Love in Action
Matthew 5: 13 - 25 

Over my past two messages we’ve been looking at Christian Swartz’s teaching on how to put love into action from his book The 3 Colors of Love, The art of giving and receiving justice, truth, and grace. 

Last week we started in 1 John 4, where John has written an amazing teaching that we pondered a bit; telling us that God’s nature can be described by one word: love.  “God is love”, John writes. Not that ‘God is loving’ or that God demonstrates love on occasion, but he says, “God is love.” Love is what God is, it is God’s very nature. 

As we look at the entirety of Scripture, we see that this love that comes from God is expressed in three basic ‘forms’, … and each of these three ‘parts’ of the greater concept of love corresponds to the three persons of the Holy Trinity. So, Love, like the three persons of the Trinity, as revealed to us in the pages of our Scripture, is not just one of these three parts, it is all three together. 

We looked at three Hebrew words (with their New Testament equivalents) that describe each of these three forms of love. 

            a.  Love is justice – green - (God’s compassionate love in action).

            b.  Love is truth – red - (God’s trustworthy love in action).

            c.  Love is grace – blue - (God’s accepting love in action).

Again, don’t miss this: Love, in the Bible is not just one of these three, it is all three. Working together, in action together. 

The point of all this is to give us a good foundation on which to build some practical ways of learning to put love into action.  If we’re actually going to do this (which, I would expect that we would want to, since we’ve been told by Jesus that loving God and each other is the basic commandment) if we are going to do it, we need to know what it is! So here we are: The concept of love, when it best expresses the nature of God, is love that represents justice, truth, and grace… or love that is compassionate, trustworthy, and accepting.) 

John, in his letters has a little phrase that he likes to use as a teaching method: “If we say (this)… but (do that), then we’re lying…”,  If we say we love God, but don’t keep his commandments, we are lying…or, “If someone says ‘I love God’ but hates a brother… the truth is not in them”. 

Let’s borrow that phrase from John and talk about the colors of love:  “If we say we love God…” and yet have no compassion for the suffering, and the weak… we’re just using nice words, (why?) because God’s love is a love that demands justice. God’s love is compassion in action. It’s not neutral. It is a love whose heart breaks for those who have no voice, and no power, and little hope.

Likewise, if we say we love God, or that ‘God’s love is living in us’, but our love does not rejoice in the truth… if our love is in any way dishonest with each other, or with God, if our love fails to call us to speak the truth to one another; if we’re not ‘coming clean’ about ourselves as we really are to anyone else, if we’re not accountable to anyone else who will be honest with us (because they love us)… then our love is not reflecting the agape love that God is offering to us, because God’s love is trustworthy.  It is grounded in truth.

And… if we say we love God, and yet we are content to live with barriers between us and others – barriers of hatred, or fear, or unforgiveness, or prejudice, or anger, or apathy, or jealousy – we again, are not reflecting pure love, that’s not the love that is revealed in the Scriptures. Because God’s love is accepting love.  It’s a love that breaks down barriers; it says, “Come. You are welcome here with me, with us.  Let’s break down this wall. Come and find healing.  Come into the truth.”

A mature, loving Christian person is able to express love in a wide variety of ways, depending on the need of the moment.  Someone asked me a question on the way out of church the other week – they were really thinking! – “Does grace trump justice?”  I think I know what she meant by that question – because there is often a tension between grace and justice. So we’d like to think that one has priority over the other. But we just don’t live simply in one color. 

Depending on the circumstance, we respond in the way that is the most loving at that moment. So, sometimes love must be tough – sometimes we need to be held accountable, sometimes we have to accept the consequences of our actions. Sometimes we need someone to tell us the truth. And that is the loving thing to do. Other times, love can be tender – we can say to someone, ‘Let’s not talk about that right now, they’ll be plenty of time later for that!’  But real love is ultimately represented by all three colors. 

Think about the father in the story of the prodigal son. He is so full of joy, his son who ‘was dead’ had returned. He’s been watching, scanning the horizon every day – hope against hope, waiting for his son to return.  And he sees him while the son is still ‘far off.’ Staggering home. Weak, and sick, and broke. He’s messed up bad, and he’s only coming home because he can’t think of any other options. 

So, what does that father do?  He calls everyone he knows, everyone on his cell phone memory, he emails his whole address book.  “Let’s celebrate, let’s have a party!  Bring out a robe, kill the fatted calf, get a ring for his finger! Get some sandals for his feet! My son has returned home!”   The parable is a parable of love as grace. It is about God’s accepting, welcoming, love.  Clearly!

But do you really think that after the party, after some time had gone by, that the father never again mentioned to his son anything about what had happened in those lost years while he was away?  I know it’s just a parable, and not a real event, but use your imagination a little bit. Let’s do a sequel! Do you think he never sat down with his son to explain to him what the impact of his decision to demand his inheritance early was going to have on his future – especially since he lost it all?  There were some practical issues to work out. Justice and truth demand that they would eventually have that conversation, don’t you think? 

I wish that Jesus would have told a story about that!  But if he had, we probably would not have paid as much attention to the part about grace and acceptance, because that’s harder for us to understand, sometimes.  The son was welcomed home, true; that was a given, and no matter what he had done, he would be accepted.  He had a home.  That’s grace! But other part of this story is that he made bad choices, and he had figure out how to make some of those things right. Even though he was forgiven, he still had to eventually address that ‘something’ within him that led him to gravely insult and disrespect his father, and his family, not to mention himself. 

That doesn’t cheapen the grace… it just completes the picture of real love.

The most important color – or expression of love – in a given situation depends on two important issues: 

1. What does the other person most need in this situation?  Would it be an expression of justice, or truth, or grace?

2.  What am I able to offer at this time?  This is important, because it recognizes that we, too, are ‘works under construction’.  We’re not God! Even though we are trying to conform to the image of Christ, we’re trying to love like God, none of us is a finished product!  So, for example, we might sense that another person needs to experience God’s grace, but in our present circumstances we are not able to minister grace very effectively to them. 

This could mean that we need to work a bit on our ‘blue’ area, it could also mean that we’re just too close, or we’re still hurting ourselves, for various reasons, and we’re not going to be the one to bring grace to that person. But can we pray that someone else will?  Can we start there?  Because we know that this is what love would do? And can we pray, and try to learn so that through our own growth and healing, that God would allow us to love fully one day, even as we are loved?  Because that’s what Jesus says, right?  “Love each other as I have loved you!” 

Expanding our ability to love, as you can imagine, includes leaving our comfort zone every now and then.  If we’re not willing to do that, we will never mature in love.  And it’s not that hard to see where our comfort zones begin and end.

[Christian Swartz has a really cool self-inventory that is in his book to help us do this… unfortunately, I was not able to get copyright permission to buy, or publish this separately. I tried!  The book is $10, which is very reasonable for what it is, but I told them that it just isn’t practical for me to buy 500 copies!  Their response was…“sorry”![1]

We can still get a pretty good idea of where we need work with just a little self-reflection. Just think, for example, about the kind of person that you find the most difficult to love, or the kind of situation that makes you most uncomfortable in ministry or in the church, or the world.

Swartz uses three examples that he says he deliberately has chosen to characterize the three dimensions of love, and he imagines how someone who is weak in that area might react: 

• Picture some activists; you come across a group of people involved in street demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience, especially in an area that you don’t necessarily agree with, or understand: Is your response, “Lord, bless these efforts to bring about justice”… or, do you listen to them, and try to understand what their point is?  Or do you think, “Dear Lord get me out of here, away from these terrorists!”
• You find yourself invited to a Bible study, and you (reluctantly?) go. And you discover a group of people focused on the absolutely binding authority of Scripture, who at times interpret it quite differently, and more literally, than you.  Again, you do think, “Thank you Lord, for this reminder of the centrality of your Word and your truth? Lead us more deeply into it! Open my heart, Lord! Or do your eyes cross as you think: For heaven’s sake, I just can’t take these hard-core fundamentalists!
• Or maybe one Sunday  you sit in a different section of the church, and you find yourself surrounded by people who are focused on radiating the positive, energizing atmosphere of grace:  they are saying things like “Praise the Lord” and “Amen” and they’re raising their hands in worship.  Do you think, “Wow, the Spirit of God is surely in this place?” Or, “Lord, what am I missing here?” Or, do you start to shrink right where you’re standing, as you are thinking, Spare me from these nuts… if anybody asks me to hug someone, I’m SO out of here! 

When we have similar reactions, it usually means that we’re out of our comfort zones!  Being out of our comfort zone is usually unpleasant in the short run, but it lays the foundation for overwhelming fulfillment in the long run.

Christian Swartz shared this revealing anecdote:

“When I conducted my first love seminar, I wanted to invite my fiancée (who, surprisingly, is now my wife) to attend. At that time, we lived about 150 miles apart, so we didn’t see each other very often.  I phoned her. “Brigitte,” I said, “I have signed both of us up for a love seminar. Are you happy?”

I noticed that Brigitte was lost for words. I got the impression that she was inwardly jumping for joy, because she had not expected me to do such a thing. “You really want to take the time to attend a seminar like that with me?” she asked, almost unable to believe it.

“Of course,” I said. “We’re getting married in the no-too-distant future, so this subject is important for both of us.”  Brigitte was overjoyed, since she was not used to hearing me talk like that.

After a while, she asked, “Tell me, Christian, who is the speaker?” “Me”, I said, with as much self-confidence as I was able to muster.

Thee was a strange silence at the other end of the line. “Oh,” Brigitte finally said,  her voice lacking its previous excitement.  “I had hoped so much to learn something.”[2]

I share that because I, too, realize the contradiction of anyone standing up here and teaching something that we have not mastered.  I am a work under construction, just as you are.  But, as we’ve often realized, we’re on a journey together. And the end of our journey is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.  It’s a journey of discipleship. 

In this journey, we help each other.  We share what we’ve learned. We encourage each other. And as we seek the blessing of God together, as we study, and as we step out of our comfort zones, we will all lear