All You Need Is Love

All you need is love.  No, that's not right.  All you need is Christ.  There, that's better. 


But wait, Christ is love, or is love Christ?  What came first, chicken or egg?  I think I'm going to stick with the assumption that the chicken came first, making the egg a derivative of the initial fowl; thus, the chicken is the superior.  Now that I've beaten this proverbial dead horse, or chicken, let's make the spiritual jump.  Christ came first, being that God came first, and so manifesting the perfected attribute of love. All this to say...Christ is love.  


Dear friend,


As we draw upon this romantic time of the year, perhaps the offspring of a capitalist motive, perhaps not, let us take a moment and reflect upon a most lovely thought.  This 'love' that we so choose to express to those we cherish, from where does the source lie?  If you say, "I love you," and you mean as you say, that it is a love that springs forth from your own inner life source, is that worth anything?  Think about it.  If we truly are as Romans 3:13-17 says, then we're all kinda worthless to love, I mean really worthless:
                  
            "Their throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, The poison of asps is under their lips; Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; Their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known."
                     
Yeah, that's us.  All of us.  Even Fabio.  Even Mother Teresa.  So again I ask, how worthless is it to say, "I love you with the love that comes from me?"  Wouldn't it be so much more meaningful if it came directly from God, the Creator, Perfecter, and Full Expression of love?    Let's put it to the test: man-love vs. God-love.  


Now, surely there's no need for me to explain man-love.  You see it all the time.  Might I even dare, my friend, to suggest that perhaps the love with which your most intimate affair dotes on thee is perhaps, man-love?


Consider this, the love with which we Christians are called to love is not our own, but our Christ's love.  


Okay, easy to glaze over what I just said, reread that if you will...okay cool, thanks for that.  I've always loved the Bible's gospel of the exchanged life.  In Lamen's terms, it's where we don't look to change anything in our lives as Christians, but rather, allow our body and soul life to be exchanged with Christ's life.  


It ain't no metaphor.  It ain't no simile.  It's the real deal, the real McCoy.  As a believer in Christ, my dear friend, you not only have the Author of the known universe dwelling in you, but because of Jesus' inclusion of you at the Cross, your spirit's been killed, your spirit's been raised, and you now can live the exchanged life!  It's such a reality.  All you must do is reckon this to be true.  Now you have the capability of loving as Christ loves!  (Isn't that so much sweeter?)


But how does Jesus love?  Check out John 15:12b-13,  
           
        "...love one another, just as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends."  


Yes, it's true, and amazingly so, Jesus died for us.  But this isn't the only way the Scriptures tell us that He laid down His life for us.  John 5:30,


                "I can do nothing on My own initiative.  As I hear, I judge; and My judgement is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent me."


Don't you see?  Isn't this mind-blowing?  Jesus, who was and is God, completely denied His right in every single regard.  Jesus, who is the physical manifestation of the Father, who designed the galaxies, who walked with Adam in the garden, who spoke to Moses, who saves the world, who will reign as King on this planet, who is bringing an army of angels to meet Satan in battle, who will be our best friend for eternity, completely denied his deity.


Laying down one's life is not merely dying, but denying.  


Dying, by it's very nature, is a one time occurrence that has an end.  As terrible as it is, it is merely fleeting pain.  But denying, that is something else entirely.  Denying can only be done actively.  One does not, like dying, do it and be over.  It is a consistent thing to be done.  It never ends.  


Denying is continual dying.


Some say nothing is worse than dying.  Try denying.  That's worse.  That's harder.  That's more impressive of Chist in my book.  So now we can make another connection.  If Christ is love, and no other love is greater than laying down one's life (death and denying), and if we can love with Christ's love, then we can (in a very real sense) lay down our life for others without traveling to ancient Jerusalem and dying on a cross.  In fact, if Christ offered it to us (directly to his followers, but by implication and application to us) in Luke 9:23, then it must be attainable for us by living the exchanged life.
            "...if anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me."


Here, the mindset of 'denying' is turned into the outward physical expression of 'picking up your cross.'  In essence, the 'picking' is defined by the 'denying.'  Just as Christ denied Himself every God-given right He had, taking the role of a servant, forgoing His own will, choosing to limit Himself, so too must we, through the Power of the Holy Spirit, deny ourselves if we are to express any kind of love worth anything.  I don't know about you, but that's the kind of love I want to give to my wife, to my best friends, to my family.


Let us delve now into the application of this glorious truth.  I am constantly aware of the way we humans interact with each other, myself included.  Perhaps the one fact that baffles me the most, that is most incongruent with our identity in Christ, is how we choose to express 'love' in the grand scheme of things (we 'say it,' even 'show it' in the big thing) but we neglect the small and individual moments.  How can we possibly expect to achieve our big picture of love if we do not focus on the smaller?  This is like a builder who has in mind what he wants his building to look like complete, but starts to build without thought to what type of brick he uses.  In fact, he doesn't even supervise the construction, much less lay the foundation himself.  What I mean is, how can we expect to achieve our "Yeah I love people" big picture, if we neglect the individual and elemental bricks of love?


Dear friend, speak love to one another.  Don't just say it, speak with it, in your words, but more importantly in your tone.  Love in your interactions.  Embrace one another.  Uplift each other.  How can anything else matter?  Take care of each other.  Compliment one another.  Love, please, for the love of God, love.  Look at 1 Corinthians 13.  With love in the little things, only then can the grander picture of "yeah I love" come into focus and become a reality.


Please, dear friend, love like you've never loved before.  Because after all, it's not you loving anyways, but God himself!