I'm sick of "love."

The Word for today:

Galatians 5:25-6:18

mark this: 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.   (Galatians 5:22-23)

Before we depart from Galatians, and because I'm in the mood, I want to talk about love.  So here goes:

"Love, love, love, love, love, love, love."

In the minds of many, all you need is love.  And all you need to know about the Bible is love--because, after all, God is love (1).

And love is the foremost fruit of the Spirit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control  (Galatians 5:22-23).

Moreover, the greatest of these is love (2).  The greatest of what?  Who cares.  All you need is love. 

And you know what, they are right!  But there's one problem.  They learned what "love" means from a Hallmark card, but not from scripture.

I was in a church once where it was love this, love that, love the brother, love the other.  It was a regular Hallmark orgy!  They went to Bible studies and talked about love; they went to small groups and talked about love; they Facebook-ed their love to each other so much they almost short-circuited the world wide web!

But when they were asked by the pastor at their Sunday love-fest to please volunteer to help with a very active children's program on Wednesday nights for one hour, then their love suddenly lapsed.

Which freed them, of course, to get on Facebook during that hour each Wednesday to wax rhapsodic about the glories of love!  And so they did, because love, after all, is a many-splendored thing.  I mean, to even begin to plumb its depths requires hours and hours of tweets, and texts, and now and then the old gold standard--the Hallmark card itself!

Excuse me whilst I retch.  I'm, as the Song of Solomon declares, sick of love (3).

The smarmy thing that generally passes for love in the world—and often in the church--is the furthest thing from Biblical love.

Instead, that lone Man on the cross--and that uncompromising, “narrow-minded” guy who is always spouting off about the Bible and sin and about that lone Man on the cross--is what the Bible calls love. 

In a dark and dying world, love is bringing the message of hope and eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. 

Here's the distillation of the Bible's teaching on what true love looks like:

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

Note that Jesus wasn't talking about laying down one's death for his friends.  He was talking about laying down one's life.

But that's asking a lot right off the bat, so let's start with a bite-sized piece:

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down one hour for his friends.

But according to your profile you have 843 friends? Then how about this:

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down one hour for the kids on Wednesday night.

***

I can't prove this, but it seems like every time the word "love" is spoken, an hour of the real thing gets subtracted from love's sum total.

At least I know that's true on Wednesday nights in Lockport, NY.

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(1) 1 John 4:8, 16; (2) 1 Corinthians 13:8; (3) Song of Solomon 2:5, 5:8 / KJV