A Bigger Salvation Than We Thought or Think

It is not a small salvation which has laid hold of us.  The terrors of God's wrath are deeper than we think, more lasting than we could fear.

But the lashes of judgement, or lack thereof, is not sufficient an honor for the blood of Christ.  God will not trade His Son for mere relief as if His glory was worth no more.

What is the glory of the Son put to open shame worth?

I shall walk in eternal peace.  Everyday security and comfort shall follow me.  I will forget what it was like to fear a man.  I will one day not remember anxiety.  Indeed, I shall marvel how anxiety could even be thought of in the light of my God.  I shall trust such that if the next step be hidden to me then still I will place down my foot in confidence knowing the Lord has gone before me.

I shall be holy as He is holy.  What?  A creature such as I?  I who sell my religion for lusts of this life daily?  Will a man who constantly turns aside one day walk with sure steps?  Every thought will be righteous.  Every desire will be for what is good.  Every choice will be as clear as if a cloud or pillar of fire led the way.

I shall be given a glory to which I have no claim.  Should I be a door keeper in the house of my God I would be blessed beyond measure.  But what is the sacrifice of my Lord worth?  It is too small a thing for God to grant Christ slaves in return for His blood.  A host of sons and daughters.  I shall sit at the table of my God as a son.  And if a son, an heir.  I shall walk the new earth as royalty.  My Father owns this land.  I shall rejoice as I look upon my Elder Brother in His glory.

What infinite value in the blood of Christ!  The blessings upon one soul are more than can be contemplated and yet no man can number the multitude of the redeemed.  Such is the worth of my Lord Jesus.

It is no small salvation that has laid hold us.

Pursue Love

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.  Seeing as I’ve been pondering for a starting point for my blog, I think I’ll take the current holiday as an idea to run with for my first post.  I want to discuss pursuing Christian love, and I’ll be picking one quality of love from 1 Corinthians 13 to use as an opportunity for us to practice some thought and action on.  I highly encourage anybody who is reading this blog to stop and read 1 Corinthians 13 at this point, then finish this blog.  If you don’t have time for both, choose scripture. 

           

Pursue Love 1 Corinthians 14:1

            Before we get to the specific example of love I want to consider, it would be well worth considering the “pursue” part of it.  Immediately after what may be the best known chapter on love in all of scripture, Paul commands us to pursue love.  Here are four points to clarify, confirm, and encourage us in this mandate.

1. This is not a command to pursue love from other people.  It is not a command to be loved.  This is instructing us to actively engage ourselves in transforming our own hearts and mind such that they are sincerely driven and motivated by love in the way we think, feel, and act towards others.

2. This is not good advice.  This is not how to achieve your best life now.  This is not therapeutic self help.  This is a command of God in the word of God.  And it is commanding that we actively pursue this, not that we sit back and wait for it to happen in us.

3. The fact that it is commanded is an encouragement.  One of the most encouraging aspects of this to my own heart is that Paul is instructing those whom he happily recognizes as regenerate, Spirit indwelt, believers, and yet he does not find it incompatible to tell them they are people who have need to pursue love.  As you meditate on 1 Corinthians 13, one of the most dominant thoughts you will have is, “this is not me.”  Rest assured that thought trumpets through my own mind as I read it.  Paul does not take weakness in this area as disqualifying their claim to Christianity, despite believing it to be so central to being a Christian that he is willing to state that a man without it is “nothing” (1 Cor 13:2).

4. The need to actively pursue love is ongoing, unending.  In 1 Thessalonians we see Paul praising this church from the very start of the letter for their love driven labor (1 Thess 1:3).  And again latter in the letter Paul tells them:

1Th 4:9-10  Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; for indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more,

How remarkable is it that Paul could speak so highly of this church that he could actually say that he has no need to write them concerning it.  And yet he says, “But we urge you, brethren, to excel still more.”  No matter how well they loved each other, Paul continued to urge them onto more.  In other words, he instructed them to continue pursuing love, to continue to purposely engaging their minds to grow in this area.  There are some things in the Christian life, some areas of growth, which we shall never be finished with in this life time, nor are we to let up our efforts in our pursuit.  Pursuing a sincere and deep motive of love in how we think, feel, and act towards others is one of those pursuits that will never end.  If you are beginner, diligently pursue love.  If you are worse than a beginner and have not the slightest sign of love, diligently pursue love.  If you are starting to get the hang of it, diligently pursue love.  If you are a shining example of love, diligently pursue love.

Love is not Irritable

            Every single description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is worth deep reflection.  Here we are just going to think very briefly about one of them, hoping that it provides help for you to think through each of them over time.  The one I am choosing is in verse five.  Love is not irritable…ouch.  The NASB translation states, “love is not provoked,” and some other translations go with that.  There is a reason that I am choosing to go with the ESV translation on this.  Both are good translations of the Greek word; however, “not irritable” speaks with a clarity of connotation to our minds that “not provoked” fails to achieve.  Let me put it this way, ask yourself these two questions and see which stings the most.  Are you easily provoked?  Is it easy for people to irritate you?  The second hits us more squarely to our own minds.  This is exactly the point.

            Now the passage is not suggesting that if you are irritating to other people, then you display an unloving character.  The passage is saying that if other people are able to irritate you then you are displaying an unloving character.  What does it take to irritate you?  What does it take from the line at the grocery stores?  From the traffic?  From politicians?  From your children?  From your neighbors?  From your spouse?  Love is not is not irritated.

            If you have a measure of both self insight and honesty, then right now you are probably thinking along with me that, “Love may not be irritable, but I most certainly am.”  For most of us, any measure of messing with our expectations is sufficient to irritate us.  The slightest amount of a spouse or child not living up to expectations is not only able to irritate us, but also to cause us to brood over it for quite some time.  Love may indeed not be irritable, but we most certainly are. 

            What shall we do?  First, let me encourage you to rather than confessing your shortcoming to a blog, confess it to an almighty God who is able and willing to wash you clean by the blood of Christ.  Second, pursue love.  Let’s think through some practical steps to pursuing love in this particular manifestation.  How do we pursue being a loving person who is not irritable?  Here are four helps which I hope will turn into aids for thinking through the rest of 1 Corinthians 13 later.

1. Never give irritability a pass.  Love is not irritable, but you almost certainly are.  However, it is important to never give it your blessing.  Our temptation will be to justify our mindset.  We will tell ourselves that in this circumstance it is not only expected for you to be irritated, but it is actually valid or right.  Being aware of your weakness is one thing, failing to acknowledge it as a weakness is quite another.  If despite your best effort you have become irritated, at least let it be clear in your mind that you are wrong.  If you can not control your irritation, at least do not give it your blessing.  There is tremendous power in simply refusing to justify a behavior in yourself.  If it must be there, let it be against your wishes, unwelcomed, unwanted, and undefended by your rationalizing.  Love is not irritable.  Leaving it exposed in this way is like painting a target for the Holy Spirit and the word of God to go to work.  We are dragging our sin into the light that it may be transformed into light by the God of light (Eph 5:13).

2. Pray for the root.  Pray for a transformed heart filled with love which finds one of its natural expressions in not being irritable.  One of the most remarkable things about love in scripture is that we don’t really find a definition of what it is, but only descriptions.  It’s patient.  It’s kind.  It’s not irritable.  But there is this root heart and mind attitude that is the love, and it’s almost defiant of a clear definition. 
               It is crucial that we remember to pray, asking God to instill this root heart and mind attitude within us.  We are going to be actively pursuing the fruits of love, the descriptions of its traits which we can see, the things that naturally flow from a heart of love.  But God must work the inward heart change.  Let’s use another one of the qualities as an illustration for this.  Love is patient.  Now love may be patient but love is not the only thing that is patient.  One classic trait of the most terrifying villains in stories is patience.  They are willing to plot and scheme for years to reach their wicked purposes.  They are willing to deny themselves in the short run that they may gain in the long run.  Palpatine in Star Wars, Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, and the Greeks waiting in the Trojan horse are all examples of malicious patience.  I would wager Satan to be a momentous example of wicked patience.
               My point is simply that as we pursue patience, or not being irritated, and other love attributes, we may end up with nothing but extreme discipline and a great deal of self righteousness, and we may have come very far from actually becoming loving.  We may pursue being “not irritable,” but if God does not work the right root in our hearts we may end up achieving this goal simply by being stoic.  Stoicism teaches us to not care about what happens by being resigned to fate.  This is not Christianity.  Christianity teaches us to be passionate about things.  We are to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15).  We are to long and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6).  Christianity is passionate, and yet “love is not irritable.”  If we are going to attain to this root heart change called love, and not merely the fruit of love, it is going to be a work of God in us.
               What does that mean for us?  Prayer.  We are to continually pray for God to change our hearts as we pursue love by striving to change our habits.  Seek the root of love, not merely the fruit of love.  Recognize that only God can do that work.  Seek for Him to do so through prayer.  And continually remember that we are seeking for something deeper than the fruit.

3. Strive for the fruit.  As we pray for God to work the root of love in us, we are to mindfully strive for the fruit of love.  We are to seriously engage our minds in this.  We have missed the mark if at the end of a long day we are for the first time considering how close we have come to our goal.  1 Cor 13 is a chapter especially suited to daily reflection early, and keeping it in mind throughout the day.  Today, doing so led me to driving through a Wal-Mart parking lot repeating the phrase, “Love is not irritable.”  If you’ve ever had somebody stealing a parking spot, or waiting in front of you for five minutes hoping the parked car with the tail lights brightly shining was about to leave rather than just parking, then you can probably picture why.  The point is this, get your goal in your mind, and keep it in your mind as you face the day.  Remind yourself.  Correct yourself.  Restrain yourself.  Love is not irritable.

4. Be thankful for opportunities rather than bitter for obstacles.  Thank God for the training He has given you:  your spouse.  When Israel took the promise land, God chose to leave some remnants of the nations to test them with regards to their devotion to the Lord and to teach them war.  He took their sinfully failing to drive the nations fully out of the land as He had commanded, and purposefully appointed their sin towards something good.  God uses your spouse’s sin the same way.  Is his or her sin good?  No.  Are they appointed by God for accomplishing something good in you?  Yes.  You will have endless practice from your spouse learning to develop a heart that is too loving to be irritable.  The Lord knows that my wife has been granted a virtual obstacle course.  Happy Valentines Day, honey.

I hope this will help you to prayerfully think through the other descriptions of love in 1 Corinthians 13, and I pray that this will spark a life long pursuit of Christian love in at least some part of His church.