So Loved…

I often say in sermons, conversations, writings, and at times when I stand in awe and wonder at what God has done or what some human being has done in the name of Jesus, “Love does things.” The Apostle Paul says it best in explaining an extraordinary life, “The Love of God constrains me.” In other words, when I ponder what Jesus did for me, what else could I do? It is not a cliche, “Love does things.” Love does the impossible, the amazing, and the things that people write stories about. Paul at one point makes a comment that angels look with longing and awe at what Jesus did on the cross. Why? They are in awe of the lengths Jesus would go, that love would go, to make a home for sinners. See, they look with longing because they don’t need redemption. Yes, of course they live by grace and are dependent, but they wonder at the profound love and cost of redemption and what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of that.Love does things. The best effort in your life will always come from love. Yes, you can legislate obedience and use laws to make people conform or do certain things, but often all you have is a mechanistic obedience. Look at all the oppressed countries who walked in line till they were liberated from their oppressors. What did that do? Show great charity? No, they became the oppressor and typically gave as good as they had gotten. Love is different because it changes your heart and affections—the place of the real you!I was amazed as I read the novel Ova a couple of years ago. Ova is a bitter old curmudgeon trying to kill himself. We capture his life through backstory. As bitter as he might be in the present, he was transformed by love. How do we know this? By what love does, of course. As the old song says, “It ain’t love till it shows.” Years earlier when his young wife is tragically paralyzed, he helps her make a way not just in his home but in her vocation. Of course, the government legislates that ramps and other accommodations be built for people bound by wheel chairs. So he just asked for what is legislated by law. Of course he finds out “goodness” can’t be legislated and for all the good intentions of abstract entities making people be charitable—it just doesn’t happen. Is this a problem? Not if you have someone who loves you enough to die for you. Ova does, and with his own time and money builds the ramps needed so his wife can teach. Yes, love does what law can never do.It is true in redemption as well. so this week we look at the scope, manifestation, and power of God’s love that he unleashed in the world at the incarnation. I can’t wait.Blessings,Jim