Yesterday we celebrated Valentine’s Day a few days early, with Lara’s parents. They gave us this Valentine's Day card. The front of the card reads, "A daughter and son-in-law like you can be summed up in the following words: funny, super cute, the best, extra sweet, brainy, big-hearted, excellent, nice, fun to be with, way cool, groovy, tops!" The inside of the card reads, "You'll have to decide who’s who!"
So we’ve been fighting since yesterday trying to figure out which one of us is funny, who’s nice, and who’s the best! We just can’t seem to agree on who’s what. Anyway, Valentine's Day is one of those holidays that can leave us with more questions than answers. One of the big questions we wrestle with on Valentine's Day is, "What is true love?"
For some, true love is always having the right thing to say. Every Valentine's Day we always pray that Hallmark will provide a way! Some professor put together a list of lyrics belonging to country-western love songs. You decide whether his list captures the true essence of love or misses the mark altogether.
- If love were oil, I’d be a quart low.
- My wife ran off with my best friend and I sure do miss him.
- If the phone don’t ring, baby, you’ll know it’s me.
- I fell in a pile of you and got love all over me.
For some, true love is a matter of spending quality time together. That time may be on a date, over lunch, over a hot cup of coffee, after the kids have gone to bed, or before leaving for work.
For others, true love is a matter of receiving gifts. The availability of Krispy Krème donuts in Springfield has done wonders for my marriage. It doesn’t matter how much trouble I get into so long as I get Lara her favorite donut before the sun goes down. If that strategy fails, it's beanie babies, NASCAR stuff, or Duke University stuff.
For others, true love is about doing acts of service. Lara isn’t so much concerned about quality time as she is about productivity. When I come into the room she’ll ask, "Don’t you have something to do? Shouldn’t you be out in the garage finishing up my computer desk? Is that the sump pump gurgling? Shouldn’t you go check that out?"
Most often, true love is about physical touch and physical attraction. You have no doubt heard Cher sing, "It's in his kiss." Or perhaps more recently you have heard Faith Hill sing, "It’s the way you love me. It's a feeling like this. It’s centrifugal motion. It’s perpetual bliss. It’s that pivotal moment. It’s subliminal. This kiss, this kiss. It’s criminal. This kiss, this kiss." So one of the big questions we ask on Valentine’s Day is, "What is true love?"
Questioning Love
Another big question is, "Where can I find true love?" Can I find it in the one I am with? Can I find it at work? In a sports league? At school? In my church? Down at the bar? In a new relationship? Where do I go to find true love?
A last big question we ask is, "How can I truly love others?" How do I love my husband? How do I love my wife? My children? My parents? My in-laws? My boss? My co-workers? My neighbor? My enemies?
These are all important questions. In large part, how we answer these three questions determines who we are and what we are becoming, and it affects those around us. We would be wise to take time this Valentine’s Day to get these three questions answered correctly. This morning I have just two verses for us to consider. I believe these verses answer all three questions. What is true love? Where can I find love? How do I love others?
Ephesians 5:1-2 (NIV) says, "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a lifeof love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."
Know God’s love.
What is true love? True love comes from knowing God’s love. You haven’t known true love until you have first known God’s love. Some activities that I really enjoy doing but haven’t done a lot of lately are woodworking, wood carving, wood burning, and painting. I used to do a lot of these activities back in high school, but I wasn’t any good at them. I couldn’t make anything useful in the woodshop. My wood carvings were better suited for the fireplace than for the coffee table. My wood burnings and paintings often found their way to the trash can. But sometime back there in my high school years, I discovered the secret behind doing all of these things well.
It was important that I always have the real McCoy at hand. If I was making a piece of furniture, I needed a master plan, a blueprint, a picture, or another piece of furniture. I needed something from which to base my design. If I was carving into wood, I needed a real-to-life, three-dimensional object to copy. Something like a plastic model, a ceramic figure, a knick-knack, or sculpture. If I was painting or wood burning, I needed to be able to study that thing which I was trying to capture the essence of, in the greatest detail possible.
A lot of us are trying to love, but our love isn’t based on anything true or real. The Bible repeatedly says that, "God is love." Instead of grounding our love in God’s perfect, holy, ideal love, we often ground it in something less. We love in the way that we have been loved. We love the way our mothers or fathers loved us. We love like the world loves. We love like what we see on television. Because we have no concept of true love, of God’s love, of love in it most perfect unadulterated form, our expressions of love become distorted. Our love becomes nothing more than a poor reflection, a cheap imitation, and a carbon copy of some lesser variant form of imperfect human love.
When Paul speaks of, "imitating God" in Ephesians 5:1 he is commanding us to pattern our love after God’s perfect love. Paul is telling us to look deeply into God’s character, to study God’s love in its infinite detail, and to gaze upon God’s love in all of its spectacular dimensions. We are to let God's love be the blueprint for our love. You haven’t known true love until you have first known God’s love.
1 John 4:7-8 (NIV) says, "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."
God is love. God is the essence and the very substance of true love. He is the original gem. Why base your love on anything less than God himself? The first question was, "What is true love?" Knowing God answers this question because God is love. To know God is to know true love.
That is nice to know, but where do we actually find true love? There was a seminary professor who had spent his life teaching about God’s love. When he retired, he made it a point to busy himself around the house. After pouring a new concrete driveway to his house, he went inside to rest and get a glass of ice tea.
Returning a few moments later, he noticed a group of neighborhood kids putting their footprints in the wet concrete. In a rage the professor stormed out of the house and chased the kids down and beat the tar out of the ones he could catch. Hearing the commotion the professor’s wife rushed into the yard, saw the angry professor thrashing the kids, and began to reprimand him. "What a shame," she said, "For forty years you have taught about God’s love, forgiveness, and forbearance. Now look at you. You’ve lost your testimony." Indignant, the professor replied, "That was all in the abstract. This is in the concrete."
In principle, we know that God’s love is the truest expression of God’s love. But how do we know this love in a very real, tangible, concrete way? Where do we find it? The answer to this second question is that we must receive Christ's love.
Where do we find love?
In order to find true love, we must receive Christ's love. Throughout the New Testament you will notice that wherever God’s love is mentioned, the person and work of Jesus Christ is also mentioned. Ephesians 5:1-2 (NIV) says, "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."
Jesus Christ is the personal expression of God’s love toward us. These verses mention the fact that Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and as a sacrifice to God. God’s love is self-giving. God gave of himself for us. John 3:16 (NIV) says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
1 John 4:9-10 (NIV) says, "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."
Romans 5:6-8 (NIV) says, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Philippians 2:5-8 (NIV) speaks of Christ Jesus, "Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in the appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!"
Knowing Jesus Christ.
In order to know God’s love in a very real and personal way, you must know Jesus Christ. If you have been following along in our study of Ephesians you will notice that from the beginning, Jesus Christ has been the central focus of this book of the Bible. Starting in Ephesians 1 in Christ, we have been blessed, chosen, loved, adopted, redeemed, forgiven, purposed, predestined, marked, guaranteed an inheritance, made God’s possession, given wisdom and understanding, enlightened, empowered, made alive, graced, raised up, seated in the heavenly realms, brought near to God, reconciled, built, entrusted, strengthened, and established. In Christ, God has given and given of himself. He’s given us inexhaustible treasures.
In Ephesians 3:14-19 (NIV) Paul prays, "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses all knowledge— that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
So what is all of this about? Paul is praying for the mystery of true love, the mystery of God’s love, to be unlocked by an ever deepening personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. He wants us to know that not only is God love, but that Jesus Christ is the personal expression of God’s love to all who believe. So God is true love. And we find this true love in Jesus Christ. All of this brings us to our third question. "How do we truly love?" The answer to the third question is that we must live a life of love.
Living a life of love.
Ephesians 5:1-2 (NIV) says, "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life a love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."
In our relationships we are to imitate God. We are to love others just as Christ loved us. But notice what this means. We are to live a life of love just as Christ loved us and, "gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." One of the primary ways we have distorted God’s love is through selfishness. When we talk about love, we don’t often talk about giving ourselves up or making sacrifices for others. But the very essence of love is to give. Love is meant to make a sacrifice.
During President Bush’s State of the Union address, there was this moment where an Iraqi woman was introduced to the members of the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. She had been liberated by American soldiers who had shed their blood on Iraqi soil and she had recently voted in the Iraq election. Moments later, President Bush introduced the proud mother and father of a soldier who had paid the ultimate price and had been killed in action. There was a moment of awkwardness as the mother and father were standing in the row directly behind the Iraqi woman. But suddenly the Iraqi woman turned around, and the mother and father of the slain soldier embraced her for what seemed like minutes.
Love is never measured in what we receive, but in what we give. That mother and father’s love is measured in the sacrifice of their son. God’s love is measured by the fact that he sent his one and only Son to earth. Whoever believes in Jesus as the Son of God might not perish, but have eternal life. Our love is measured in what we give, in what we sacrifice, and in what we offer to others. To imitate God and to live a life of love is to selflessly give of oneself. This is true love.
Love isn’t about receiving. It's about giving. It’s not about what people say to us. It is about what we say to others. It’s not about what people do or don’t do for us. It is about what we do for them. Love isn’t about being served. It is about serving others. Love is not about people focusing on our needs or on making us happy. It is about us focusing on God’s love and imitating Jesus Christ. Love is not primarily about physical intimacy and feeling good. It is about making a sacrifice and being an offering.
How you answer these three questions determines who you are and what you are becoming. Are you an imitator of God? Are you becoming like Jesus Christ?