A reflection on the teaching from 70x7

Good morning, friends. This morning I want to speak to you about love because only love can change the destination of a country. There is no other way that a person, or a people, can truly change except by true love. And when I say “destination,” I am not talking about whether this is an easier or more comfortable place to live. I am talking about eternity. I am talking about where your soul will spend forever.

We are not here to make a political point. We are here to hold up the light of Jesus Christ. So let us go to the chapter the whole Bible knows as the chapter of love, and let it tell us plainly what love really is.

What love actually is

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13 that I can speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but if I have no love, I am only a sounding brass, a clanging cymbal. A man can speak beautiful words, but if there is no love inside them, the words mean nothing. I can have the gift of prophecy, understand all mysteries and all knowledge, have faith enough to move mountains and if I have no love, Paul says, I am nothing.

Many people believe that helping the poor is, by itself, love. Let me tell you how it really works. It is winter now in Cape Town. I walk past a man in an alley, and he is cold, and I give him a blanket and say, “Be warm,” and I walk on. I have helped him for a season. But if I walk away and leave him to walk, warm and comfortable, straight into hell, what have I really done for him? I must give him the blanket yes. But I must also give him the truth. A season of warmth means nothing if his soul is lost.

That is why the passage says that even if I give everything I own to the poor, even if I give my body to be burned, but have no love, it profits me nothing. So Paul tells us what love is, and we should measure ourselves against every line of it:

Love suffers long. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not puffed up. It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own. It is not provoked. It thinks no evil. It does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.

Love suffers long — that means that whoever stands in front of you, whatever kind of person they are, even if twenty times they refuse the love of Jesus Christ, you still love them completely. Love does not look at another person and say, “I wish I had what he has.” Love is not boastful about its own achievements. It is always seeking the other person’s well-being instead of its own.

Why truth matters so much

Love rejoices in the truth. Thessalonians warns that whoever does not love the truth will be deceived you will believe a lie and be convinced it is true. And the truth is this: God created all things. Jesus Christ is the Creator. He made you, and He made me. On the day you were conceived, your name was written in the book of life.

All through your life the truth will come to you through a preacher, through a Bible, through a screen, in a hundred different ways. God promises that the truth will find you. The only question is what you will do with it. Will you accept the love of Jesus Christ, that wants your name to remain in that book? Or will you turn to something else? Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

The command that is hardest of all

Here is where it becomes difficult. How is it possible for a person to say “I love you,” and in the next minute take up a rifle and go to war against another man? This is what countries do to one another. But we are Christians, and we do not take part in that, because we have been made into love, as God is love.

In Matthew 5, Jesus takes the old saying “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” and He says instead: walk the extra mile. Turn the other cheek. Love your enemy. It is easy to love your own family, the people who already love you. Anyone can do that. But can you love your enemy? That is the call of God. And at the end of that same chapter He tells us the goal: “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” To love your enemy is the very thing that makes you like your Father.

What love truly looks like

We all know the most famous verse: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” That is what love is. God gave His Son. And His Son, your Creator, did not come to sit in a kingly palace. He laid down His life.

He had every right not to. When they put Him on trial He could have called down legions of angels and wiped them all away in a moment. Instead, the night before the cross, He sweated blood and asked, “Father, is there any other way?” And the answer was no. There was no other way. He laid His life down and He died and, thank God, He rose again. He died so that you could rise. That is the gospel.

Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

In John 15 Jesus gives the command and then shows us exactly how He kept it. “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” How did He love? He laid down His life. So the Christian also lays down his life for his friends. The things of this world stop being the thing that defines us.

How to test yourself

So here is the test. Can you look at the brother or the enemy who is hurting you, and with the love of Jesus Christ say in your own heart, “God, forgive this person, for they know not what they do”? When Stephen, the first martyr, was being stoned, that is exactly what he prayed as he died. If you can do that, you can know one thing for certain: it is the Spirit of God speaking inside of you. That is the mark of a true Christian to look upon your greatest enemy, while you are both still alive, with saving love.

I still remember the day I met the Lord. The next morning I walked out and saw my brother’s children, and I was looking at them with a love that was simply not the same as before. I knew it was not coming from me. It was a love God had planted in me. I had been reborn.

So go and look in the mirror. Ask yourself honestly: Do I really carry this love? Am I truly reborn? What spirit is working through me? The Bible says the eyes are the windows into the heart. If you look at people with hate and resentment, no matter what they have done, then something is wrong, and you need to bring it to God.

An invitation

And when you fail, because you will fail ,God does not abandon you. If His Spirit lives in you, He will come and say, “No, my friend, we do not do things like that.” That is mercy. But if the Spirit is speaking to you today and there is ongoing, unrepented sin in your life, then the one thing to do is simple: repent. Ask God to help you receive His love.

Our time here is short a breath, when you set it next to eternity. So wherever you go, look for the chance to bring people the good news of the One who died for them. Do not only hand a man a blanket. Feed him the bread of life. The way it begins is honest and plain: you see that you are a sinner, you come to the place where you no longer want to live that way, and Jesus Christ meets you there. He cleans you up. He takes your sins as far as the east is from the west, and makes you white as snow.

That is what love is. Love suffers long. Love lays down its life. Love can look its enemy in the eye and forgive. May the Lord plant that love in each of us, and let His eyes look out through ours. In the name of Jesus amen.