In the footsteps of Jesus—Love as Jesus loved

To love as Christ loved is the way to break down the walls that separate us and bring healing to broken lives. Jesus didn’t hold anything back and loved until others experienced that love.
Notice, the author doesn’t until others appreciated that love, and he doesn’t say until others responded with love. He simply says until others experienced that love.
Understanding this is one of the greatest challenges of following Jesus Christ. To love as Jesus loved means turning our usual values upside down, but doing so will revolutionise our relationships.
What is love?
Probably the best known New Testament passage on love is 1Cor.13. Best known, but well practiced?
RT Kendall defines the love described by Paul as:
#1 A demonstration in words
Not just any words, but Holy Spirit inspired words. As Paul lays out the essentials of love there is no room for sentimentality, there is only room for the love that lies at the heart of God. It’s his essential character.
When Paul talks of love that keeps no record of wrongs, he’s pointing us towards the grace of God. When love always protects, always hopes, always trusts, always perseveres, Paul points us to the consistency of God who is the same yesterday, today and forever. When Paul says that love never fails he points us to the eternal nature of God’s love for us: I have loved you with an everlasting love. But words are not enough.
#2 A demonstration of works
Throughout history God has both spoken of his love and demonstrated it. Paul said that the ultimate demonstration of his love for us is seen in the sending of his Son, Jesus Christ, while we were still rebels.
Jesus lived out the love of God, and we are called as his followers to do the same.
If you live this way, this way of love demonstrated by Jesus, then you will dazzle the word. “Let your light shine before men,” not to impress them but so that they might “praise your Father in heaven.”
#3 A demonstration of wisdom
What Paul calls love, James calls wisdom.
There were two important aspects to living a life that pleases God in the Old Testament.
Keep the covenant. Not to get God on your side, but to demonstrate your commitment to him.
Choose wisdom as a pattern for life. Without wisdom keeping the covenant becomes a blind act of religious obedience. It has no meaning further than rule keeping. Wisdom shapes a life to walk in the light of the covenant promises. Wisdom forces you to take responsibility.
#4 Demonstration of the will
If you wait until you feel like it, you probably won’t live a life of love that often. RT Kendall says: We must never wait for a mood or a feeling to overwhelm us.
Our moods and feeling can mislead us. We don’t find some people easy to love. If we wait until our hearts towards them change before we love them, the truth is we may never love them. On the other hand if we chose to love them in obedience to God’s will, then maybe we’ll make room for the work of the Spirit in us as we learn to love them as Jesus has loved us.
How did Jesus love?
#1 Unconditionally
Friend of sinners. There isn’t a single person in the whole of the gospels that Jesus encountered and didn’t love.
Lk.14:13 When you give a feast invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.
#2 Sacrificially
You don’t need me to remind you about the cross. A symbol of the most violent and cruellest forms of punishment ever devised by human beings. And yet the symbol of the church. The symbol of the unending love of God for the same human beings who devised its cruel use. Is there a greater sacrifice that choosing to die for someone else? You might die for a righteous man the Bible says, but surely never for an unrighteous one. But that’s what Jesus did. God could have wiped us out and started over again with a new universe. If he can create it, he can restart it. But he didn’t. He chose rescue over restart. He chose to pay the price of redemption rather than begin again.
#3 Courageously
Jesus believed you were worth the sacrifice. He believed you were worth all that pain and suffering, He believed it was worth his while to give you the choice of where to spend your eternity. He left the choice to you. He told it straight: No-one comes the Father except through me. But he left you the choice. What will you choose?
The challenge to love
Jesus said that we were to love as he loved. Love becomes the practice of our lives. As you seek to practice the love of God, these three steps might help.
Put others before yourself: What’s more important to you—that the work is done or that you are seen?
Accept your part in his plan: When john saw Jesus he recognised it was time for his role to change. He must become greater, I must become less, he told his followers. He even sent them after Jesus.
Be quick to applaud the success of others: It’s remarkable to think that the creator of the universe is your greatest advocate. He’s your personal cheerleader in life. He was willing to be misunderstood, mistreated and misquoted in order to give the chance to shine for him.
Paul says that we shine like stars in the universe of a crooked and depraved generation. And in heaven Jesus cheers you on. When you step out to serve him, to do something in his name, to honour him, then Jesus shouts from heaven, “Way to go!” Of course if he’s more British, he’s more likely to say “Well done, nice try.” But then again, I suspect his enthusiasm for you will get the better of him and he’ll dance and sing and cheer with the best of them.
To love as Jesus loved will transform our relationships. It will transform our relationship both inside and outside the church. It will change the way we relate to each other and it will change the way we relate to the God who loved, who gave his Son for us, who came to die for us and who cheers for us in heaven.
Love as Jesus loved—Way to go church!