"GIFT-LOVE"
GIFT-LOVE Scripture Reference, 1 Cor. 13 I have preached two messages this Holiday season on The Glory of God. This is an eternal subject of which we will never be able to fathom the height, width, depth or length. As I was praying how to approach the Lord’s Glory this Christmas Season, I concluded that Love is the Glory of God. As Preachers with the duty to minister to the souls and spirits of those whom the Lord has entrusted to us, we are blessed with a visible and tangible manifestation of the Glory of God. I have experienced the Cloud, Fire, and Light of the Shekinah Glory. We are blessed to worship under an Open Heaven. The Lord has graced this Fellowship to be able to enlighten you and others by revelation using Mt. Zion, The Sons of God, The Feast of Tabernacles, The Heavenly Jerusalem, The Throne of God, The Gates of the City, The Temple, The Tabernacle, The Holy of Holies, the Golden Candlestick, Open portals with angels descending and ascending and much more to enlighten you to comprehend the reality of the Spirit and experience the Glory. The Word of God says, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” “God is love” says St. John A typical example of Gift-Love would be love which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing. An example of “Need-Love” in a family would be a lonely or frightened child running to its mother’s arms. Divine Love is Gift-love. The Father gives all He is and has to the Son. The Son gives Himself back to the Father, and gives Himself to the world and for the world to the Father, and thus gives the world (in Himself) back to the Father too. Christmas is about “Gift-Love” to those of us who have “Need-Love” Those of us who are spiritual should not be calling Need-love “mere selfishness.” Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. But man’s love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely a “Need-love”. This is obvious that Christ came to earth to save us from our sins. We must run to Jesus for forgiveness for those sins and implore Him for support in our tribulations. Our very nature is one vast need. Incomplete, preparatory, empty, yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose. Except for the Grace of God, humans have nothing to bring to Him but our Need-love. It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast, “I’m no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.” Those who come nearest to a Gift-love for God will next moment, even at the very same moment, be beating their breasts with the publican and laying their indigence before the only real Giver. And God will have it so. He addresses our Need-love: “Come unto me all you that travail and are heavy laden.” C.S. Lewis Describes the Four Loves as (1) Affection, (2) Friendship (3) Eros and (4) Love: Please forgive this brief overview which does no justice to the beauty of the writings of Mr. Lewis, but hopefully will suffice for this sermon:
Many families have a mixture of love and hate. There are demons in the soul of marriages and thus in the soul of the family. This is caused by a mixture of good and meanness in the relationships of the family. If affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life, the seeds of hatred will germinate. Love having become a god in family relationships becomes a demon. The rivalry between all natural loves and the love of God is something a Christian dare not forget. God is the great Rival, the ultimate object of human jealousy. We must never love anyone or anything more than we love the Lord. He will test us and prove us in this. This was the test of Abraham when the Lord asked him to sacrifice the promised seed, Isaac. There will come a time when each of us as parents will have to trust the Lord to love our children more than we love them and put them in His loving hands for the salvation of their souls. (2) Friendship – Few value it because few experience it. Friendship seems the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It has least stress with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals. For me personally it has to do with respect and loyalty. Friendship may vary with individuals. Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without affection one of us would have been reared; but can live and breed without Friendship. The species, biologically considered has no need of it. Controllers whether in community or organizations feel uneasy around Friendship. It has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality. The co-existence of Friendship and Eros may also help some moderns to realize that Friendship is in reality a love, and even as great a love as Eros. It is wonderful to be married to your best friend and even more wonderful if that relationship is so strong that it is not threatened by friendships with others. It is maturity when we realize we can’t meet all of the emotional needs of our spouse and don’t want to. We can then enjoy the company of mutual Christian friends on many levels. (3) Eros – This is a big one that can cause great joy or great sorrow depending on whether it flows through the Glory of the Love of God. “By Eros I mean of course that state which we call “being in love”’, or if you prefer that kind of love which lovers are “in”... Eros is not just physical love, but most often simply a delighted pre-occupation with the Beloved—a general, unspecified pre-occupation with here in her totality. Women be very sure that a man is not “in love” with you if he is pursuing you for the wrong reasons. A man in love really hasn’t the leisure to think of physical love. He is too busy thinking of a person. The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself. He is full of desire, but the desire is Godly. Eros wants the Beloved. The physical love then becomes a triumphant seventh wave of flooded love. This would require a teaching unto itself. Remind me to teach on this for Valentine’s Day. (Smile) I will give you gentlemen who are “in love” one piece of advise: Hold the hand of a lady. This speaks volumes. A woman who surrenders herself as an offering to a man without the sanctification of marriage is self-surrender and would be like an idolatress offering to a man. We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still call so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred. Our loves do not make their claim to divinity until the claim becomes plausible. It does not become plausible until there is in them a real resemblance to God, to Love Himself. Let us here make no mistake Our Gift-loves are really God-like; and among our gift-loves those are most God like which are most boundless and unwearied in giving. Human love can be glorious images of Divine love. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, impenetrable, irredeemable, the alternative to tragedy or at least to the risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. It is like hiding the talent in a napkin and for much the same reason, “I knew you that you were a hard man.” Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness. If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he has not. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherit in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this is the way in which they should break, so be it. Do you serve, or choose, or put first your Beloved over the call and will of God in your life. Our Lord’s own words are both far fiercer and far more tolerable than those of the theologians. He ways nothing about guarding against earthly loves for fear we might be hurt; He says something that cracks like a whip about trampling them all under food the moment they hold us back from following Him. “If any come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife…and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26) That Love Himself should be commanding that he hate that which we love can be understood in the light of, “a man, said Jesus, who tries to serve two masters, will hate the one and love the other.” This is not feelings of liking or disliking. Consider, “I loved Jacob and I hated Esau”. Esau’s earthly life was a good deal more blessed than Jacob’s. It is Jacob who has all the disappointments, humiliations, terrors, and bereavements. But he has something which Esau has not. He is a patriarch. He hands on the Hebraic tradition, transmits the vocation and the blessing, and becomes an ancestor of our Lord. The “loving” of Jacob seems to mean the acceptance of Jacob for a high (and painful) vocation. The “hating” of Esau, is his rejection. He is “turned down”. He fails to “make the grade”. He is found useless for the purpose. Because we love the Lord and the Glory of His Love flows through us, we will be able to love our loved ones with a greater love. However, that love must always be second to the calling. God is love “Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us.” This love is Divine energy. The primal love is Gift-love. In God there is not hunger hat needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give. It is no good applying to Heaven for earthly comfort. Heaven can give heavenly comfort; no other kind. And earth cannot give earthly comfort either. This Christmas as we approach the Glory of the Throne of Grace, let us allow Him to fill us with the beauty of his loving-kindness, wisdom and goodness that we may reveal the Glory of His love to those to whom we are sent. Let us go to Him that our “Need-Love” is kept filled and not put pressure on our loved ones to meet that need. When our “Need-Love” is full, then we become vessels of “Gift-Love”. Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
- Affection – The Love of parents to offspring, but also of offspring to parents. This would also cover the love humans have for their pet animals. He describes it as the humblest love. It gives itself no airs. Love said