Jun
12
2009
Loved Forevermore
Amongst other things, the gospel is the good news that if we, by faith, embrace all that Christ has done for sinners, then we can be assured that absolutely nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). Once we know that we’re forever loved by Jesus, we’re free to love others regardless of the risk, because our deep need to love will be satisfied.
A friend once told me, “My home is an unloving place.” When he returned there everyday from work, he said he wasn’t loved the way he longed to be loved by his wife and kids. I listened to him, and we talked further. Eventually I responded, “Maybe, just maybe, you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective.” I suggested that for six months he ask himself the following question each day when he came home from work: “Who here can I love? Who here needs my love right now?” I told him to pray about this before he walked in the door, asking God to show him the answer to that question. This man did that, and things at home changed.
Unfortunately, the fear that our love toward others will not be reciprocated is something that paralyzes many of us. It prevents parents from properly loving their kids, and husbands and wives from properly loving each other. We come to this conclusion: I will love you only to the degree that you love me. It’s an attitude that enslaves us. But the gospel frees us from that.
I too enjoy receiving love from my family. I’m ecstatic when my kids love me and express affection toward me. Something in me comes alive when they do that. But I’ve learned this freeing truth: I don’t need that love, because in Jesus, I receive all the love I need. This in turn enables me to love my kids without fear or reservation. I get to revel in their enjoyment of my love without needing anything from them in return. I get love from Jesus so that I can give love to them.
The gospel tells us that God in Christ loved sinners even while we hated him. Fully realizing this will pave the way for us to love others unconditionally as well. We realize and experience this liberating truth: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16). This kind of lay-down-your-life love is the clearest indicator of a gospel-centered life.
But laying down your life for others is impossible. It’s too scary—unless you know you’ve been eternally loved by Christ. Then you’re free to give your life to others, because you’ve received so much yourself.
Do you realize how radically different this world would be if that was the rule instead of the exception in all our relationships? The most powerful way we can join God on his mission to bring heaven to earth—to warm this place up, and renew and redeem and fix this broken planet—is by applying the gospel in this way, in all our relationships.
14 Comments
Hi Pastor Tullian- Hope you’re doing well today
You said:
But I’ve learned this freeing truth: I don’t need that love, because in Jesus, I receive all the love I need.I get to revel in their enjoyment of my love without needing anything from them in return. I get love from Jesus so that I can give love to them.
I really do understand the concept and actually the truth in that, but with the most respectful and humble heart I want to challenge that statement because I lived in a ‘loveless’ marriage for seventeen years, which encompasses way to much for this post…
I can’t remember the verse and I could look it up to appear more astute, but that’s an area that God is dealing with in me; anyway, it is something like, “there are four things the earth cannot stand up under and one of them is a married woman who is unloved.” The earth and I both buckled…for real, and not for lack of effort in the form of prayer and counseling etc. etc. And yes of course there are two sides to every divorce, but before God, you and anyone else who reads this, I can say that I was not loved and after that many years I crumbled.
If I’m honest I need both kinds of love, so what am I missing? Is there some piece of the message that I’m not connecting with? What if you truly give give give love, in a Christ like fashion and never receive any back…that happens! It seems one could weather that for a season or two, but many years of it has rendered many in the Christian community a statistic.
So frustrating because as believers we have the greatest example of love ever given to mankind in the person of Christ, yet we can still end up in the mud face down when it comes to relationship.
Even God wants us to love Him back..and He IS love?
Please help me understand…maybe I’m just too cerebral…sorry if I come off that way!
“We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19
Robin, I hear you. As a counselor and in our non-profit, I work with many women who are unloved – many who are abused by their husbands (as our ministry is domestic abuse). I am not saying this was the issue in your marriage, but it is in many. No matter how loving they are, how much they bow down and think not if themselves, it never gets better. They ask them selves daily “what can I do that is loving” hoping things will turn around. I did it myself. And of course their husbands say they DO love them. So in that case, is it loving to be abused? I do not think that is what God means by loving others. I think many of us struggle with what it means to love another rightly and how that is worked out in our daily lives, especially in severe cases of being unloved. I also think there are “levels of unlovedness” if there is such a word. May God bless you as you seek to understand.
Thank you pastor Tullian,
It is so true that when we know that we are loved, we can in turn love back.
Your sharing of how you feel towards your children greeting you hit home for me
My husband needs to experience this sort of revelation. So I thank God for allowing
me to see that there is hope, because at times I feel that we are the only ones
going through things like this. But God is so faithful and He cares and watches over His children.
We truly do not deserve His love or His grace but thank God He does.
Keep on leaning and trusting Jesus for strength and wisdom so that you may minister
not only your flock but others who are striving to walk in the way of our savior.
God bless you abundantly.
Dearest Kate – Your words of love, compassion and heartfelt understanding ministered to my soul like a warm bath massages weary bones. May God richly bless you for reaching out to the broken, in the spirit of grace and kindness.
Psalm 34:18 -Love, Robin
Robin and Kate,
I, too, can relate. However, I do believe it is only possible (but IS possible) through God’s grace- and only through His grace – that one can love without anything in return. Love being not a fuzzy feeling, but a self-sacrificing committment to meet the needs of the cherished person. That doesn’t mean letting anyone “off the hook” as far as consequences for illegal behavior (as in abuse), but to love them with the love that God has for us. God laid down His life for us while we were yet sinners, so I may lay my life down for even an unloving husband. God Himself is a faithful, loving Husband to me, and in turn I am able to love others as He has loved me. I cry out to God regularly that “I can’t do this.” And He gently or not so gently reminds me that He can. It is all God. As Tullian says, If I have God and nothing else, I have everything.
Dear bmg,
Thanks so much for jumping on board. I hear your precious heart…and believe sincerely that God blesses those who strive for Godly, sacrificial living and loving.
I believe also though that in marital relationships we make ourselves vulnerable to love and be loved. When we say ‘I do’, we say I do to loving and cherishing along with hardship and adversity and ALL come into play on the complex field of relationship. I am by no means an authority on this subject of brokenness, I only have my experience to go on and my God to trust in.
Eph. 5:25
Husbands LOVE your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Anything short of that command, or the command for wives to respect their husbands, is going to stir up a nasty storm, be it in the quiet of our hearts or a loud audible cry. Satan waits to rip the roof off our marital mansions and he is exceedingly patient. Our satellite for the pattern of the storm is mapped out all over scripture.
In the song ‘Brave’, Nichole Nordeman wrote:
I’ve never known a fire that didn’t begin with a flame
Every storm will start with just a drop of rain
But if you believe in me
That changes everything
Again, I am not an authority, but I think what can happen so often is that we stop believing in each other and that too changes everything, and not for the good. There is so much great advice in God’s word about marital relationships. He says, do not deny eachother intimacy except for a time of prayer. When couples refuse to love eachother sacrificially it can easily end up in weeks, months, and years of physical separation which leads to spiritual separation. Chances are that if you’re not sleeping together, you’re probably not praying together either (or visa-versa.) At that point you’ve received your R.S.V.P from Satan.
It’s so hard sometimes, but God in His faithfulness will never fail to respond to the sincere child who falls at His feet in despair. I know this because I spent three years there…
I love you sister -Robin
Robin,
Thank you for your transparency. I so appreciate where you are coming from. Sometimes I feel that I live “at His feet in despair.” I think we need to distinguish between loving sacrificially and living with circumstances. One may not have anything to do with the other. You say, “God blesses those who strive for Godly, sacrificial living and loving,” and then proceed to explain that that may not change circumstances. No, husbands don’t love their wives as Christ loves the church. Wives don’t respect husbands, etc., etc. We can point to things that caused the “breakup”. However, I believe that laying down our lives to love that person (spouse, friend, whoever) can be done before, during, and after the breakup/blowup. We do it in spite of the circumstances in which we are living. Tullian, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure I once heard you say from the pulpit that with God, there are no irreconcilable differences. I believe that. The problem is that God is left out (by one or both parties), and thus we have divorce, etc. I also firmly believe that God can turn divorce (and evil) around for good. No matter what, I am called to lay down my life and love, forgive, and pray for that person – no matter the circumstances or whether God ever changes the circumstances.
I love this blog for the opportunity to connect with our pastor and fellow believers; however, it is a challenge for me to communicate my heart over a keyboard
May God richly bless you, my sister!
bmg:
Well said; I receive it!
…And may God richly bless you as well
In our culture I think an enormous problem with “love” is that even within the church it has a 60′s American cultural definition. Love is not only forgiving, understanding, and patient, but confrontational, truth speaking and bold. Jesus loved ferociously. Let’s redefine the word in Biblical terms. God is love and yet chastens us severely. Let’s love as He loves.
God also loves us so much that he lets us deal with the consequences of our actions. He does not save us from that – at least not much – and so sometimes the end result of our consequences – our unloving, is sometimes a high price indeed. It can also be the most loving thing we can do for another. It is an exemplification of His love.
Speaking of divine intervention in our relationships, Sunday School with Warren Gage was right on target today! I felt that it was so worthwhile listening to that I procured a copy of it (at least most of it) and made an mp3 of it. You can listen to it if you download the MP3 file from my website.
It was wonderful to see the first wave of former NCC members take vows this morning – I look forward to serving Christ alongside all of you in the coming years!!
In honor of that occasion, Dr. Gage took a diversion from his series on Isaiah and spoke on the topic of unity, and David’s guidance from the Lord on how we can foster it. His class was an exposition of Psalm 133
Tullian, today’s sermon was excellent! It had me thinking things like “Wow – I didn’t know the Gospel was that big! – Thank you so much for your ministry!!
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Kate-
I get it.
Tullian,
Since this merger, we have encountered many examples of Psalm 133 being showcased in the lives of our new brothers and sisters here at CRPC. That’s the one that begins, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity!.”
Dr. Gage, taught beautifully on this Psalm yesterday, during a one week respite from his teaching in Isaiah. He introduced the lesson by commenting on the late start to his class, necessitated by the reception of the New City newcomers as CRPC members. He said, he embraces those kinds of inconveniences when the payoff (of receiving new members) is so great.
Tullian,
The lesson would be worthwhile for all of us. Don Law, in his response above, offers the opportunity to
download Dr Gage’s lesson as a MP3 file from his website.