FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE
LOVE
DR. JIM DIXON
1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-14:1a
APRIL 7, 2013
Andy Griffith died on July 4th last year, 2012. I don’t know how you feel about that. Perhaps it made you sad. Perhaps you really loved his TV stuff. Maybe you don’t have any feelings at all because you are so young that you have never heard of Andy Griffith. Andy Griffith began “The Andy Griffith Show” in 1960. It ran for eight years, 249 episodes, about 31 episodes a year. During that eight-year stretch, almost the entire time, it was number one in the nation, number one on TV. Even today, more than five decades later, reruns are still on TV and are very popular. Before Andy Griffith died, they asked him how he felt about Barney Fife, played by Don Knotts, and Opie, played by Ron Howard, and Aunt Bee, and Gomer, and Goober, and all the Mayberrians. He said this: “It was all about love.”
God tells us that this is what life is about. Life is all about love. The Bible tells us that this is what life is supremely about. It is all about love. Today we look at love. Many times, in the past we have looked at God’s love for us, and many times in the past we have looked at our love of God. That is love on the vertical. God’s love flowing down to us, our love reaching back to him. We love because he first loved us. I am not going to talk about vertical love today. Today we are going to focus on love on the horizontal, our love for one another, our love for people. We are going to look at what the Bible tells us about love on the horizontal. We are going to look at four different types of love the Bible mentions that Christ calls his people to. These four different types of love are laid upon us, as a charge, by our Lord Jesus Christ.
The first type of love is philoptochos, a Greek word which means love of the poor. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ then you are to love the poor. This is the charge given to us by the Lord himself. Philoptochos, love of the poor. That word philoptochos is not actually in the Bible. It is not in the Greek New Testament, but the compounds are. Ptochos is in the Bible and philea is in the Bible. The concept of the love of the poor is everywhere in the Bible. Many passages stress this and teach this to us that we are to love the poor.
Yesterday, here in the Commons, we had our Discovery class. I always come and share our vision statement as a church with the potential new members. Part of that vision statement is that we would be a congregation mobilized to elevate the urban poor. This is part of the vision God has given our church. That is why we have 28 ministries in the inner city, many of them founded by Cherry Hills Community Church members. All of these ministries are handholding ministries. We hold hands with these ministries including five inner city churches. These are all efforts to reach out to the poor and the oppressed with love in obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ. We are constantly inviting you to join with us in these ministries to the poor. We are inviting you to mentor an inner-city child or inner-city teenager. We have invited you to go and help single moms, to go help the homeless. We have invited you to go and help those in prisons and their families.
We have ministries all over the world where we seek to help the poor. In fact, we were just notified by World Vision, which is a wonderful international ministry organization that gives relief to the poor and the oppressed in the name of Christ in countries all over the world, that we have now reached the point where we have given them, as a congregation, more than one million dollars. They want to come and to thank us personally on a Sunday morning from the pulpit. The truth is, over the course of the years, we have given more than a million dollars to countless ministries that have worked for the poor. Every time you give a dollar to this church a portion of that goes to the poor.
I hope you understand how core, critical, this is in the power of the Word of Christ. In Luke 16 the message of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is this: If you don’t care about the poor, if you don’t love the poor, if you just ignore the poor, you are on a path to hell. That is honestly what Jesus says. Look it up. Read it. Luke 16, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Look at the Olivet Discourse, look at Matthew chapter 25, look at the parable of the sheep and the goats. What is Jesus saying to us? He is saying, “If you don’t care about the hungry, if you don’t care about the thirsty, if you don’t care about the naked, then he will one day say to you, ‘Depart from me you workers of iniquity.’ He will place you with goats and not with the sheep.” I hope you understand the clarity and the power of these passages. This is not something the church of Christ has an option on. We are commanded to love the poor.
What do you think of when you think of Nottingham, England? My guess is you rarely think of Nottingham, England, but if you do, what do you associate with Nottingham, England? My guess would be that what you think of is the Sheriff of Nottingham. You think of nearby Sherwood Forest. You think of Robin Hood and how he robbed from the rich to give to the poor. There are old legends about Nottingham, Sherwood Forest, and Robin Hood dating back to the 14th century, to the 1300’s AD. They are just legends. What you should think of when you think of Nottingham, England, is William Booth.
William Booth was born in Nottingham in the 19th century, in the 1800’s. One day when he was newly married, he took his first trip to London. He had never been to London. He took his first trip to that ancient city that the Romans built called Londinium. He was just blown away by the poor, by the poverty, by the oppression, by the squalor. He was devastated. He came home to his wife and he said, “I have been to hell. I have got to do something about it.” He loved Christ and he loved people. He started a ministry, and he called it The Christian Ministry. Pretty creative, huh? The Christian Ministry later became the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army has ministered in the name of Christ to poor people all over this world.
Have you ever been to hell? Have you ever returned from someplace and it felt like you just came back from hell? Have you ever thought, “I can’t just sit here. I have to do something about it.” Have you ever thought, “What would God have me to do?” Barb and I have been to hell. We have gone to Asia many times. We have gone to parts where there were open sewers. It was unthinkable. I know many of you have been to parts of the world where you have been to such places. Have you ever felt, “Oh, I have got to do something about this?” Have you ever gone to downtown Denver or even out in Aurora and seen sections of town where it is just tragic. Have you ever wanted to do anything about it? This is the command of Christ, that we would have love for the poor. You understand, this is our heartbeat—all these ministry opportunities. Please join us. Please love.
The second kind of love that the Bible mentions is Philadelphos, which literally means love of the brethren. Brotherly love. We use this word today, as in the name of the city, Philadelphia. We talk about brotherly love today. It means a different thing today than what it meant in biblical times, in the ancient Hellenized world. Today, when most people talk about brotherly love, what they mean is love for people. Love for human beings. Love for mankind. Brotherly love. That is not what the word originally meant.
The Greeks had a different word for love for humanity. It was called philanthropos. Philanthropos means love of man, love of people, love of mankind. That word has morphed. We have used that word differently today. Philanthropos, which originally meant love for mankind, now means charitable giving, anything philanthropic. Words morph, words change, words go through a transformation. Originally philadelphos, brotherly love, was a family love. It was not gender specific; it was gender neutral. It could refer to love of brothers, love of sisters, family love. It had to do with love of friends. Love of the people you are close to. Love of friends, love of family, brotherly love.
In the Bible it is used in a variety of ways, but most of the time in the Bible it refers to love for the body of Christ, love for the church, love for our brothers and sisters in Christ. This charge is laid by Christ, upon his people, that we would love his family—brothers and sisters in Christ. The Bible tells us that when we come to Christ and we receive him as our Savior from sin and the Lord of our life, in that moment we are born into his family. His father becomes our father. What he has by nature, we receive by adoption. We are brought into the family of God. Now, we have brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world, wherever the church is. It is the will of Christ that we have this unique special love for each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.
He even tells us that this is how the world will know that we are his disciples, that we have love for one another as Christians. His will is that the world would look at us and see how we as Christians love each other, how we in the family of God are learning to love each other, and the world would be drawn in like a magnet. People would be so attracted to that. This is the will of Christ that we have this second kind of love, love of the church, love for the Christian family. It is not easy because we are not all loveable. It is not easy because we are all sinners. It is not easy because we are all flawed. We are all messed up. It is not always easy to love the church.
I think of Barb and her charge to love me. I am a brother in this world that she is supposed to love the most. I am her brother in Christ as well as her husband. It is not easy to love me. I am pretty messed up. I really am, as I have said before, a bozo on the bus. I have a lot of stories that could illustrate this; there are so many.
I know years ago I told you this story about when Heather and Drew, our daughter, and our son, were young. They were just normal kids. I mean wonderful, talented, but normal. Neither one of them had very many phobias or fears. Heather had a fear of elevators, strangely enough; particularly glass elevators. She didn’t want to get into a glass elevator; it kind of spooked her. I remember one day we were at the Tech Center at the Hyatt Regency where they have a glass elevator. We went to get into the elevator and Heather didn’t want to get in. I thought, “Well, this is the day that I am going to have her face her fear. I am going to make her confront her fear.” I told her to get in the elevator. She didn’t want to do it. She said, “No dad, I don’t want to do it.” I said, “Heather, I want you to get in the elevator. You are going to see that you are just fine. We are going to go up and come back down. You are going to be okay. You aren’t going to be injured. You will see. Now, get in the elevator.”
She said, “No.” Then she began to cry. I began to put more pressure on her. Tough love, you know. Barb was watching this and she said, “Jim, I don’t think this is the time. We are heading to China tomorrow and we will be gone for three weeks. The kids are going to be with babysitters for three weeks. They are already spooked because we are leaving them. This is not the time for this object lesson.” She didn’t realize what a wonderful parent I am and what great parenting skills I was displaying. Barb and I wound up getting in an argument right there. Heather was crying. Barb and I were fighting. As we were heading to the car at the Hyatt Regency, we were still fighting and I was just getting madder and madder. Finally, I said, “I am not going home with you. I am walking home.”
I took off and started walking. Barb and the kids got in the car. Suddenly it dawned on me as I was walking that this is the Tech Center and our house is 15 miles away. I was walking. I was mad. I was feeling the heat of my anger. As I was walking down the street, I noticed Barb creeping up alongside of me in the car. She was going two miles an hour right along next to me as we are going down the road. I was just mad, and kind of stubborn. She was just coming along saying, “Jim, come on. Get in the car.” The kids rolled down their windows, “Daddy. Get in the car.”
That is me. I am not that different from you. Well, maybe a little bit. We all have times when the inner child rises up. We all have times when we are kind of babies. It is not easy to love each other sometimes. The will of Christ is that we would love each other so much that we would have each other’s back, that we would forebear each other, that we would have patience with each other, that we would be praying for each other, that we would love to hang out together, that we would laugh together, cry together, that we would seek to serve the cause of Christ together, and that we would do this with joy. That should be our prayer. That is really the hope of the world—that they would see the church learning to love each other in the midst of all of our weaknesses and all of our flaws, which are so many, at least in my case. This is the will of God, that we have this second kind of love that is philadelphos. It is brotherly love, love of the church, love of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
There is a third kind of love. It is Philoxenos. This is also mentioned in the Bible. This charge is laid upon the church, by Christ, that we would have Philoxenos. Xenos means strange. What do you think philoxenos means? It literally means love of strangers and oftentimes it is rendered into the English as hospitality. This is a kind of love that Christ calls us to—hospitality, the love of strangers. This is huge. The church cannot be the church unless we learn to love strangers. The church cannot impact the world unless we learn to love strangers, unless we show hospitality. One of the major goals of the early church was to be hospitable.
Even in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew chapter 25, you have the words of Christ that we are not only to love the poor, those who were hungry, thirsty, and naked, but we are to love strangers. Even in the Olivet Discourse he says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Come, O blessed of my father. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Depart from me you workers of iniquity. I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me. You welcomed me not.” This is a big deal. In Romans chapter 12, look at the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There are many gifts of the Holy Spirit when you look at Ephesians 4, I Peter 3, Romans 12, and I Corinthians chapter 12. There might be 31 gifts of the Holy Spirit, or if you count overlaps there may be 19 or 20. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is hospitality, philoxenos, love of strangers.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God endows certain Christians with a special gift in hospitality. Some of you have it. You love to have people at your house. You like to have lots of people staying at your house and you like them there for weeks, maybe months. There are others of you who do not have this gift. Your house is kind of your sanctuary. It is your respite. It is where you are healed. But you are still called to hospitality.
Here is the deal: There are certain gifts of the Holy Spirit that even if you don’t have them you are supposed to practice them. That is true of the gift of evangelism. Even if you don’t have the gift of evangelism, you are still called to evangelize. It is true of the gift of mercy. Even if you don’t have the gift of mercy, you are still called to show mercy. It is true of the gifts of helps and aids, if you don’t have those gifts, you are still called to help and to give aid. This is true of hospitality. Even if you don’t have the gift, you are still called to love strangers. You are still called to hospitality.
The Bible is clear. The early church did everything it could to encourage hospitality and the love of strangers. In passages like Hebrews 13, “Don’t neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby many have entertained angels without knowing it.” Wow! That is kind of theologically out there. If you show hospitality and you love strangers you might, without knowing it, showing love to an angel in disguise. I think in the early church there was this desire to view hospitality very supernaturally and very wondrously. Every person you meet is a treasure. Every human being is a treasure. The imago Dei, the image of God is at least residual in everyone. There is a treasure there.
You don’t know, as you show love to a stranger, what wonderful things you might discover. You might be encountering an angel in disguise. In 1 Peter chapter 4, we are encouraged to hospitality and to the love of strangers, and then the added comment, “For love covers a multitude of sins.” This passage, 1 Peter 4:8-9, is much discussed and debated. There are possibilities to what this might mean exactly. There is some sense in which God is saying that love covers a multitude of sins, even the love of strangers, in the form of hospitality.
A few weeks ago, Barb and I went to a pretty big church in Palm Springs, California. Everyone was really friendly. Everybody smiled at you. Everybody gave you eye contact. So, many people wanted to come up and help us. There was free coffee and free food. There was lots of fellowship and lots of conversations, lots of warmth, and lots of love in the room. The service started and the music wasn’t very good. I don’t mean to be critical, but it really wasn’t very good music. The band, the instrumentalists, weren’t very good, and it didn’t seem like the singing was very good. Then there was the sermon. Well, it really wasn’t a very good sermon. I have felt that oftentimes when I am finished preaching that it wasn’t a good sermon. But I am saying that this really wasn’t a very good sermon. But the place was packed. I found myself thinking, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” I wonder if we were a little more loving around here, what would happen? We are not perfect and we need a few sins covered. If we were more loving, what would happen?
Believe it or not, we had a national organization called Pinpoint assess us just this year. They came and assessed our hospitality and our friendliness and our love. We didn’t do very well. I know you are wonderful, but somehow, we didn’t do well. They sent people into the worship center. What they do is they go into worship center and the classrooms, and they ask strangers questions. They stand around to see if anybody says hi, if anybody cares.
We didn’t do very well. Maybe we were having an off day. Maybe they weren’t hanging out in the right places. We didn’t do very well. In Christianity Today (you can go online to christianitytoday.com), there was an article recently that said that if you have a “meet and greet time” in your worship hour, which we do have, (turn around and say hello to the person next to you), that is okay. But if you do that and it is contrived and if people are visiting and notice that you are only friendly when you are told to meet and greet and after that nobody wants to have anything to do with you, it creates a cognitive dissonance and they don’t buy in. If you are friendly when we have our “meet and greet” but after the service is done you are out of here, it doesn’t work really well.
I know we need to be sensitive. Some people just want space, and we don’t want to be space invaders. Some people want to be left alone, so we need to kind of sense where people are at. Sometimes you can just tell that somebody wants to talk to someone. Somebody wants to make a friend. Sometimes you can even look around and see someone in your section that might be hurting. Are you sensitive enough and do you love enough to be the church? It is what the call of Christ is upon us.
The early church understood this and so, the early church started the hospice movement. The word hospitality comes from the Latin. The word hospice comes from hospes, which means guest, or host. The early church thought of the hospice movement. In the 4th century, from the time of Constantine, the church was no longer underground and the church was free. In the Roman world, in the Hellenized world, the church was now free to build church buildings. From that 4th century onward, you couldn’t find a church in any town, any village, any city that didn’t have a hospice. Every church built a hospice. The hospice was for the love of strangers. Strangers could just come and stay in your hospice. They could spend the night there. They could spend a number of nights there. They could get a free meal there. They could eat for days there. They could find clothing and medical care there. The hospice movement. It was all free. It was all love. It was the church. Is it any wonder that the church conquered the Roman world? It was by love.
Over time, the hospice movement was handed over to religious orders such as the hospitallers. Then it went from being free to being a for-profit endeavor. Hospitals were formed. Then they became secular. It all began with the hospice movement. Today, we still want to be the church. That is why we established Manna Ministries. We offer manna from heaven. People can come here to get food and clothing. They can get help, even a certain amount of medical care. This is why we have Love in Action Sunday. Why do we invite, every year, the congregation to join us as we go out into the community and show a little love? It is so we can be the church. We don’t need just 2,500 of you doing this. We need all of us doing this so we can be the church and the power of Christ will descend upon us and upon our communities.
In some of our community service venues, you will have opportunities to meet people you have never met before, people who don’t even go to our church. In other venues you will just be serving. The community will see us loving and caring about Highlands Ranch and our neighborhoods and the folks who live there. What a wonderful thing. We want to encourage you to go into the lobby, into the Commons and sign up today. We have thousands of openings for people who want to show the love of Christ that day to our community. Philoxenos. This is the third type of love Christ has called the church to.
There is a fourth form of love Christ has called us to is philechtros. This Greek word means love of enemies. This is the strangest love he has called us to. This is the most powerful love he has called us to. Philecthros. I will confess to you, in the Greek language there is no word philecthros. I made it up. I made the word up, but the compounds are in the Greek. Echtros is the word for enemy. Phileo is the word for love. But philechtros is not in the Greek because the concept of loving your enemy was an impossible concept for the Hellenized world. This would have just seemed impossible. You don’t love your enemies; you love your friends. You love your neighbors, and you hate your enemies. This was Greek thought. It would have been an oxymoron to say to love your enemies.
Philecthros. They didn’t have a word like this. Nobody thought you should love your enemy. That is why the teachings of Christ are so radical. Absolutely radical. The Sermon on the Mount is found in Matthew chapters 5 through 7. In Matthew 5, you see, “You have heard it said of old, Jesus said, love your neighbor, hate your enemy. I say to you, love your enemy and bless those who curse you.” You come to the Sermon on the Plain in Luke chapter 6, “Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you, spitefully use you.” This is the love we are called to. It is really a radical thing. Think about it.
In Luke chapter 10 you see the parable of the Good Samaritan. You all know the parable of the Good Samaritan. Even non-Christians in the secular world know the parable of the Good Samaritan. You know because it was a parable that it didn’t really happen. It is just a story. Christ made it up. He made it up in order to drive home a point. That is what parables do. The stories are almost more powerful because they didn’t happen, more powerful because Christ made them up. He did this with intentionality. You can see how he crafted this parable. The audience could relate. There really was a Jericho Road. It really was dangerous. People really could fall among robbers, or thieves on the Jericho Road as they went down into the valleys. There were criminal elements there. You didn’t want to travel the Jericho Road alone, so the audience could relate, but the story was made up.
So, Christ crafted the story. A Jewish man had been robbed, beaten, stripped, and left half dead by the side of the road. Jesus crafted a couple of villains in the story. He had to think, “Who am I going to make the villains?” He chose the religious leaders. That tells you something. That tells you that he wasn’t that pleased with the religious leaders of his day. He crafted the villains as a priest and a Levite. They have a lot of rules, a lot of regulations. Their liturgy was impressive, but they didn’t have a lot of heart. They didn’t have a lot of compassion; they didn’t have a lot of love. Jesus makes them the villains, the religious leaders.
Then he thought, “Whom am I going to make the hero?” He is speaking to the Jewish audience. He thought, “I am going to make the enemy the hero.” He intentionalized that. Who do Jews hate the most? Not the Romans. The Romans were, in a sense, their oppressors, but they didn’t look down on the Romans. They looked down on the Samaritans. They hated the Samaritans. They called them Samaritan dogs. They called them half-breeds. For centuries, since the time of the Assyrian Empire, Jews and Samaritans had slandered each other. They hated each other. Jesus made the hero a Samaritan. The Samaritan coming down that road saw the wounded Jewish man. Moved with compassion he went to him. That is powerful. It has to do with the call of Christ on us.
I don’t know what is going on in your life. You might be thinking, “Well, I don’t have any enemies.” I would suggest that you might think a little longer and maybe a little deeper. Has anybody ever slandered you? Has anybody ever said something bad about you? Maybe something you thought wasn’t fair or just? Has anybody rejected you? How about a bad business deal? Do you have any enemies? Is there anybody you need to forgive? Is there any root of bitterness you need to let go of? Is there anybody you need to go home and start praying for? In the Bible when you see the word echtros, when you see the word enemy, you see the command of Christ to love them. It is not the word phileo. That is kind of a touchy-feely word. It is the word agape. Jesus is not saying you have to feel really good about your enemy. He is saying you have to make a choice to seek their good, to seek to bless them. You need to do that today. As we leave today, who do we need to start praying for? Who do we need to start thinking about how we can bless them? Or how we could do something good for them? This is the love he has called us to.
We have these four kinds of love. Philoptochos, the love of the poor. It is a dangerous road you are going down if you ignore the poor. The word philadelphos, the love of our brothers and sisters in Christ, the love of the family of God, and the love of the church. Despite our flaws, we need to love each other. Philoxenos, hospitality, the love of strangers. This is the great call of Christ upon his church in every generation. Then finally, the love of enemies, philecthros. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.