Last week we talked about true
evangelism being something God does, and our only job is to bend our
wills to him, to submit our wills to his will—get out of the way,
so to speak—so that we aren't creating obstacles to God's
evangelizing work. It's not that we are more powerful that God, it's
that if we do not submit to God, we are not allowing him to use us
for his work. It's not that cannot use us, it is that he is not
willing to use a vessel that is going to send mixed signals to a
potential child of God.
If I'm preaching the gospel to you, and
then I launch into an expose on how great a secular TV show is, where
I'm describing whole scenes for you, and they aren't emulating God,
I'm sending mixed signals to you. I need to focus wholly on God, to
accept his Spirit working in my life, to submit to his will, and then
I can give you the pure Gospel, without distractions, or heresies
thrown in.
Complete submission is possible. God
helps us achieve it. There is not hard work required on our end. It
says in Romans 6: “Do not present your members to sin as
instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as
those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to
God as instruments for unrighteousness.” What is the key verb in
that passage? “Present”: we offer ourselves as an insufficient
sacrifice to God. He does the work, but what we are doing is
presenting ourselves. It does not require hard work. It just
requires us to submit, like slaves, to God's will. It's getting all
our garbage off the table: clearing the desktop and only allowing
God's jobs to be on our desktop.
Jesus said this last week to us, when
he said, I am the vine and you are the branches. Abide in me and I
in you, and you will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do
nothing. We are presenting ourselves to the vine. Jesus is grafting
us onto himself. He blood flows through our veins. We bear more and
more fruit, due to Christ's blood in us. These fruits bear seeds and
the seeds are planted in others' lives, combining to bring that lost
souls back to the Good Shepherd.
This is what Christ means when he tells
us to “Abide.” Abide isn't an active verb, it's an accepting
verb. It's all about accepting God's will in our lives. It's about
“presenting” ourselves to God as slaves. It's about submission.
Now, in this week's passage, which appears right after last week's,
we get another command to abide, but this time it is abiding in God's
love.
What does it mean to abide in God's
love. If we look at what we've just been talking about, it means to
accept God's love. It's about presenting our love to God. It's
about submitting to God's love. God's love is a love of submission,
and that's what makes it so unpredictable.
The Greeks have four different words
for love. We have one. They have four. The first is storge, and it
means affection. It is the love that you might have for a pet. The
second is philios or friendship. Philadelphia is brotherly love.
We're getting closer to true love. Then we have eros, which means
romance. It's the love between husbands and wives, when the two of
you just NEED to be together. It's an achy love.
Now, agape is the last love, and it
used to be thought of as the lowest love. It means charity, and
ancient Greeks thought of it as giving alms to the poor. It was not
thought of too highly. But God showed us what agape can be. As we
read in today's passage: “There is no greater love than this: that
one lays down one's life for one's friends.” Agape suddenly moves
from the lowest love to the highest love. Whenever we watch a movie
or read a story in which someone lays down their life for a friend,
we are moved, because we are seeing true agape love in action. We
are watching the love of God played out before our eyes. In the
movies this happens all the time, but in real life, we flee, because
of our sin, because of our unwillingness to submit, to abide, to
present. We fail at this kind of love.
Jesus commands us to love one
another—to agape one another—to lay down our lives for each
other. Yet we fail. Back to Romans, chapter 5, we read, one of us
would scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps foe a good
person one would dare even to die. Sin keeps us from being able to
die for a good person or a righteous person.
But here God demonstrates agape love:
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ
died for us. We cannot bring ourselves to die for a good person.
Jesus died for us while we were still enemies. His is perfect agape
love, perfect self-sacrifice. The only way we can do likewise is to
completely submit ourselves to God, become his slave, present
ourselves as an offering to God, for him to do with us as he wishes,
without us kicking against him, wanting to be our own person. The
only way we can show true agape love to each other is to completely
abide in his love.
Paul writes in Philippians that Jesus
was in the form of God, and could have chosen to stay where he was,
living as God, but instead he made himself nothing, he took the form
of a servant, a slave, a submissive one, an abiding one, born in the
likeness of a man. And then it goes downhill from there. After that
complete submission to humanity, he completely submits to love.
Jesus humbled himself by being obedient to the point of
death—something we are unable to do, but the perfect man can—and
he died on the cross for us. He showed true agape love.
And what follows is exaltation: as a
result of this agape submission, God highly exalted Jesus and
bestowed on him the name above all names. We refuse to submit,
because we would rather exalt ourselves. Now, who would you rather
exalt you? Yourself or God almighty? Exalt yourself and God will
humble you. Humble yourself—submit, abide, present—and God will
exalt you. Only through abiding in agape, can we be made more life
Christ in this world.
