SE022810
ITS ALL GREEK TO ME
4. AGAPE
I went to the Lincoln Memorial two years ago and the place just gives you goose bumps. The Second Inaugural is littered with references to God, prayer and Bible quotes. It showed me so graphically that this was a man of deep Christian faith, AND love. He was speaking about the coming end of the War when he spoke these words recorded there:
"With malice toward none; with charity for all."
“Charity”… is a word we might use to translate the fourth of the Greek words for love. Many of you have heard it before: AGAPE.
Lincoln clearly understood what AGAPE means and what’s unique about this kind of love, when he put it into practice after the war.
- Day of surrender crowd at Whitehouse
- Band playing
- Lincoln’s speech about reconciliation and peace
- Lincoln tells them what to play:
o Not Battle Hymn of the Republic
o Dixie!
The message to the South was clear:
You will be treated with “charity for all.”
You can see why the North collectively gulped at this. I would have. The South called themselves “Confederates”, but in the north they were REBELS. It was not called the Civil War initially, it was called The Rebellion.
The Star Wars franchise has sanitized that word, REBEL. Sure if you’re rebelling against Darth Vader and the Evil Empire being a rebel is a good thing. But not in the standard definition of the word! REBEL:
“a person who resists any authority, control, or tradition”
Unless you think ALL authority is bad, you have to say being a rebel is mostly BAD. What I’m saying friends, is that they didn’t DESERVE to be treated as Lincoln wanted them to be treated. They didn’t deserve compassion
- The REBELS fired the first shot.
- The REBELS were too ready to violently break up a peaceable union, and
- The REBELS prime justification was the State’s Right to violate the values upon which the union was built
o the equality and rights of every individual.
- The REBELS oppressed millions of Africans – “wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces”, as Lincoln himself described it.
- And the final result was the death of more than 500,000 soldiers in war –
o The bloodiest American war ever.
They didn’t deserve the charity Lincoln offered.
- And that’s why Lincoln was eventually hated in the North almost as much as in the South.
- And that’s why after Lincoln’s death, his successors embarked on a campaign of punitive exploitation of the South.
- AND, that’s why a rift remained between NORTH and SOUTH for a hundred years.
There’s a lot that rides on LOVE – AGAPE love which we’ll learn about today. This kind of love is the most important of all the loves we’ve talked about this month. It’s GIFT love. AGAPE is very different from the other loves which are built on NEED or WORTHINESS.
- In PHILIA, I love my friends because of what I find worthy in them, their sense of humor, a shared passion, their godly character.
- In EROS, I may sacrifice my life for my beloved, but I love her because, in some sense, I am bound to her, chemically, sexually – it serves me to love her.
- In STORGE, I may love my helpless baby, but I can’t help it – I need to be needed, so who’s really giving to whom?
BUT AGAPE IS DIFFERENT!
o ONLY AGAPE, is indifferent fully to it’s own needs AND indifferent to the worthiness of the object of our love.
o ONLY AGAPE, is a gift type of love with no strings attached; a love that seeks only the good of the beloved.
So Divine Gift Love enables a man or a country to love what is not naturally lovable:
- Rebels
- Enemies
- Criminals
- Tyrants
- Fools
- Idiots
- Even someone like me.
Agape is SPECIAL. We might say, AGAPE is behind the whole universe! How can I say something that bold? Because AGAPE defines the very nature and character of God who is the Source of the Universe! John says:
- 1 John 4:16 God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
o let’s insert the actual Greek word:
- 1 John 4:16 God is AGAPE. Whoever lives in AGAPE lives in God and God in him.
So AGAPE is at the heart of the universe…
- Because it’s at the heart of the nature and character of God.
God IS gift love personified and the UNIVERSE is evidence of it. The universe doesn’t HAVE to be here. It’s a gift that flows out of the ALL SUFFICIENT one. He creates out of whimsy! “And for thy pleasure they are created” Scripture says. Think about that!
God doesn’t NEED to create you. You are superfluous. This whole universe is like a peacocks tail*. It serves no necessary function, it’s just there for the pleasure of looking at it; you are here to be the OBJECT of God’s love.
And so God is AGAPE. Jesus said it like this:
Matt 5:44-45 But I tell you: AGAPE your enemies… that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He …sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (EXTENDED)
Friends, furious, giving, relentless Love is WHO God is.
There’s a story that’s told of a monk sitting by a stream. He notices as he looks down that a scorpion has fallen into the stream and is dying. So the monk proceeds to reach his hand out to grab the scorpion and bring it to safety.
But another man passing by notices this and notices that the monk is getting repeatedly stung by the scorpion. Every time the monk puts his hand out to snatch it away from danger, it’s tail flies up to strike out at him. The passerby finally mocked the old monk and said,
You fool! What a waste of your effort! Don’t you know that it’s the scorpion’s nature to sting!
“Yes,” the monk replied, “but it is in my nature to save.”
Friends that’s what we mean when the Bible says, “God is AGAPE”. It’s who God is. It’s not what he does during Lent. Agape is not a cool new app he runs on his IPhone. It’s not a great idea he got at a seminar on universal management. It’s WHO HE IS.
WE AGAPE GOD
Now, what’s crazy about this AGAPE, gift love, is that God gives us the ability to AGAPE him. He even asks us to Agape him! IN a sort of weird, paradoxical twist, Jesus said the greatest commandment, was to AGAPE God. Well it’s weird and paradoxical for a bunch of reasons.
- One, God has no needs so he needs no gifts.
- Two, anything we gift to God, God already owns, so have we really given anything?
With those paradoxes, how can we AGAPE God? Very simple. Even though everything we have is God’s there are STILL some things we can withhold from God! God has empowered you in fact, to withhold some things if you want…
Such as?
- Your heart.
- Your devotion.
- Your will.
- Yourself
How this plays out in your individual life, you alone know.
- You might be withholding your heart from God by refusing the acknowledge the knock on the door of your heart.
- You might be withholding your devotion – when the chips are down, you don’t do the right thing, instead you do the thing that enhances your bottom line, what makes you feel good.
- Withholding your AGAPE might show up literally in your charity. God asks repeatedly in Scripture, bring the first fruits of your income to the store house. This is a gift God is asking you to give to him. Not because he needs to it live. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, he doesn’t need your tithe to survive. God isn’t poor. But Jesus said:
o As much as you’ve done it to the least of these brothers of mine, you’ve done it to me!
o When you agape the poor, lift up the hungry, assist the downcast and broken by giving to the mission of the local church – friends, you AGAPE GOD!
GOD LOVES US FIRST
Ah, but there’s a TRAP! in our AGAPE of God. Every time we AGAPE God, an impulse goes off in our hearts. Here’s what it says:
- Hey, you love God! God must love you.
And the moment that happens, a poison has crept into our soul. We begin to think that God loves me, because I love so well, because I’m WORTHY, because I’m good. But Jesus taught us the opposite. God does not love us because we are good. What is good in us is because God loves us.
Listen to John elaborate on God’s AGAPE:
o 1 John 4:19-20 We love because he FIRST loved us.
There’s something in the human soul that thinks God loves us because there’s something in us that is loveable. But friends, what is in you that you didn’t receive? God put into you gifts and strengths and a free will. Then you and I take that freedom and we sin, we do UNLOVING things, horribly selfish things, abusive things, mean things, arrogant things.
These are the things we can claim for ourselves!
But then, I know how this game is played. Some of us, realizing that flaunting some virtue before God to make him love us is a waste of time, we resort to our humility.
- See what marvelous repentance I offer him!
o Surely he will be impressed with that!!
- But if that doesn’t work, we’ll offer God our authentic no-BS assessment that we still lack humility
o surely God will be impressed with such a straight shooter as me!
And that’s how it goes, friends, layer after layer, trying to hold onto some idea of our own worthiness to God, our own attractiveness to him.
“God loves me,” I say to myself, “because I am lovable.”
All this trying to find some intrinsic lovableness simply shows how uncomfortable we are with being creatures. We would rather be gods. Because…:
- Creatures are sort of pathetic.
- Creatures have needs.
- Creatures fallen into SIN have even MORE needs!
- Creatures are forever DEpendant on someone else.
- Creatures have no place in the world that they can say, this is mine and ONLY mine.
o So we would much rather be gods.
But do you see what this means? Some of us don’t really WANT God to love us!! – not AGAPE LOVE.
- Oh we’d be happy to hear the preacher say God loves us with PHILIA love, that love that admires a friend. Think God loves us because he admires us so much.
- Or, we’d be happy if God loves us with STORGE love, that love that envelopes children who are inherently lovely because they share my DNA.
But the Bible does not say God is STORGE or PHILIA.. The Bible says, God is AGAPE. The same reason some of you would never accept charity from a church or a relative is why you secretly despise it when the preacher says that God loves you with AGAPE. You hate
- the weakness,
- the groveling pathetic frailty and dependence it implies about you,
- the NEED!
Ah, but what if, my friends, it’s the truth? What if our attempts at being lovable to God are actually at times attempts to shove God out of the drivers seat so God doesn’t have to love us…
- we don’t have to be God’s project.
- We don’t have to be the recipients of God’s aid.
- We don’t have to be the parasites that must draw every morsel of life from a divine host.
If the truth were known, some of you don’t even WANT God to love you! Wow. Let’s read John again;
1 John 4:10-11 This is love: not that we loved God , but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
While we’re trying to prove our lovableness, by our lists of good deeds, our worthiness, our humility, our rugged truthfulness even; meanwhile, God is simply trying to catch us up into his love, IF we’ll just let GO and trust it.
I remember playing the ocean surf for the first time. Too scared to do anything radical, I’d keep my feet or a foot or just a toe locked to the sandy bottom. Doggedly determined to be anchored in some security I could control. But the instant I lifted my foot I was open to a wild, exciting, beautiful, exhilarating ride on the surf – which I could not control.
Just like that, when we lift ourselves from this prideful illusion of our LACK of NEED – the false promise of our own godhood – ONLY THEN will we get caught up in the love of God,
o his AGAPE for sinners and beggars and prostitutes and pastors.
CONCLUSION
There’s a story from the life of Jesus that embodies the gospel perfectly from Luke 7:36-48:
36 Jesus has dinner with Pharisee named Simon.
37 sinful woman brought an alabaster jar of perfume,
38 wiped feet with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
39 Simon scandalized
40 Jesus Parable time
41 "Two men owed money
42 Neither could pay him back, so the debts of both canceled. Now which of them will love him more?"
43 “the one who had the bigger debt canceled." YES!
44 you didn’t love me like this woman.
The question is, WHY NOT?
47 she loved much, which shows her debt is canceled. She’s been caught up in my love for the unworthy. Her seemingly greater debt has actually made it easy for her to see her need.
- Simon does not love as he should because he doesn’t know what it is yet to be caught up in God’s LOVE.
- He still thinks he lovable because of his AGAPE towards God. But he hasn’t given God anything God didn’t first give to him.
o YET, he HAS withheld something from God. His pride. His confession of need.
- The woman can’t help it! She’s a mess. There’s no hiding her need. She is NOT LOVABLE. Her sins are many…
48 Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."
In bringing all this need to God’s AGAPE in Jesus the Son – her sins are forgiven. I.E. she is LOVED MUCH.
o And so now, she loves much
1 John 4:19-20 We love because he first loved us.
I INVITE YOU TODAY to confess your need. You unlovableness. I’m not asking you to grovel like a fool over made up offenses and false guilt. I’m asking you to join REALITY, where God is.
o You have nothing good to bring him that’s solely yours, but what is yours is a boat load of sin – much of it done in trying to secure your value apart from God.
That’s a fool’s errand. Can’t be done. It’s living a lie.
o Here’s the good news – let go of it, and be FREE! Live! Experience love like you’ve never known. AGAPE!
o So will you be like SIMON, or will you be like the WOMAN?
