What Exactly IS Love? // Living a Life that Leaves a Legacy of Love, Part 3

There are basically two types of love in this world. Conditional love and unconditional love. One belongs to the world. It’s a shallow imposter. The other one belongs to God. It’s the real thing.

Love is a Radical Thing

Marilyn Monroe once said:

I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you certainly don't deserve me at my best.

That’s a cheery thought isn’t it? But it makes an important point. People who are perfect are easy to love aren’t they? They never make mistakes. They never fall short of our expectations. They never disappoint us, or hurt us, or ignore us.

Yep – those people are soooo easy to love. Have you ever found one? A perfect person that is … No, me neither. Of course we know that there aren’t any perfect people walking on this planet. We kind of know that in our heads, but that doesn’t stop us from expecting perfection when we go looking for love. And I’m not just talking boy–girl, husband–wife type of love.

Friendship is a form of love. Being a parent involves loving. In fact, in a sense, we can interact with work colleagues, associates, acquaintances – either in love, or not. With compassion, or not. With kindness, or not. You understand what I’m saying, right?

My dictionary tells me that love is a strong feeling of affection and even attraction. That can be true. Well, it is true … at least in part. At least some of the time. But that dictionary definition falls a long way short of what love really is. That romantic sort of love is easy to have when the person we’re loving is perfect – and lets face it, everybody can be perfect in short bursts.

But anybody who’s ever been married will tell you that their life–long soul mate is far from perfect, lots of the time. Anybody who’s ever been a parent will tell you that their children are far from perfect. So, what is love; what’s the definition when people and situations and circumstances and relationships are imperfect – which, let’s face it, they are, most of the time? What does it mean to love someone then, huh?

Jesus once said this:

No greater love has any man than to lay down his life for his friends.

If we stop and think about it, that’s absolutely true. Because in an imperfect world, loving imperfect people, love is all about sacrifice. In fact, I’d like to propose an entirely different definition of love: Love is the decision we make to unconditionally, care for, support and honour someone. On their good days and their bad days.

And the fruit of that love is that it develops a relationship that becomes rich and satisfying. In other words, the feelings follow along behind the decision to radically sacrifice ourselves to another person. To put up with their failures. To help them when they’re acting badly, rather than criticise them. To give them the space to make mistakes and still be there for them when they come to their senses.

Often times, love is a radical sacrifice that hurts. And when we choose to live out that radical sacrifice, relationships develop that last a lifetime. How’s that for a definition of love? Radical, sacrificial, unconditional love. What would our world look like, if everybody adopted that definition of love, instead of that trite, superficial, inch deep dictionary definition – a strong feeling of affection?

Affection is the reward of love; the feeling is the result of love. Love – as you may have heard me say before – isn’t just a noun. It’s not simply something that we have or don’t have. It is also a verb. A doing word. Love is something that we are meant to do. And the doing part of love, is sacrifice.

We each would like to think that we would live behind a legacy of love – that when we’re gone, our children, our grandchildren, our friends and wider family – all the people we’ve come into contact with, well be better off, for having known us. It’s pretty natural to want that. But let me tell you, there can be no lasting legacy of love that our lives leave behind, unless we’re living out the right definition of love.

And that definition is that love is a decision to make radical sacrifices for other people. And radical sacrifices always, always cost us something. True greatness isn’t about what we achieve. True greatness is about what we leave behind in the hearts of those whom we’ve served. Again, that’s exactly what Jesus said:

The greatest among you will be the servant of all. (Matthew 23:11)

Can I ask you this – what definition of love are you living out? That shallow dictionary definition or the real definition, the true definition – radical sacrifice?

The most beautiful, the most sublime definition of love that I have ever read comes, of course, from the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13. I’ve often heard it read and spoken about at weddings in a lovey-dovey, fluffy kind of way. Have a listen – tell me whether you thing that it’s lovey-dovey, and all fluffy and soft:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

It seems to me that every part of that description is an explanation of the sacrifice involved in loving. Patience – that’s a sacrifice. Kindness – that’s a sacrifice. Not being envious, boastful, arrogant or rude. Not insisting on your own way. Not being irritable or resentful. Bearing all things, enduring all things. They’re all about sacrifice – a sacrifice that never ends. There’s nothing lovey-dovey or fluffy about any of that. It’s all about sacrifice. The sort of love that God is calling you and me to, is the sort that involves radical sacrifice. The sort that the Apostle Paul writes about in Romans 5:8:

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

My friend anyone who wants to live a life that leaves behind a lasting legacy of love – they need to be living that sort of life. That sort of love. It’s as simple … as that.

Two Types of Love

When we’re flat out, busy with the hectic lives we lead, leaving a lasting legacy of love isn’t always in the front of our minds is it? But … ask anyone who has a lot of time on their hands. Some one who’s retired maybe, or living on their own. And one of the things that’s at the top of their list is the significance of their life. What impact have I had? Are people better off for having known me? What legacy will I leave behind when I’m gone? They ponder those questions perhaps more than any others.

Funny how our perspective changes as we get older. The less time we have left on the planet, the more the important things really matter. Problem is, when you’re older, isn’t necessarily the best time to start thinking about these things, right? Because by then, many of the opportunities to have a positive impact, to leave a lasting legacy of love, will already have passed us by. And then what?

That’s why we’re chatting about this stuff. Because the life we’re living now, today and tomorrow, and next week, next month and next year – is the very life that’s going to determine the legacy that you and I are going to leave behind. And one of the strongest indicators of how good (or not), how powerful (or not) and how long-lasting (or not) that legacy is going to be, is the sort of love that we give to other people.

As I said at the top of the program – there are really only two types of love – conditional love, and unconditional love. Now, giving unconditional love is hard work. It involves sacrifice, it involves time and effort … so you have to ask yourself, is it really worth it? Well, to answer that question the best thing, I think, is to look at conditional love first.

Conditional love, quite simply, is love with strings attached. We place conditions on the party whom we are going to love. I will love you if … you do this and you don’t do that. Provided that you will hold to your end of that bargain I will love you. But if you don’t, I won’t.

Now, on the surface that sounds just a bit reasonable. After all, if the other person is difficult, if the other person is a pain in the neck, if the other person isn’t playing the game – why would you love them. Cut ‘em off. Be done with them. Move on. And of course that’s what many people do. That’s what divorce is about. In fact the more you think about it, the less you want to be on the receiving end of conditional love. Am I right?

And the reason for that is that we know we’re not perfect. Our weaknesses sometimes give us a distorted perspective on reality, and so we can be overly touchy about this or that. We need people to love us who are prepared to love us despite our weaknesses, despite the fact that we fail them sometimes, despite the fact that we won’t always meet up to their expectations of us.

If we can’t find people like that, we are not going to be secure in who we are and where we belong. And yet all too often the love that we ourselves crave is not the love that we dish out to others. How often have you allowed another person’s weaknesses or failures to cause you to withdraw your love, your friendship, your support from them.

Well! Well – if that’s how you’re going to be, then ….

We’ve all done that haven’t we? We may not say it out loud, but we certainly think it and we certainly do it. It’s like pulling the rug out from someone else’s feet. They were relying on your love and support and all of a sudden you pull it out from underneath them – and they fall flat on their face.

There was a time in my life when I was difficult to love. I’d gone through a rough patch, a few people, one in particular, who should have been there to love me unconditionally, failed me and withdrew their love and support. At that time, some friends came out of the woodwork – people to whom I had never been particularly nice – and they loved me unconditionally. They gave me somewhere to live. They wept with me. They held me. They encouraged me. This was truly, unconditional love.

Those people – if they’re listening to this today – know exactly who they are. Those people have left a lasting legacy of love in my heart. They have shaped who I am. Each time you benefit from something I say, you’re actually benefiting from what they did for me. It’s a legacy that’s rippled out to countless more people? Why? Because the most precious love of all is the love that we don’t earn or deserve. That’s the sort of love that will cause your life to leave a lasting legacy of love. Unconditional … love.

The very sort of love that God gives to anybody who believes in Jesus His Son. Back in the OT, the agreement between God and His people was conditional – I will bless you, said God, if you keep my commandments, but if you don’t, I will punish you. Hmmm. Israel copped a lot of punishment, because somehow they couldn’t obey God’s commandments. Sound like anybody you know?

You can read the contract, or the covenant if you will, in Leviticus Chapter 26. It’s worth reading. Of course the Lord our God always knew it wasn’t going to work. So … eventually He sent Jesus, His Son, to die on that cross to pay for our sins.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8,9)

And the reason that God’s love towards you and me is so precious is that it costs us nothing, but it cost Him everything – the life of His Precious Son, Jesus. In Christ, God’s love is completely unconditional in every way – no matter what I do, no matter how badly I fail, I can always be forgiven, I am always forgiven – because my trust is completely in what Jesus did for me. And the same, the very same is true for you, if your trust is completely in what Jesus did for you.

My friend, if you would leave behind a lasting legacy of love, then the sort of love that you need to give today, is the very same love that you have already been given through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Unconditional love.

Putting Your Life on the Line

So, if you had to, would you be prepared to put your life on the line for the people you love? Pretty tough question isn’t it?

I want to share a story with you today – an historical story that comes from the nation of Israel – about a young woman called Esther. She was a young Jewish woman who lived in the 3^rd or 4^th century BC. As has been the case for most of their history, the Israelites were captive and subservient to a foreign King, Ahasuerus, who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia. He and his wife had a falling out, so – as was the custom – he sent out his servants to gather all the beautiful young maidens in the land for him to choose another wife.

As a result of this process, young Esther becomes Queen. Unbeknown to the King, she is of course, a Hebrew, of the nation of Israel. Nevertheless, once she is Queen, she is queen. Not long after, her uncle Mordecai – who had raised her – discovers that one of the king’s top advisors, Haman, has decided to destroy all the Jews in the kingdom – quite simply to put them to death. Haman said to the King: (Esther 3:8–11)

‘There is a certain people scattered and separated among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the kings laws, so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued for their destruction, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, so that they may put it into the kings treasuries.’ So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, the enemy of the Jews. The king said to Haman, ‘The money is given to you, and the people as well, to do with them as it seems good to you.’

Hmmm. What to do? So Uncle Mordecai sends a message to his niece Queen Esther to go in to the King and get him to change his mind. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Esther sends this message back to Mordecai:

‘All the kings servants and the people of the kings provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law—all alike are to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the golden sceptre to someone, may that person live. I myself have not been called to come in to the king for thirty days.’ When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, Mordecai’s answer came back to her swiftly:

‘Do not think that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father's family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’

Of course what he said made a lot of sense, but think of the absolute dilemma that this young woman faced. Would she put her life on the line? Would she go in to the king? And when she did, would she find his favour, or would she come to an untimely death? She showed such great courage and decided to go in to the king who held up his sceptre. Se won his favour, she wooed him and he changed his mind. He rescinded his order of genocide. And ultimately Haman, the man who plotted the demise of the Jews, was put to death.

Now there’s probably very little chance that you or I will ever be asked to literally, physically put our lives on the line for others in quite the same way as Esther did. And yet each and every day, opportunities abound for us to lay down our lives for others.

For our children when they make some terrible mistakes in life. Four our wives or husbands, as they fall short of our expectations. For our work colleagues. For our community. In fact as you think about it – opportunities literally abound for us to lay down our lives. We live in a world that’s used to instant gratification and disposable just about everything. And all too many of us, when we don’t get that instant gratification, want to dispose of the relationship. Hmm. So, let me ask you again – would you lay down your life for your friends, for your family, for those whom you love?

Will you give them the sort of sacrificial love that you would want if you were in their shoes … or not? Tough questions I know, but they’re exactly the questions we need to be asking ourselves if we want to live the sort of life that leaves a legacy of love. This is what Jesus had to say about laying down his life for his friends:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. … For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father. (John 10:11-18)

The price God paid for you and me is totally mind-blowing – the life of His precious Son so that we might have eternal life in His Presence. It just boggles my mind. And that’s what makes God’s grace and His love so powerful. It’s unconditional and it came at a price and even God Himself didn’t shrink from laying down His life for us.

My prayer is that as you contemplate that sort of love – the love He has for you, the price He was prepared to pay for you … that that might take you to a place where you can honestly evaluate, re–evaluate the love that you show to others around you; to the people who really matter; to the people in whose lives, when all is said and done, you would like to leave a lasting legacy of love.