Perhaps no other emotion has evoked such a response as has love. It's needless to recount the endless numbers of poets, musicians, historians, myths, legends, and stories that tell us of all the ways love has affected us, for good and for bad. One thing is fairly obvious, though (in my estimation) . . . love is misunderstood. For most it is an emotion; a feeling or series of feelings that we have toward another person or thing. When we say, "I love you," it generally is meant as a feeling toward something and the hope is that the response will be feelings returned. Romance and it's cousins indeed play a part in love and most men will tell you that if it does not play a part things can go very badly, very quickly. But feelings are not the starting or ending point of love. They are not the basis of love, but can be some of the byproducts of love done right?
What then is love? Our love for God and each other is demonstrated for us, and should find its basis in, the cross. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, "one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (5:7-8) We sinners, vile and wretched, separated from a holy God because of our sin, being the very filth that He cannot look upon were loved by Him by way of the cross. His son, perfect and kingly, died on the cross so that he could restore us to right-relationship with the God we were so cosmically separated from. And as we dig a little deeper into this demonstration of love, the reality of love in Jesus' death on the cross, we see the picture of how our daily demonstration of love in our lives finds its basis in the cross.
Moving from one apostle to another, we see John recount Jesus' words: "This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you . . . This I command you, that you love one another." (15:12-14, 17) As we follow the pattern, Jesus' command to us, His "law," is that we love each other. By sharing our feelings ? By saying nice things and painting each other in light of rainbows and butterflies? No. Love, for Jesus, means dying. Laying down His life is His demonstration of love and we are to love "just as I have loved you." And the crux of it all, the part that we so misunderstand, is that love is self-sacrificial. "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." Jesus willingly died for us as a demonstration of love. And we, in order to love, must willingly die as well. This plays out not in a physical death (although in extremes it can and has), but in a dying to our own rights and desires. To daily "take up our cross" means to willingly lay down the rights we were carrying in order to have free hands to carry the cross. We cannot carry both.
And what of the unlovable? Or loving when we've been wronged? We still look at the cross. "While we were yet sinners . . . Christ died for us." Our "feelings" toward another should not cloud our love. The way of the cross and the pattern of a cross centered life has been set: "As I have loved you."
The cross was God's demonstration of His love toward us filthy sinners. For us to love, whether it is God, family, spouse, children, friends, etc., we must follow the same pattern of laying down all the rights we think we have and have the mind Christ had as He carried His cross. The power of the cross, the wisdom of the cross, and now the love of the cross are all intertwined and carry the same theme: there is power, wisdom, and love by living by the way of the cross.
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