Love's Definition

Text: Psalm 136, I John 4:7-21
August 15, 2004, Dave Philips

 

 

            One of the loveliest paintings of Salvador Dali is his Last Supper which hangs in the National Gallery in Washington , D.C.   The colors are beautiful, the technique fantastic.  It’s the kind of thing Dali painted all his life that had other painters saying with envy, “How does he do it?”

            I’ve got to tell you, though, it’s not my favorite Last Supper.  I find the painting disturbing.  The disciples sitting around the table are real men, no question, but nothing else is real.  In the background is a beautiful blue lake.  Perhaps it’s nitpicking to point out that there’s no lake like that around Jerusalem , and no upper room in Jerusalem could have commanded that view. 

            But the thing that really bothers me is not the background -- after all, a painter ought to have some license to use symbolism -- but the way Dali paints Christ.  The Christ that Dali portrays seems to me to be the least real thing in the painting.  He is so “spiritual” that he’s transparent.  He looks like a ghost.  You can see through his body to the boats that are floating on the lake behind him.  The disciples all have their heads bowed in prayer, as if they have to keep their heads down and their eyes closed to prevent this ghostlike Christ from floating away, because he certainly looks as if he couldn’t exist outside their imaginations.

            But when you read the New Testament, you get a very different picture of Jesus.  There’s nothing ghostly about him.  He is unusual, no question.  But he’s not a spook.  Even in his resurrection appearances to his disciples when he does interesting things like entering a room without opening the door, the New Testament writers depict him as being as solid and substantial as anyone could be.  The risen Lord Jesus is at pains to tell his disciples that he is real, not a ghost.  He asks for food to eat.  He says “Look at my hands and my feet . . . Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”¹

            If the New Testament is right, Dali should have painted the picture exactly the opposite of the way he did.  Jesus should have been pictured as solid and substantial and everything else as ghostly.  Jesus, according to the New Testament, is the most real human being who has ever lived.  Compared to him the rest of us are smoke and vapor.

            Jesus taught us the meaning of love.  Our culture is mad about love.  We love everything!  We love ice cream, the Isotopes, Elvis, vacations in Hawaii , money, pizza, the movies, playing golf or tennis, living in New Mexico .  Love has come to mean a very strong emotion directed vaguely toward something or other.  It would be difficult to get the audience of the Oprah Winfrey show to agree on any single definition of love.  Our culture is very vague about the meaning of love.

            The Bible, by contrast, is very clear on how love is to be defined.  Love is, to be sure, a very strong emotion.  But that’s not all by a long shot.

            So, to give you an alternative to the popular point of view on love, I want to show you two biblical definitions of love, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New Testament.  In the Old Testament definition, love is explained in terms of what God does.  In the New Testament definition, love is explained in terms of who God is.

 

LOVE: WHAT GOD DOES

 

            Psalm 136 shows us the love of God in the acts of creation and redemption.  If you love nature -- the Grand Canyon , for example -- you can also be in love with the One who created nature.  Psalm 136 takes us back to the first book of the Bible and its confession of faith in the God who created the heavens and the earth.

            The philosophy of naturalism says that there is no God, that nothing -- literally nothing at all!  -- created the universe.  Mark that well, because it’s important.  It’s either God -- or nothing.  Either God started the “Big Bang” or nothing did.  Either God created DNA with its double helix formation and its amazing complexity, or nothing did.  Either God is responsible for the beauties of nature -- Lake Tahoe , the Oregon coast, Bryce Canyon , Mt. Taylor   -- or nothing is. 

            Naturalism says that all we see around us is purely the expression of nothingness.  10,000 monkeys sitting at 10,000 computers and randomly running their fingers over the keyboards will, supposedly, eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare in order if the monkeys are given infinite time.  But as scientists are beginning to recognize, there has not been sufficient time for this amazing universe to have sprung from nothing.  If the Big Bang theory is correct, the universe sprang into existence in a nano-second, not over an infinite period of time.  And the natural history of the earth has gone screaming along at a furious rate as species have sprung into existence suddenly and with no warning, and just as suddenly have disappeared.  Did nothing produce all this?  Is nothing guiding it?

            I can’t live with that.  Not many people can.  It’s plain common sense that behind these incredibly designed machines -- the atom, the cell, the human body -- is an incredibly complex Mind.  This is in fact what the Bible teaches us.

            But what the Bible also teaches that I have found in no other philosophy or religion is that God created this universe because of love.  Everything in Psalm 136 points to a God whose love brought the universe into existence and whose love sustains the universe.  When you see a beautiful sunset, translate it into, “I love you!” signed, “God.”  When you quench your thirst with a glass of cool water, listen to God whispering in your ear, “I love you.”

            And not only the creation, but we ourselves, we human beings, are the products of God’s love.  The most important Old Testament word for love is the Hebrew word hesed.  It takes several English words to translate this single Hebrew word.  Hesed means not only the powerful emotion of love, it also means faithfulness and mercy.  Hesed is the kind of love that keeps its promises.

            Promise keeping love is a rare and fading commodity these days.  We Americans change loyalties very rapidly, depending on how our needs are being met.  We enter into throwaway relationships with our lovers and spouses, our children and friends.  If we feel our needs are not being met, we’re out of the relationship.  Commitments are viewed negatively by an increasing number of Americans, according to futurist George Barna, because, says Barna, commitment “... limits our ability to feel independent and free, to experience new things, to change our minds on the spur of the moment and to focus on self-gratification rather than helping others.”² 

            And hesed love would say in response, “Well, tough!  There are more important things in life than your ability to feel independent and free and experience new things.  There are more important things in life than your freedom to change your fickle mind on the spur of the moment and please yourself.  More important than all these things is keeping your promises!” 

            God keeps his promises.  God sticks by his commitments.  All through the checkered history of Israel , God is faithful.  He brings Israel out of slavery in Egypt , he establishes them in the Promised Land, and, once there, he takes care of them.  In the Old Testament we learn the nature of love by observing what God does.

 

WHO GOD IS

 

            And then in the New Testament we learn more about the nature of love not only by observing what God does but also in learning who God is.  And here we encounter Jesus.  Jesus is without parallel in any of the philosophies or religions of the world.  We sometimes wish he had not said such extravagant things about himself.  We sometimes wish he had not told us that he was the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one came to God the Father except through him.  It would be a lot easier on us Christians in getting along with our Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist and especially our agnostic and atheist neighbors if only Jesus hadn’t told us that he was the only begotten son of God.

            The trend in our society is, for the moment, away from saying such things.  The trend in our world is, for the moment, toward recognizing the truth in all religions and minimizing the differences between them.  So it doesn’t matter what you believe just so you’re sincere.

           

            In the 19th century Henry Carpenter wrote this stirring poem:

           

The time shall come when this, our holy

                        Church

            Shall melt away in ever widening

                        walls,

And be for all mankind.  And in

                        its place

Shall rise another church, whose

                        covenant word

            Shall be the act of love.  Not Credo³

                        then

            But Amo⁴ shall be the watchword

                        through its gate.

           

            Do you hear what Carpenter is saying?  The ideal church for him is a church without a creed where you no longer say, “I believe,” but instead you say, “I love.”  For Carpenter it’s not so important what you believe as long as you love.

            Doesn’t that sound great?  Wouldn’t our non-Christian friends be delighted with that?  But wait a minute!  Not so fast.  What is it that Henry Carpenter believes about love?   Isn’t it really important to know what love is before we commit ourselves to living by love?

            In our culture, there is not a uniform agreement on what we believe about love!  Several years ago in Washington , D.C. , a young man killed his girl friend.  When he was asked why he killed her, he replied, “Because I loved her so much.”

            Susan Atkins, one of Charles Manson’s girls, said she had committed murder for Manson out of love.  She said she knew she had done the right thing in committing the murder because when you do the right thing “it feels good.” 

            “How could it be right to kill somebody?” Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecuting attorney asked her.

            “How could it not be right,” she replied, “when it was done with love?”

            If you’re asking me, Susan Atkins and the New Testament can’t both be right, and Henry Carpenter doesn’t know what he’s talking about!.  It is important what you believe about love.  Our creed about love is important.  If love is anything we want it to be, anything that feels good, then we shouldn’t have sent Susan Atkins and Charles Manson to prison.  And friends, listen to this very carefully.  (I’m getting to that magic phrase, “finally, and in conclusion,” so you ought to be waking up, anyway!)  The smartest people in the world in places like Harvard, Oxford, and the Sorbonne are waking up to the scary reality that since we’ve eliminated God from our universe, there is now no ethical basis for saying that Susan Atkins is not right!  If you don’t believe me, if you think I’m overstating things, please read the first chapter in Dallas Willard’s brilliant book, The Divine Conspiracy.  If there is no God, then the ten commandments are out the window, and you might just as well say, “Thou shalt kill,” as “Thou shalt not kill.”

            But for us Christians love is very carefully defined.  As I read my Bible I find three definitions of God.  Two of them are in this little letter of John. Jesus tells us God is spirit,⁵ and John in his letter tells us that God is light,⁶ and then in our scripture lesson he tells us twice that God is love.⁷  What God is, love is; and what love is, God is. 

            For Christians, love is not abstract.  Love is personal.  Love is, in fact, a person.  God is love, and whoever has seen Jesus has seen God.⁸  John tells us in our scripture lesson, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation (or atoning sacrifice) for our sins.”⁹  Love for us humans is defined in Jesus Christ.  His spirit, his actions, his words tell us where love begins and ends.

            Now, there’s one more little thing we have to remember (finally and in conclusion): not only is it important to define love, it’s also important to define what a Christian is.  John tells us in our scripture lesson that Christians are people who love their neighbors.  So,  if you’re a Christian, you’re supposed to love your neighbor.  Period!  No qualifications, no excuses, no sniveling!  John tells us, “Anyone who says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother or sister, is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother or sister, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brothers and sisters.”¹⁰

            Amen?  Any questions?  Good!  We’ll be talking about what this means in weeks to come.