WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE? PART 2

Are you a living sacrifice?  Are you renewing your mind?  And are these two concepts related?  In Romans 12:1, Paul urges us to do one thing (offer ourselves) and to do it in view of one other thing.  “Urge” is a word that means “to beseech” and has the connotation of inviting to one’s side.  Paul is beseeching us to walk beside him in this matter.  And he wants us to do this “in view of God’s mercy”.  Has he just shown us something of God’s mercy?  Well, yes!  In chapter 11:32 we read, “For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that He may have mercy on them all.”  But it can be argued that chapters 9, 10 and 11 are an inset and so chapter 12 can follow chapter 8.  OK …., “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  God’s mercy is found at the end of chapter 8!!

And perhaps Paul here is talking about the entire letter; chapters 1 – 11.  In any event, one thing we know for sure; God is merciful!!  Would you agree?  God is merciful.  Paul then urges us to do something; “present your bodies as living sacrifices”.  Earlier in this letter he says that we have been baptized into the death of Messiah.  Shortly thereafter he tells us to reckon ourselves as dead (Rom. 6:4 & 11).  And what was a sacrifice to be?  Over and over in the Torah we see that it was to be “without blemish”.  Paul tells us our living sacrifices are to be “holy and well pleasing to God”.  And then we read that this is our “rational act of worship”.  Yes, the word for “rational” is the Greek word “logicos” and we get the English word logical, thus rational, from that.

I’d like to have my worship of God to be logical and rational wouldn’t you?  And when we consider God and His ways, shouldn’t we make sure we are not conforming to the pattern of this age but that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds? 

OK, so we have made our way full circle to the start of Part 1 of this discussion, but what does all this have to do with the title, “What is the Opposite of Love”?  I’m glad you asked! 

Let us first take a look at love.  It has been said that the most powerful force in the universe is love.  I suppose that one might debate this point.  But there are two scriptures in 1 John 4:8 &16 that state, “God is love”.  And in my mind this would shift the balance of any debate concerning the power of love.

First a few facts about the word love:  I believe we are all familiar with the Greek word “agape”, sometimes labeled as the highest form of love.  The word “agape” is a noun and the related word, “agapeo” is the verb form.  Together these two words are used in the New Testament some 258 times.  In the five chapters of 1 John they are found 46 times and if we add to that John’s use of the words in his gospel we can add 47, plus the other two letters of John and the book of Revelation adds another 12 uses.  So, of the 258 uses of these words, 105 (or about 40%) are found in John’s writings.  May we conclude he placed much emphasis upon these words and leaned heavily upon them to get his message across?

We have already looked at Romans 13:8-10 which ends up letting us know that “Love is the fulfillment of the law.”  Now that’s some power!

1 John 4:7-21; this whole passage needs to enter into our discussion here.  I urge you to read it in its entirety.  I will refer to parts of it.  “Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God.”  Might we see the renewing of our minds beginning to take place with the implementation of this directive? 

“Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.”  Do we understand that this statement is a word of fact?  This isn’t a “maybe” or a “kind of” statement.  John’s is a factual statement and implies the question, “Do you know God?”

John goes on to tell us that God’s love is manifest through His Son and that His love came a long time before our love.  And so, “God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”  Are we beginning to start to see an answer to our title question?  Let’s go a little further here:  “In this way, love is made perfect among us (why?), so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement, because in this world we are like Him.”

Let’s go back in 1 John to see the antithesis of this love for God.  In chapter 2:15 we read, “Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”  Please note that the word for “love” here is “agape” – so we see that John has not wandered from his use of this particular word.  Going on in verse 16 we read, “for everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the vanity (or pride) of life – comes not from the Father but from the world.”

Some time ago, I asked a gathering of God’s children, what is the opposite of love?  I basically received four answers: 1)hate – this word would probably appear in a dictionary as an antonym or in other words “an opposite” for obvious reasons; 2)apathy – this is an interesting thought because as someone said, both love and hate are emotions and show forth that an individual is at least alive.  Apathy on the other hand shows a lack of human interest and fits in with Jesus statement in Rev. 3:16, “Because you are neither hot nor cold, but are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth.” A person who is hateful may be persuaded to love.  But a person who is apathetic has no hope; 3) pride or egotism – perhaps this would also be an obvious answer because of our venture into 1 John 2:15-16, especially the phrase, “the pride of life”; 4) fear – on this answer let me quote from 1 John 1:18, “Perfect love casts out fear”.  These four answers are very good and might cause us to end our discussion here.  But I find that there is, possibly, a fifth antonym of the word love and it lies in the idea of “idolatry”. 

Let us look at this idea further next time.

WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE? PART 1

Some time ago I was given an article on neuro-plasticity and how science has determined that we, humans, can change the way we think and thereby act.  I remember putting this together with Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”.  The renewing of our minds is possible – but how do we go about it?  Ah!  Paul gives us the answer in Philippians 4:8 as he gives us eight concepts to think upon. 

At that time I developed this idea into a message and delivered it at several venues, i.e. church services and festivals.  I felt that this understanding was given to me by the hand of God.  And indeed it was well received with ensuing discussion.

More recently within our local congregation I began looking into this same subject with a series of bible studies, keeping in mind the thought that Paul did not write this admonition to the church in Rome and then expect them to send a delegation to Philippi so as to read their letter and find out how to renew their minds.  Paul must have given the Romans the answer within their letter.  And it must have been located somewhat shortly after this admonition in Romans 12:2.  Let’s take a look at this possibility.

“Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and well pleasing to God – this is your rational act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and discern what God’s will is – His good, acceptable and perfect will.” (Rom. 12:1-2)

Does this process of renewal have anything to do with our “offering our bodies as living sacrifices”?  The short and obvious answer is, yes!  For what shall we say, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit … you are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Cor. 6:19-20)  Whatever God requires of us is His right; for when we entered into covenant with Him, we gave our lives over to Him. 

But it has been my experience that being a “living sacrifice” to Him is not an easy concept to grasp, never mind an easy activity to put into practice each and every day.  Paul elsewhere says, “I die daily”.  Here he proclaims that he means what he says and puts it into practice.  We must understand that Paul either had renewed his mind or was well along the way to doing so.

OK!  Let’s set this daily “living sacrifice” aside for the moment (we shall come back to it) and move on to some of the other things Paul tells us to do in Romans 12.

Verse 3, “For by the grace given me I say to everyone of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”

Oh my!  It is such a human, fleshly and “old manish” thing to do, to consider oneself better than others.  We seem to always want to put ourselves first.  Knowing this, Paul goes so far as to reiterate it in verse 10, “Honor one another above yourselves”.  And then again in verse 16, Paul says “… Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.”  Do you want to renew your mind?  This is a good place to start!

At this point Paul starts talking about the body with many members, each having a different function.  He says, “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.  We have different gifts according to the grace given us.” (Verses 4-6)  The word translated “gifts” here would better be translated as “graces”.  It is the Greek word, “charisma”.  It is the same word Peter uses in 1Peter 4:10, “Each should use whatever grace he has received to serve others …”  The word “grace” is indeed a gift but the nuance is that one receives it without any merit of his own.  And the other concept here is that “each” of us has received a grace/gift.  In other words, when God calls His children, He gives each one a grace/gift, or it may be that He takes a look at us, sees what we have been born into and thereby raised with the aptitude of a certain personality and so calls us accordingly – we all must then take a look at Paul’s list of graces and see just what God has given to us or seen in us.

Let us not lose sight of the fact that we are striving to understand how we might renew our minds.  Understanding these gifts and where we fit into them will play a part of our renewal!

Let me briefly say that these graces or gifts listed here in Romans 12, are sometimes called motivational gifts as opposed to the gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 (manifestation gifts) and Ephesians 4 (ministry gifts).  If you are interested in learning more about this, please see the book by Don and Katie Fortune entitled “Discover Your God Given Gifts”.  Don and Katie explain that we all have motivational gifts and they help us discover which gift is tops in our individual personalities and what other gifts we may have that complement this top gift.

For our purposes here, knowing which is our dominant gift, (prophesy, service, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading and compassion) will lead us to the greatest gift; which we all know and understand is love.  The very next thing Paul tells us here in verse 9 is that “love must be sincere”.  Our love must be honest, genuine and without pretense.  We must consider these graces, these gifts from God and we must pursue them.  But we must do so in love.  We must apply them with love.  We must prophesy in love, we must serve in love, we must teach in love, etc.  “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.  … Love does no harm to its neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:8-10)

Some time ago an individual confessed to me that they did not feel they had a love for their brothers and sisters in the church.  After some conversation and consideration it became obvious that this person, whose “top tier” gifts were leadership and service, loved others through these gifts.  They were able to organize church services.  They made sure there was a place in which to worship at and that the room was clean and ready.  Their observation was that they didn’t love like those who were compassionate or giving.  But the reality here is that we must learn to love within the gift (or grace) that God has endowed us with.