Love

Happy Valentine's Day to my family and friends! What are you doing today to celebrate love in your life? After all, today is the day we make a notable effort to remind those who are special to us of our love. Restaurants are packed, florists are busy delivering bouquets of roses ... signs of love are everywhere! Couples take time to celebrate their love with a favorite meal, a movie, or a short weekend getaway to celebrate their Love! Love! Love!

But, is that all there is? Consider another face of love, the kind of love that isn't all hearts and roses.

The words of the Apostle John make it easy to understand. God is love, and because He loved us, we ought to love each other.

Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:11)

Easy enough, right? The problem is that true love doesn’t always make others feel good. In fact, it has the potential to offend. For instance, love drives a mother to stop her child from touching a hot stove, offending her child’s free will to protect her.

A true friend will intervene in your life to prevent you from making a colossal error, a love that may not be seen as very loving at the moment, but the outcome will prove otherwise.

God’s love toward us can frankly offend our will. But as a Father whose love is perfect, He is willing to risk offending our carnal nature so that His divine nature can grow within us.

To put it bluntly: Love can be offensive.

It’s along these lines that John reveals the divine love that is intended to reach out to others through the life of every believer:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 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. (1 John 4:7–11 emphasis added).

You see, to say we genuinely love God is not based on feelings or goosebumps. It’s not love as the world would normally use the word.

How did God show His love among us? “He sent His one and only Son into the world … as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

God’s greatest expression of love is not a pretty picture. It was an offensive scene. It wa a horrifying portrait of broken flesh, bleeding wounds, excruciating pain, ferocious suffering, crushing weight of sin, blasphemy, rejection, and mockery.

And yet God is love. He is the essence of love. Holding nothing back. Going to the greatest degree of sacrifice as He chose the cross to be the perfect expression of His love.

Are we a people of a non-offensive love? Or are we a people of the offensive cross? Love that lacks the cross is meaningless and weak—and all too often, two-faced. It’s a love that satisfies the flesh and emotion, but without the richness of covenant love. Crossless love is temporary, fleeting, and bears no eternal hope.

Love without the cross has no backbone. It cannot stand. It is lifeless. Has no foundation. Barren. Empty. Anemic. Powerless.

Consider the 21 Christians from Egypt who refused to renounce their faith as believers in the Messiah. Lined up, on their knees, each with a black-hooded executioner stationed behind him holding a knife. Death could be avoided by simply denying the cross of the Messiah. ISIS was quoted as saying, “We’re chopping off the heads of those that have been carrying around the cross illusion in their heads.”

The cross illusion? Apparently, the cross was anything but a fantasy or a dream. Their faith was offensive to their accusers and cost them their lives. The cross of Christ had shaped their hearts. These 21 true martyrs died for trusting in the work of the offensive cross.

It is God's will that the Body of Christ molds its love for others into the shape of His divine love. Pure love. Selfless love. Blameless love. Cross-shaped love.

Ann Voskamp said, “Rip the cross out of the heart of love, and you kill the power of love.” (1)

For people who are stumbling toward ruin, “the message of the Cross is nothing but a tall tale for fools by a fool. But for those of us who are already experiencing the reality of being rescued and made right, the Cross is nothing short of God’s power” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

Prayer

Father, remind us daily of Your love that we become a people of the offensive cross, bearing the power of the cross as it continues to mold and shape our hearts, speak through our mouths, motivate our hands, and guide our feet. Help us to resist living a safe or comfortable life, but be determined to live one of cross-shaped, offensive Love. In Jesus' name, amen.

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(1) Ann Voskamp’s article "The Wake-Up Call from ISIS: Who in the Church is Answering?"

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