LOVE IN ACTION
COMMUNITY SERVICE DAY
DR. JIM DIXON
APRIL 25, 2010
ROMANS 12:12a, JAMES 1:22, 1 JOHN 3:16-18
In theological seminaries, in Master of Divinity programs, there’s always a course called Homiletics. In order to get your MDiv, you must take this class called Homiletics. Homiletics has to do with the art of preaching. Now, in Homiletics class, you learn that there are many different forms of preaching. One form is called expository preaching. Expository preaching is preaching where you take a passage of scripture and you just go verse by verse, maybe phrase by phrase, and you seek to exegete, or extract the meaning of, that passage or of those verses. Now, normally when I preach, I preach more thematically, topically, and parabolically. But this morning I want to do a little bit of an expository kind of thing. I want us to take a look at three little passages, and I want us to exegete them. I want us to try to extract the meaning on this love and action Sunday. So we’re going to take these three passages and we’re going to seek to extract the meaning.
So first of all, we have Romans 12 verse 9a. “Let love be genuine.” Now, this word genuine, what does that mean? What does it mean to say, “I want my love to be genuine.” Now, for hundreds of years, the only Bible used in the Christian churches was the Latin Vulgate Bible. The Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Old Testament were rendered into Latin. And so throughout all the churches, particularly in Europe, the Latin Vulgate Bible was used for hundreds of years. Now, in this verse, Romans 12:9a, the word “genuine” is rendered by the Latin word “sincerus.” Sincerus is the word from which we get our English word sincere. So “let love be sincere.” But sincerus literally means “without wax.” “Let your love be without wax.”
Now, understand that in the Roman world, people made things out of wood. They made other things out of marble or stone. They would give these things as gifts, or they would purchase them for themselves and place them in their home. Sometimes the marble or the wood would crack. Sometimes the marble or the wood would chip, and they would fill it in with wax. They’d fill the cracks in with wax. They’d fill the chips in with wax. Literally sincerus means “without decay or without corruption.” It means whole. But it came to mean “without wax” because these items of wood and of marble, when they were cracked or chipped, were filled in with wax. And they were not sincerus. They were not without wax.
So basically the implication here is that our love is full of wax. Our love is cracked. Our love is chipped. Our love is not whole, but we have this goal set before us that our love would be whole, without cracks, without chips, and without wax. This is the goal. Now, we can look at our love, any kind of love, and we see the wax.
You can look at eros love. Eros love is the Greek word for romantic love. I know this is hard to believe for some of you who are younger, but I’m 64 years old and I can remember my teenage years. You might think, oh, you get into your sixties and you can’t even remember your teenage years, but you can. I can remember that, in my teenage years, I had a girlfriend. We kind of went together on and off for a year and a half. And I thought she was kind of cute, and I thought she was deep in her faith and very spiritual. And I respected that. Certainly, she was a more committed Christian than I was at that time in my life. And we went together for a year and a half. I took her to the senior prom, et cetera, and we wrote each other notes. She would always say, “I love you greatly. I’ll love you forever,” and I would say similar things to her.
She went away to Guatemala where her parents were missionaries between my senior year of high school and my first year of college, and she wrote me pretty regularly. I just kind of wasn’t into that, and I didn’t write her back. And I think she decided my love was full of wax. And she came back and told me she didn’t love me anymore, and I decided her love was full of wax. And I think this is the teenage deal. Oftentimes, you know, there’s a lot of love that’s full of wax. It has a lot of cracks, a lot of chips, a lot of holes, and yet it can still hurt. You’re still involved, and it can still hurt.
Now, you grow up and you really fall in love. Many people, most people, get married. But even married love has cracks in it and chips in it and wax. And some of you have experienced incredible pain because you’ve had your husband or your wife say to you, “I don’t love you anymore, and I don’t think I ever did.” I mean, that is the pain of life. And through my years of the ministry, many years of counseling, I’ve talked to so many couples in the midst of many tears describing that pain of experiencing a love that is full of wax. This is the world in which we live. Eros love.
Now there’s family love, storge love, and it’s also sometimes filled with wax. For our family, this has been a huge week. Our daughter, Heather, and her husband Chris have had their thirdborn child, a little son. The two girls that they’ve had are named Abigail and Nina, and this little boy they named Dixon. So it’s Abigail Lowe, Nina Lowe, and now Dixon Lowe. And of course, I kind of like the name Dixon.
Now, you know, it was a hard birth for Heather over at Sky Ridge Hospital. She was given an epidural, and, as sometimes happens (about one out of every 100 cases), it just doesn’t take. And so she had a great deal of pain, even though she has a wonderful pediatrician and an incredible doctor who delivered the baby, Jack Hein, who’s a member of this church and a great friend. Jack gave her another block to help her with the pain. But still, she was in a lot of pain. And the baby, little Dixon, was huge. I mean, even though he was taken almost two weeks early, he was still nine pounds, one ounce. This baby would’ve been 10 pounds. Heather’s small, and she’s very small boned. And this was just a hard, hard delivery and very, very painful.
But there’s that storge love, that family love that’s already there. Heather would have died for that baby. I mean, that’s the kind of love that is there. And of course you know, they spent three nights in the hospital, because it was hard. Barb and I had the other granddaughters. We had Nina and Abigail for three days. But then after the birth Heather and Chris and Dixon had to go back to the hospital and spent another night because they thought there were some neurological irregularities in Dixon. So they ran tests and MRI and EEGs and things are looking pretty good. We took the girls again at home. Nina got sick and threw up all night. We thought maybe she was better. The next morning she was kind of doing pretty good. We went over to Starbucks and she threw up right there at Starbucks, and we kind of cleaned it up and said, “Thank you very much,” and we were out of there. But that’s called family love. That’s storge.
But see, even family love has holes in it, cracks in it, a lot of wax. There are deadbeat dads out there, and there are some deadbeat moms out there. There are children who grow up and don’t even care about their aging parents. Storge love can have a lot of wax. This is the human predicament.
Of course, there’s also phileo love. This is friendship love, and it too can be filled with wax. I’m blessed with many friends, and some of you are good friends I’ve grown over the years to know and love. I know that sometimes in my friendships I feel like I disappoint people. Barb has said to me before that the ministry is just a call to disappoint people. It does kind of feel that way, because you can’t please everybody. It would not be physically possible. I made this decision some years ago to never do anything on a Saturday night. It, for me, is sacrosanct. It is set apart for God. I can’t do Sunday mornings unless I get away and don’t do anything on Saturday night. But I get invitations. I mean, any other night is available. But Saturday nights are sacrosanct. I felt that before God I needed to do this. But I have great friends, and they’re doing things on Saturday night, and they want Barb and I to be there.
They have a very special occasion at Saturday night. It’s a special occasion. It’s a huge birthday. It’s a huge this, it’s a huge that. And I say no. I know that feels like, wow, Jim’s friendship love has a lot of wax. And it does, because I’m like you. I’m very cracked, very flawed, but I think we’re all in a process of learning how to be friends, aren’t we? We’re in a process of learning what it means to be a good friend. But we’re in this human predicament.
Now, the word that’s used in this verse in Romans 12:9a is the word agape. It’s not eros, it’s not storge, it’s not phileo. It’s agape. And agape is a word captured from the Hellenized world in the Bible and given special meaning. In the Bible, agape means Christian Love. It means love that is like God’s love. Agape means love that is selfless, love that’s unconditional. So agape means, “Let it be genuine. Let it be without wax.” And oh, isn’t that hard to have the love of Jesus in us, to let the love of Jesus shine through us and be without wax? In fact, the actual Greek word in Romans 9a is “ahypokrites.” And “a-” means with “without,” and “hypokrites” is the word from which we get hypocrisy. So, it means “without hypocrisy.” “Let your agape love be without hypocrisy.”
And I think for me that means that at least if I’m not going to love exactly as Jesus loves, I would admit it. So I admit that this morning. I’m trying to love like Jesus loves, but I’m not there yet. I don’t want to be a hypocrite and pretend I do love like Jesus loves. Every once in a while His love shines through me, and I am so grateful for His mercy. But I’m a project and I’m in process, and so are you. But let your love be genuine. That’s the goal. Let your love be genuine.
Now, there’s a second verse, James 1:22. “Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” be doers of the Word. Now, in the Bible, “the Word” means three things. First of all, the Word means the Bible itself. This is the Word. This book is called the Word, and it’s the Word of God. Holy scripture.
Now, the Word is under attack. Today, the Bible under attack and there’s a battle for the Bible. I received about a week ago a letter from another pastor. It’s a very, very nice letter; very thoughtful. And this pastor also sent me a book. The book was a book by Brian McLaren called A New Kind of Christianity. Brian McLaren had written me a note in the front of the book, and it was very complimentary, very kind. Brian McLaren does not know me, and I do not know Brian McLaren. I have read some of his books and I have heard him speak. I have a problem with the books and with the teaching of Brian McLaren. Brian McLaren is part of a group that is sometimes called the emerging church. It’s relatively small when you look at the whole Christian world, but it’s a group called the emerging church. And it’s hard to stereotype, because there’s great variety within the emerging church, but Brian McLaren is kind of part of this movement. My problem is that a lot of the literature in this movement is, in my view, borderline heresy and touching apostasy. As a pastor and as one who really believes that we’re moving towards the end of days when there’ll be this growth of apostasy, I’m very concerned. I’m very alarmed.
Now, in this movement, you have this teaching that the Bible is not fully credible. This is what’s taught by many parts of the emerging church. The Bible is not fully credible. It’s not completely valid. You can’t completely trust it because it’s influenced by Greco-Roman culture and other ancient Semitic cultures that were tribal and violent. So as you read the Bible, you get a view of God that is tribal, and you get a view of God that is violent. So fortunately, they say, in the Bible there’s evolution. So as you move through the Bible, there’s this evolution in the Bible’s view of God, and it gets a little bit better as it moves ultimately to Jesus. But you have this tribal, violent view of God. So when you see the story of Noah and the destruction of the world by flood, they say God would never do this. God never did do this. That’s just tribal and violent. When you read the story of Moses and the crossing of the Red Sea and how God spared His tribe but how the Egyptians were completely drowned, they say God would never do that and God didn’t do that.
They argue that’s just the Greco-Roman or Semitic tribal violent God. So they would argue that in the Bible you have this stream of revelation. There’s a stream of revelation that moves from Genesis to Revelation, and much in the Bible is not in the stream. There’s a stream of revelation, but you have to go through the Bible and find out what’s in that stream and what’s outside of the stream—what’s true and what’s not true, what has authority and what does not have authority.
So in this emerging church movement they say, “Well, this is true. This is not true. This is in the stream. This is not in the stream.” They can thereby change Judeo-Christian morality and change Judeo-Christian theology because they have the right to judge what’s right and what’s not right in the Bible. And in this emerging church movement, because of this view of the non-violence of God, the cross is even rejected, because the cross is violent. God would never do that. So the heart of the gospel is lost, because God would not wanted His Son to suffer. Substitutionary atonement, the very heart of the gospel, is lost.
Now there’s much more I could say, and I feel like as a pastor I need to warn you about books like this. I mean, I want to be nice to people. I’m sure Brian McLaren is a great guy. I don’t know him, but I bet he’s a great guy. I just feel, though, that I need to warn you about this type of literature and the times in which we are living. I’ll tell you one thing, though, that I would say Brian McLaren is right about, and that is that the Bible’s all about love. He’s right about that, because Jesus said that the Torah is all about love. It’s all about the Shema. It’s Leviticus 19:18. “Love the Lord your God. Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love, love, love. That’s true. Of course, you can’t throw parts of the Bible out and fully understand the love of God and what it means to love God and what it means to love each other. You can’t throw parts of the Bible out.
The Old Testament, I hope you understand, means Old Covenant; the New Testament means New Covenant. So the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, describes all the terms of the Old Covenant that God made with Israel, with Abraham, and with Moses. Then the New Testament is the New Covenant, describing the terms of that New Covenant which God made with the nations through Jesus. You can’t throw any of it out or you destroy all of it. If you throw some of it out, you don’t receive the full covenant. But it is about love.
And it is true that love is something you do, it’s something you feel, it’s something you believe, but it’s also something you do. So be doers of the Word. It means here’s a sense in which you have to do this book. See, I know people who are orthodox theologically and morally. They can recite the Nicaean Creed and the Apostle Creed. They bend the knee at the Westminster Confession of Faith. They agree with all the ancient ecclesiastical councils. They understand Judeo-Christian values. They affirm them all, and they have an orthodox view of the Bible, but they don’t do the Bible.
Do you understand what I’m saying? That’s scary. It’s scary when you don’t believe the Bible, but it’s also scary when you don’t do the Bible. Be doers of the Word. Of course, the Word not only refers to the Bible. The Word refers to Jesus. The Bible is the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible’s the Word of God written, and Jesus is the Word of God living.
There’s a sense in which as followers of Jesus we must do Jesus. It’s not enough to believe the right things about Him; it’s not enough to say, “Save me from my sin.” If you really take Him as Lord, you begin to do Jesus. That’s a hard call.
Now, in the ancient Roman world, there were many slaves. At the peak of the Roman Empire, some estimate there were as many as 50 million slaves in the Roman Empire. The entire Roman socioeconomic system was predicated on the existence of slavery. These slaves had varying roles in life, some demeaning, some more valued, but for all of their lives were not their own. They were property. Now, in this Roman world of slavery came Christianity and the call of Jesus, and it’s the call for us to serve the lowest of the low.
You have to do Jesus. You lay down your life, you give the cup of cold water, you wash feet, you do Jesus. You do the word. This is the agape love. This is His love. This is the love we’re called to, and it’s the highest of calls. So be doers of the Word. The Word is the Word of God written. It’s the Word of God living.
It’s also the Word of God spoken. It’s the gospel. Sometimes this expression “the Word” refers not to the Bible or to Jesus, but to the gospel. “Be doers of the word” means to respond to the gospel. It also means to go out into the nations and into the world and proclaim the gospel. And then it says something about deception in this passage. And of course, the devil is the deceiver. In the final stage of history, it’ll be a time of deception and many will depart from the faith and some will no longer endure sound teaching. So we know about the deception of the evil one, and the Bible tells us it’s always with us, and it will be at its peak as we approach the end. But sometimes we deceive ourselves. And so this passage of scripture says, “Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
So you see, as Christians we deceive ourselves when we think that we can believe the Bible is authoritative, believe properly about Jesus—you know, believe in the Great Commission and the gospel—but not do anything. That’s self-deception. Be doers of the word. So that’s our second passage.
Then finally, I want to take a brief look at 1 John 3:16-18. “By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us. So we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let not your love be in word or in speech, but in deed and in truth.” So some people have the goods and some people have the need. That’s what this passage says.
Now, the word for goods is “bios.” You might think it would be “agathos,” or another word like “kalos,” but no, it’s bios. And bios means “life.” It is the word from which we get biology. “If anyone has ‘bios.’” But in this form that it’s in in this passage, bios means “everything needed for life.” It means livelihood. If you have the means of physical provision, bios, and you see your brother in need, destitute or really in need of anything, and you close your heart against him, how does God’s love abide in you?
It’s a tough passage of scripture in many ways. First of all, we live in Douglas County and we have the goods. All you have to do is take a look at national census reports. This is one of the 10 most educated counties in the United States of America and one of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States of America. And you might be sitting there thinking, wow, what happened to me? But as the world views things and as God views things, we have the goods. So this passage is hard for us. We have the goods and there are lots of needs out there and obviously you can’t meet them all. And God understands that. Jesus went to the pool of Bethzatha in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate—sometimes called in some early manuscripts Bethesda and other early manuscripts Bethsaida, but in most Bethzatha—and there was a great multitude of infirmed, sick, paralyzed, ill, and lame. The need was great, and Jesus had the goods. There was a man there who had been paralyzed for 38 years. Jesus, because He had the goods, healed him. “Rise, take up your pallet and walk.” But He only healed Him.
Have you thought about that? At the pool of Bethzatha, there was a multitude of people. They all had the need and He had the goods. So I hope you understand when you look at the Bible holistically what you must do. This doesn’t mean that every need must be met by you, or pretty soon you wouldn’t have the goods. You’d just be the person with a need. Do you understand what I’m saying? So there has to be a combination of the goods and the need and the call. So you need spiritual discernment here. But you also need a mindset that is constantly saying, “Who can I help?” You need a mindset that that is looking by the call of Christ to give yourself away. This must be your mindset if love is genuine in you. “If you see your brother in need.” The word “adelphos” there can mean brother or sister; it can be a generic word. For many passages of the Bible you have to look at the context to know that. But in this case, it’s brother or sister. It’s generic, and it can mean Christian or it can mean non-Christian, because the word adelphos is used in both ways in the Bible. So, you could take this to mean “if you see a Christian in need,” but you could also take this to mean if you see anyone in need, because this word of adelphos has that scope.
We cannot close our hearts. So he says, “Let your love be not in word or in speech, but deed and in truth.” Now, this Greek word for speech… a lot of people love with their speech, but not with their deeds. The word for speech is “glossa.” We get “glossary” from this word glossa. The word “gloss” comes from this word glossa. It means literally “tongue,” and you know that passage in James chapter three, starting with verse one, about the tongue. This passage kind of takes it a step further. James chapter three says, “Let not many of you become teachers” (and with this we’ll close), “for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all make many mistakes. If anyone makes no mistakes in what he says, he’s a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well. If we put bits in the mouths of horses that we may control them, we guide their whole bodies. Look also at the ships. Though they are so great and driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue, the glossa, is a little member which boasts of great things. How great a force is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, an unrighteous world amongst our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the cycle of nature and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast, bird, reptile, and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by humankind, but no human being contained the glossa. No human being contain the tongue, a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it, we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse man, who were made in his likeness and image. Brothers and sisters, it ought not to be so. Can a spring pour forth from the same opening both freshwater and brackish? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good deeds let him show forth his wisdom and the meekness of Christ.”
Now, we use our tongues, our glossa, to bless and curse. I think most of us realize we need to bless more and curse less. We need to bless more and not curse at all. So every morning you should wake up and say, “How can I use my tongue to bless?” But our passage here takes it a step further. It’s not enough to use your tongue to bless. Don’t just love in speech. You must love in deed. So it’s not enough to reject cursing and just use your tongue for blessing. You must take it a step further. You must put love into action. You must put your words, your speech, your glossa into action. You must love indeed.
So here we are today. What an opportunity. I don’t know what it is you’re going to be doing today, and maybe you’re part of the 2,300 going into the community with the love of Christ and with servants’ hearts. Maybe you’re heading home today and you’re not able to be part of that. But I hope as you seek to be doers of the Word and not hearers only that you want to be Jesus—you want to be His hands, His voice, and His feet. You want to live out the word of God, the Bible. You want to live out the gospel. You want to be that person that loves genuinely and not just in speech, but in deed.
That’s the call. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing today. I think it’s a big journey and it’s a process that we’re in together and we’re learning to love. That’s part of what a church community is about. This is a place where we learn to love. So that’s what we’re doing today. We’re learning to love, and it’s agape love. It’s Christian love. It’s the love of Jesus. Let’s close with a word of prayer.