042. Unconditional Love

Unconditional love is the title of the message today.

Last week I had five minutes to spare so visited an op-shop and invested two dollars on a fairy-tale DVD.  I’m not big on fairy stories but the one that caught my attention was Beauty and the Beast.  The introductory statement to Beauty and the Beast was this – “Truly loving involves looking for the beauty inside a person, and that being loved, can make you beautiful.” 

A little sign at the butterfly house has these words on it, “How it improves people when you begin to love them.”

G. K. Chesterton was one of the first people to notice that fairytales are not just for children.  The best fairytales teach us how to live as grown-ups. They praise the courageous and scorn the villains. Some of them teach us a lot of profound life lessons. Chesterton's favorite was Beauty and the Beast. And he said, among the many lessons that Beauty and the Beast teaches, this one is foremost: that…

pp        “Unlovely things must be deeply loved before they become loveable” 

 This is what Paul writes in Romans 5:8,10. 

pp     Romans 5:8,10   “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." …..

Then verse 10 goes on to say ….

“When we were God's enemies, we were reconciled (or made in harmony) with Him (that’s God), through the death of His Son (Jesus).”

Unlovely things must be deeply loved before they become loveable.   If you and I take our spirituality and somehow severe it from this crowning virtue of love, our spirituality becomes ugly.   John says in …. 

pp    1 John 4:19

 "We love Him because He first loved us." 

Friends if we’ve accepted Jesus as our Saviour, we know we've passed from death to life, we know we've made that enormous leap, we know we've actually crossed over.   But we’ve got to love each other.  We’ve got to love those close to us, and those not so close to us.  

In the famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, Paul talks about putting on love over every other virtue that you can have—like a robe that wraps around you, put on love.

In 1 Peter 4:8, Peter says….

pp    "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." 

He says love is the crowning virtue.

 pp       Agape love is unconditional love.

The word that Peter uses for love is agape, a word the New Testament writers made famous. It wasn't really used and didn't even have a particularly positive connotation until the biblical writers got a hold of it and used it to describe the love of God and the love we're to show to God and others, as we grow in our knowledge and experience of God. Often, agape has been described as unconditional love—love that is without conditions, love that is not earned, love that we don’t deserve and did not see coming.  It is unexpected. It is unannounced. It is unmerited. It just comes to you. 

 When you think about it, most love that operates in the human realm is conditional. It's an if/then. If you love me back or if you do nothing to forfeit my love, or if you're beautiful or attractive, if you're whatever, then I will love or continue to love you. The way human love (and most love) tends to operate is that there is a feeling of attraction, thankfulness, or some kind of emotion, and the fruit of that emotion is a decision: "Because I feel this way, I will love you." The decision can transcend the emotion, but it's never very far from that emotion. It's the "if" thing: "I feel attraction; therefore I choose to love you. If I stop feeling attraction, my love will maybe shrink in proportion to that."

 What agape does is to completely reverse the terms of that. Agape is not emotionless; it's just that the emotion follows the decision. In other words, the emotion is a fruit of the decision. There's a choice that's been made: I choose to love. And on the basis of that choice, emotion rises. But the choice is the first thing. The choice is a thing that's in place regardless of the emotion. The emotion rides on the decision, the choice. 

I read a great book on relationships by Gary Smalley.  It’s called, ‘Love is a Decision’.  It’s a great little book on improving relationships.  It shows us that we can get our love relationships back to where they used to be.

Now here's where this agape kind of love gets very interesting: It's far more stubborn than simply that I choose to love and therefore feel loving. It actually pursues the object of its love. It is loving even in the face of resistance, even in the face of bad behavior where another emotion might be more expected. So agape will love in the face of rebellion, in the face of rejection, in the face of rank badness. It's this amazing form of love that has made a decision, and the decision is final. It's set. And on the basis of that decision, whether it's met with loving, good behavior or not, it continues to pursue in love.

 So that's how we normally talk about agape: unconditional love!  And that's a good way to talk about it. But here's something that I think is an even a simpler way to understand it: Agape is ‘unprovoked’ love.
Normally, when we hear of something unprovoked, we think of anger, attack, aggression, or violence. When we hear about that unprovoked aggression, we say there was nothing in the person who was the recipient of the attack that in any way had this coming to him or her.

We have to attribute the act of unprovoked violence to the perpetrator. There's something twisted and wrong in them. There's something broken and skewed in them; they're working out this deep anger, and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's in them. That's how we account for unprovoked violence.

 I want to call agape ‘unprovoked love’, and it works on the same principle—but just in the opposite direction. And as with unprovoked violence, when we seek to understand unprovoked love, we look for the explanation not in the object of love, but in the one who is loving. We say there must be something going on in them, something deep down, that accounts for this kind of act.  ------

Our Father God is an agape lover. The Father is a lover who loves what He loves, not based on the loveliness of the object, you and me, but on some quality within Him. In a sense, He can't help Himself, though He does choose it.  John says, He loves because He is love.

 What I want to help us understand today is that there are three contexts where this love—agape, loving as God loves—has to be present in us or else we default to mere worldly human love.

And the three groups of people for whom we need agape love, unconditional love, are the losers, the winners, and the enemies. The Bible uses the term …

pp     "the least of these" = the losers

(I use the terms….) 

  "the most of these" = the winners 

  "the worst of these" = the enemies. 

 If you don't understand what agape love is, and you don't allow the love of Jesus Christ to flow into and through you, then you will be fine as long as everything is reciprocating.  As long as love's coming back to you, as long as you can find beautiful creatures to love, you'll do just fine. But the minute you bang up against a winner, a loser, or an enemy, you're in trouble if you don't have agape, unconditional love.

 So…..

pp     You need agape for ‘the least of these’ – the losers.

The least of these are the people you're most likely not to notice, or if you notice them, you’re most tempted to avoid. They smell. They look funny. Jesus describes it this way: They're beggars. They're prisoners. They're naked, and their nakedness is not attractive to you. 

They're hungry. They're needy.  

Those are the ‘least of these’ people. You just want to rush by; you don't want to make eye contact with the least of these. They drain you. There's no gain in loving them, and there's no loss in not loving them. You know you can just go by and you're not going to be punished. Everybody's passing these people by. Nobody's holding you accountable, it seems (until judgment day comes). ------   It's so easy to walk right past the least of these. So there needs to be an overturning of our sense of superiority—of our love of comfort, our need for security.

We need to overcome this disdain, disgust, and weariness against the least of these, the losers of the world.

Early in the morning a couple of weeks ago I was out letterboxing the new butterfly house leaflets.  I was listening to a story on my ipod.  It was a story about one of the least of these, and I was a bit teary.  There was this school for children with special needs.  At a fundraising banquet, one of the fathers, whose son Shea goes there, got up and began to speak. He told a story of how he and his son Shea had been walking through the neighborhood a week before, and they had stopped to watch a group of boys playing baseball. 

Shea doesn’t communicate well, but he let his father know in his own way that he so wanted to play baseball with these boys. And the father thinks, Oh my goodness, what am I going to do? So he walks up to the pitcher of one of the teams and explains the situation. And the pitcher just makes an executive decision; he says: "You know, it's the eighth inning. We're down by six. What have we got to lose? Come on in; we'll let you bat at the bottom of the ninth." Shea is ecstatic. 

Well, they were losing by six runs to this particular team in the eighth innings, but by the bottom of the ninth, things have turned around. They've gained three runs, and they've got bases loaded. So if they get a homerun, they've won.

 And it comes Shea's turn to bat. And the father's sitting there with his heart thumping, because he wonders, Shea has been promised he can bat; will they let him bat? And the team realizes their predicament, and they have a little huddle. Then, to the father's amazement, they say to Shea, "Come on. It's your turn to bat." And Shea is absolutely delighted; he clutches the bat, and he's got it all askew and he's holding it too tight. 

 Then the pitcher from the opposite team does an amazing thing. He takes several steps forward and lobs an easy one right over the plate. Shea swings wildly, and misses widely. One of the players from Shea's team comes up behind him and gently wraps his hands around Shea’s. Together, they hold the bat. And the pitcher lobs another one, and they bunt it, and it just rolls up right to the feet of the pitcher. 

 It's an easy out, but everybody's screaming, "Run to base! Run to base, Shea!" And the pitcher throws it far and wide. Shea makes first base, and they say, "Run to second, Shea! Run to second!" The guy out in the field is going to zing it into second, then he realizes what's going on and throws it far and wide. And Shea makes second. "Run to third! Run to third!" And all the other players are coming into home plate. And he makes third. "Run home, Shea! Take it home!" And just as he hits home plate, the ball zings in.  An uproar from both teams goes up, and they mount him on their shoulders and parade him as a hero.

 And the father told this story and said: "That day, 18 boys reached their level of heaven's perfection. Because when heaven puts one such as my son on this earth, perfection is measured by how others react to him." -----

All right … now …

pp   You need agape for ‘the most of these’ - the winners.

There's a second thing that we need the unconditional agape love for. If we don't have it, we aren't going to get very far with ‘the most of these’, the winners. ‘The most of these’ is the person you're most likely to notice – and -resent.  ‘The most of these’ is a person who does what you do and just does it better. They eclipse you. They leave you in their long shadow. It's your prettier sister. It's your more athletic brother. It's the worship singer that everybody gushes over, and they do it right in front of you, and you're a worship singer, too. ‘The most of these’ is that person who excels in the area in which you want to excel (and probably do); but they just seem to excel a little more.

We are most threatened not by those who are different from us—we just don't understand them—but we are threatened by those who are most - like - us, but just a little better.  That's ‘the most of these’- the winners.  And where agape had to come in and get rid of your feelings of superiority with ‘the least of these’ (the losers), now what the Spirit of God has to do with ‘the most of these’ – the winners, is to give you freedom from your sense of inferiority and insecurity so that you become their biggest fan. 

I think one of the most remarkable Bible stories we have of agape love is the story of David and Jonathan.  King Saul, the father of Jonathan, was David's rival.  King Saul was feeling out-shone; he was feeling overshadowed by young David. And he does what you do when you have a ‘most of these’ in your presence—you try to throw a spear at them, in some figurative or real way, as Saul did.   You try to destroy the beauty and the giftedness of the David in your midst because they make you feel so inferior. That was King Saul.

Jonathan, Saul's son, had more to lose than Saul did. He was the prince. He could be next on the throne.  He was the one who was actually going to be supplanted by David; he would not inherit the throne because of David's greatness.     And Jonathan did everything that David did: he knew the art of war; he knew the art of wooing; he knew the art of leadership. Everywhere that David is good, Jonathan is good too and he too has ambitions.   It's just that David is better. 

 David does it better, yet Jonathan becomes David's biggest champion. He actually makes enormous sacrifices for the sake of advancing David's cause. And I'll tell you why: because he saw it as God's cause. This is what you do with ‘the most of these’: you ask the question, "What are you up to here, God?" Because it's not about you; it's about His kingdom. You really have to say: "God, what are You doing here? I wanted what this man has, but You didn't give it to me, not in this measure. What are You up to here, God? How can I get on board with what You're doing through that person? And how do I cheer it on?" 

 I'll tell you who your ‘most of these’ is. ----       You already know. They're too much on your mind. God wants to give you agape love for that person. He wants to convert your feelings of animosity or resentment or intimidation into enormous favor toward that person. ----  Would you allow God to do that?  -------

Now ….

pp  You need agape for ‘the worst of these’- the enemies.

Agape is supremely needed with your enemy, ‘the worst of these’. The ‘worst of these’ is that person-  —you know very well who they are.---- Even more than with ‘the most of these’, you have cause to despise them. They have hurt you. They have betrayed you. They've taken something precious from you. They've exploited you. The ‘most of these’, the winners that you’re jealous of, you may resent, but they’re probably oblivious to that. But your enemy has been somewhat intentional about what they've done to you. 

You do not need God to help you love what is lovely. But you so need God—there's no other way—to love your enemy, (‘the worst of these’), a person who has deliberately hurt you. And Jesus says: You want to know where the real level of heaven's perfection is? You will be sons and daughters of your Father in heaven when you love those who have in every way forfeited your love for them because they actually set out to hurt you in some way.

 1994 was the year of the Rwanda genocide where 800,000 innocent men, women and children were butchered to death.   I want to tell you the story of a woman whose son was killed in the genocide. 

This woman had nursed bitterness, grievance, and thoughts of vengeance; she just wanted to find her son's killer and bring due punishment. But one night she had a dream, and in the dream she was going down this street and saw a house, and she knew in her dream that it was the house of her enemy. And she heard God say, "Go into the house." She said, "I don't want to go into the house."   She went into the house, and God led her through many rooms and then to a set of stairs. And in the dream God said, "I want you to go up the stairs." She said, "I don't want to go any further in this house." "I want you to go up the stairs." She went up the stairs, opened the door at the top, and found that it led into heaven.   In her dream she had a revelation that the path to heaven goes through the house of her enemy. 

Two days later, there was a knock on her door. A young man is standing at the door, and he's shaking. He says to her: "I am the man who killed your son. I place my life in your hands; whatever you want to do with me, I accept it. I have had no peace since I did what I did. And I will accept whatever. If you want to kill me, you can kill me. If you want to turn me in to the authorities, turn me in to the authorities. Whatever you want, my life is in your hands."

And because she had this revelation from God in the dream, she said: "I will not do any of this. But I do have one request. You must now become my son." She took him in and fed him at the table where she fed her son. He's the same size, so he wore his clothes. He actually moved in and became a son to her, because heaven passes through the house of her enemy. 

 This boy is still living with her. God has given her such favour that she now has a national ministry in Rwanda. She travels all around, and she's helping the whole nation deal with the issue of reconciliation, because heaven passes through the house of your enemy. -----

 Who is your enemy? Who's the person who hurt you? Would you believe that heaven goes through their house? The reality is, you cannot love that person unless God does something in you. But if you want to know the perfection of love, find unprovoked love for that person when they've provoked everything but love.  – that is unconditional love!

 In conclusion, do you know what the opposite of love is? The Bible suggests that it’s not hate. It's fear. John says this in 1 John 4:18:

pp     “Perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." 

Fear will block the love of God being accepted by you and coming out of you. Fear has to do with punishment. Fear has to do with: "You don't measure up. You're not worth it. If we really knew you, we wouldn't like you." That's fear. Yet the real truth is found in 1 John 3:1 where it says …

pp   "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God.  And that is what we are.”

So Jesus Christ went to Calvary.  In Romans 5:6,8 we read…

pp    "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly…. God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." 

 You don’t really know how loved you are.  And it’s not because you deserve it; the agape Lover has loved you and always loves you. You have no cause for fear. If you have said "yes" to that love, you have no basis for fear; you can let it go. You can let love flow into you, and let that fear get cast away. As you experience the fear-less-ness of being loved by a holy God, you will be able to do what is otherwise humanly impossible: love - the least of these, love - the most of these, and love - the worst of these. 

Stand and pray.

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