Episode 1. A World Without Love
Imagine … just imagine a world without love. What would that look like? Well, sadly, you and I don’t have to do too much imagining. We don’t have to look too far from home, to see what a …
Imagine … just imagine a world without love. What would that look like? Well, sadly, you and I don’t have to do too much imagining. We don’t have to look too far from home, to see what a loveless world looks like.
Love is something that we take for granted. It just is. It just exists. It’s always been here, always will be. Love. When I was younger, by far the majority of pop songs were about love.
These days, believe it or not, 92% of pop songs feature sex – it seems that sex sells.
But as much as love is something that’s always been there, something that we take for granted, it’s the lack of love, or the failure of people to love one another that causes most of the pain in this world. And not just on a geopolitical scale. It’s the absence of love, or the failure of love, that causes most of the pain in our lives at an individual level.
Can I be even more specific – in your life and my life.
Think about the things that cause you pain. Okay, there are health issues and financial issues. But most of the pain in our lives is caused by relationship issues.
Anger, resentment, arguments,. Feeling ignored and passed over. People who try to bully you. People who always want to get their own way. Just think about your relationships at the moment. Where do they fall short? What are the things causing you hurt at the moment?
Think … isn’t it all about people failing to love one another the way they should? Absolutely.
My dictionary tells me that love is a strong feeling of affection. That’s it! Well, I don’t know about you, but I think that that’s a wholly unsatisfactory definition of love. My feelings, your feelings, the next person’s feelings – they go up and down, depending on how we feel physically and emotionally. Depending on what’s going on around us.
Anyone who’s been married for any length of time will tell you, there are times in a marriage that your wife or husband drive you completely bonkers. You thought you knew them … then they do … that! No, if love is going to have any meaning at all, it has to be more than a strong feeling or emotion.
So what is love? What actually is it? Come on, if you had to get up and give the rest of us your definition of love in 25 words or less, what would you say? How would you put it?
Well that’s what I want to explore with you this week and next week on the program. Let’s take a journey together to discover what love actually is, Because if, in our heart of hearts we can work that out, then at the very least you and I will have a better sense of what it is to love other people.
And that … that has to be a good thing, right?
So we’re going to spend some time together in 1 Cor 13 – a familiar passage to many, written by the Apostle Paul to the Church in Corinth. Seems that church, which he was involved in planting in the 1st Century AD, was having some significant problems.
Arguments, dissension. So Paul, who’s off somewhere else at the time, writes this letter to them. These days that letter is the 5th book of the New Testament. And the reason that Chapter 13 is so well known is that it’s almost the chapter spoken about at weddings. Well, Christian weddings at least.
And it kicks off – talking about love – in rather an odd way. It starts off by describing a life, a world, without love. Let’s have a listen:
1 Cor 13:1–3: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have 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 do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
So what God is saying here through Paul, is that it doesn’t matter how clever or gifted you are, it doesn’t matter how much of your life you sacrifice, it doesn’t matter how generous you are, how much faith you have … if you aren’t motivated by love, it’s all completely useless. You know something, I think he’s absolutely right!
We all know people who are incredibly bright or gifted or talented, and yet, they’re not the sort of people you want to be around. Because there’s no love. There’s no kindness or gentleness. For them, it’s all about them. Blow you, blow me, they’re only interested in advancing themselves. And we just don’t like being around those sorts of people.
It’s those sorts of people that ruin relationships. It’s those sorts of people who start wars. If I don’t have love, then I gain nothing. Absolutely. If I don’t do everything out of love, motivated by love for God and for others, what’s the point?
And the love that Paul’s talking about here? Is it some vague feeling of affection? Nope. The original Greek word that he uses here is agape. Agape is a selfless, sacrificial, unconditional of. Of the four types of love spoken about in the Bible, it is the highest form of love.
It’s the love that God showed to you and me by sending Jesus to the Cross to die for us. When Jesus said, no greater love has any man than to lay down his life for his friends, that’s the sort of love that He was talking about.
Rock solid, unconditional love. Love that endures all the up and downs. Love that never wavers or fails, even when the object of that love doesn’t deserve it.
Without that sort of love, all the gifts and abilities in the world mean nothing. Would you agree?
So how are you living your life. Is your life mostly about you, or about the love that you have for the people around you? Because when you and I are dead and gone, the only thing we’ll leave behind is the love (or not) that we deposited in the hearts of the people who really matter to us.
I was fascinated recently to read what Mahatma Gandhi thought about Christianity. Gandhi was a Hindu, but he’d read the whole new testament. And strikingly, he had a lot of time for Jesus. This is what he said:
I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
That … that is as sad as it is true. You and I are never going to be perfect, but so often we Christians and the church at large are not, principally, an expression of God’s love. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of Christians do good things. Amazing things. Look at Mother Theresa. And okay, we all know about her, but there are countless Christians today, living lives of sacrificial, unconditional love.
Problem is, there are also countless Christians who are doing the exact opposite. Fighting and arguments in churches. Power struggles. Pride. Dissension. And out there in the world, the place where we get to use our gifts to express the love of Christ in a practical way, so many so–called Christians are using their talents for their own self advancement.
How are you living your life? If God is indeed love as the Bible says He is, if God did indeed send Jesus His Son to die to pay for your sin, if all that is true … how are you living your life.
Is yours a life of sacrificial, selfless, unconditional love? Or are you one of the Christians that Gandhi was talking about?
Hard questions, but questions that need to be asked. So join me again tomorrow, as we take a look at what Christ–like love in my life and your life, really looks like.
You know, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. This series, Love Is …, is all about helping us to live the life of love that Jesus would have us live. And to help you with that, I would love to share more of God’s Word with you.
So, you can listen to each of the messages in this series again, right now, online at christianityworks.com. Just click on the A Different Perspective icon at the bottom of the homepage and you’ll see them all right there.
You can stream them online, download the audio or transcript, even subscribe to the podcast.
And while you’re there, check out the treasure trove of free resources – like the Christianityworks daily eDevotional. Words of inspiration, hope and encouragement delivered right to your inbox, on your smartphone, tablet or computer each weekday.
It’s all about helping you live out each and every day in the victory that Jesus came to give you. And, like everything else on the site, it’s completely free. That web address again is christianityworks.com.
Remember, this series is all about helping you to discover the amazing love that God has for you, a love that He wants you to live out, each day, in this tough, brutal world where so many people are in desperate need of the love of Christ.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m Berni Dymet and I’ll catch you again, same time tomorrow, with … A Different Perspective.
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