Topic: Two sides of love?
Scripture: 1 John 3:11-24; 4:7-12
The first question the speaker asked us
was: How many love song titles can you think of in one minute?
Two sides of love? There’s often a debate
seen on this:
Truth, champions of the Word of God, of love
towards God through Christ. Complain the lovers of grace do not love the truth
enough.
Grace, champions of the concept of
kindness, to change hearts in life. Complain the lovers of truth don’t love
people enough.
Vertical and horizontal dimensions to love.
What demonstrates true love?
It’s made real in actions. You see it
through the demonstration of it. It is concrete, anchored in history.
Vertical dimension:
·
Jesus shows it in 1 John 4:9:
“He sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”
·
Sacrifice proved it. 1 John
3:16: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for
us.”
·
God started it. 1 John 4:7. It’s
not by our own credit.
·
God is love. 1 John 4:8.
Horizontal dimension:
·
We share God’s love.
·
Love those close to you. 1 John
3:11-16. We ought to lay down our lives for your brothers. Lack of love is
death.
·
It’s one thing to love
conveniently. It’s truer to love at a cost, when it costs your life. Eg.
Queensland flood 2011, 13y.o. Jordan Rice said “Take my brother first.” How
often do we love like that?
·
Love those in need. 1 John
3:17. This love spreads to those outside of our comfortable reach.
·
Love with action. 1 John 3:18.
·
Loving God=loving others. 1
John 3:23-24. 1 John 4:7-8,11
Two sides of love? A false story. It’s not
either or! It’s both and.
Unity in diversity: Some parts of the
scripture, if pulled apart, can lead to heresy! Truth and grace should not be
pulled apart!
Truth and grace come together and meet in
love.
The speaker describes how he went on a
combined church ministry outreach on the docks of Honolulu: He saw Filipino
fishermen singing hymn songs. Why were those fishermen there? He spoke to one of them and found that he had been away from the Philippines for two years. When these
fishermen are not on the boat, they’re just on the dock. Each vessel holds only
6 people. Crime was bad on the dock until a guy called Chris started visiting
and making friends with these fishermen. Chris began a ministry to the
fishermen. They also arranged for medical students to do free medical checks for
these fishermen. They say these guys have a horrible life, sometimes having
only 3 hours of sleep in their fishing trips. So many have blood pressure
problems and the medical students gave them some medications for their blood
pressure (Now
I don’t quite understand this point… medical students can’t prescribe
medications!). They run a congregation for
these guys, and the fishermen experienced the love of Jesus through the love of
these people to them, and enjoy the congregation. Many of these fishermen got
baptised. Their lives changed, crime has dropped, and these miserable fishermen
got kind of hopeful.
My thoughts: Speaking of love songs… Interestingly when I
woke up today, I received “a love song from heaven” from the Israel marching
prayer team’s chat group (a Line chat group for the team I was in during my trip
to Israel last year)! Joe King’s “I Will Always Love You”.
There is an interesting testimony behind the writing of
this song.
Testimony in English:
Testimony in Chinese:
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