Love is not a possession of some kind; it is not an abstract idea, it is not only the motivating factor for behavior, rather love is behavior. In simple terms, love is action, or we may say: “love is ethics.” It is concrete and visible; it is covenantal and relational. In fact, it is so concrete for Paul that he says I Corinthians 2 that “(he) decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
Love, for St. Paul, is most clearly demonstrated in the concrete suffering of Christ for us. He gave himself for us, while we were yet sinners. To love is to act; anything short of action is not love at all. A husband can say he loves his wife 100 times a day, but if he refuses to connect his words to his actions, there is no fruit to his love. Our mission is to pursue the fruit of love in word and deed.
I once was having a conversation with a woman who was having difficulty in her marriage. Her husband was consistently struggling to bring his home into order. The problem was two-fold.
First, he was allowing a certain sin to set up camp in his heart. It’s not as though he was overjoyed at the struggle he was having, but he was not exactly kicking the scoundrel out with a swift boot to the backside either. This tolerance of sin is what created the bigger problem in his home. When a man is truly taking his duty of godly dominion seriously, the result will be a degree of beauty and order. His home will be slowly and steadily growing in these areas. When a man allows sin to get all comfy in his garden, then chaos and ugliness will result. It will follow him in whatever his hand touches. His wife will be infected by it, his children will be infected by it, his work will be infected by it. Everything will start to wither and fall apart. Something has to die. Either sin and self has to die or the things around him will die. Death is inevitable, which leads me to the second problem.
Her second problem was the struggle to allow sin to have its natural consequences in his life in order that he might wake up to the seriousness of the situation. She was concerned that if she stopped bailing him out then others would suffer. The children would suffer if she didn’t pick up the slack and provide for the family. Others within the extended family and the church would have to sacrifice to take care of her and the kids if the consequences of his sin were allowed to come to the surface. This is true. The man is called to lay down his life for his family. He is to die to himself that he might give life to those under his care. If a man will not do this because of a love for his sin and a love of self, then someone else has to do it. Life only comes through death. Abundant fruit only comes from dying seeds. If a man will not die to himself that his family might be blessed, then someone else will have to do it in his place. Others will have to sacrifice, others will have to serve. No amount of enabling or pretending can prevent this.
And a man can only do this if he has first looked to the One who suffered and died in his place. Christ was crucified and buried that all us men once enslaved to our lusts and in love with our own lives might be raised as servant-kings. And the people who continue to live under the care of such men can only endure with grace and hope if they also have looked to the One who endured undeserved hardship for the joy of redeeming and restoring an undeserving people to glory and honor.
“For we walk by faith and not by sight.” So says
the apostle Paul in 2Cor 5.7. Paul is, of course, dealing with a particular
issue there in that context, but this statement is a general principle of the
Christian faith that he is applying to that context. Paul is laying down the
way that all Christians must walk in every area of life: by faith. Faith is
relying upon what God says and having your thoughts, actions, and desires
shaped according to his word. Faith is thinking Christianly.
Learning this way of life is a struggle. We have
enemies within and without. Our own sin that seeks to exalt itself and our own
word of authority fight submission to what God says. We hear the voices of the
world echoing the words of the devil, “Has God really said?…” God’s authority
is challenged in our lives at every turn. We are tempted not to listen to him
and exalt our own word or the words of others above his, conforming our lives
to those words.
I John 3:16: This is how we know love: Jesus laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
Laying down our lives is a distinctly Christian commitment. Only the Christian can truly say they follow a Lord who died for them. The sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross is the model of Christian existence. The Christian faith is self-sacrificial. The saint looks at his brother and says, “You are a follower of the crucified Lord and my duty is to lay down my life for you.”
Now, at this point, it is tempting to list ten examples of sacrifice, but one would naturally feel like once he completes the list his sacrificial disposition ends. Laying down our lives for one another is not always calculated, it is generally an act of service at a time when we least expect.
True love sees an opportunity to lay down our lives and seizes it with wonder at the Lord of glory who gave his body on a tree. In communion with one another sacrifice becomes the language of love. As C.S. Lewis describes: “When God becomes a Man and lives as a creature among His own creatures in Palestine, then indeed His life is one of supreme self-sacrifice and leads to Calvary.”
In the
beginning, after the final act of creation was done, God saw everything that he
made and declared it “very good.” This declaration included man himself, man
and woman. Since that time man has had the need to be approved, vindicated, or justified
in the eyes of God himself and those who represent him in our lives. Children
need to hear “Well done” from their parents, reflecting the divine pleasure of God
himself. A spouse needs to hear approval from the lips and attitude of his wife
or her husband. The employee needs approval from his employer in the form of praise
or pay. A peer needs vindication from his peer group that he is accepted. We
are beings created with a need to be judged and found acceptable.
One of the
problems we have in our sin is that we set up false gods, gods who make
themselves readily available, to judge us by the wrong standards and give us
the acceptance we crave. This vindication is quick and easy. The echo chambers
we create in our society through social media and other avenues gives us a
great cloud of judges surrounding us to tell us that we are accepted, that we
are justified because of the way we think, act, talk, and the positions we take
on issues. These gods are all too happy to grant us quickly the justification
we long for, and we are all too happy to be satisfied with their judgments. The
more they approve of us, the deeper our affection for these gods.
Every year around this time the internet is flooded with essays and interviews concerning Lent: Should we observe it? If we observe it, how should we observe it? And so on. Good folks disagree about these issues. But it is a good discussion to be having. I thought I’d chime in on the issue. Hopefully, I can help keep people thinking through the issue.
First, let me clear some ground here. I agree with many of my brothers who despise some of the Lenten practices. There are people who have superstitious views of the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, for instance. I’ve even heard of one church who set up shop in a local business so that you can get your ashes to go. This was a one-stop shop for groceries and a dose of humility and repentance. People who do this sort of thing are, in most cases, viewing the imposition of ashes as some type of talisman that is going to keep God off their backs for a little while longer. I have witnessed people through the years from many branches of the Christian church act as if the religious ritual itself (whether it is the imposition of ashes, fasting, attending worship, going to revival services, or whatever) was an end in itself. After you do the deed, then you are free to live any way you want outside of the time of that special rite. According to what God said through the prophet Isaiah in his opening salvo, he has never taken kindly to superstitious views of religious rituals (cf. Isa 1.10-20. Mind you, the rituals that God is condemning in Isaiah are the ones that he himself set up. These were not manmade rituals. These were God’s own rituals that were being abused by superstitious views.) Superstitious views of the imposition of ashes or even fasting have no place in the Christian Faith.
The
Transfiguration of Jesus was a taste of future glory. Jesus ascended the
mountain to pray, leading Peter, James, and John to join him. While there, the
form of Jesus’ face changed and his clothes turned white, like flashing
lightning (Lk 9.29). Moses and Elijah appeared and spoke to Jesus about the
exodus that he was to accomplish soon in Jerusalem (Lk 9.31). This exodus event
would involve his suffering, death, and resurrection, something about which
Jesus spoke to his disciples before ascending the mountain (Lk 9.21-22). If any
man desired to participate in the exodus and future glory of Christ, he would
have to take up his cross daily and follow Christ (Lk 9.25-27).
Before
Jesus ascended this mountain to receive a foretaste of future glory, he ascended
another mountain. On this mountain, he wasn’t leading disciples. He was being
led. On this mountain he would also be promised glory, feasting his eyes on all
the kingdoms of the world. But this mountain-top experience was the
anti-transfiguration, for it was the promise of the devil.
Baptisms
are glorious events. Looking at the baptism of Jesus, we understand why they
are glorious events. Jesus’ baptism provides the archetypal pattern for every
subsequent baptism into Christ. Whether infant or aged, when a person is baptized
into Christ, heaven is opened, the Father declares the baptizand his loved
child, and the Spirit is poured out. Though we don’t see all of these happen
with the naked eye we know that they happen to us because they happened to
Christ Jesus, the one with whom we share baptism.
But
sharing Jesus’ baptism is not where our identity with Jesus ends. In baptism we
come to share in the life of Christ, and that life moves from baptism into the
wilderness. The Spirit poured out in baptism is the same Spirit that leads us
into the wilderness to be tested by the devil (Lk 4.1-2). To be declared “son
of God” in baptism is a vocation as much as it is a standing before the Father.
Part and parcel to that vocation is to be tested in a world that is hostile to
us by a Father who graciously withholds from us good things until the proper
time.
It’s hard to measure the significant impact of Benedictine monasteries upon the church and Western culture. At a time of tremendous upheaval, uncertainty, and dark paganism in Europe, these tiny communities living under the Rule set forth by St. Benedict both preserved the light of Scripture and learning and, at the same time, advanced the light of the gospel within the gates of Germanic warrior culture.
While it was far from neat and tidy in its efforts, the monastic movement sought to lay down roots of biblical living within the fertile ground of paganism that would produce a spiritual vineyard to choke out the weeds of worldliness. Far from being isolationist, they were on a reclamation project- reclaim the truth of Scripture, reclaim the life of holiness, reclaim the earth under its rightful lord, King Jesus.
St. Benedict states at the end of his Rule that this way of life was not meant as an end in itself. He set down a blueprint of monastic life that was meant for beginners, to begin the process of true discipleship. It was not for the chosen few who were super-saints. It was to lay a foundation of biblical community that could (and did!) overcome the darkness around it.
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
