We saw in my previous post that we cannot do God’s good works without being saved; without being saved from spiritual death, from enmity with God, from slavery to sin, from Satan’s dominion, and from the world’s hold on us.
In this post, I want to continue this theme that God’s good works are impossible for us to do without divine intervention, not only because we have to be saved, but also because the cost is simply too high when we do not have the love of Christ in our heart.
God’s good works always cost us something
“None of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” Romans 4:7-8
One key difference between a non-Christian man and a Christian man is that a non-Christian lives for himself and a Christian man lives for others. Of course, both non-Christian men and Christian men sacrifice for their own families. But what truly sets a Christian man apart is his willingness to sacrifice for his fellow believers who are in need. As John writes in 1 John 3:16-18,
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
The Apostle Paul expressed the same ideal in his address to the Ephesian elders:
“I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ” Acts 20:33-35
Thus, God’s good works always cost us something, including possibly our very lives.
Men, the love of Christ is not for sissies
Therefore, any man who thinks that following Jesus Christ and loving our fellow believers the way he loves us is for effeminate wimps has no idea what discipleship is all about. Consider, for example, the following story.
As a pastor, I witnessed a lot of tragedy. But no one I have known has been in more distress than “Mary.”
I got to know Mary several years ago through my home church’s men’s team ministry, which we call “Faithful Hands.” I have been involved on a team at our church for almost twenty years now. Mary, a widow and single mom, was one of my team’s care receivers.
The reason why Mary was a widow and single mom raising her son and daughter alone was because her son had murdered her husband. Since patricide does not happen very frequently here in Denver, our local TV stations and newspaper covered this horrible family tragedy for days.
But Mary was also in severe distress for another reason: besides struggling with deep grief and with the evil that had befallen her and her family, Mary was at the same time terminally ill with liver disease and needed a liver transplant.
As her disease progressed, she became deathly sick and had to be hospitalized while she waited for an available liver. I remember visiting her in her hospital room and seeing how weak and yellow she had become.
But besides a liver transplant, Mary had another option: a living donor could donate a portion of their liver to Mary and both the remaining liver and the donated portion would grow back into normal livers. All Mary needed was a willing donor with a matching blood type.
Since no one on my team had a matching blood type, I sent an email to all 60 members of our Faithful Hands ministry. In it I explained Mary’s situation and described what making a live liver donation involves and what blood type was required and asked if anyone would like to volunteer.
To my shock, two of our men volunteered to be live liver donors for Mary!
“These men really understand what practicing the love of Christ means,” I thought to myself when I received that response. They had counted the cost and because the love of Christ was in their hearts, they were willing to pay it.
As it turned out, at the last minute, a cadaver liver became available for Mary, and after the transplant she made a wonderful recovery. In fact, she eventually went on to do missionary work in a foreign country.
“Warning! Attending Our Men’s Ministry May Cost You Your Life.”
As we see from Scripture and from experience, if we Christian men are truly going to accomplish the good works God saved us to do, then we might consider including the above warning whenever we promote our men’s ministry.
Sound melodramatic?
It is not.
Take, for example, the secular world. When someone joins the military, they know that doing so may in fact cost them their life. When someone joins a police force, they also know that doing so may cost them their life. And when someone decides to become a firefighter, they, too, know that doing so may cost them their life.
In all three of these examples, the participants in these vocations know that they are probably not going to die. But they also know that they could die. Yet they choose to accept the risk and do their chosen field of work anyway. Why? Because they have a higher purpose: they know our society could not exist in the form that it does without them doing what they do, while also being willing to sacrifice their life if they have to.
Because God’s good works may cost us dearly, they cannot be done without the love of Christ in our heart
The same is true about the good works God saved us to do. They can cost us dearly. They may even cost us our life. There are two ways this is true. The first is because we will face persecution when we do them. As our “passage for getting there” states:
“Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” 2 Timothy 3:12-17
The Bible teaches that this persecution can even lead to death: “You have not yet resisted to the shedding of blood” (Hebrews 12:4), the writer to the Hebrews reminds his readers.
Sadly, there are still parts of the world where Christians experience martyrdom for their faith. Here in America, on the other hand, Christians seldom suffer bloodshed. But it could happen and we must be open to that possibility.
But besides persecution, there is another way that we, as Christian men, may be called to sacrifice our life, and it involves the love of Christ. The Bible teaches that when we have the love of Christ in us it motivates us to sacrifice everything, including our very lives, for our fellow believers.
The slave with the pierced ear
It is a simple fact of life that we make sacrifices for the people we know and love that we would never dream of making for people we do not know and love. Take, for example, the law in the Old Testament about male slaves and pierced ears.
“If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.” Exodus 21:2-6
Without the presence of love in the heart of a slave, voluntarily becoming a permanent slave to his master would be stupid. But in the presence of love for his wife and children – note also, for his master as well – voluntarily enslaving himself for life makes perfect sense. In fact, his slavery would not feel like slavery at all, but perfect freedom. His love makes slavery irrelevant.
Ruth and Orpah prove that without the love of Christ in our heart, we cannot do God’s good works
It is the same with us. Without the love of Christ in our heart, we simply cannot do the good works God wants us to do. Without it, God’s good works seem like drudgery and even slavery of the worst kind.
Take, for example, the story of Ruth, Orpah, and their mother-in-law, Naomi. In Ruth 1, the details the story gives us about Ruth and Orpah are exactly the same: both were Moabite women, both married the two sons of Naomi and Elimelek, who were from the land of Judah, both had a father-in-law who died, both were barren after ten years of marriage, both of their husbands died, both of them planned to go with Naomi as she returned back to Judah, and both were encouraged by Naomi to stop accompanying her back to Judah and instead return to Moab, their homeland.
“Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Ruth 1:8-9
At first, both Ruth and Orpah protested and insisted that they would continue following Naomi to Judah:
“Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.” Ruth 1:9-10
But Naomi continued to insist that they return to their own homeland and gave them some very good reasons to do so:
“But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!” Ruth 1:11-13
Up to this point, both Ruth and Orpah have been acting exactly the same. But suddenly, as Ruth and Orpah stood at the point of deciding whether they would continue following Naomi to Judah or return to their homeland, something happened that separated Ruth from Orpah and distinguished Ruth from Orpah forever:
“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.” Ruth 1:15-18
Ruth and Orpah: God’s scientific experiment
What was the one deciding factor that distinguished Ruth from Orpah? Ruth had the love of God in her heart for Naomi and Orpah did not. And that made all the difference in the world. They both counted the cost and, though they were in exactly the same circumstance, it was the presence of the love of God that made it impossible for Ruth not to follow Naomi and the absence of the love of God that made it impossible for Orpah to follow Naomi.
It was as if God was performing a scientific experiment and changed just one variable – the presence or absence of the love of Christ in the hearts of Ruth and Orpah – to prove that that one variable was the cause of the change in outcomes.
The critical factor as we seek to do all of the good works God has saved us to do is the presence of his love – the very love of Christ – in our heats. That, and that alone, is the only thing that can and will motivate us to do them. And with his love in our heart, doing them becomes the most natural thing in the world.
A prayer that we might know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
“For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 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.” Ephesians 4:14-19
And so, men, here is another question we all must ask ourselves: do we have the love of Christ in our heart so we can do God’s good works?
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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