Authentic Christianity #9: What is Love?

What is love, really? In this message from 1 John 3:16–24, we explore the biblical definition of love and discover that love is far more than a feeling or emotion. According to Scripture, love is sacrificial action. Looking to the cross of Jesus Christ as the ultimate example, this sermon challenges us to move beyond words and affection toward selfless service that benefits others, even when it costs us something. We’ll also examine how acts of sacrificial love provide assurance of our faith and confidence in our relationship with God. If you've ever wondered what authentic Christian love looks like in everyday life, this episode offers a practical and powerful answer. 

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If you hear a word all the time, everyone knows what it means. Well, this morning I'd like to just think about one of those words. And the word is love. It's really everywhere. It's in all of our media. It's all throughout the Bible. It's an important word, to know what it means. And wouldn't we just assume that everyone just automatically would know what the word love means? Well, what, what is love? And why is it important for us to know what love is? Is it like, I'll date myself here, or is it like the movie Love Story where it says, love is never having to say you're sorry? Or, I could argue, perhaps that love is having to say you're sorry. Is love something that is, in the air? Is love all that we need? What is love? Is love something that is in my heart? Does it have a location? What is it? And where is it? If I were to ask, your average materialistic scientist to define love for me if they were consistent with their, worldview, they would have to tell me that there is no such thing as love. Or if there was such a thing as love, it would be just, just electrochemical reactions occurring in the brain. So, what is love? Well, whatever it is, our understanding of it is vital if we are going to, understand the book that we've been studying, for the last several weeks. First, John, we need to really understand what this word love means from a biblical perspective. If we're going to make sense of what John has been teaching us. Last week we saw that, the command to love our brothers was the opposite of sin, opposite of doing that, which is of of an offense, the absence of evil. It is what God commands us to do. And it is by which, we know that we are of him if we love our brothers. And it's by which we know that we're not of the devil if we, love. So what is love? Well, today, as we continue in our series entitled Authentic Christianity Reflecting God's Christ's love, we're going to look at what love is. So we're going to see John's definition of love. And we're going to ask the question, you know, how are we affected by loving others? When God tells us to love each other, does he mean, that we will be disobeying him if we don't have fond affections towards each other? If if I have a preference towards one person and I'm not particularly preferential towards another, does that mean that I'm violating God's law because the person I'm not, particularly fond of is also a fellow Christian, a brother, and Christ? Is that mean that I am just obeying him? If that's what it means to love, then I think it wouldn't be something we could do very consistently. I, I don't know about you, but I find preference is sort of a natural occurring thing. It's hard not to, prefer somebody who has a more compatible personality to your own or, our, our sees things or, relates to things that you're interested in, that they're interested in also. But so is it, is it that this love to, to, love one another is a command to have an affection towards everybody? Let me let me try to illustrate it this way. If if our love was, based on our inclinations by nature, it would be, really hard to to change those inclinations. For example, pet owners, love different kinds of dogs. Right. And isn't it true that the pet owner of certain kinds of dogs don't really like other kinds of dogs? For example, let me show you some pictures of some dogs here. Now, maybe not all of you are dog lovers, but if you are a dog lover, you'll know that you don't love all kinds of dogs. You love particular kinds of dogs. For example, among dog lovers, some people love this kind of furry little tiny dog. Others might love, this kind of dog, you know, poodle here. And the two probably wouldn't necessarily be fond of the other as much as the kind that they really love. Or, some people love these laboratory retrievers and, you know, would have a fondness towards those and wouldn't have a particular inclination towards the other two. And then there's, some who love, pit bulls. And, you see more and more of these around. And I would kind of doubt that most pit ball lovers would love the little furry things. If the point I'm trying to make here is if if what the Bible means by love is, having, kind of a natural inclination or a fond affection towards something, then, it is pretty hard to, fulfill a command to love all of our brothers. But, that's not what the Bible means by love. And, today we're going to look at what the Bible means by love. What is the biblical definition of love? And further, how are we all affected? By obeying God's command to love each other. So this morning's, message is entitled, what is love? And we'll be looking at John first John chapter three, verses 16 through 24. Heavenly father, Lord, we just come before you this morning and we ask God that you would, really give us a vision for, what it means to love each other and give us a desire to fulfill your call and to see how, loving each other in a biblical way puts us in a state of trust and confidence. That's that's beyond our understanding. Lord, we pray, father, that you would, illuminate our eyes to your words as we're covering something so, familiar and so much of our review. But yet, Lord, I pray that we see it with new eyes as well, that we see, father, what it means to love. In Christ name we pray. Amen. First John chapter three, verses 16 through 24, beginning at verse 16, it says this. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words our tongue, but with actions and in truth. This, then, is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is the command to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us. We know it by the spirit he gave us. So the ultimate definition of agape love, our biblical love is not emotional. It's moral and it's ethical. It's, it's a it is ultimately defined by the cross itself, by the death of Jesus Christ as our atoning sacrifice. And so this morning, our theme is this that love is sacrifice. I don't think I've ever read that in any of the romantic novels. Not that I read romantic novels are seeing it in any of the, you know, romantic films or any of our media. I've never seen this sentence any in any other context in the Bible, love is sacrifice. Love is sacrifice. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the love. Verse 16. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. Love is sacrificial giving. It is giving in a way that benefits, somebody else. And it is giving in a way that cost the one who is giving. Biblical love is love that, can be given even to our enemies. You can act sacrificially if you're an ethical person in such a way to love a neighbor. If you define love as, giving of yourself and such a way to benefit another person, you don't have to like the person that you're loving. If that's the definition of love. You can be, an ethical benefit, a virtuous benefit to even those that you don't have a preference towards. Biblical love. Can be applied to everybody. You cannot have. At least I cannot. Maybe you can. I cannot have a fondness or a fond affection towards people that I would, consider. Not my friends or even my enemies. But I can act maliciously in a way that might benefit them or does benefit them. The kind of love we are commanded to have for each other. Isn't, love that is based in feelings? It's not something that's in the air. It's something that's in our will. It's in our hands and it's in our feet. It's not necessarily in our heart. Love is an act, a sacrificial act, whether small or great. It is, an act of benefit towards the object of our love. Now there's a story told. I'm not sure it's a true story. I've heard it told us a true story. So since I haven't, investigated it to the degree to which I would know it to be true, I'll just tell it as a story. A story told of a, of of an operator of a drawbridge along the Mississippi River. That the drawbridge was a railroad, track that where the bridge would open up when the ships had to go underneath and it would closed down when the railroad and when the trains would travel over it. And one day, this drawbridge operator, was operating the bridge, and he had brought his son to work. And, in the long hours of the day, his son started exploring, the mechanisms of the bridge. And, the operator lost track of where his son was. The bridge was in the up position to let some ships come through, and all of a sudden, a train was coming. The signal occurred that he needed to drop the drawbridge. He couldn't find his son. And as he was about to throw the lever of the drawbridge, switched, to to let the, bridge down. He looked down and he saw his son. And the mechanism of the drawbridge. And he had a choice. He could let the bridge remain in the upward position, and everyone on the train would die because, the bridge would the train. The train would crash into the, bridge that was in the upright position. Or he could, lose his son and the mechanisms of the bridge and lower the bridge, which he chose to do. His son perished in his choice. The train drove over the bridge, and he saw the faces of the people on the bridge. I mean, on the train. Anonymous people, all whose lives were spared because of his sacrifice, none of whom knew what was going on. And, that would be an example of love without feelings. He had no, he had no connection with any of those people. Yet he sacrificed the ultimate sacrifice for their sake. And that would be, the same kind of love, definition of love, of what Jesus did on the cross. Do we think of love in terms of how our actions, our how the object of our love benefits us? Or do we think of love in terms of how we benefit the object of our loves, our of our love? Take the word I love you. If you were to take the phrase I love you and you were to substitute the word, the word sacrificial giving for the word love in either the phrase I love you or I don't love you anymore. Think about how that sentence change changes in the phrase I love you. It would be I want to give myself to you sacrificially and in the phrase I don't love you anymore. It would be, I don't want to give myself sacrificially to you anymore. Doesn't that kind of change the meaning of what it is that we normally hear? When we hear, especially the words I don't love you anymore. I don't love you anymore. I don't want to be sacrificial anymore. Sort of changes the tone of that biblical love has to do with what we're willing to do and what we're not willing to do. For another, it does not have to do with what others are willing to do or are not willing to do towards us. Last week, when we looked at verse 11, which is this this is the message you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another. That means if we were to put the biblical definition into this, verse, it means that you should want to give yourselves sacrificially to each other. Love is sacrificial. Giving. Again, the theme this morning is that, love is sacrifice. And point number one is this because Christ sacrificed for us, we ought to sacrifice for others. Verses 16 through 18. This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid his, laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? What Christ did and what Christ is doing for us is what is what we are called to, emulate and be an example for how we respond to others. He is our example of what love is. Now, I want you to think about this for a second. If you were to imagine that you were in the Garden of Gethsemane and you were watching the struggle that Christ was going through, the very act of the greatest act of love ever, where he was in this wrestling match with himself in the garden, and he's realizing the magnitude of what's about to occur that he's going to be receiving unto himself what is the cup of God's wrath for all of the sins of humanity? And he he calls out to God, and he says, God, if there's any way that this cup could pass from me, could you do it? But not my will. But your will be done. Now, when you think about that moment of such magnificent sacrifice, the willingness to have the wrath of God be placed on him as a substitute, as an atonement for humanity. I doubt if he was thinking how fond he was of us. I doubt that it was going through his mind. Aren't those people cute? I'd love to cuddle with them. I don't think fondness or affection was really at the heart of his love. His the heroic was at the heart of his love. The idea of taking on the burden. For others, the heroic nature of love was seen there in the heroic nature of love, is not one of an affection. When a hero dives into the cold water to save a total stranger, it's not based out of affection. It's a whole different idea. The kind of love that a hero does, in the kind of love that Christ did for us is a love is a, a love, an action. It's a volition. It's an act of the will. I don't think the cross is, you know, easily fits into into, into a sweet little, love is in the air kind of definition of love. The idea, you know, that love is just, kind fondness really trivializes the magnitude of Christ's heroism for us. What made the cross the ultimate expression of love is what it cost him. Hero's love is measured by its sacrifice. And Christ gave his all for us. That's what love is. And that's what God commands us to do for each other. To be giving towards each other. If we love each other, we will help each other when we can. The way, John puts it in verse 17, is this, maybe it's verse 18. Dear children, let us not love with words our tongue, but with actions and in truth, our love towards each other is not in words. There are and actions. Years ago, there was a family who, was in need of some furniture, and they were without the resources to buy the furniture that they needed. And Marty and I had some used furniture we weren't using anymore. So we passed that used furniture on to this family that was in need of furniture didn't cost as much. It didn't cost us anything, really. But we gave the furniture to them, and and they had it for a time. And, a couple of years later, they, bought a new dining room set and the dining room set that we had given them was still in really good shape. And the fella that I gave it to start it in his garage and, I knew it was in his garage and, and, another family was in need of furniture. And I went over to him and I asked him, hey, you think you could pass on that dining room set to this? This other family that's in need and, he said, no. And when he said no, I thought, well, it's his. He can do what he wants with it. It was legitimately his. He didn't have to pass it on. But I couldn't help thinking to myself, you know, you ought to, And I suppose I could have twisted his arm and and, shamed him into it, but that wasn't anything anyway. But it was an illustration to me of what it was real. And, you know, we we live under God's observation of us. And he sees all that he has given to us. The magnitude of the generosity of what he has poured out upon us. It seems like, the generosity that, was received should promote generosity in return. And that's, I think, how we know that we're being affected by God's love is God's love is in us. And we actually want to, be sacrificial because of the sacrifice that we have received if we don't even want to help when it costs us nothing. How much less will we want to help if it costs us something? The proof of love is not in our words. It's not in the air. It's in our actions. It's in our hands. It's in our feet. It's in our will. It's in the desire to act in ways that benefit other people, when it even costs us to do so. You know, there's verse 17, if anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Is the way John asks the question again, the theme this morning is love is sacrifice. And point number one is because Christ sacrificed for us. We ought to sacrifice for others. And point number two is acts of love. Bring assurance to our heart. Acts of love have a powerful impact or effect on us. When we love in this sacrificial way, we are great beneficiaries ourselves. Verses 18 through 24. Dear children, let us not love with words our tongue, but with actions and in truth. This, then, is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence. Whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything. Dear children, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is the. This is his command to believe in the in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey this command live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us, and we know it by the spirit. He gave us whenever we love, out of God's example of sacrificial love, whenever we selflessly spend ourselves and benefit to others, we set our own hearts at rest. According to this passage, it gives us the assurance that we are in the truth and we belong to the truth. It says in verse 19, again, what does it say in verse 19? It says, this then, is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence. We set our hearts at rest in his presence. And we have confidence that we belong to the truth. When we love, sacrificially, there's something that's in us that goes, oh, I know that didn't come from me. I must belong to God. That isn't, my nature to just give without expectation of something in return. So, I must be part of the truth. My heart must belong to God. There's evidence of it. I am loving sacrificially, and it puts my heart at rest. Years ago, when we were over on 45th Street in Sierra Way, and that in our old building over there, there was an apartment complex that was right next to the building. And the manager of the apartment complex had this teenage kid that that, was, a real rambunctious kid. And, he was always up on our roof because the wall at the back of our building was very easy to climb up on. And from there, you could climb up onto our roof. And the problem with him on our roof was that we had these old cement tiles that when he would run on them, some of them would crack and you wouldn't know which ones were cracked until it rained, and then when the damage would occur, when it rained, and then you'd find out what tiles you needed to replace. And so I was constantly struggling with this manager to try to keep her son off of my roof. Well, one day she called and, she was all upset. She was, in great distress on the telephone and just as I answered the telephone, I heard somebody up on the roof, which at the time I presumed was probably her son. Anyway, she was in great distress because her mother, who was in terminal stages of cancer, was at Loma Linda Hospital who had just had a stomach aneurysm blow up. The doctors weren't going to operate on her because she was in the late stages of terminal cancer. They were just going to let her pass away. And, she wanted me to go to the hospital and share Christ with this woman who I'd never met, and pray for her and pray for healing. I don't know if I've ever received a ministry request that I least wanted to comply to. I Unenthusiastically went to Loma Linda Hospital, found the ladies room and ICU, went in and gave the most unenthusiastic presentation of the gospel I think I have ever given the lady praise to receive Christ. So I'm a little more encouraged. I pray for her stomach aneurysm and go home. The next day I receive a call from the manager. She's all excited. The doctors don't know why they're amazed, but her mother's stomach aneurysm had healed, and she's able to come home and spend the last months of her life with them. There. After that, I had very little contact with them. They didn't come to church, except for when I was trying to keep her son off the roof. I, I didn't ever really have any contact with him. But what it did to me was interesting because, I knew how much I didn't want to do that. And yet I was compelled, felt compelled to do that. And it made me realize I'm part of God and I belong to God. I wouldn't have done it otherwise. I'm not a person that you can shame into anything. There's no explanation other than there must be the love of Christ working through me. Because, I don't do that stuff out of guilt or anything, so there must be some explanation of why I didn't say no to her and why I was willing to do that. It gave me a confidence that Christ was in me. It made me realize what team I belong to. Like when I was in high school playing basketball, I never question what team I was a part of, because in every single play and every single game, whether I did well or did poorly, I always was trying to do my best for our team. I would what what if, I would have been standing there and was nonchalant about catching the ball when it came to me? Oh yeah, I could catch it if I wanted to, or when I'm squaring up for a shot. And I thought, well, I don't really care whether I make it or not. If I would have had that attitude, I would have had to question, do I really belong to this team? But every game, in every circumstance, whether I did well or whether I did poorly, I always wanted to do my best. And because of that, I knew I was part of that team because I always wanted to help the team win. I would start to wonder what I belonged to if I started not caring what team won. And I think in the same way as if we're playing, you know, in this game of life, I mean, it's kind of trivial to call it a game if we're if we're functioning in life and we want to know who we belong to, we could ask ourselves what we care about. If we care about the things Christ cared about, which is, at the heart, sacrificial love. And if everything that we seek to do promotes that vision of God and that glory of God through our actions, whether small or great, we, put our hearts at rest and we know which team we are on. We know who we belong to again this morning. Love is sacrifice. Point number one is because Christ sacrificed for us. We ought to sacrifice for others. And point number two is acts of love. Bring brings assurance to our hearts. I'd like to conclude this morning with the words of Christ in the Gospel of John. Chapter 13, I'll be reading from verses 13 to 17 and verses 34 through 35. John chapter 1330 13 through 17 reads. You call me teacher and Lord, and are right, and rightly so, for that is what I am now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. And verse 34 through 35 says this A new command I give you love one another, as I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples. If you love one another. Heavenly father, Lord, we just come before you. And Lord, we recognize that, sacrifice is not, a fond, emotion. It's a decision of the will. And I pray father, that this day that each of us would decide to give ourselves and benefit to our families, to those around us, and to our church body. Lord, can we we pray this morning, father, that you would cause, us to desire to follow your example and gain the assurance that we belong to the truth. Give us a heroes heart, Lord. May we be given the love that comes from above. Lord, there's nothing in my nature that wants to be selfless. But when I see evidence of it. Lord, I know that you're working in me. And I have an assurance of your, love, residing in my heart. And we open our hearts to you and ask father for you to live in us, for your spirit to be in us, and that we would, rest in the knowledge of our being part of your family, being, one with you, seeking to, glorify you through being like you. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.