The Love of God Part Four: Love Came Down....

I have been looking at the beginning of Luke's gospel and struck by the fact that Jesus birth was announced by kings and angelic beings yet He is born in the backwater, ordinary manger of all places. Why not on an impressive throne in a palace? Wouldn't that be a more suitable place for the King of the World? He deliberately came to relate to shepherds and kings. He does not distinguish with whom He comes too. He is power and humility personified in one. I am learning more of the breadth of His glory manifest on the cross this season. JESUS died not just for our sin but all our suffering too. I am reading the "Grace Outpouring" which describes a visitation of a woman to Ffald-y-brenin retreat centre who had been abused by a religious man. As she stood before the wooden cross at the retreat centre she started hitting it and sobbing and yelling at God. Then she felt God speak to her and  say that just as the staked wooden cross is immovable so is His love. He said to her, "you cannot move it, because its immovable. My love for you is immovable. I have been with you through your pain and through the abuse and I hate what you have been through. I am not for the abuse: I am for you. I am standing here so that you can pour out your anger, pain, hurt, and frustration onto me. I will carry it on the cross. My cross is immovable, just as my love is immovable. When you have poured all your anger and hatred on me I will just say to you that I love you." A similar experience is told of a man who comes to the retreat centre and stands before the wooden symbol and weeps out all his grief and anger for a wife he had tragically lost to cancer. Like the range of emotions expressed by Job and the Psalmist, Jesus can take any emotion and pain and pour out His love to heal. He loves like no other. Be real with Him and ask Him to show you more of the love He manifest to you by coming in His son to earth as a baby and dying on a cross for You (quote from the Grace Outpouring by Godwin and Roberts" 2008.)

The love of God Part Three: Agape

The word "agapao" or "agape" describes the Greek word for the love of God in the Bible. Passages that use this word - Rev 3:19, John 16v27, John 19:19, John 20:2. Agape love is self giving, it is not a love of the worthy, and it is not a love that desires to possess. On the contrary, it is a love given quite irrespective of merit, and it is a love that seeks to give (Romans 5:10, 5:8, 4:10, Matt 5:44-45). What is the difference between this love and other loves? In the Bible there are other Greek words that use love - "Philia" (deep friendship love e.g. 1 Sam 18:1fff). Also related to this word are "Philadelphia" (brotherly love/love of the Brethren). Eros love (love of the attractive/sexual love) is not used for the Church in the Bible as its is described as a possessive and sexual love. Agape love is most effective in the believer when it underlies all other loves; storge, philia and eros. Without agape being our baseline, other loves cannot be made perfect in a individuals life. They may very well act on their own but can serve as bad masters. For example a sexual relationship which is selfish and only desires to please itself will not bring lasting joy in a marriage. A friendship that is purely for one's own benefit will not last and one will end up friendless. Real relationships which are selfless and not just one way will stand the test of time. They will put up with all sorts of things that come their way. I am blessed with such real friends that stick through thick and thin because of this love. Oh how we need to understand the agape love of God that perseveres through hardship in relationships of all kinds, which sees below the external and right to the heart, that loves the unlovely, the hurting, the sick and our enemies as much as we love those who are easy to love.

I am reading 1 Corin 13 nearly every day in the VOICE Bible translation (2012) at the moment until I absorb it in its entirety.The first three verses say this (and which we will come back to in this series in more detail):

1 Corinthians 13v1-3
"What if I speak in the most elegant languages of people or in the exotic languages of the heavenly messengers, but I live without love? Well then, anything I say is like the clanging of brass or a crashing cymbal. What if I have the gift of prophecy, am blessed with knowledge and insight to all the mysteries, or what if my faith is strong enough to scoop a mountain from its bedrock, yet I live without love? If so I am nothing. I could give all that I have to feed the poor, I could surrender my body to be burned as a martyr, but if I do not live in love, I gain nothing by my selfless acts."

The key here is the motive i.e. "selfless acts". You can, believe it not, have all the gifts of the spirit, give all you have to the poor yet not understand this love. In this day and age we love pictures, words of knowledge and prophecy, we like quick fixes. I am guilty of this. But these are not the heart of the gospel unless they are motivated by a selfless love. According to the Bible these things will not last. Someone with an great  motivation of immense love for all those around them will do great things for the Kingdom. This is why I believe many unlikely heroes will be in heaven, heroes that have never entered the public pulpit, but in their small quiet way they will be great heroes in the kingdom.In Matthew 10:16 it says "the first will be last and the last will be first." If you have only the capacity to love the one in front of you and don't have a great ministry title, that's OK in the Kingdom of God in fact that is the basis of all that we do. How I want to know this Jesus.