Since Easter, we've been exploring how the Holy Spirit enables us to THRIVE--to be more than "just alive". The Holy Spirit helps us THRIVE even in the face of death, THRIVE by giving us wisdom to navigate any obstacle in life, THRIVE by forging within us character like steel, and THRIVE by teaching us to cry out to God as Father, Abba, daddy. This morning, we explore how the Spirit enables us to THRIVE in loving others.
LOVE is a pretty amazing thing--but what is love? To love is to show tenderness. i.e. A mom tenderly loves her baby. To love is to have passionate affection most often for something that brings you pleasure). i.e. You might love baseball, love gardening, or love fishing. To love is to be filled with sexual passion and desire.
There is a whole spectrum of what "love" might mean. On one end of the spectrum is everything from romantic love, to pleasure, and brotherly love. But on the other end of the spectrum we might place Christ's kind of love. The love of Jesus far exceeds any kind of love ever known. By his love, we know the full extent of God's love.
But again, what is love? Jesus provided a clue when he commanded us to love the Lord Our God with "all our heart, mind, body, and soul" and to "love our neighbor as ourselves." Your heart is inclined to serve whatever you love. Your mind is anxious for whatever you love. Your body lusts, desires, takes pride, or seeks pleasure in whatever you love. The destiny of your eternal soul is bound up in what you love. Your relationships are subjugated to whatever you love.
Jonathan Edwards, the great Theologian, once said, "We are free to choose, but we are slave to our greatest desire." It's that way with love too. We are free to love, but we are slave to our greatest love. Who, or what, are you a slave to? Who, or what, do you love? Around who or what, is all your heart, mind, body, soul, and relationships revolving?
God has given us this great capacity to love. And whatever we've chosen to love is what people find inspiring about us, or what they find tragically sad, even pathetic about our lives. We have a great capacity to Love God and Love People, but often we love ourselves the most. How might the Spirit help us THRIVE in love?
The Spirit Leads Us Beyond Self-Gratification.
By definition, love is selflessness. When we're Spirit-led, we're God-centered, or other-centered. But that is our core problem. We're self-centered. We might desire to love God, or love people, but the cravings of our flesh are stronger. The more we've obeyed the flesh, the stronger the flesh has become, and the harder we find it love.
The Spirit breaks the tyranny of our flesh. Galatians 5:16-17 says, ". . . walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do."
The flesh-centered person might want to love, but they're overcome by the desires of the flesh. The Spirit-led person might be tempted to sin, but they're compelled to love instead. According to God, you're either flesh-centered or Spirit-led. The Spirit changes our default impulse from the things of the flesh, to things of God.
A flesh-centered person leads a sad, and tragic life filled. Their default is sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of rage, rivalries, dissensions, envy, drunkenness, gross sexual behavior. (see Galatians 5:19-21).
But a Spirit-led person leads an inspiring life. Our new default is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (See Galatians 5:22-23). Galatians 5:24 says of those who are Spirit-led they "have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."
It's the Holy Spirit destroys our inner animal, who gives us a new heart and new mind and new relationships, and sets us free, giving us new desires, that we might become fully human, and love as Christ first loved us. You can cage an animal, you can write laws to control carnal man, but only God changes us so we can love beyond self.
The Spirit Leads Us Beyond Self-Importance.
By definition love is selflessness. When we're Spirit-led, we're consumed with the things of God, and we actively look to the interests of others. But that is our core problem. By default, we look to our own interests. We honk at people in our way, ignore others, become abusive when people get in the way of our ambitions, or impede our goals. We lack basic empathy, a basic regard for others. We are our own top priority. But the Spirit of God rewires our defaults.
In Philippians 2:1-4 Paul makes an appeal, by the Spirit God. He says, ". . . If there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."
And what does looking to the interests of others entail? For Jesus it meant subjugating himself to God's will, God's glory, God's purpose. It meant emptying himself of any aspiration of glory. Taking the form of a servant, becoming a man himself, and humbling himself, and obeying God even to the point of death, even death on a cross. By the way, you're never so important, as when you love God, love others. And you're life is never so irrelevant, and tragic, as when you're filled with self-importance.
The Spirit Leads Us Beyond Hyper-Spirituality.
By definition love is selflessness. When were Spirit-led, our religion serves God, and it's serves God's redemptive purpose in others. But that's our core problem. We develop this hyper-spirituality that's all about the flesh--God loving me, God serving me, answering my prayers, filling me, making me happy, healing me, moving my mountains, exalting me, using me. But do we exist for God, or does He exist for us?
In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, Paul warns, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."
There is this torrent of hyper-spirituality flooding our churches that is deeply self-centered, even narcissistic. We live in a day when Christians make great boasts about their spiritual experiences. Their message is, "Look at me. Look how radical my life is. Look how much I love God, I'm not just a fan I'm a true follower." But as you listen, you realize their religion is all about themselves. And when it comes to loving others? There's little fruit.
When your religion is all about "me", you become unapproachable, impatient, even unkind. We act arrogant and rude, and express irritation toward those in need. Out of insecurity, we ooze with envy, even resenting those whose light shines a little brighter than ours. We tend to boast about ourselves, or our church, or our spiritual conquests on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, books, and every platform available.
But true spirituality is the servant of God, never self; true spirituality is the servant of God's redemptive purpose in others, never about the aggrandizement of self; True spirituality has one headline... and that headline is LOVE.
Paul says, "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." The Spirit teaches us to love beyond self.
The Spirit Leads Us Beyond Intellectual Arrogance.
When we're Spirit-led we're most inspired to know God's love in Jesus Christ, and to help other's know God's love. But that's our core problem. In our arrogance, we tend to fill our heads with lots of knowledge... even Bible knowledge. We forget that we exist to know God's love in Christ Jesus, and to make that love known. Knowing, receiving, and sharing love IS our core curriculum, it's not another elective.
In Ephesians 3:14-21 Paul says, "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
The Spirit Leads Us Into Eternal Fellowship.
The essence of love is selflessness. When we're Spirit-led our relationships take a distinctly different form. Our relationships are marked by endurance and long-suffering. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, our love "believes all things, endures all things, and hopes in all things." But this is our core problem.
By default we disbelieve that people (even ourselves) can be forgiven, or even should be forgiven. We disbelieve in the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit--that by the power of God, all things are possible, that people can change. Christians are among the first to destroy people's hope... when people come to God for hope we do psychology--we diagnose their condition, assign them godless labels, do some token good deed, but then pass them on to other churches, institutions, pastors, or professionals. We don't always endure, and walk with people in discipleship, and help them grow. We don't care to be inconvenienced by other people's messiness.
Speaking of endurance, Church skipping is epidemic today. Our default is to run from responsibility to love. Father's run from fatherhood, family, to pursue pleasure. Christians run from their church, at the first sign of trouble. And Pastors run too--the average pastor doesn't last more than a few years in a church. We love the idea of community, but what we really want are benefits w/o commitment, or accountability.
For the first time, I noticed this verse in Romans 15:30, and it really challenged me. Paul says, "I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf."
Notice the language! "I appeal to you" "by our Lord Jesus Christ" "by the love of the Spirit" that we "strive together" "in prayers to God." A Spirit-led person knows what it means to get on their knees, and get into the trenches w/brothers and sisters in Christ, and strive together in prayer, before God, and in the power of the Spirit. We don't strive enough together. To the degree we strive together in love, we become an inspiring church! But when we run, skip, and jump from church to church. . . we're become a caricature of Jesus... instead of an authentic, living, breathing, suffering expression of his love. The Spirit welds us together as one. [WHERE CAN YOU THRIVE? Self-gratification, self-importance, hyper-spirituality, intellectual arrogance, deeper fellowship?]