When I talk and write about the love of Christ, I feel like a child trying to copy a Rembrandt with finger paint. Please forgive me for my gross inadequacy and run fast after you have read this to the real picture painted in Scripture.
The love of Christ is the central theme in Christianity. It is a Christian’s “Holy of Holies;” the spiritual sanctuary we enter into daily to experience God. By living out what we experience in this sanctuary we express the presence of God in our world.
My intention here is not to fully develop this topic. No one ever really has. Rather, I want to give you a simple framework with which to organize your thoughts when you meditate on Christ’s love. I also want to help you understand how men’s team ministry relates to and expresses the love of Christ
“The Love of Christ” as Jesus Christ’s love for us.
This is the subjective sense of the love of Christ. Not subjective in the sense that this is our own personal feeling about Christ’s love, but subjective in the sense that Christ is the subject in the phrase. “The love of Christ” here is what Christ does for us and how Christ feels about us.
A good example of this use of the love of Christ is Mark 10:21. A rich young man asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life and then told Jesus that he had kept the ten commandments from his youth. Then we read: “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” Here Jesus simply stood there and loved this man.
Ephesians 3:18-19 is another example of the subjective sense of Christ’s love. Here Paul prays that the Ephesians “may have power, together with all the Lord?s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge?that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Paul is not talking about our love for Christ here, but about Christ’s love for us.
“The Love of Christ” as our love for Jesus Christ.
This is the objective sense of the love of Christ. and it refers to our response to Jesus Christ. Jesus is the object of our love and this response to Christ’s love forms the basis for our personal piety. When John says in 1 John 4:19, “We love him, because he first loved us,” he is referring to this objective sense of the love of Christ.
“The Love of Christ” as something we do for others.
This is the nominative sense of the love of Christ. When we use the phrase in this way, we are talking about the love of Christ as a way of treating others, as a set of practices that reflect the pattern we have in Christ.
The important thing to understand about this third sense of the love of Christ is that in practice it cannot outpace the first two senses of the love of Christ. That is, the way we practice the love of Christ is limited by our understanding of Christ’s love for us and our personal response to Christ’s love for us. When we know what Christ’s love “looks like” (Christ‘s love for us – the subjective sense of the love of Christ) we understand when we are-and when we are not-practicing it. And when we are responding to Jesus Christ personally in love (Our love for Christ – the objective sense of the love of Christ) , we free ourselves up to love others as well.
The fact that our practice of the love of Christ is dependent on our understanding of Christ’s expression of his love for us is why I spend so much time in my seminar describing the love Christ has for us. Those of you who have been through the seminar know that I talk about how Christ identified with us, committed to us and sacrificed for us. This understanding of how Christ loved us in practice forms the basis of how we love others in practice.
Share with us how your understanding of the love of Christ has deepened as a result of participating in men’s team ministry to their widowed and single parents in your church.
This post originally appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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