Love in Action

Yesterday's blog was on the topic of love as is today's.  I'm not really doing a series on love, I'm just reading in the epistle of 1 John.  If you read through it, you'll find that love is it's dominate theme.  The very fact that it is a dominate theme speaks to its importance and why more than one lesson in a row might be needed.

As I indicated yesterday, we are, as a people, pretty fuzzy on the meaning of love.  We are not even clear on how to identify what it is.  People often say, "I love everyone" and then walk right past someone begging on the street without the slightest interest in helping them.  A spouse will say,"I do love you but I've got to follow my dream."  Jesus said that we are to love our neighbor.  Do we even know our neighbor's name?  Have we ever offered to help them or to even find out if there is a need?

What I'm getting at is this, love is not a feeling that just happens - something we fall into and out of, carried away by the whims of our emotions.  Jesus said, "A new command I give you. Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another" (John 13:34).  Emotions cannot be comanded, we feel what we feel.  Love, therefore, cannot be an emotion.  Like is an emotion.  We can't help but like some people.  We like people who do nice things for us.  We like people who give us a good vibe (whatever that really is).  But we get to choose whom we will love or even if we will love at all.

Come with me to 1 John 3:16-18 and listen to what the apostle of Love, John, has to say.  "This is how wwe know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.  If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?"

According to the word of God, love is not a sappy feeling or a tender notion, love is a concrete action.  Love acts for the good of it's object.  When you love someone, you do for them.  Even when we have to sacrifice our own wants or engage in something we'd rather not, love demands we act in their behalf.  In the words of a 60s tune, "I would do for love what I would not do."

Have you ever sat through a chick flick for your wife?  Have you ever endured Sesame Street for your children?  Have you gone to the deer woods with your husband when roughing it for you means a motel stay without cable?  Have you ever stood up for a friend even when it put you at risk?  Do you get the picture of what love really is?  Love is action, not feeling.  That is how the Lord can command us to love our enemies (cf. Matt 5:44).  We don't have to like them, that may not be possible, but we can love them, seeking their greatest good, even praying for God's blessings upon them.  Jus' Sayn.