Jesus had a way of making difficult things sound easy. He
said,
"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that
despitefully use you, and persecute you…" [Matt. 5:44; KJV
used throughout].
There you have it, my friend. Beautiful words from the Master
that laid upon his followers a responsibility that is difficult to accomplish.
Do you find it easy to love?
As a young believer, I enjoyed the security of knowing that I
had the answers to most questions. I have now grown old enough to realize that
(alas) my answers were either too simplistic or just plain wrong. The
Character of Love is one of the things about which I erred.
You see, I thought that love was easy, that it just happened.
And perhaps there is a sense in which that is true for most of us. We grew up in
good homes, having fathers, mothers and siblings that we loved. In those good
homes, the love of our parents was seldom doubted. But did our love for our
siblings just happen? Did we not learn it because our parents insisted that we
do so, and because our parents first loved us? I’m sure that is so.
However, I have also met believers who were reared in
terribly abusive homes, starved for affection by parents who barely even
tolerated them. Did familial love just happen for them, or do you suppose that
they have had to work hard in order to learn it? I doubt that love came easy for
them. I believe that they must have struggled at it day by day.
I grew up hearing preachers sermonize against sins of the
flesh, and at the time, I supposed that it was right to do so. But I do not
recall hearing even one of them preach a complete sermon on the importance of
love. If they mentioned love at all, it was to support another topic about which
they preached. When that was accomplished, they changed the subject. I wonder
why? Could it be that love is a much weightier subject than they were capable of
teaching? Should not a sermon about love have been warranted at least once
during a preacher’s tenure? Yet at the time it mattered little to me, for love
seemed to be such an easy task. That is how confused I was. So, is love easy?
In recent years I have grown to realize that love, far from
being an easy task, may sometimes present us with the most difficult of trials,
especially when we are injured by someone else’s wrongdoing. In Satan’s great
contest with God over God’s servant Job, Satan said,
"…Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give
for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and flesh,
and he will curse thee to thy face" [Job 2:4, 5].
Satan’s point was that, in order for Job to be truly tested,
his trials had to be personal. It is tragic when someone across town is
murdered; we feel a sense of anger and want the murderer arrested and punished.
But what if it were our beloved son or daughter that was murdered? Would that
not be a personal loss that would change our lives forever? We would know that
in this world, we would never see or hear from our child again. We would be more
than angry; we would be deeply, almost inconsolably, grieved. No doubt that we
would learn to live with our loss, in time, but we would never entirely get over
it. Now tell me, how easy would it be to love the murderer of our child? That is
what we ought to do, is it not? (Read Matt. 5:44 again, thoughtfully.)
Even so, would it be natural for you? Would it be easy? It would not be easy for
me. Do you still believe, my friend, that biblical love is always an easy task?
There are actually several types of love mentioned in the
bible. We are here concerned with love of God and love of our neighbor. Jesus
was concerned with that too. When a lawyer asked him about the greatest
commandment, he responded by quoting from the Law of Moses,
"…‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment’" [Matt. 22:37, 38; Deut. 6:5].
"Love" is translated from the Greek word AGAPAO,
about which W. E. Vine wrote,
"Christian love has God for its primary object, and
expresses itself first of all in implicit obedience to His commandments…
Self-will, that is, self-pleasing, is the negation of love to God"
(Expository Dictionary Of New Testament Words, by W.E. Vine, Vol. III,
Lo-Ser, pg 21.)
The Love of God is first, not in the sense that God had given
no commandments before He commanded it, but rather in the sense that it was the
most preeminent commandment, the most important one, that God had given. Deny
that measure of love of God, and few would follow His other commandments. The
first duty of God’s people throughout biblical history, then, was to love God to
that degree, with their entire being. Do you suppose that it is any different
for believers today?
In the text above, Jesus also said that the command to love
God was great. Why? "Great" was translated from the Greek word
MEGAS, from which, I suppose, we derive the English word mega.
It primarily refers to mass and weight, but in usage it took on more subtle
shades of meaning. Here, I believe, Jesus used the word to refer to the
excellence of the command to love God with all of one’s heart, soul and
mind. That meaning supports the demeanor of Jesus as he called his people to
repentance. And his words add substance to what Solomon, in concluding his book
Ecclesiastes, had written hundreds of years before him.
"…Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this (is) the
whole (duty) of man" [Ecc. 12:13].
When we omit the words that are in parentheses above, which
are not found in the original text, but were supplied by the translators,
we gain a better sense of Solomon’s meaning. Fearing (reverencing) God and
keeping His commands are the whole of man.
If love of God requires the whole of a man, body, mind and
soul, do you still think that it is easy? At the very least, it is certain that
people should love God to the fullest extent possible, but could it be that some
believers are better at loving Him than others? How should we treat believers
who are not as good at loving Him as we are? Or, how should we treat believers
who are better at loving God than we are? Herein we must find room for less
judgment and more tolerance.
In answering the lawyer’s question about the greatest
commandment, Jesus also spoke of the second greatest commandment. He said,
"And the second (is) like unto it, Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself" [Matt. 22:39; Lev. 19:18].
Jesus said that the second greatest commandment is to
"…love thy neighbor as thyself." Is that not just as true for believers
today as it was for the Jews whom Jesus taught? Would we show our love for God?
Then we must show it in our love for our neighbor. Would we serve God? Then we
must do so in service to our neighbor. Jesus’ words are not difficult to grasp;
but are they easy to obey?
It is no small wonder, then, that in Luke’s gospel, the
lawyer asked a follow-up question:
"But (the lawyer), willing to justify himself, said unto
Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor’" [Luke 10:29]?
In answer to his question, Jesus told the lawyer about the
man who had been beaten by thieves, and left nearly dead on the Jericho road. A
priest and a Levite, revered as holy men by the Jews, when they had seen the
man’s condition, passed him by without giving aid. But then a Samaritan,
regarded by the Jews as both unclean and unholy, saw the man, treated his wounds
and took him to an inn to recuperate, paying the man’s expenses to stay there.
Even the lawyer understood that the despised Samaritan was the neighbor of the
man who fell among thieves (Luke 10:36, 37). Can we not realize that our
neighbor is our fellowman, particularly if he/she is in need?
Many people lack a clear concept of God as Spirit (John
4:24). Instead, they visualize God as a grandfatherly character who lives
somewhere in the clouds overhead. He is no more real to them than, perhaps, a
beloved family member who has already departed this life. Consequently it seems
easy to love Him and nearly everyone claims to do so. But love is proven by
actions, and the only way that a "new testament" believer could display
his/her love of God, was to display it toward his/her brother (neighbor). The
apostle John, sometimes called the apostle of love, said it this way,
"If a man say, ‘I love God,’ and hateth his brother, he
is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he
love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That
he who loveth God love his brother also" [John 4:20, 21].
John wrote during the time preceding the A.D. 70 destruction
(by the Romans) of Jerusalem and the temple worship, a time described in both
the "old" and "new testaments" as "the last days." During
that time, the Christians, particularly the Jewish Christians, were persecuted
and treated harshly by the unrepentant Jews, their brethren. John taught them
not to hate their brothers, but to love them instead. Do you suppose it would
have been easy to love them, the men who had, perhaps, murdered their relatives?
I think not.
Perhaps the Jews had failed to realize, as Paul told the
Roman Christians, that love was the fulfilling of the law,
"Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he
that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit
adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear
false witness, thou shalt not covet; and if (there be) any other
commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore
love (is) the fulfilling of the law" [Rom. 13:8-10].
Since loving their neighbors was commanded for Christians two
thousand years ago, is it not also expected of believers today? I suggest to you
that it is.
Yes, love may sometimes present believers with a great
challenge, but it is one that they can accept and surmount. Perhaps it would
help to think of love, not as a warm emotion of the heart—which may sometimes be
very difficult to maintain—but as a verb, which, under the best of
circumstances, it is. A verb denotes action, does it not? When people say, "I
love God," unless their service is obvious in their ministry to others, I am
left wondering how they demonstrate that love. They cannot take Him out for a
movie or a pizza. They cannot go fishing with Him. They cannot even see God, not
in person, but they can see their neighbor whom God has created. Are they, are
we—am I—doing anything to serve a neighbor, particularly a needy one?
But the paragraph above, perhaps, does not present a real
trial to believers. At various times, many of them have been needy and others
provided for their needs. Because of that, they/we gain great satisfaction from
helping the poor. But how do we treat the backbiters and gossips? Do we love
them? Do we love those who have lied about us and ruined our reputations? Have
we forgiven those who have so unsettled our lives that we may not ever recover?
How do we treat those who disagree with us about doctrinal issues? Do we
continually love them, or do we refuse to fellowship them?
Admittedly, it is not easy to love someone who has wounded us
personally, but it can be done. As Jesus said about a certain demon that his
disciples could not cast out, "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer
and fasting," and he cast out the evil spirit for them [Matt. 17:21].
When we take our injuries to God in prayer, pleading for his help, will He not
teach us, in time, to forgive our brother and love him again? I know that He
will, for He has done so for me.
Come to think of it, with God’s help, even a difficult
commandment like love becomes easy. For with Him, "all things are possible"
[Matt. 19:26].