I have been engaged in a study of the second half of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and, not surprisingly, the themes from that letter have been resonating in my mind over the past few weeks. I have been struck by Paul’s emphasis on the importance of love and unity in the local church. On the one hand it’s kind of obvious—we need to love the Christians around us—but on the other hand, the personal implications are profound. I’ve always known that God calls me to love the people I covenant with in my local church, but until now I haven’t been quite so aware of the danger of falling out of love.

Paul did not seem to have any particular concern with the unity of this church in Ephesus. As far as we can tell he wasn't writing because the church was splintering apart or because he had heard rumors of their disunity. But perhaps this was even more reason for him to address the issue. Paul knew that Satan is the great enemy of God and his people, and one of his enduring tactics to disrupt the church and to hinder our witness to the world is to bring about disunity. How does he do this? He does it by first eroding the love between brothers and sisters in Christ.

Wherever there is disunity there will first be the absence of love and the presence of pride. Satan's great desire for your church and for mine is to fracture the people in those churches into camps, into groups built along lines that have no business dividing us. We may know this in the abstract, but we need to make it personal. Here is what we need to see: God wants me and commands me to love the other people in my church; Satan wants me to hate them. God wants me to feel a great deal of unity with those people; Satan wants there to be an issue between us—something, anything, to drive us apart.

Have you ever paused to think about this? Do you know that Satan is actively working in your local church right now to drive a wedge between you and the other people there? He wants you to hate that other person—or at least to stop loving that other person—and he is constantly giving you opportunity to do just that. A quick survey of church history, whether on a global or local scale, will show just how successful he has been. He will split churches into factions by first making those Christians find reasons not to love one another, not to bear with one another in love.

There was a time in my life when I worried about money. These were not just occasional thoughts about how little money we had, but the kind of worry that would wake me up in the night, bathed in sweat, my mind racing, trying to figure out how on earth I was going to scrape together a few hundred dollars to pay another bill. I was being eaten up by worry and I came to believe that the solution was to worry some more. Every few days I’d make up a list of all the money we had, all the money we owed, all the money that was coming to me, and would try to make the pieces fit. They didn’t. That night I’d wake up again, lying in the dark, trying to figure it all out.

I thought of those days last week when I was studying the book of Ruth. There was one little thing there that caught my attention and got me thinking about this. At the beginning of chapter 2, Ruth and Naomi have returned from Moab and Ruth declares that she is going to head out to the fields to work; she will take on the role of breadwinner. But here's the question I had: Why doesn't Naomi go out as well? It seems that at this point she is not yet an old lady; she is older but not old. At least it is unlikely that she is so old that she can’t go along with Ruth and put in a day's work. And since gleaning was dangerous work--a woman out in a field alone was always vulnerable--2 would be better than 1. But we are not told why Naomi remained home.

And this led me to wonder if she was experiencing the kind of paralysis that can come when we are overwhelmed with worry. Naomi is convinced that God is sovereign, but she is not at all convinced that he is good. Perhaps she is in a funk and in such a dark place that she can't even bring herself to get up and get going. Maybe she believes that her job is to stay home and worry. Have you ever been there before? We all worry at times--we all have problems that weigh on our minds, problems related to health or love or money. I think there are times when we feel like we need to worry, like if we don't worry, God won't pay attention. We can feel that our worrying is effectual, like it is effective, like it gains the ear of God.

The first chapter of Ruth sets the stage for a dramatic reversal. It’s the opening of a story and it immediately draws us into the despair of Naomi. At the end of the book’s opening chapter we are left with a very honest but not-so-pretty portrayal of her. She is a woman who has fallen on hard times—her husband has died and her sons have died, leaving her without any grandchildren, without any future.

Through all of the devastation she has become convinced that the Lord is out to get her. She believes—rightly of course—that God is in control, that God is sovereign, but she no longer believes that God is good. She looks at all that has happened to her and she decides that God is opposed to her; he must be. God is strong, but God is not loving. What other explanation could there be? How could a loving God allow all of this to happen to me?

Is there a darker place to be? Could you love or trust a God who is sovereign, who is all-powerful in this world, but who is not good? What kind of a God would that be? Who could worship such a God, a God who controls all things but who is evil or ambivalent, who just doesn't care? That would be a mean and savage God, the kind of God we would all want to flee from. 

No wonder, then, that Naomi is in despair. No wonder that she is so low. To believe that God is all-powerful, to believe that he demands our allegiance, but that he is opposed to us—that is terrifying. No one can trust a God like that. No one can truly love a God like that. Naomi has created a false image of God. Instead of allowing God to speak into her circumstances, she has interpreted God through those circumstances. When her life was good, God was good; now that her life has gone bad, she believes that God is bad.

As you know, I have been reading a lot of R.C. Sproul’s books lately, as part of a project I am working on. A few days ago I went through an older title, The Character of God. There I found these words, speaking of the depth of God’s love and the fact that it is a giving love.

When the Bible speaks of God’s love it invariably reaches the subject of God’s sacrifical kindness. The love of God is the love of a God who gives. The most famous verse in the Bible underscores this fact: “God so loved the world that He gave” (Jn 3:16). This giving of His only begotten Son on our behalf is the dearest expression of the love of God we can find.

The Apostle John wrote, “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him” (1 Jn 4:9). Here John spoke of “manifesting” something. To manifest something is to make it plain, to show it clearly. God doesn’t merely talk about being loving; He puts His love to the test by showing it in a way that is undeniable. He shows His love by giving.

What God gives and to whom He gives it further manifests His love. God is a gift-giving God, but His supreme love is showing by His supreme gift—His only begotten Son. Elsewhere Scripture says that there is no greater love than a love that willingly lays down its life for a friend. To sacrifice your life for your friends is the “greatest” display of love we can show. Or is it? Jesus took it one step further by giving His life for His enemies.

Although Jesus did lay down His life for His friends. He died for them while they were still sinners in the midst of deserting and denying Him. This act of self-sacrifice was not done alone. Jesus acted in concert with His Father. In fact, it was His Father's idea. The Father conceived the cup, filled the cup, and gave the cup to the Son to drink. The Son shuddered before the cup and sought to have it removed. The father said no, He would not compromise. The Son then willingly took the cup and drank it to its bitter dregs. Together they made the gift of Jesus’ precious life.

John understood the order, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10). The essence of the gospel is found in the words, “While we were yet sinners,” The love of God reaches out to us while we are alienated from Him. We have no love for Him, and our hearts are stony and cold. We love ourselves and our things. There is no affection in our hearts for God.

The supreme irony is that although God is altogether lovely, as fallen creatures we do not love Him. He is worthy and deserves our love. We owe Him our love, yet we do not love Him. On the other side, we are altogether unlovely by His standards. There is nothing in us to commend us to God, and He certainly does not owe us His love. But the staggering fact remains, He loves us. He loves us to the extent that He gave His only begotten Son for us.

In the past few years I’ve often been asked to speak or write on the topics of discernment and Christian maturity. I’ve also been asked to discuss the ways Christian communicate using all of these amazing new media available to us. In both cases I’ve found myself drawn to a quote by John Stott. This comes from his excellent commentary on Ephesians and here he discusses the well-known words of Ephesians 4:15 where the apostle calls us to speak truth in love. Stott aptly describes two different kinds of people.

Thank God there are those in the contemporary church who are determined at all costs to defend and uphold God’s revealed truth. But sometimes they are conspicuously lacking in love. When they think they smell heresy, their nose begins to twitch, their muscles ripple, and the light of battle enters their eye. They seem to enjoy nothing more than a fight. Others make the opposite mistake. They are determined at all costs to maintain and exhibit brotherly love, but in order to do so are prepared even to sacrifice the central truths of revelation. Both these tendences are unbalanced and unbiblical. Truth becomes hard if it is not softened by love; love becomes soft if it is not strengthened by truth. The apostle calls us to hold the two together, which should not be difficult for Spirit-filled believers, since the Holy Spirit is himself 'the spirit of truth,' and his first fruit is 'love." There is no other route than this to a fully mature Christian unity.

I’ve been to my share of conferences in the past few years and quite a few of these have been geared toward pastors. There’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed at the beginning of these events. In many cases these conferences are an opportunity for old friends to reconnect. Many times pastors have been attending the same conference year after year and have met new friends there or have reconnected with old friends from their college or seminary days. This is a once-per-year opportunity to spend a little bit of time together and to play catch-up.

I suppose there must have been a time when people carried printed photos in their wallets. Today, though, people carry photos on their cell phones or on their iPods. So often, when these men meet after the passing of yet another year, I see them embracing and then immediately digging out their phones or their iPods to show off the pictures of their children or grandchildren. And it is interesting to hear them talk; to hear them share proudly about the children they’ve already begun to miss even after only one day apart. As you listen to these pastors tell about their children, you notice that they dwell on the things that make them proud. “Brian’s nine. He loves basketball and leads his team in scoring. He’s getting so tall! His head comes up to my chest now and he eats like there’s no tomorrow. And here’s Rebecca. She’s fourteen. You can see she looks just like her mom. She loves cameras and says she wants to be a photographer…” Of course you know as you hear this that the last year has not been free of conflict. You know that mom and dad are probably working hard to maintain boundaries around Rebecca who is already acting out as a rebellious teen and that they are working hard to make Brian respect authority. It may well be that the night before he left, dad had to invoke some discipline and left the house only after making Rebecca promise that she would obey her mother. But when dad gets together with his friends, these things are not at the front of his mind. He loves his children, he is proud of his children, and he wants to tell others about them.

I thought about this a short time ago when I was considering how God feels about us, how he feels about me, how he feels about all of his children. I guess I often go through life thinking that God is generally displeased with me. I see my sin, I see my failings, I see my heart. At the same time I see from Scripture God’s majesty, his holiness, his perfection. And when I put these together I suppose that God must be looking at me with at least some level of disgust. He must regard me as I regard myself so much of the time; as a person who may try to do what’s right, but as a person who is just an abject failure when it comes to holiness. At the end of the day, I do love him, but I also love sin. At the end of it all, I pledge allegiance to him, but prove allegiance to myself seemingly just as often. So what could there be for him to love here?

But I’m starting to think that I’ve had this all wrong. I don’t know that there is a single Bible passage I would point to. But more and more, as I study God’s Word and as I learn about who he is, I see that he is a loving Father who is lavish with his love. Maybe it was my recent studies in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Maybe it was my reading through the prophets, seeing how God hates sin but loves his people. Maybe it was just talking to my mother who came to this realization, I think, long before I did. But somehow I am starting to see that God hates my sin but that he loves me. God despises the evil that lurks within me, but is extravagant in his grace. He actually, really loves me.

And maybe in that way God isn’t so different from the pastors I see at conferences. He loves us. He loves me. And more than that, he’s proud of me. He isn’t petty, filling his mind with all those things I’ve done wrong, but rather he is gracious, seeing all those evidences of his grace in my life. And, you know, I think this is one of the reasons that The Shack has done so well and has sold so many copies. It presents a God who not only loves people, but who also likes them and who is proud of them. Maybe we can be so careful in (rightly) understanding God’s hatred for sin and his desire for holiness that we forget about his great love for us despite the sin that still pollutes us. Maybe we forget that God truly does regard as children—children he not only loves but children he also genuinely likes. And there’s a difference between the two, isn’t there?

This morning I stumbled across the first few pages of Alexander Strauch’s Leading with Love. He begins this book by telling a story from the life of Dwight L. Moody. He tells of a time that the evangelist Henry Moorhouse was asked to preach at Moody’s church every night for a week. To everyone’s surprise, Moorhouse preached seven consecutive sermons on John 3:16, preaching on God’s love from Genesis to Revelation. Moody’s son recorded the impact of this preaching in the life of his father:

There is a profound truth that every Christian must face: the Bible is an inexhaustible treasure. Talk to a pastor who has spent a lifetime reading, studying and explaining the Bible and he will tell you, I’m sure, that the more he comes to understand, the more he realizes he does not understand. I have heard John Piper compare this to climbing a mountain. As he scales a sheer cliff and comes to the top of a great mountain, he looks to the distance and sees that beyond it lie more mountains still. And so he begins to scale the next mountain and sees beyond that more, bigger, taller, grander mountains. And so it will continue into eternity as we gaze towards the eternal, infinite God.

A week ago I posted a review of Alexander Strauch’s Love or Die (click here to read it) and in that review said “I can think of few books I’ve read recently that have had so immediate an impact on me and have given me so much to think about. I trust, that with God’s help, the implications of this book will be with me always.” In the back of the book Strauch provides a list of “50 Key Texts on Love.” In my devotions I have been going through those texts a few at a time, seeking to understand the contexts in which they were given, to understand what God means by them, and to understand how I can apply them to my life.

To this point I’ve looked at key texts in the Old Testament and in the gospels. I haven’t encountered any texts that are new to me; I have read them all before and have memorized or studied many in the past. But I continue to learn from the Bible’s inexhaustible store of treasure. Just this morning I came to Matthew 22:34-40.

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

This is one of those foundational texts and one I have undoubtedly read or heard hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Jesus quoted two Old Testament passages, both of which would have been familiar to his hearers and to Matthew’s readers. One of them was recited by pious Jews twice daily and was written on their doorposts and phylacteries. He chose these two out of the 600+ laws the Pharisees had deduced from the Scriptures. Love God first and best and love your neighbor as yourself. This is the heart of the Christian faith.

This morning I began to think about that phrase, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and wondered, “why love?” Why is it that the greatest commandment is not to obey or fear or follow? Why are we commanded to love? And here I had to pause and ask myself whether I love God first or whether my love is secondary to obedience or submission or to something else. I wonder if that command, in the Challies Standard Bible, reads, “You shall obey the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Is love as central to my faith as it ought to be?

I suppose it is possible that I am drawing something of a false distinction here. We do not need to go too much further in the Bible to find that love and obedience are inextricably connected. John 14:15 says clearly, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” But I do not take this to say that love and obedience are one and the same. Rather, I take it to mean that obedience is proof of love. Obedience proves love to God but is not the sum of love to God. Do I love God? I can look to the Scripture to see if I am obeying him. If I obey God, I can take it as proof of my love. But isn’t my day-by-day love to be composed of more than obedience? Isn’t “how do I know I love God?” different from “how do I love God?”

I began to think of how Jesus loved his Father and came up with at least a few ways (and I’m sure this is but a drop in the proverbial bucket). I wanted to see how people may have answered this question: “How did Jesus love his Father?” And here is what I thought of: He loved his Father by defending him. When the Pharisees showed their appalling ignorance of the character of God, Jesus would step in to defend God. He loved his Father by communing with him. Jesus constantly escaped from the crowds so he could spend time alone with God. He communed with him in prayer and undoubtedly in meditating upon the Scriptures. He loved his Father by loving his Father’s people (see, for example, John 17:12). He loved his Father by obeying him. He loved his Father by doing his Father’s will. He loved his Father by making his Father’s glory his first priority and by making much of him. And I’m sure this list could continue.

And I got little further. I began to look to my own life to see if I am primarily obedient to God or if I primarily love God. I can’t help but feel that, if I am motivated primarily by obedience, then I am missing out on something important. Does this mean that I read the Bible every morning just to obey God? Or do I read the Bible in order to spend time with God and enjoy some moments of communion with him? Do I love his people because I want to ensure I am following his edicts, or do I love his people because he loves his people and I want to be like him? Is there a purity in love that is missing from obedience?

I’m going to turn to you for your thoughts and see if you can bring some clarity here (though by this time I may have so muddied the water that you are completely and utterly confused). Am I making a false distinction, or is there really a difference between “how do I know I love God?” and “how do I love God?” And if so, answer what should be a simple question: how is the Christian to love God?

It is a strange gig, being a book reviewer. There are times when I spend weeks or months in anticipation of a new book only to find it a great disappointment. And then there are times when a book just shows up—a book I didn’t even know existed—and it takes my breath away. Such was the case with Love or Die by Alexander Strauch. While the book is large in dimensions (8.8 x 5.9, so slightly larger than an average paperback) it is short in length, coming in at just 112 pages (which includes a study guide, indexes and a couple of appendices). But despite its length, it packs quite a punch. I can think of few books I’ve read recently that have had so immediate an impact on me and have given me so much to think about. I trust, that with God’s help, the implications of this book will be with me always.