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“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers…. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” – 1 John 3:16, 4:20
” ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.’ “ – John 15:12-13
“And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” – Colossians 3:14
“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” – 1 Peter 4:8
One would be hard pressed to live any sort of Christian life, much less a life of revolutionary Christianity, without having some notion of the importance of love in sustaining that life. Heck, the great endzone verse, John 3:16, gives a statement which is fully predicated on the basis that God so loved us. And so, through the ministry of Jesus and the apostles we see that this act of love on the part of God, and the act of love on the part of Jesus for dying on the cross (1 John 4:10), the call to love is transferred to us.
However, many these days want to confuse love as spoken of in the gospel with the love found in the world. They teach that we should love the earth, love ourselves, and no matter what, as long as it is done in “love”, any action is just peachy. Yet, what the world and liberal theologians paint as “love” often times stands in stark contrast to the love we’re called to as a revolutionary Christian. We are told that “God is love” (1 John 4:16), and not that this is an equality, that there is something called “love” and something called “God” and they are actually the same thing, but instead that whatever there is that is love can be wholly found in the character of God. Thus, we must be slow to assume anything is love that is clearly in contradiction to God as revealed in scripture.
Moreover, the message we see in 1 John 3:16 and the Gospel of John 15:12-13 is clear: the greatest love is shown by the willingness to lay our life down for the sake of another. Then, interpreting this with the understanding that love reflects the character of God, and equipped with the knowledge that Christ’s love lead him to die a sacrificial death on the cross so that we may be reconciled to God, we understand that to love in the way Christ instructs us means that we should sacrifice all of our physical pleasures and ties for the cause of making Christs name known. As it says in Matthew, whoever loves their family more than Jesus is not worthy of following him (ch. 10:37), nor is anyone who values their possessions on this earth (ch. 19:21), and so anyone who tries to hold onto their worldly life will surely lose everything in eternity (ch. 10:39).
Furthermore, if we are to imitate Christ’s love in this manner, then we must also acknowledge that this love is especially for the unbelievers. Romans 5:6-8 says:
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
So often we are proficient at demonstrating love to fellow believers, but in order to be truly revolutionary we must be even more willing, willing enough to “take up our cross daily” and to die for those still trapped in sin. If we are to demonstrate true revolutionary Christian love, we must be willing to lay down our lives, risk everything we have in this world, in order to see the reconciliation of every alcoholic and prostitute and deadbeat dad and homosexual and drug addict and pedophile to the one true God.
The people living in the world hate us. They hate us not only because they disagree with us, but also because we know the mystery of life everlasting, we know the peace of living a life in which Christ has redeemed us from sin, and yet all too often we are too afraid to exercise the revolutionary love to which we are called, laying down our lives in order that they may know this as well!