Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The Love Debt






Day 4

The Love Debt

On January 10 2010, on my first morning in the Dominican Republic, God began to teach me about love.  I had been reading through the Bible and that morning’s reading happened to be in Romans 13.  In verse 8 it says, “Owe nothing to anyone except for your obligation to love one another.”  I had often heard this verse (at least the first part of it) used in messages about finances.  “Don’t borrow money!”  But that morning in the D.R. I felt as if God was telling me to take a closer look.  The context here is about our relationships with each other and not about finances.  Ever since then, I have been exploring what it means to have a love debt.  As it turns out, I didn’t really understand love very well at all then.  Since then, God has “spoken” to me over and over about love through my scripture reading, other reading, conversations with other Christians, sermons and life experiences.  I feel as if I’m still learning about love but here are a few things I’ve wrestled with so far.
Love is a Debt (Romans 13:8)
How does that fact change the way I relate to others?  When I give someone a gift I might have expectations of gratitude but what about when I pay my bills?  Do I expect to be thanked when I pay what I owe?
Love is Undeserved (Romans 5:8)
The English language is weak in that we only have the one word “love” to describe so many different things.  In Greek, there are at least 4 words that we translate simply as “love”.  There is affectionate love, erotic love, brotherly love and the highest form of love (the way God loves each of us), agape love.  Think of someone you love.  Now ask yourself WHY you love them.  If some endearing quality of that person comes to mind then it wasn’t agape love that you were thinking about.  The different kinds of love are all jumbled together in our minds (at least in mine).  The lesser loves can be very strong and very good.  It’s normal to have more than one kind of love for the same person.  That’s OK- unless we mistake the lesser loves for agape love.  God loved us (and continues to love us) when we are completely unlovable.  That’s the gospel.  We don’t like to be loved as the unlovable.  Sometimes we do things to try to earn God’s love, to pay him back for his love (as if we could).  That’s anti-gospel.
Love is the Opposite of Selfishness
Most people think of love as a continuum with agape (perfect) love at one extreme, no feelings in the middle and hate at the opposite extreme.  I propose that it’s selfishness, not hate that is the exact opposite of love.  One of the ways that people are created in God’s image is that we are all “lovers”, each and every one of us.  God did not create us because he was lonely.  For the eternity before creation, God existed in a perfect relationship of love between His three persons- the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  We were created to share in that love.  The problem is that our love has been warped, perverted, turned in upon itself because of sin.  The love that we receive from God was meant to be reflected back to God and to everyone around us.  Instead we crave love from everyone else while selfishly loving ourselves.  The solution is not to somehow add love but rather to cooperate with God as he transforms our hearts and in so doing, “fixes” our broken love.  Can you think of any sin that a person can commit that’s NOT rooted in selfishness?  I can’t.
Love Requires Action and Sacrificial Giving (1 John 3:18, John 3:16, 1 John 3:16 and 17)
Agape love is NOT a feeling!  I used to think that a message about love was the church-equivalent of a “chick-flick”.  Guys, you know what I’m talking about.  It’s a boring movie with no action, lots of long scenes of dialogue and just before you nod off, you look over at your wife and she’s crying.  That comes from a misunderstanding of what love is.  An example of a real love movie would be Last of the Mohicans where Major Duncan Heyward loves Cora so much that he gives himself up to be tortured to death, knowing that it means that his rival Hawkeye would get Cora.  Another good love movie is Forrest Gump where Forrest risks his life over and over, going back into the combat zone trying to save his friend, Bubba.  Re-read 1 John 3:16-18.  Think about it.
Love is Impossible without the Holy Spirit
Galatians 5:22  Love is first in the fruit of the Spirit.  1 John 4:7-8  Love comes from God because God IS love.  Notice it doesn’t say God is loving as if that was just another part of a description of God.  What does it mean to you that God IS love?
Love is not just the icing on the Christian cake- It IS the cake.
What did Jesus say would mark us as being his followers?  It wasn’t our strong faith or living lives free of sin (although those are important) but rather it was that we would love each other.  “All men will know you are my disciples if you love one another.” John 13:34
Love is what keeps the church body healthy and growing.  “Do EVERYTHING with love.” 1 Cor. 16:14  “Let love be your HIGHEST goal” 1 Cor. 14:1 (emphasis mine, of course)

In what ways has your thinking about love grown so far this week? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


How might life be different for you if you really believed and lived secure in God’s love?
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Prayer: Reflecting specifically on this devotional, write out a prayer to God. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________












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