforting responsibility.

A few days before this, I was reading a blogpost where the writer talks about a young lady who was sobbing when her pastor announced that he is moving to another church soon! Why should any young lady sob when the pastor is moving out? Lots of reasons: She is a new believer. He is her first pastor. But most important one is that she had no father. Ever since she came to this church and became a Christ-follower, she has found her lost father in the pastor. For her, it is not a pastor moving out, but it is dad leaving. Does the pastor realize that he will be orphaning many such young ones when he moves out?

The blog and the flowers still torment me in a gentle way. A torment that I am beginning to enjoy and would to live with. The new realization that I have children besides my own biological ones who love me and look up to me as their dad is exhilarating. It also reminds me that there is an awesome responsibility upon me to model a father. That modeling is important because these young lives will learn how to be fathers and even mothers from the way I parent. The flowers are still fresh though they are almost one old week now--thanks to the damp monsoon weather. They may wither one day however, but their message will stay on to challenge and motivate all those who like me are looked upon by others as fathers, in the church, school, workplace... wherever someone need to imagine a father in us.

The "AGAPE" Love

The Bible teaches us that love is a fruit of the Spirit and it has supremacy over the gifts of the Spirit. In fact Saint Paul argues that the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit is useless if devoid of love. Being devoid of love is a state of existence which can be very well described as "being nothing” (1 Cor 13:2) and such lives "gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:3).

The love mentioned in this passage is a entirely different type of love, very different from what we usually mean by it. The Greek word AGAPE is consistently used throughout the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, the greatest poem on love.

It was a common word for love which found a new meaning in the New Testament because of the experience of love that the writers had. Their experience was different from those who lived before their era, before Christ came in to this world to put up a magnifcient show of this special love. The translators of the Old Testament into Greek who lived about 200 years before Christ had many Greek words to choose from to translate the word, "love.” So, they chose as they thought fitting for the context of each occurance in the Hebrew bible. The word AGAPE is used for love only 20 times in the entire Old Testament in Greek though the word love comes more 500 than times! However, the New Testament writers use the word AGAPE 116 times (75 times by Paul alone) though the New Testament is only one third the size of the Old Testament! The resaon for this use is their experience of God’s love through his Son, Jesus Christ which the Hellenistic Jews missed.

This love is not a convenient love or a congenial love but a love for the most unlovable. Most of the time we love whom it is convenient to love. Inconvenience hinders such love. Haven’t you seen people break up when one of the lovers change universities or move away from the other. The distance and new circumstances becomes inconveniet for love and love ends there. AGAPE love is is not congenial. Congenial love is the love for the things that we like or for those of the same kind. Crows peck away the alien birds who enter their tree because they cannot love birds of other kind. Their love is congenial. Human beings also have the same mentality. It is easy to love people of our family, our country, of our skin colour and the like. Though, we may not hate people who are different from others, loving them demands effort.

However, the love that God displayed through his son is qualitatively quiet different from this. It is the love for the most unlovable, when they were most unlovable. In Romans 5:8 we see the nature of this love: "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” First of all Christ loved for the sinners whom God really doesn’t like at all. The Bible says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18). However, God is willing to love us though we donot deserve his love. The New Testament writers reserved this word for that sort of love. Secondly, God loved us with his AGAPE love when we did not deserve us. God’s love for the sinners was not after their conversion to God’s children. He loves them even before that, when they "were still sinners.” Thank God that he did not say, "if you stop sinning I will try to love you.”

John, who is known as the Apostle of Love says that God was so liberal in loving us, his love was unlimited. He uses the word "lavish” to express the manner of God’s love! "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1 NIV). The most unworthy of all are the ones who are loved by this type of love.

Moreover, this love is transformative. It transforms the persons who are loved so that they look at the world and all around them with AGAPE love. This transformative power is expressed in 1 John. "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.” (1 John 3:14 ESV). "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16 ESV).

The reason for the AGAPE love is not in the object of love, but proceeds from the character of the lover. God is able to love us with the AGAPE love because he is love. We cannot love others with AGAPE love unless we are transformed by this love. That love transforms our world-views, the quality of service, and all that we do and think. That is why this love has the supremacy over all the magnificent gifts of the Spirit and display of spiritual power.