I’m not going to get everything said this morning that I want to say.  There’s a good reason for this: the topic, again, is the love of God.  No twenty minute or twenty hour sermon could ever do justice to it.

            What’s the most important thing in the world?  What is the solution to the world’s problems?  What will bring you and your neighbors the greatest possible fulfillment in life?  One thing: the love of God as we have seen it demonstrated in Jesus Christ.

            Patrick Morley calls love “The Most Important Thing.”¹  Henry Drummond back in the 19th century called love, “The Greatest Thing in the World.”  Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote a song back in the sixties that said,

 

            What the world needs now is love, sweet love;

            It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

            What the world needs now is love, sweet love,

            No, not just for some but for everyone.

 

            Would anyone here have a serious disagreement with these sentiments?

            We’re at an extremely important point in our series of sermons.  We’re at the point where I’m raising the question of application.  Jesus is God’s definition of love, Jesus is God’s clearest expression of love, and Jesus says to all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, “Follow me.”

            Here’s the application question: are we going to do it?  Are we going to obey Jesus’ new commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you”?

            I’m calling my sermon, “The First of the Red Hot Lovers.”  God is love.²  That is God’s nature.  There is no one who loves more ardently, with greater intensity, than God.  We learn the meaning of love and how to apply love from God’s word of love to us: Jesus.  He’s the first of the red hot lovers.  If we’re going to follow Jesus and obey his great commandment to love each other and get the word out about his love, we’ve got to do what he says.  Right?

            I’ve got two texts this morning: I Corinthians 13, the great chapter on love, and Philippians 1.  Let me start with I Corinthians 13. 

            This chapter looks, at first sight, like an essay on the concept of love.  It’s in the style of many contemporary Greek philosophers writing at the time of Paul.  But look again.  Note the context.

            In the New Testament the word “love” is never an abstract concept.  It’s always personal and concrete.  It’s always defined by the life of Jesus.  Remember Jesus said, “Love one another...” -- how? -- “...as I have loved you.”³  So, when we look at the context of Paul’s chapter on love, we’ve got to think of how it was that Jesus loved people.

            Let’s take just a couple of examples.  Jesus touched and healed lepers, people no one else would go near.  Jesus sat down and had lunch with prostitutes and tax collectors, people no one else would go near.  His enemies called him scornfully the friend of sinners.⁴  He hung out with these people.  He gave them his affection.

            Jesus also behaved like a servant.  When none of his disciples would take the role of a servant at the last supper, Jesus put on servant’s clothes, took a basin and towel, and washed everyone’s feet.⁵  This would be like the C.E.O. of a company putting the janitor’s clothes on and cleaning the restrooms at corporate headquarters.

            And finally, Jesus took our place on the cross.  We were the sinners, he was innocent.  But he stepped into our place and died so that we could be forgiven.

            Now, let’s go back to I Corinthians 13.  Think about the meaning of love with the behavior of Jesus as the context.  As you read it, take the word “love” out and replace it with the word “Christ.”  “I may be able to speak the languages of men and even of angels, but if I don’t have Christ, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell.  I may have the gift of inspired preaching; I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have all the faith needed to move mountains -- but if I don’t have Christ, I am nothing.”

            How does that grab you?  Does it make sense to you?  Do you see the context?  When Paul says “love” he means love as defined specifically by the life, ministry, and death of Jesus Christ.  Now, there’s nothing really hard to understand about this idea.  What does the world need now?  Love -- as defined by Burt Bacharach?  No, as defined by Jesus.  That kind of love.  Who’s supposed to express that kind of love in today’s world?  We Christians are.  That’s not hard to understand.

            The real question is not, “Do we understand these things?”  We do understand them, don’t we?  The real question is, “Will we take these things seriously and put them into practice?”

            I’ve had church members say to me, “If I did the sort of thing on the job that Jesus did, I’d be in real trouble with my boss.”  Hey, folks, I sympathize with those of you who struggle with that!  And let me tell you, I’ve got the same problem.  I’ve got to decide every day of my life whether I’m working for 100 bosses in this congregation, or just One.  I’ve got to decide every day of my life whether I’m going to try to please each one of you by telling you just exactly what you want to hear, or whether I’m going to tell you what it says plainly in God’s word and let you take it or leave it.

            Now, if Jesus is an abstraction, the choice is plain: you’re my bosses.  If love is abstract, then you’re the boss.  I’ll go with the percentages and try to figure out what you all want me to do and do that.  But that’s the problem.  Jesus is not abstract.  Neither is love.  Jesus is very real and very definite on how love is to be expressed: it’s the way he’s shown us how to do it. 

            Let’s try one more thing before we leave I Corinthians 13.  You know, I tell the people who come to me to get married that I guarantee all my weddings.  I guarantee that the people I marry will have great marriages as long as they abide by the terms of the warranty.  And the terms of the warranty are found in I Corinthians 13. 

            Just take a look at verses 4-7.  I said that if you substitute “Christ” for love in this chapter, it makes sense.  Try this little experiment.  In verses 4-7 substitute your own name for the word “love.”  If I’m doing the substitution, it reads, “Dave is patient and kind; Dave is not jealous or boastful; Dave is not arrogant or rude; Dave does not insist on his own way; Dave is not irritable or resentful.  Dave does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.  Dave bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  That is, “Dave never gives up; and his faith, hope and patience never fail.”

            I’ve got to ask myself, “Do these four verses accurately describe the way I love my wife, my family, and my friends?”  If I’m having a fight with Cathy, I need to sit down with I Corinthians 13 and ask myself if I’m living up to the terms of the warranty God has given me in Jesus Christ.

            If I have a question of how love is supposed to be expressed, all I need to do is go to the gospels and see how Jesus did it.  Love is not abstract, folks.  It’s very concrete.  And it’s not hard to understand, it’s simple.  All we have to do is love each other the way Jesus loved us.  That’s it.

            Now, let me go to my second text.  Here we see Paul expressing his love for his friends in the church at Philippi.  Paul takes Jesus seriously and loves his people ardently.  Listen to his words: “God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ.”⁶ 

            The word Paul uses here for affection actually refers to the upper chest.  It’s the part of the body which contains the heart, the lungs, and the liver.  What Paul is saying to us is, literally, “God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the upper chest of Christ.”

            In other words, “I yearn for you with that part of my body where I can feel love or pain, the part of the body that aches when someone I love dies, the part of the body that gets all fluttery when I’m in love.  That is what I would like to express for you Philippians.  God is my witness how I yearn for you right up here, with that part of me in which Christ expresses love and affection.  I’m not talking abstract concepts to you, Philippians.  I’m talking intense feelings.”

            Over the past couple of generations, some of us Christians have gotten scared of emotion.  We don’t like emotional religion, we are suspicious of great displays of emotion, and there are some good reasons why this is so.  It’s kind of a Presbyterian tradition not to be overly emotional.

            Dr. Fred Speakman, a great Presbyterian preacher of the last generation, preached a sermon and then wrote a book called, Love Is Something You Do.  Dr. Speakman was making a very valuable corrective in that sermon.  He said, “Don’t be so concerned about whether you feel love for another person.  Be concerned about what you do for that person.  Love is something that you do, not something that you feel, and when you do for people, the feelings of love will follow along naturally.”

            Many of us have picked up part of that idea and made it a working principle of our lives.  We say, typically, “You don’t have to feel love for everyone.  Some people you just plain won’t like.   The important thing is to act loving toward everyone.”

            But let me tell you: if we’re unemotional in our expression of love, the message just plain isn’t going to get across.  I had a dramatic demonstration of this several years ago in a senior high youth meeting.  My youth leader was leading the meeting, and the topic was, “Do you have to like people in order to love them?”  The senior highs reacted very quickly to this question by saying, “No, you don’t have to like people to love them.  The love is the important thing.  Whether you like them or not is secondary.”

            “Well,” said my youth leader probing a little deeper, “does that mean that you don’t have to be friends with these people that you don’t like?  That you can just have an attitude of love toward them without really hanging out with them or being friendly with them?”

            “Yes,” said the senior highs.  “You don’t have to be friends with them.  God doesn’t call us to hang out with obnoxious people.”

            I had determined that I was just going to observe and not participate in the meeting, but I have this problem: I’m a preacher!  I felt I had to say something.

            I said to them, “People, I think if I had the choice between being loved by you and being liked by you, I’d opt for being liked by you.  I don’t think I want to be loved by you if it means you don’t care for me, or you won’t hang out with me, or you don’t want to have anything to do with me because you think I’m obnoxious.”

            What we call Christian love may sometimes be what the Victorians called charity.  It can be a cop-out for indulging a cold attitude toward people that does things for them in a minimal way but never gets involved emotionally with them.  Do we have a problem with that in this country, or what?

            The next time a homeless person hits you up for a handout, ask yourself, “How am I supposed to love this person?”  And then ask yourself, “How did Jesus do it?”

            One of my fellow ministers knew a man who went out one afternoon, the day before Christmas, with a carload of frozen turkeys to deliver to the poor folks in the ghetto in Chicago’s South Side.  He came home that evening with his car still full of turkeys and his emotions in a turmoil because of the expression of intense hostility from those poor folks in the ghetto toward his cold charity.  They told him to stick those turkeys in his ear, and he couldn’t understand why these people were so hostile to him when he had such beautiful intentions of doing something nice for them.

            But they knew!  They knew the difference between cold charity and warm love.  They knew that while he was doing nice things for them, he really didn’t have much use for them.  The turkeys would be the extent of his love.  He wouldn’t stay to make friends with them.  And above all, he would never invite them to his home.

            Christian friends, I believe we have a crisis of affection in our world today.  It is nothing new.  It’s as old as the Corinthian church, and older.  The context of that great love chapter in I Corinthians 13 was a church where people were shutting each other out of their affections.

            Someone asked me in a Bible study group, “Do we have no choice?  Must we like everyone we come in contact with in the church?”  You tell me what you think.  When Paul says, “God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection, with the upper chest of Christ,” do you think he felt affection only for the people he was naturally drawn to in the Philippian church?  Or, when Jesus says, “Love one another as I have loved you,” do you think his intention was that we hang out only with the people we like and give frozen turkeys to the ones we don’t care to socialize with?  Do you think if Jesus were with us today, he might say, “A new commandment I give to you: like one another as I have liked you”?

            Let me make a practical suggestion as we close.  I think we need to start where we are.  Let’s start with our church.  Or, if you’re not a member of this church, start with your home church or your social circle.  There’s one lonely person you know in the church whom you’re not socializing with.  Can you extend the affection of Christ to that person some time this week?

            I made a pastoral call on a non-member.  Non-members comprise about 50% of the people on the social roll of this congregation.  That blew my mind when I ran those numbers. 50% of Zana’s list of church people are not members.  Ask yourself why that’s so.

            Anyway, I called on a non-member.  Toward the end of my visit I asked if I could answer any questions this person had about the church.  This person said, “I don’t have a friend here.  Can you find me a friend?”  Unusual question: I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that question before on such a visit.

            So, let me put it to you: will you be a friend to this person?  I’m not going to tell you the sex, age, or anything about this person.  This person will just be our mystery non-member.  Would you be willing to extend friendship to one non-member or visitor this morning?

            “Oh, Preacher, it’s so hard!  I’ve got things to do, places to go, my life is so full, I don’t know if I can do it.”

            The famous judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, once sentenced a repeat offender to five years in prison.  “But your honor,” whined the defendant, “I’ll be dead before that.  I’m a very sick man.  I can’t possibly do five years!”

            Judge Landis glared at him.  “Well,” he said, “you can try, can’t you?”

            Jesus says to us, “Love one another as I have loved you.”  And we say, “Lord, I’m so busy.  I don’t have time to love that way.”

            And Jesus looks at us, and his look is not a look of irritation or anger; it’s a look of ardent, affectionate love.  And he says, “You can try, can’t you?”