I’m going to begin this morning by reading a few verses from different books in the Bible, and I wonder if anyone can work out what they have in common?
Matthew:
“As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.
Mark:
“These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter)
Acts:
“By faith in the name on Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus’ name and the faith that comes through him that has completely healed him. As you can all see.
Any ideas?
I’ll read one more, that might give you a clue, from John’s gospel:
“For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Any ideas? They are all Chapter 3 v 16 of those respective books. John 3:16 is, perhaps, the most widely referenced verse in the Bible, but some of the other 3:16’s are just as important, and the one that we had in our reading from John’s first letter is one of the other “3.16s” that seems to me to be one of those.
“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
Although the hot cross buns and chocolate eggs have disappeared from the supermarket shelves we are still, in the church’s calendar, in Easter season. It will be Easter until we celebrate Jesus’ ascension in a couple of weeks.
As we are in Easter season, we continue to reflect on the meaning of the events of that first Easter, and their implications for our lives.
One of the most important questions that we face as human beings is, “what is love?”. We instinctively know that it’s important, it is one of the driving forces of our lives. A lack of love can stunt and reduce our lives. A wrong understanding of love can damage us and those around us. But a right understanding of love causes us to blossom and to flourish, like the right amount of spring rain and summer sun.
It’s such an important concept that many languages have more than one word to describe the different shades of emotion and feeling that we, in English, lump together in that single word, “love”.
The language that the New Testament was written in had four key words for love.
Eros: passionate, romantic, and sexual love
Philia: affectionate, friendly, and brotherly love
Storge: natural, familial, and protective love
Agape: unconditional, selfless, and divine love
Each of these aspects of love is a gift from God that can bring joy and flourishing into our lives as they are given and received freely. The first three of these can also, however, become toxic if it becomes focussed on our own need. For instance, the love a parent has for a child – storge – when filled with grace and the desire for the child to become their own person is beautiful, but if a parent becomes controlling rather than protective, because they see their child as an extension of themselves, and their “love” for their child becomes more about their own need than the child’s good, then it becomes unhealthy for both.
If you’re interested in reading more about this then CS Lewis’ classic called, appropriately, “The Four Loves” is very helpful.
The fourth love- Agape is immune from this as it is, by definition, selfless and unconditional. In fact, there is a sense in which we could say that without a foundation of “agape” then the other three, and any other kind of “love” that you might describe isn’t actually love.
This principle is laid out for us in 1 John 3:16:
“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
It won’t surprise you to hear that this love is “agape”. This is how we know what true, self-giving love looks like. To get the truest understanding of love we look at Jesus, and in this Easter season we look at what Jesus did on the cross – he laid down his life for us.
Yesterday I had the privilege of taking a wedding. A friend of the bride and groom had chosen a Bible reading for the couple, and she had chosen to read from Ephesians 3, a passage which included these verses:
“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ.”
And what do you think is the word for love in these verses? It is agape. It was a great reading for a wedding, and I was able to talk about the extent of God’s love for the couple and for all of us. That it is so broad it encompasses all people, that it is so long that it covers our whole lives, from beginning to end, that it is there in our mountain top experiences and in the depths of our valleys. I was also able, with this shape in mind, to point to the cross, and the ultimate expression of Jesus’ love that we find there – him laying down his life for us.
Another reading that we often have at weddings comes from 1 Corinthians 13:
“Love is patient, and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at the wrong, but rejoices in the right.”
What kind of love do you think that Paul is writing about in this letter to the church in Corinth? I’m afraid that there are no prizes for guessing that it is “agape”.
We have not been left without clear direction as to what Godly love, the love that makes all other loves healthy and fruitful looks like. It looks like Jesus in his life and death, self- giving and other preferring.
This is also the love of the Father. What does that other 3:16 say again:
“God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
What flavour of love is this? Yes – it’s agape. And how is it shown – how does God love the world – in this way, by given his only Son. It is a love of giving, and whilst we need to think about it for a minute to see how this is self-giving, I don’t think it takes much more than a minute. How does a parent feel when they send their child off to war? There is self-sacrifice in that, it seems to me.
So, what does this mean for us, today? Three things, perhaps.
Firstly, a fresh appreciation of God’s love for us. We are human beings, and so we love imperfectly. Our experience of other peoples’ love for us might be mixed. Our experience of loving others might carry pain. All of these things can skew our view and experience of God’s love for us. God’s love for us is perfect and complete, with no shadow or shade. It is a gift of grace, freely given. We can’t earn it, we can’t break it. God loves us. It is who God is.
Secondly, it acts as a reminder of our call to love others in the same way. The second half of that verse in John’s letter says, “we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren.” This echoes Jesus’ commands to love our neighbours, to love each other. Sometimes this is hardest in the little things of life. The big, dramatic, acts of love are perhaps more obvious, but the day to day, week to week, decision to prefer others and to give way is more difficult. It’s all very well laying down our lives, but what about the way we prefer to stack the dishwasher? In parallel with this, in all our loves, it is worth asking the question of ourselves – who is this love for, is it for me or for them, in reality?
Thirdly, when we thing about mission we are often encouraged to look for signs of God at work in the world and to join in. I’m sometimes asked how we’re meant to do this. One of my answers is to look for Godly love. Where do we see people loving in a self-sacrificial way that looks like 1 Corinthians? Where we see that, we can honour it, and pray blessing on it, and gently encourage those showing it to meet the One who loves perfectly, if they don’t know Him by name already. For he surely knows their name.
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