John 3:16 – Chris Linzey

When you title a post “The Greatest Thing You’ll Ever Learn” you get some people who are convinced you’ve lost your mind. Perhaps they think you’ve just succumbed to a massive ego trip.

But last week my wife and I were listening to Nat King Cole and one of his classics called “Nature Boy” came on. Nat sings of meeting an enchanted boy who tells him, “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

And this isn’t a new concept. It’s actually biblical.

From the beginning of Creation to the coming end of the world (no predictions – Jesus says quite clearly that no one knows) – God is all about love. His love for humanity is the driving force behind everything He does. The whole story of redemption is about God’s incredible love for us.

And our response to a loving Creator is a response of love. In the Jewish community, the driving theme is the Shema – the central prayer of the Jewish prayer book. Many Jews recite it twice daily.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

In the New Testament, Jesus reinforces this idea when someone asks him, “What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus answers, “The greatest is to love the Lord your God and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself.”

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is love.

And love isn’t a schmaltzy feel-good kind of thing. It’s easy to love someone when there is a warm fuzzy feeling. But that’s not love. In the Bible love is not lip-service and fuzzies. Love is active behavior.

One verse of the Bible many non-believers have heard is John 3:16 ~

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

And in our culture we hear that phrase “so loved the world” and interpret to mean the quantity of God’s love. We read it, “God loved the world SO much…”. but that’s a poor understanding of the word. It’s not about quantity – it’s about action. A better way of phrasing it would be:

This is how God loved the world – that he gave is only Son…

God’s love is something that is demonstrated in a very palpable way.

At one point Jesus tells his disciples:

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

But we miss the mark, don’t we? We often decided that we’ll just tolerate (at best) others. We don’t actually LOVE. We don’t sacrifice for others. We give out of our surplus, but not out of our scarcity.

When someone really LOVES something they’re willing to get stupid about it.

But when it comes to loving others we’re not willing to get stupid about it. We’re reserved. In John’s 1st letter he tells people, “How can you not help someone in need if you have the ability? Where’s the love?”

God’s love in us compels us to be people of love towards others.

In the end, Nat King Cole had it right. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return. It’s the way of Jesus.

In the way we talk to people.
In the way we talk about people.
In the way we treat people.

LOVE

Follow @chrislinzey

October 22, 2013

Have You Found True Love?

We live in a love-saturated culture. It seems that most of the popular songs out there (actually, most of the songs throughout the history of the world) have been about love. Many of these songs even have “love” in the title. Do you know these? Can you name them from some of their lyrics?

Bittersweet memories that is all I’m taking with me. So good-bye, please don’t cry. We both know I’m not what you – you need…

Every night I’m lyin’ in bed holdin’ you close in my dreams, thinkin’ about all the things that we said and comin’ apart at the seams…

Shot through the heart and you’re to blame…

You don’t need money, don’t take fame – Don’t need no credit card to ride this train. It’s strong and it’s sudden and it’s cruel sometimes but it might just save your life…

The truth is that we often have the wrong perspective when it comes to how we understand “love” – we think about it as a “what you do for me” kind of emotion. It’s not about the other person but really only about how you make me feel. The problem is that these emotional connections only make it too easy to move on. “I don’t feel love for you so I’m gonna walk away.”

But real love doesn’t move on in difficult moments – it holds on and fights for the “other”

Paul’s perspective on love in 1 Corinthians 13 is famous (and probably overused come wedding season) but there’s something to it. So I’m going to talk about it again. I want you to notice the type of words he uses to describe love.

Love is patient (it performs the positive act of waiting)
Love is kind (it responds to others with a tender heart)
Love does not envy (there are no intense negative feelings over another’s success)
Love is not boastful (not a pompous windbag)
Love is not conceited (not puffed up, puffing up the self puts others down)
Love does not act improperly (it does not do stuff to shame others)
Love is not selfish (doesn’t seek personal advantage over the “other”)
Love is not provoked (doesn’t get caught up or riled up, not irritable)
Love does not keep a record of wrongs (don’t get historical)
Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth (it treats others fairly)
Love bears all things (it protects and covers up what is displeasing in others)
Love believes all things, hopes all things (it trusts in God’s care and protection)
Love endures all things (love doesn’t bail out when times get tough)
Love never ends (despite trouble, hardship, or affliction, love perseveres)

Did you notice the type of words Paul uses? He uses verbs, not adjectives – love is something to be done. This is the main point of John 3:16 ~

This is how God loved the world – that He gave is one of kind son…

This verse is not about the amount of love God has but how God shows love – through action!

Love isn’t about feeling warm fuzzies towards others. It’s about behavior. God loves us through His actions. He cares, so He acts accordingly. Christ coming to the world is the greatest act of love because it is putting our needs as His priority.

The flip-side to this divine display of love is that we are commanded to pick up and carry on this definition of love! We have the opportunity to create God’s kingdom on earth, and it all starts with love – how we treat and prioritize others.

Not to be trite and cliché, but what the world needs now is love. Not a schmaltzy, Coca-Cola version but a godly, biblical version of love as concrete behavior that puts others first and puts ourselves second.

Talk it out: Have you been on the receiving end of phony love? How have you seen the real deal?

August 9, 2013March 6, 2016

Breaking G.I. Joes

From the beginning of history, we have lived in a broken world. What does it mean when something is broken? It doesn’t work the way it is supposed to work.

When I was a kid I was playing G.I. Joes with my younger brother. He started teasing me and laughing at me. I can’t even remember what he was laughing about, I just remember that he was making me mad! The more he laughed, the angrier I became. I was holding a G.I. Joe in my hand. I became so angry that I threw it at him as hard as I could!

The Bible tells us that all of us do things that break our connection to God. Even if we try really hard to be good, we still do things that damage our relationship with Him. Anything that breaks our connection to God we call “sin.”

So as my G.I. Joe goes flying through the air, my brother ducks and the Joe sails over his head…and crashes into the window. CRACK! I broke the window! My dad came into the room and asked, “What’s going on in here?” So I confessed. I said that Kevin made me so made that he made me throw the G.I. Joe and it hit the window and the window broke. But my brother didn’t MAKE me do it, did he? I did it myself. And when someone breaks something, who should have to pay to fix it? The one who broke it. So my dad drove me down to the hardware store to buy a new window.

But remember – God says that we ALL do things to break our connection to him. Buying a window is hard enough – who is going to pay to fix our broken connection to God? You don’t have enough money. You can’t do enough good things to fix it. So God said, “I will pay the price to fix it myself.”

When you do something bad, what is the price you have to pay as punishment? If we are left to ourselves, we do bad things and we break that connection with God – the punishment is death. That’s a pretty steep price! And God said he would pay it himself. So God became a man, and his name was Jesus.

John 3:16 says: “This is how God loves us – that he gave us one of a kind son, so that anyone who believes in Jesus would not die but would live with God forever.”

Jesus came to pay the price we couldn’t pay – death.

So they put Jesus on a cross and he was punished so that we wouldn’t have to be. It hurt a lot to be on that cross. It even felt that God had forgotten him. And when it hurt the worst Jesus yelled out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani” which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

And then Jesus died. He died so that he would fully experience life and pay the biggest price anyone could pay. And, just to make sure he wasn’t pretending, a soldier took a spear and stabbed Jesus through the side, and blood and fluid came out. As the final act in his death they put him in a tomb carved out of rock and they closed it off with a huge stone.

So What?!? The cross makes a difference.

How do we respond to the story of Easter? This is a REALLY important question! God took the first step. He says, “Here, I want to give you a present!” If someone wants to give you a present you can choose to ignore it. Or you can choose to respond and to accept the gift. God’s gift is Jesus, who paid the price for what we broke.

How will you respond to Jesus? C.S. Lewis said that there are only 3 options for how we respond to Jesus. #1 – we can call him a lunatic, a crazy person for saying what he said and doing what he did. And then we ignore him. #2 – we can call him a liar, a person who wanted to trick everyone. And the new ignore him. Or #3 – we call him Lord (which means the boss) and we admit that he is who he says he is. And is Jesus wasn’t a lunatic, if he wasn’t a liar, then he must be Lord – and if he is Lord then we can’t ignore him but need to follow him.

Romans 6:4 says, “Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in a new way of life.”

The cross makes a difference.

Everyone who hears the Easter story needs to make a decision: how will you respond to Jesus? Is he a lunatic? Is he a liar? Or is he Lord? If he’s Lord, it’s time to tell him and time to start living the new life God wants us to live.

What’s your decision? Are you willing to say, “I believe Jesus paid the price for me”? Are you willing to say, “I want the cross to make a difference in my life”? Are you ready to say, “I will follow Jesus”? The cross makes a difference. Are you ready to say, “I believe, and I want him to make a difference in me”?

A prayer for you:

I believe that Jesus paid the price for my brokenness.

I believe that the cross makes a difference.

God, I want you to make a difference in me.

Change me.

Make me more like you.

Amen.

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