The Practice of Godliness: Godliness has value for all things (25 page)

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Authors: Jerry Bridges

BOOK: The Practice of Godliness: Godliness has value for all things
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GOD IS LOVE
We have already noted in chapter 10 that the apostle John makes two statements concerning the essential nature of God: “God is light” and “God is love.” Love is not defined here as an action, nor even as a character trait, but as an essential part of God’s nature. As Bethune notes, “God was love long before he had made any creatures to be the objects of his love, even from all eternity”
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God is infinitely glorious in all His attributes, but the Bible seems to give preeminence to His holiness and to His goodness or love. In Exodus 33 there is an instructive relationship between God’s goodness and God’s glory. In response to Moses’ request, “Now show me your glory,” God replies, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence” (verses 18-19). Yet in verse 22 God says, “When my glory passes by ...” It appears from the correlation of verses 18 and 22 that God equates His glory with His goodness. And how does God describe His goodness? Exodus 34:6-7 says, “And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”’
The children of Israel seemed to recognize God’s goodness as the expression of His glory. At the dedication of Solomon’s temple, according to 2 Chronicles 7:2, the glory of the Lord so filled the temple that the priests could not enter. Then verse 3 tells us,
When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, “He is good; his love endures forever.”

 

Notice the Israelites’ response when they saw God’s glory: “He is good.” God’s goodness is the preeminent expression of His glory. If we desire to be Godlike and to glorify God in our lives, therefore, we must make the cultivation and exercise of love in our hearts an urgent priority. There are three overall prayer requests I make for myself and for others for whom I pray: that I and they would grow in holiness, humility, and love. Of these three, however, love has priority, for if I love God I will seek to be holy, and if I love other people I will seek to be humble, putting their interests ahead of mine.
If love to God and to our neighbor should be our highest priority, then it is important for us to know how love expresses itself. First Corinthians 13 is, of course, the most familiar description of love. And the list of qualities covered in that passage have, for the most part, already been addressed in previous chapters of this book. There are two other Scripture passages, however, that seem to sum up the essence of love into two overall traits that will be easily remembered. These passages are 1 John 3:16-18 and 4:7-11.
LOVE GIVES, WHATEVER THE COST
In 1 John 3:16 John says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.” The key idea here is that love gives,
even at great cost to itself.
Jesus gave His life for us. John 3:16 tells us that the Father so loved that He gave His only Son to die for us. In Jesus’ incarnation and death, both the Father and the Son gave in response to our desperate plight. Nothing but the Savior’s incarnation and death would suffice to rescue us. The cost was infinite, but God the Father and God the Son loved us so much they did not hesitate to pay the cost to meet our need.
John says in his epistle that we too should give even at great cost to ourselves: We should “lay down our lives for our brothers.” In the context of Jesus’ sacrifice, John’s challenge to us seems overwhelming and impossible—the ultimate act of love. But John’s application is very practical and down-to-earth: He asks that we share with our brother in need. We are to do this out of pity and compassion, however, not duty. We are to put our love into practice by meeting our brother’s need—even at great cost to us.
There are tremendous needs in the world today, and we Christians ought to be involved in meeting those needs. John is very clear on this point: “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” Paul tells us the Macedonian Christians exhibited this kind of love: “Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability” (2 Corinthians 8:2-3). They gave out of love and at great cost to themselves to meet the material needs of Christian brothers in Jerusalem, whom they had never even met. We should give to our church and to the work of missions, but we should not overlook the fact that the most well-known passage in the Bible on giving, 2 Corinthians 8-9, has to do with giving to the poor.
But material needs are not the only ones our brother has. Often he needs a listening ear, a word of encouragement, or a helping hand. But to meet those needs requires us to give of ourselves—our time, our attention, and often our heart. This can be more difficult than giving money. Paul said of Timothy, “I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare” (Philippians 2:20). As he compliments Timothy, Paul adds a striking indictment of others: “For everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ” (verse 21).
To meet the non-material needs of others costs getting out of ourselves, our concerns, and our interests. We cannot take a genuine interest in the welfare of others, as did Timothy, unless we are willing to become involved in their interests and their concerns. And we cannot do this unless we are willing to forego our own interests. But love willingly pays the price.
LOVE SACRIFICES TO FORGIVE
The second passage in which John instructs us in the meaning of love is 1 John 4:7-11. Immediately following his declaration that “God is love,” John says,
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

 

Once again John points us to God’s sacrifice in sending His Son into the world that we might live through Him. But the central thought is that
God gave in order that He might forgive.
He sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. The concept of atonement is best expressed by the marginal reading of the
New International Version:
“the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away” our sins. God gave His Son, who took away our sins by bearing in His own body God’s wrath, thus turning away that wrath from us. God’s justice required that our sin be punished, and forgiveness was impossible as long as justice was unsatisfied. So God gave His Son in order that He might forgive us. He forgave at great cost to Himself.
Now John once again applies God’s love to our relationships with one another. He says since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Do we love one another enough to forgive each other, with or without apologies for wrongs done to us? So often we want to exact the last ounce of remorse and repentance from our erring brother before we will even consider forgiving him. But God did not do this. When we were still sinners, still His enemies, He sent His Son to die for us so that He might forgive us. And John urges us to do likewise.
Forgiveness cost God His Son on the cross, but what does it cost us to forgive one another? Forgiving costs us our sense of justice. We all have this innate sense deep within our souls, but it has been perverted by our selfish sinful natures. We want to see “justice” done, but the justice we envision satisfies our own interests. We must realize that justice has been done. God is the only rightful administrator of justice in all of creation, and His justice has been satisfied. In order to forgive our brother, we must be satisfied with God’s justice and forego the satisfaction of our own.
I recall a personal struggle a number of years ago to love one of my brothers in Christ. One evening the Holy Spirit addressed to my mind the rather startling question, “Do you believe I love him just as he is?” I hadn’t thought of that before, but I did concede that surely God must love him just as he was, faults and all. And then God pressed this question to my mind, “If I can love him, can you?” God was teaching me to love as He loves, to forgive as He forgives. And love forgives at great cost to itself; it does not demand justice or even changed behavior from its brother.
This forgiving aspect of love enables us to be patient with one another and to live at peace with one another. It enables us to deal gently with our brother, even when he sins against us. If we are to grow in the grace of love, we must be ready to forgive, even at great cost to ourselves.
LOVE REACHES OUT
Often in our teaching on love, we stress—and rightly so—that biblical love is not emotions or feelings, but attitudes and actions that seek the best interests of the other person, regardless of how we feel toward him. Vine says, for example, “Christian love ... is not an impulse from the feelings, it does not always run with the natural inclinations, nor does it spend itself only upon those for whom some affinity is discovered.”
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An illustration from The Pursuit of Holiness provides an example of this kind of love:
Suppose you were meditating on 1 Corinthians 13, the great love chapter. As you think about the chapter, you realize the importance of love and you also see the practical outworkings of love: Love is patient and kind and does not envy. You ask yourself, “Am I impatient or unkind or envious toward anyone?” As you think about this, you realize you are envious toward Joe at work who seems to be getting all the breaks. You confess this sin to God, being very specific to name Joe and your sinful reaction to his good fortune. You ask God to bless him even more and to give you a spirit of contentment so that you will not continue to envy Joe, but will instead love him. You might memorize 1 Corinthians 13:4 and think about it as you see Joe at work. You even look for ways to help him. Then you do the same thing tomorrow and the next day and the next till finally you see God working a spirit of love in your heart toward Joe.
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So love is very much a matter of actions rather than emotions. However, although this emphasis on
acts
of love is certainly necessary, we can sometimes give the impression that love doesn’t involve any emotion—that it is entirely an act of the will, of one’s duty, regardless of how one feels. We can even promote the “I can love him but I can’t like him” type of attitude. The Bible does not support such an unbalanced concept of love.
In describing the Christian’s love toward his brother, the Bible uses such expressions as “Love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22) and “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love” (Romans 12:10). Other translations choose such words as
fervently, fondly,
and
affectionately
in the same passages to describe the love Christians ought to have for one another. Three different writers use the expression “brotherly love” or “love as brothers,” all indicating that Christian love is to be characterized by an affection that family members have—or ought to have—for one another (see Hebrews 13:1 and 1 Peter 3:8).
All of these passages from the Bible indicate that our emotions are involved. We are to reach out and embrace our brother with a deep fervency of spirit, in our hearts if not in actuality. Obviously such a fervency of spirit cannot substitute for loving actions, but surely it should accompany them. We dare not settle for less.
From the contents of Paul’s epistles to the churches, we can safely say the two churches that caused him the most grief were Corinth and Galatia. Yet listen to the emotion in Paul’s voice when he writes to the Corinthians, “For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you” (2 Corinthians 2:4). And to the Galatians he wrote, “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!” (4:19-20). Distress, anguish, tears, and pains of childbirth are all terms calculated to express the deep emotion of Paul’s love toward these people. That their actions made them difficult to love only deepened the intensity of his love for them. And that love was not just an impersonal act of writing them letters of correction in their best interest; he reached out and embraced them even while he rebuked them.
One of the greatest moments of my Christian life occurred one day when I opened my arms and warmly embraced a brother in Christ whom I had somewhat disliked for several years. God had so dealt with me that I finally realized that to think about anyone, “I will love him, but I can’t like him” was a great deal less than God’s standard of love and was therefore a sinful attitude on my part.
Love is more than a mere act of the will. Going back again to Bethune’s definition, love is a vigorous spirit that rules the whole man, ever directing him to the humble and loving fulfillment of his duties to God and man. We should do more than just decide to do acts of love: we should desire to do them. This is not to say we are to do acts of love only when we feel like doing them; it is to say we are not to content ourselves merely with acts of the will, good as those acts may be. We are to lay hold on God in prayer until He gives us that vigorous and loving spirit that delights to reach out and embrace our brother and to meet his need or forgive his sin, even if it is at great cost to ourselves.

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