Listen to 2010 version of the 8 part Agape Love sermon series:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

[Gary Petty] If I asked you to on a piece of paper to write down...I'm not asking you to, but if I did, to write down the five most important things in your life, most of you would write God, then probably my husband or my wife or my children, my friends, my family. Most of that list, and in some cases all of it, would be living, either God is a living being or people that you have relationships with. Now, at number four or five might come your career or something. You know, if you're 22 years old and single, maybe number five is your TV set or something. We list these things that are important in our lives.

And the reason why that list doesn't start with, you know, my house or my car is because we have a relationship with God or we have a relationship with people and we say we love them and they love me. The word love is an interesting word in English. You can love your wife. You can love your country. You can love your easy chair. But you don't mean the same, have the same meaning to the word when you use it. I doubt if many of you love your children in the same way if you say, "I love my car." You have two different meanings and yet you're using the same word.

Philosophers have written volumes on the subject of love. Poets have pined for lost love. It's amazing when you listen to country music, rock music, rap music. I don't care what you listen to, it's amazing how many of the songs are about what? Has something to do with love. It is said that love is divine. It is said that love is noble. It is said that love is really non-existent. It is said that love is nothing more than enslavement and keeps you from truly being happy. And there's some pop psychologists who go down that route. Some say it's just a myth.

You know, when you look at the definition of love in English, it's actually a very simple definition. The dictionary says that love is to have a strong attraction or affection for someone. It means to have a strong liking or interest in something or it means a strong, usually passionate affection for someone of the opposite sex. So when we say, "I love" something, what we mean is, I have a strong attraction to this person or affection for this person. Or we mean, I really like this thing. Or we mean I like you because I'm attracted to you as a member of the opposite sex. And that's what we usually mean when we use the word love.

Some say that love is the answer to all the world's evils. We talk about love all the time. Sermonettes and sermons when you read the Bible you see the word love used all the time in the Old and New Testament. The Bible says that we are to love God. The Bible says that we are to love our neighbors. The Bible says that we are to love our enemies. Some people say, well, you can't do that unless you first learn to love yourself. What's it all mean? What does that mean? 1 John 4:7, here we have John mention the words love throughout this passage, throughout this book, so much that some people will read through this and say, "Ah, this is just so mushy. What in the world does he mean? Was John a Protestant? All he talked about is love! What does this mean?"

"Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God." Now if we take the English definition of this, then we must say beloved, let us have strong affection to one another for strong affection is of God and everyone who has strong affection is born of God and knows God. Is that what he's saying? He who does not have strong affection does not know God, if for God is strong affection. Is that what he's saying? Well, if we use the English definition, that's what he said. But of course that is not what he's actually saying. God is love.

Now verse 9 is very important because it begins to open up what he's talking about here. This is the beginning of a series of sermons. And I haven't really covered this material for many, many, many years. That I will tell you I believe right now is the most important information for the entire Church of God. We're going to cover in the next five weeks is the single most important information for the entire Church of God and for every one of you here. Verse 9, "In this, the love of God was manifest toward us. God has sent his only begotten son to this world that we might live through Him." And this is love. He says you want to understand this. What you're gonna find is as we talk about this love, this kind of love that he's talking about here is always expressed in action, is not always expressed in emotions. But it is always expressed in actions.

And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, so also we ought to love one another. Now, what does John mean? What does John mean? It's interesting when you go back to especially first century Greek, the amount of words that they had that is translated love in English. Now, some of these you all know. You've heard it a hundred times. But we need to go back to this, because there's a core central problem in the United Church of God. It is a core central problem in the Church of God as a whole. And this core central problem is this. We think it's a lot of other things. But this is what it is. It goes back to what John is saying right here.

The Greeks had a specific word, and I can't remember what it was. It's a very interesting word. It means the love between family members. So there was a word that you would use if you were Greek in the first century, if you spoke the Greek language. And you said, "I love you," to your sister. or to your uncle. It was a very specific word. You wouldn't use that word to other people, because they weren't members of your family. It meant I love you as family. They used the word eros, that doesn't appear in the Bible either, which meant that the love between a man and a woman. And it was romantic, it could mean passionate, it could be sexual, it had a broad range, but it was specifically something that happened between a man and a woman.

You have filial, which is brotherly love. Now, brotherly love is the word that you'll see many times in the New Testament. phileo means to love someone else that you have an interest in and that you were willing to act towards in an unselfish way. If I have brotherly love, then I will be nice to you. Brotherly love could describe the love between best of friends. It could describe the love between, you know, a husband and wife. A husband and wife could have family love towards each other. They could have eros towards each other. And they could have phileo towards each other, all meaning something different, yet expressing both feelings and actions. phileo is not only an emotion, it is expressed in actions. But it tends to be explosive.

In other words, if you were from Corinth and you had phileo for all the people in Corinth, it could be a patriotic love. You didn't have the same phileo for the people from Rome. I mean, they'd come in and wiped out your city at one time. So you did, well, that's a bad example. Not that most people would know this, but actually when the Romans wiped out Corinth, they moved Romans into them, into the city. So they were made up mainly of Romans. So let's use Athens. You're from Athens, you're Greek. You can have phileo for everybody in Athens. They were your brothers. Just like you can have phileo at a baseball game when they sing the national anthem and everybody stands up and takes off their hat, and you all feel this common emotion. And at that moment, you'd all stand up and fight for each other. And you don't even know the name of the guy next to you, right? So phileo could be highly emotional. It could be very sacrificing.

But you know, a man in combat has intense phileo for the man beside him. So a man might be in a foxhole and a hand grenade comes in and he jumps on the hand grenade and dies for his friend. How many men have you ever known have jumped on a hand grenade to save the enemy? How many men have ever been captured and a hand grenade comes in and they throw it on it so that the enemy is saved? That's because phileo doesn't go that far. It is self-sacrificing, but it's self-sacrificing in exclusivity into those who have same interests as you, or that you're bound together somehow.

Then we have this concept of agape. That's the word that John uses in 1 John. Now, agape is an interesting word. In ancient Greek, first century Greek, agape was a very ambiguous word. It has all these little different meanings, but it's rather ambiguous what it actually means. It's used some in philosophy. It's not, you don't find it as, you know, as common in other writings as you do in the New Testament. The reason why is it seems that the New Testament writers took this this word that just was sort of big, it just love and said, "Let's explain this as the ultimate good." This is the ultimate good. So God is not the love of family, God is not eros, God is not phileo. God is bigger than all that. And here, what we read in 1st John is he says, this is what God is. God is agape, and you must have agape towards each other. In other words, if you are going to understand God and His love then you also must have this for each other.

So agape isn't just a description of God. It is a description of what the children of God must become. We can have phileo and not be the children of God. Now, people can have an enormous amount of phileo love. They can be very giving, very kind, do many acts of service and still not have agape. That's hard to grasp, it's hard to understand. How can that be? So then we must understand, okay, give us an in-depth definition of agape. I can't go to a Greek dictionary and give you that in-depth. Oh, it's the greatest love. What's that mean? I have one Greek dictionary at home that has over 50 pages of explanation of agape, and at the end of it, of course half of it is in Greek anyway, so I don't get that part. But the English part, when it's done I'm thinking I still don't know what it means. And then at the end it says, "So you must go to the New Testament and read how they describe it to understand or give any Christian meaning to the word." So you can't go to ancient Greek to get the meaning of this word. You have to go to the Bible to get how they used this word because it is a word that has a unique Christian meaning.

So what is it? What is it that God is that you and I are supposed to become? We all know that love involves some emotions. And yet agape transcends emotions. Here's the problem as we begin to go through this. When all actions towards other people are based on our emotions, then we will tend to only associate with, listen to, and treat well people who think like us. When we understand agape...and it's always described in actions. That's what's amazing. Agape is described in actions. We begin to understand that it is a process of mind. There's emotions involved. But it is primarily a process of mind. And in this process of mind, we choose our actions towards others, and sometimes it is the exact opposite of how we feel.

Matthew 5, I'm going to read Matthew 5 and then towards the end of the sermon we're coming back to Matthew 5 to see this in a greater context. We're in the middle of the Sermon of the Mount here. Matthew 5:38. Matthew 5:38 says, "You have heard it was said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." Now if that has been interpreted, you know, that's a law from the Old Testament, was that the Old Testament taught revenge. And the Old Testament doesn't teach revenge. What the Old Testament taught was, you have to let the punishment fit the crime. I mean the idea of someone steals so you cut off their hand, people believe the Bible says that. No it doesn't. The Quran says that. Bible doesn't say that. Because that punishment doesn't fit the crime. You've now crippled the person and made him a thief forever. So this concept is let the punishment fit the crime.

Now, that principle still stands. That principle was founded by God. And now Jesus Christ who says, right, that's a principle of God, he says now if you're really going to understand where he's coming from, where Christ is coming from, you have to now take this another step. "But I tell you, not to resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him also have your cloak. Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away. You have heard it said that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." Now, you shall love your neighbor was in the Bible. You shall hate your enemy was a common, just a common saying at the time. "But I say to you, love your enemies." I want you to think about what he says here. "Bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the sons of your Father in heaven, for He makes his Son rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." Verse 46, "For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?" He says, "Do not even the traders do the same?"

One of the proofs of discipleship is that we love one another. Others are supposed to see the love that we have for one another as a proof that we are the children of God. That if all we do is love one another, why are we different than the local mosque? How are we different than the local Hindu congregation? They love one another. They sacrifice for one another. They give to each other. They spend time in each other's homes.

I'll never forget watching a piece of a newsreel that had a profound effect on me. End of World War II when the Russians came into Berlin, the Germans were out of soldiers. And they took these boys, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15-year-old boys, and they gave them a Panzerfaust, which is a little tube that shot a hollow charge that would blow up a tank. And they gave them some minimal training and they sent them out. And the interview was with a Russian tank commander who talked about it was a game. He said, "They killed thousands of our soldiers." He said, "Because you'd see these little boys running through the rubble, coming up, popping up out of a cellar, shooting one of those things and running off." And he says, "You could hear them laughing. It was a game," he says, "until we would machine gun them." And he says, "You don't know what it does to you to shoot a child." He says, "But we ended up, we had to kill them. There were hundreds of them. And they were killing thousands of us."

But what I remember in the newsreel is watching Adolf Hitler walk through these boys as he was sending them out. And the absolute affection that he had for those boys and they had for him, it was in their faces. They would go to salute and he would reach out and touch their faces and they would smile. And you could tell they just wanted to hug each other. There was absolute affection between this evil man, Adolf Hitler, and these little boys. And if all love is affection, then Adolf Hitler at that point was a very loving man, whereas he felt intense affection and you could see it in his eyes. And Jesus says, if that's all it is, why are we any different than them? He says, "And if you greet your brother and only, what do you do more than others?" Did it not even the traitors, those Jews who were working for the Romans, they even do that.

Therefore, verse 48 points us where we have to go. "Therefore, you shall be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect." Our Father in Heaven is agape. And Jesus Christ is saying here, "You must become agape." How do we do this? How do we do this? I mean, does this mean that we're to allow our enemies to abuse us? What does this mean? So even this has to be put into some kind of context or all of us might as well go out here and just lay down in front of a car, you know, we're just gonna be abused. What does that mean? Romans 5:8. Romans 5:8 ties into verse 9 of what we read in 1 John. And it is really our starting point. It is we're working from a big concept into small concepts here, into absolute actions. So we have to understand the big concept, and then we'll move into the actions. These actions will take us this sermon and four more just to go through.

Romans 5:8, but God demonstrated His own agape. This isn't phileo. He had demonstrated His own agape towards us, "and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." This is the core. If you're going to understand it, this is the core. If there's conflict between you and your husband or wife, this is the core where you start to solve that. If there's conflict between you and brethren in the church, this is the core. There is conflict in the United Church of God between ministers, and this is the problem. This is the problem. It's not what everybody argues about. It starts here. The beginning of the understanding of agape starts here. It starts with God showed his love towards me while I was unlovable. God exhibited His love towards me by sacrificing His Son while I was absolutely despicable. So if we're going to understand agape, we start there. We start with an action by God, not an emotion by God.

While we were yet despicable, Christ died for you and for me. And that is how God tells us and expresses this is what agape is. If we don't go back to that point, you cannot have a government. Is that simple? We go back to that point. and then we begin to say, "Okay, that's how God expresses it to me. How do I now express it to others using that same broad principle, that principle that starts there?" Now, if you look at what we've read so far in 1 John and in Matthew and in Romans 5:8, we can begin to now break down our broad principle into a few smaller points. We can begin to build a definition of agape. But as we do, we still continue to find that agape is a very broad concept. From what we've read so far, we know that agape involves a way of thinking and it involves motives. It involves a way of thinking and it involves motives. God did not sacrifice His Son because we and He had the same interests. Right? Love in English means you have the same interest. We had no interest in common with God when He sacrificed His Son for us.

So agape involves a way of thinking and it involves motives. Agape involves self-sacrifice. Second principle we learn. Three, and this is what's real hard, agape isn't contingent upon how the other person treats you or Jesus would have never allowed Himself to be sacrificed. Agape is not contingent upon how the other person treats you. It's contingent on you doing what agape is. Agape is unselfish, an outgoing concern for everyone, even those who don't have your same interests and even those who are unlovable. And when somebody is unlovable, you don't have good emotions towards them. So agape is looking for what's in the best interest of a person who is unlovable. That's pretty tough, to look out for the best interest of a person who's pretty despicable.

Agape isn't always necessarily an emotion, although positive emotions are experienced when we express agape. Now that's important to understand. In other words, when you express agape, at the front end you may have very negative emotions, but you do it anyways, and the result is you have very positive emotions on the other end of the action. It always comes down to action. Agape is always expressed in action. God expressed his agape in sacrificing His Son while we were yet sinners. It's an enormous idea. And it's what makes John 21 such a remarkable passage. You know scholars argue that John, there's a passage in John 21 we're going to read, that John 21 isn't real because Jesus and Peter would have had this conversation in Aramaic and it's written in Greek. Well, we know that Jesus and Peter spoke Greek. So there's no reason to believe that this particular conversation wasn't in Greek.

So let's go to John 21:15, John 21:15. This is after Jesus' resurrection. He meets with Peter and the other disciples. And in verse 15 he says, so when they had eaten breakfast, "Jesus said to Simon Peter, 'Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?'" What a question to ask. He's sitting around with all his other buddies, all the other disciples. They've all been through all this together. They'd followed Jesus for all these years. They'd watched Him be sacrificed. They had now seen Him resurrected. And what does Jesus ask him? You talk about a trick question. "Do you love me more than James? Do you love me more than John?" And he said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." And He said, "Feed my lambs." But you know, in Greek, that's not exactly what that says. In Greek He says, "Do you agape me?" And his answer is, "Yes, I phileo you." He asked him, "Do you have the love of God for me even more than your fellow disciples?" And he said, "Yes, I have brotherly love toward you. You are my brother."

So verse 16 he says, a second time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you agape me?" I may be agapao, which is the verb, but it's the same meaning. And he said to Him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." He said, "tend my sheep." You know, in your margins in some Bibles, where Peter answers him, it'll say, "Yes, I have strong affection." How many in your margins does it say something like that? Seeing many of you have it. It's a strong affection. Because why? The translators knew he's using a different word. And he's saying, yes, I really feel strongly towards you. And yes, I want to follow you, but, you know, God pays so big. And besides, it was just a few days ago that I denied you. I wasn't willing to take that, go that full measure for you. I wasn't willing to die for you. He says, "I can't say that." Peter's not being rebellious here. Peter is overwhelmed by what He's asking him. "Do you have the love of God for me?" And he keeps saying, "I love you like a brother." And finally, He says a third time, verse 17, "Simon son of Jonah, do you finally own me?" And Peter was grieved. And he finally says, "Yes, you know that I finally own you."

Peter wasn't being rebellious. Peter understood the enormity of what he was being asked. Jesus didn't get angry with him. Jesus seems to appreciate his honesty. I mean, he knew what was in his heart anyway. "I can't go there," he said. "It's too big for me." The most detailed definition of agape is in 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter. You've probably read that chapter as much as any other passage in the Bible. But we don't understand it. We haven't even begun to understand and the Church of God needs to understand. It's where we have to go. The letter that Paul wrote to that church of Corinth around 55 AD, those chapters contain some of the most intense correction in the entire Bible. They are condemned by Paul because they are a church that is tearing itself apart in divisions and in anger, and everybody's picking their champion minister. I'm of a Paul. I'm of a Paulist. And then you're really a good one when you say, I'm a Christ.

They have a church that's tearing itself apart because of sin. In fact, Paul tells them, "You take this man and you kick him out of your church." They have people, men in this church that are going to prostitutes. They have people showing up at the Passover stone drunk. They have rich people mistreating poor people. Everybody speaking in tongues and a group of women got together and took over the church. It is chaos. It is absolute chaos. And so Paul tells him in 1 Corinthians 12, "Let me explain to you all the gifts God has given to you," because there was one great shining spot in Corinth. They were the most gifted group of people. God had given them miraculous gifts. Some people were great speakers. Some people were great prophets. There were people there who performed miracles. And there were a whole lot of people who spoke in tongues. They were a church of miracles. They were a church of gifts.

And at the end of explaining to them about all these great gifts that God gave to them, he said, "Now, we've talked about your divisions, and we've talked about your fighting, and we've talked about your sin, and we've talked about the length of your hair, and we've talked about your sexual problems, and we've talked about taking each other to court, which you're doing, and we've talked about how you need to get some kind of order in this chaos that you call church. And we've talked about how you need to not let these women run the church. And we've talked about your wonderful gifts." And then he says, "Let me show you a more excellent way. Let me show you something better than your gifts." Now what we believe, just like the Corinthian Church, is that gifts are everything. The gift of administration, the gift of speaking, the gift of healing, the gift of prophecy. That's everything. And Paul said, "Let me tell you something better than gifts from God."

Something better than gifts from God? A better way? Well, all their gifts had led to what? What had the gifts of Corinth led to? One of the most dysfunctional congregations in the New Testament, although many of them weren't very functional, this one was real bad. And he says, "Now let me tell you why those gifts don't matter in the condition you're in." So let's go to 1 Corinthians 13. 1 Corinthians 13:31 of chapter 12. Of course there's no chapter breaks, this is a letter. The verses and chapters just ran together. He says, "But earnestly desire the best gifts, and I show you a more excellent way." I want to stress that he didn't say, "Deal with all this sin and all this division and all this arguing in your church and I'll show you a better way." He says, "Okay. I've already pointed out all the problems. Now I'm pointing out your strengths. And let me tell you a better way than your strengths."

I find Paul's argument fascinating. It's like before you criticize somebody, if any of you have taken any training at where you work, before you criticize somebody, you're supposed to tell them something good first. Paul spends 11 chapters just pounding these people, and then he spends one saying, "Wow, God has given you all these gifts. Let me tell you something better than gifts. Let me tell you something better than the abilities you have and the church that you have, something better than it." And then he makes some of the greatest statements of hyperbole in the entire Bible. Verse 1, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not agape, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal." It's one thing to be able to speak in tongues, the tongues of men. So suddenly God gave me the ability, say, to speak in Spanish, which many of you here would greatly appreciate. But what if He gave me where I understood angel language? This is a hyper-mode. So, you know, every Friday night an angel showed up and I would talk to that angel. The rest of you wouldn't see the angel, you wouldn't hear the angel. And when we were done I would say, tomorrow's sermon, or what if, what if every week, I walked up here on stage and I don't have any notes? Yes? Yes? Yes? Today's sermon, the angel has given me the today's sermon, let's turn to Romans chapter 6. And I could understand angel language.

He says, "You know what that's like?" He said, "That's like someone who doesn't know how to play the trumpet, blowing on a trumpet." Ever hear that? It's terrifying. When my daughter's first two boys got old enough, the first thing I went and bought them was a little drum and cymbal. And she said, "You're paying me back." I said, "You betcha." Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. He says, "You know what it is like? You know what it is like to have the gift that you could talk to angels?" He's not talking about something made up. He's saying, "What if you could actually do that?" He said, "If you don't have agape, it's just like a little kid walking around going, bang, bang, bang, bang." He says, "It's meaningless. It's absolutely meaningless." "And though I have the gift of prophecy, what if you understood all of Daniel, and you know all the beasts of Daniel and you know Revelation 13 and you know everything about the place of safety and you know all of the ultimate prophecy down to its finite detail, and you even know who the two witnesses are?" He says, "What if you know all that?"

And he says, "I understand all mysteries. You understand the nature of Christ, you understand the mysteries contained in the Scripture." And Paul, if you remember one time I gave a whole series of sermons on just all the mysteries that Paul talks about. Took us five sermons to go through. You understand all the mysteries. You understand the exact relationship between law and grace. You understand how the holy days are truly a shadow of Jesus Christ. And it's amazing because you know that these shadows make perfect sense and you can explain them to anybody. And you know it. You know it. He says in all knowledge you understand the Scripture at a level nobody else in the congregation does. You know Greek and you know Hebrew. And you can explain passages from 1 Corinthians and you can explain Deuteronomy and you can explain Galatians and you can just do it. And you know all doctrine. You can explain the Sabbath, why you don't have an immortal soul, why you don't go to heaven when you die. You can explain the return of Jesus Christ. You can explain the gospel inside and out.

He said, "If you have all prophecy, you have the gift of prophecy. You have understand all mysteries and all knowledge. And though I have all faith, every time one of the elders anoints you, you get healed immediately if you have all that, so that you can remove mountains. And I have not agape, I am nothing." Now, can you have agape and not believe in the Ten Commandments? No. So, you can't have this one without this one, okay? You can't have agape without having repented of your sins and have receiving God's Spirit because it takes God's Spirit to help us become like God. You and I, and I just assume that you know this as we go into this, you and I cannot have agape on our own. If God is agape, you and I have to have God in us to become that way. So is it possible to have agape and despise the Ten Commandments and not keep them? Of course not. Do you have to have a certain understanding of prophecy to have agape? Do you have to have a certain understanding of the Bible and the mysteries to have agape? Yeah. Do you have to have a certain amount of knowledge to have agape? Yeah. But his point is, is you can have those and still not have a government. That's the point.

We can be a church that keeps the Sabbath and not have agape. And according to the apostle Paul, it's zero. It's zero. We can be a church that keeps the holy days. And according to the apostle Paul, if we don't have agape, it's nothing. Understand, he didn't say it means a little bit. He says it's nothing. So we can have the one, you can't have agape without the other. But you can have the other, you can have the mysteries, you can have the prophecies, you can have the knowledge, and still not have agape. That's what we have to understand. That's what we have to grow into as a congregation, as individuals, and it's what the United Church of God needs to learn and needs to grow into. We can have all of it and still be nothing.

Verse 3, I've struggled with verse 3. "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body be burned, but I have not agape, it profits me not." You think, well, man, if I give everything to the poor and live in absolute poverty and I die as a martyr, what more do I have to prove? Begin to understand that agape involves motives. There are many Muslims who have died as martyrs in the crusades. The Christian crusaders came into town and the priest would get up and give a blessing and say, "Kill everyone. If you feel they should save someone, go and save them, that means they're a Christian. But go ahead and kill everyone." The Crusades went into villages in Turkey that was 100% Christian and killed everybody. The Crusaders killed tens of thousands of Christians because, well, they live in a Muslim country, they must be Muslim. When the truth is, in Turkey, the Muslims were very open and allowed Christians and Jews to live back in the, this is back in the Middle Ages. And so, they killed thousands of Christians because the priest gave the blessing, they went and killed him. And why did they kill them? Because they stole everything they could from them all in the name of the love of God. All in the name of the love of God.

It's possible to be a martyr because you believe something and have great courage and still not have agape. It is possible to do great good deeds. and have a wrong motivation. I'm going to go back and think of the Sermon on the Mount, where people say, "Christ, we did great things in your name." And He will say, "Depart from me." But they were good things. That's good. But here he says we can even do good deeds, enormously great good deeds. If we do not have agape, it's not enough. It's not enough. I tell you what happens to me every time I read through 1 Corinthians 13. I find myself in sort of this conversation in my head with Christ and Him saying, "Do you agape me?" My answer is always, "I phileo you." I find myself exactly where Peter is. I fear, at times that the Church of God is simply going to become rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing spiritually speaking. And this is the only way I know not to become that way. It's doctrine.

I mean, I've spent the last year and a half going through all 20 of the basic doctrines. Yes, it's doctrine. But understand, we can have all that and still be nothing. And so he comes to this conclusion. I'm gonna read a paragraph from a marriage... It's a book I bought one time for marriage counseling. And it was written by someone who was trying to approach marriage and marriage counseling through the Bible. How many of you thought, well, they have all these good principles. I'll get this because I'll, you know, sometime when I'm talking to somebody or giving a sermon, I'll pass on one of the principles and sort through the things that aren't maybe correct. But there were enough good things in the book to buy it. And then as I read the book, I got to a place where the writer is saying, "1 Corinthians 13 says agape, what is agape?" And in this very, this one paragraph, this person understood it and he wrote one paragraph. I want to read the paragraph. "Agape is not love that is grounded in any external value." So where does he get that? What's that mean? God sacrificed His Son for us. He exhibited His love, Romans 5:8, by sacrificing His Son while we had no value. While we had no value, He sacrificed Him for us. So it's not the external value.

What should drive us to praise and worship God is the realization He did that because He is agape, not because we were wonderful. He sacrificed His Son for us because of who He is, not because of who we were. Now He makes us into something. We have great value because of that action, but that action was on His part. That's grace. That's grace. That action was on His part while we had no value. And then He said, "Now I can give you value." And we can become valuable. He goes on, he says, "Agape is pure love and does not have its source in the loved object. The reason it cannot have its source in the loved object is because sometimes there are people who are unlovable." So it can't have its source in the loved object because they're just plain unlovable. "It is unmotivated by anything outside of itself." In other words, it's the character of the person. "It is motivated, its motive is holy from within its own nature. It is not based on any expectation in return. It is an action, or it is a love, expressed in an action in which you expect nothing in return."

Think how many marriage problems that would solve. Well, I have to say, there are times when I have no problem saying I phileo my wife. I have a hard time saying I agape at times because I'm expecting something back, right? I'm expecting a compliment, or I'm expecting a hug, or I'm expecting something back. And that's not wrong, I'm just saying it's not agape. There's nothing wrong with eros love and there's nothing wrong with phileo love, it's good. But it's not agape. Agape expects nothing back when it does this action.

Now, I want to go back to to Matthew in a minute because then we have to be careful. Then we reach the point where I expect nothing back so go ahead steal from me. That's not what it's, no. The motive is the other person. Listen to this. Agape is not an act of self-completion or self-satisfaction by means of another. It cannot be frustrated because it does not demand anything in return. And here's the key. It is pure outgoing desire to care for another. Pure, outgoing desire to care for another, to do what is right for the other person. I must do what is right for the other person. So agape comes down to doing what is best for the other person in spite of personal consequences. It is doing what's best for the other person, regardless of how they're treating you. And it's doing what's best for the other person even if it goes against your own emotions. So agape is based in doing what is best for the other person.

And now we come down to a definition we can begin to understand. Read it again. Agape is doing what's right, what is best for the other person in spite of their actions and in spite of your own emotions and in spite of personal consequences. You see why? I guarantee you if Jesus asked if you agape me, if you're honest and have any understanding of yourself, you're going to find yourself in the same place Peter was. And it's not just for those who you have attraction to, that's phileo. It's towards those who you have no attraction to. It's towards those you have nothing in common to, and it's to those who spitefully abuse you. Now, the next few verses of 1 Corinthians 13 begin to tell us how to do that. And so we get into 1st Corinthians 13 verse 4, and it says, "Love suffers long." If you have a King James, it says love is long-suffering. Agape suffers long.

Now here's the logical problem that I find very uncomfortable. The only way to learn long-suffering is to suffer a long time. See, I like suffering. Oh, hey, I'll show my love by suffering for a short time. Right? You got 30 seconds. Okay! What a great guy! A month? A day? Maybe an hour? A year? I'm gonna suffer a year? I'm gonna suffer five years? Wow. I can't phileo own that. No. It's agape. We suffer a long time. It allows us to suffer. Here's where we have to understand. We are suffering for the good of the other person. We are suffering for the good of the other person. See, some people take this, "Well, I'm just so long-suffering. I've allowed this person to spend my whole life." I've dealt with people, with women, "Yes, I know he beats me twice a week. And he's high on cocaine three nights a week. and every Friday and Saturday night he's out at the bar picking up another woman." I mean, I've literally been in situations where it was this bad. "But I must suffer with him."

I am suffering to do what is best for the other person. How do we do that? Three things. First of all, keep your perspective on God and what He has done for you. This is the starting point. This is why we started with 1 John, and this is why we started in Romans 5:8. Agape is expressed by God by how much He suffers for us, how much Jesus Christ suffers for us. He suffered for us as a human being. He suffers now as your brother. The Father suffers as your Father. They suffer with us and for us, and they put up with us for us and it's for our good that they do this. So we must go back and remember, if God has done this for me, how much more must I do this for somebody else? Think of Christ being beaten beyond recognition and then say, "Can I take this abuse from this person for one more hour at my job? This despicable person who screams and hollers and calls me names. Can I do this for this person one more hour? Can I?" Once we compare sometimes, it becomes a whole lot easier because this allows us to suffer with those or for those and with those who we find unattractive. It allows us to suffer for people and with people because their welfare is our motivation. Right?

You know this when you have a baby. See, phileo crosses over into agape in a very restricted sense. You know what it's like to get up in the middle of the night to change that baby's diaper, even though every part of your body doesn't want to do that. Why? Because it's what's best for the baby. You can always shut the door, turn on the radio in the room so you can't hear the crying. I mean, there's a way to shut out the crying, right? And let the baby cry all night. There are people who do that. I'll change the diaper in the morning when I feel like it. In those kinds of actions, we get close. Okay? We get close. Agape is that you treat everybody that way all the time. And Jesus says, "Do you agape me?" Because if you agape Him that way, we have to agape everybody that way. And I keep finding myself, I phileo you. Me and Peter in the same boat here. So we have to go back and remember what he did for us.

Now let's go to Matthew 5 again and understand that Matthew 5 must be looked at through the lens of agape. Verse 40 says, "If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him all your cloak also." So, when Paul, if you take this literally in all situations, when Paul was taken to court, for being a Christian, he should have said, "I won't defend myself. Go ahead, beat me, take my life. It's okay." But he didn't, did he? He defended himself. Why? Because your motivation in every situation is what is best for the other person. There's a time you would not let somebody do that. It says, "give to him who asks you and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away." You know, there's other places in the Bible that says, "do not lend money to people unless you're willing to lose it." And there are some times you just don't lend to people. So which biblical passage do we follow? You follow both. When it is good for the other person to lend to them, you lend to them. When it is not good for the other person, you say no. What is your motivation in both situations? It is what is good for the other person.

As a parent, have you ever had to take a privilege away from a child because it's what's best for the child even though it hurt you, sometimes more than it hurts the child? Does God say, "I agape you, therefore you can abuse me all you want?" Of course He doesn't say that. Does God say, "I'm never going to punish anybody? I have such love for you. Go ahead. Shoot your neighbor. It's okay with me." No, he doesn't say that. How can God throw someone in the lake of fire and be the ultimate expression of love? There's only one way. I mean, you have two conclusions. One, God is an angry, vindictive being. Or two, it's what's best for the person he's throwing in the lake of fire. I don't know other conclusions you can come to. Philosophers have argued that point for 2,000 years.

How can a loving God do that? Well, He's a vindictive angry mean God. And they define love by feelings. And if you use the English definition, I suppose He is. If you understand that God's motivation is always what is absolutely best for that person at that time, then there will come a point where that will be an act of love. When it changes everything too, every time you and I are in a trial, it doesn't go away. God and I have had trouble over this. If you agape me, take away my trial. And the answer is, boy, do you need this trial. No I don't. Is there anybody else up there I could talk to? And then I find myself saying, "Yes, Jesus, I phileo you, because this agape is too big for me." It's just too big. God always, every motivation, is what's best for that person at that moment. So there is a time when you allow somebody to take advantage of you. And there's a time you don't. And here's what's hard, the answer to that question isn't what's best for you. It's what's best for the other person.

I have an example that I've used before, because it was something years ago in our marriage that just my respect for my wife just exploded when I understand what she was doing. We lived in a house in Houston and we had three children and it just wasn't big enough. And we were renting this house. And a house down the street which was a much nicer house and much bigger house came on the market and the people said, "Oh we know you, you're our neighbors, we'll rent it to you," and they gave us a great price. And we said, "Okay, we're going to move." And I went to the people who owned the house we lived in, and they were Hindus. And I said, "We're going to move." And the man became distraught and he said, "You can't do that. We have a contract." I said, "Yes, we have a contract that says I rented this house for a year. There's dates in the contract. I've been in the house four and a half years, almost five years. The contract was up years ago." "No, no, no, automatically you renew year to year." "That's not what it says." And he became more and more confused and distraught.

And then he looked at me and said, "How can a holy man do this? You're a holy man." Now you have to understand in the Hindu belief, you go through reincarnations. When you become a holy man, when you die, you go to live with Brahma forever. You are in their, that caste system, you know, your old friend Bob, who was a reprobate, he's a snake. He came back as a skunk. But when you finally reach holy man status, you've been reincarnated tens of thousands of times, and you are on a status that's unbelievable. Jesus in Hinduism, Mother Teresa. People from all different religions who reach a certain status are now considered holy men and women. And he looked at me and in a distraught way said, "But you're a holy man." So I went back and talked to Kim. I said, "Kim, as Christians, we can't do this." I mean, I took the contract to a man I knew was a lawyer, and he looked at it and said, "What this guy's saying, is ridiculous, you rented the house from this to this point, and you haven't even been under contract for four years." I said, "I know that. He doesn't." So I went to her and I said, "We can't do it. not because we don't want to and not because we don't have the right to." There's a difference between having the right to do something and is this what best for that person.

Now this was the house she wanted. This was the house we would finally let where we didn't have our son sleeping in the bedroom with us. You know, waking us up six times a night crying. This was the one where she actually had a kitchen bigger than a postage stamp and the colors weren't strange. And the house didn't smell like curry, even after five years. And she sat and cried, which is unusual for my wife to cry. And then she said, "I know it's what we must do." So I went back to the guy and said, "Okay, we will finish out this contract period that you feel is there." Because, I told him, I said, "Not because you're right legally, but because morally, I will do this for you." Well, he immediately cut our rent to practically nothing. And in the next six months, we received an enormous blessing. And in the next six months we were transferred out of the city, which means we saved thousands of dollars in not moving.

Now, we didn't know that at the time. We didn't know he was going to cut our rent way down. I said, "Well, we have to do this." Now at the time, it was such a lesson for me, because this was not simply an act of agape on my part. Either house was fine with me. There was really no self-sacrifice on my part. There was for my wife. It was a huge self-sacrifice. And we were right. Do you understand? You can be right and not be carrying out agape. As human beings, we don't think that way. If I am right, then I have the right to be right. And I have right to these actions. And sometimes having the right doesn't make them wise. And sometimes having the right doesn't mean it's agape. So we have to learn to suffer long.

The last point in suffering long. Keep your perspective that you're just as human as the next guy. That slow bank teller, the man who cuts in front of you, making rude gestures, the small child who can't understand a simple instruction, the person who drones on and on and on with the most boring story you've ever heard. Remember something. Today, that's that person. Yesterday that was you doing that. And tomorrow is going to be you doing it again. You're going to be the impatient person. You're going to be the person having the trouble. You're going to be the person not feeling well. So cut that person a little slack because that's what's best for that person. And you know how you know that? Because when you're in that state and someone cuts you a little slack, what do you say? "Oh, thank you." Right? When they cut you a little slack, you're so thankful.

So in order to suffer long, we start with understanding God's suffering for us. Secondly is that we keep this perspective. And actually there's a point I missed, but I want to throw this point in. Keep your perspective of what God is doing in your life now and that you're an ambassador for Jesus Christ. That's why I told the story about my wife. I missed the point. As an ambassador for Christ, we had to do something even though we had the right not to do it. We had the legal right and you can argue we had the moral right. Can't help it the guy didn't understand that. And he was a Hindu. He wasn't even a Christian. Didn't matter. How could a representative of Jesus Christ leave that man feeling like he had been abused because he didn't understand? Because he didn't understand. So let me repeat it again. Keep a perspective of God when he's done for you. Keep a perspective that you're just as human as the next guy. And keep a perspective of what God is doing in your life now and that you are an ambassador for Jesus Christ.

We've just scratched the surface. We scratched the surface of an entire list of what it means to express agape. So over the next few weeks we will be going through this, understanding that agape was exhibited to us by God through the life of Jesus Christ. And that this must be preeminent in our lives because it is how we are to respond to God and how through His help and indwelling of His spirit, we learn to respond to our fellow man.