Acts 10:44-48; John 15:9-17 Nine times Jesus uses the word “love” in these few verses. Everybody agrees that we should love each other, right? All over the world, pretty much everyone thinks loving people is a good thing.
So why would Jesus make such a point about something everyone already knows? Because like with everything else, we mess it up. We’ve broken it. Jesus brings us into the very heart of this concept of love that we all think we know – and come to find out we really don’t know after all. Like we do with most things, when we talk about something good, or right, or of God, we usually start with ourselves. Knee-jerk reaction, and reveals immediately that we’re broken. We do it with love, too. When we hear Jesus talking to us about loving each other, the first thing we do is say to ourselves, “Well, I love God; and people. Most people. A lot of people. Several people.” We turn this revelation of God into something to justify ourselves, that’s about us. We’ve taken this wonderful reality of God’s love for us and we’ve broken it. Love has become a way for us to describe what we want for ourselves: I love (want) that car; I love (want) that person, I love (enjoy) Colorado sunsets, I love (want to make sure I end up in the right place) God.
Jesus puts love back into its right perspective. Love starts with God, and ends with God. God relates to us out of love, and we are simply the beings who get caught up in God’s love. God’s love for us is what ties us to God. Jesus reminds the disciples (including us) that their place with him is the result of his initiative, not theirs; begins with his love, not theirs; relationship with Jesus is ultimately a result of God's love. Philip Yancy (What's So Amazing about Grace?) writes about a definition of love that Mother Teresa gave at a National Prayer Breakfast.
… Rolled out in a wheelchair, the frail, eighty-three-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate needed help to stand up. A special platform had been positioned to allow here to see over the podium. Even so, hunched over, four-feet-six-inches tall, she could barely reach the microphone. She spoke clearly and slowly with a thick accent in a voice that nonetheless managed to fill the auditorium.
Mother Teresa said that America has become a selfish nation, in danger of losing the proper meaning of love: "giving until it hurts." [p. 244] Isn’t that a great definition of love? We often think of love as getting. It is a feeling I get. It is a person I get. It is an object I want to get.
However, Mother Teresa says that love is giving – giving until it hurts. That's what Jesus does. In fact, he not only gives until it hurts; he will continue giving until he dies. That's how much pain he will suffer on behalf of those he loves.
Amongst us we have examples of Christ’s love connecting us to God and then flowing through us. Youth and adults going to Louisiana to help with hurricane relief. Not going for themselves. Not going to gain anything. Not going because it’s easy. They are going because there are people who need them. People whose lives have been turned upside down, who’ve lost everything, who are completely dependent upon people like us going down there and doing what needs to be done.
Love starts with God, and ends with God. God relates to us out of love, and we are simply the beings who get caught up in God’s love. God’s love for us is what ties us to God. And as we are connected to God in Christ, God’s love comes through us to those around us.
God’s love shapes us, changes us, makes us whole.
Philip Yancy ("What's So Amazing about Grace?") writes:
At a seminar, [Brennan] Manning referred to Jesus' closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as "the one Jesus loved." Manning said, "If John were to be asked, 'What is your primary identity in life?' he would not reply, 'I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,' but rather, 'I am the one Jesus loves.'"
Sociologists have a theory: you become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed God's astounding love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?
What would it mean if each of us saw our primary identity in life as "the one Jesus loves"? How differently would our lives be?
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. . . No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
You are the one Jesus loves. You are the one he died for. You are the one he gave his all for. You are the one he connects to the Father in love. You are the one.