Hard

Here’s a question: If you’re of the curious sort as I am, feel free to toss this little gem into a few friendly conversations and see what comes back: Is it hard to love somebody?
Of course the short answers are yes and no, but this is hardly the type of question that’s looking for a short answer.

Is it? Is it hard to love somebody? I think most of us lean to a resounding “YES” and those reasons are commonly understood in recognizing the selflessness assumed in the word itself.

Tomorrow is Good Friday and far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to take a closer look at the beauty and magnificence of mercy and grace shed on our behalf; and our appreciation of that sacrifice. I’m not here to disagree with whether or not you lean to one side or the other. This, again, is another one of those times where I'm more interested in how we formulate our understandings and then holding them up to the Light of Scripture.

Here’s The Word:

Ephesians 5:29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:

This may seem like an odd place to start an Easter message. The image of Christ on the cross and the empty tomb are the things we usually see. And honestly, I’m not even promoting the common “exegesis” of this section of Ephesians 5, which is where we usually talk to husbands and wives about their responsibility to each other in marriage. I use this verse because there’s an assumption about love that begins in verse 25 that starts “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;”
Verse 29 digs deeper, clarifying this 'love'. Look at the first part of verse 29 which says “no man hates his own flesh” – this is the implication that everyone, innately “LOVES” themselves.
Of course in this day and age, that’s a much more difficult conversation to have but I believe God over anything contemporary thinking, and I believe it’s still just as true now as it was then.
Scripturally speaking, it looks like the love of self comes “easily”, not hard at all. It’s expressed in the everyday care we give to ourselves. Verse 29 goes onto say that The Lord gives that same kind of everyday care to the church.
I start there because I think that we believe it’s hard to love someone because of how we’ve allowed the definitions and ideas about love to change. I don’t believe that the everyday care I give myself comes at some great cost or personal turmoil to myself. I can even see how desiring good for someone else probably doesn’t HAVE to be as hard as that either. But I do know that feeling of turmoil that’s associated with love – so what is THAT?

Here’s The Word;

Matthew 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

This verse (and others) do a great job at identifying that turmoil. See, when I love myself (even when I haven’t been comparatively “good”), I can still find reason to care for myself. But on the contrary, if someone else hasn’t been particularly ‘good’ to me, I find reason to withhold that same care from them. So it’s not love that’s hard, it’s my fight with a reason TO love that becomes the issue. I withhold my love from others based on ME and my ideas of their deservedness of it… and this makes it hard.

What should I do? Looking at Matthew 5, it’s not hard to see that my gauge for giving love is where I need refinement. Not that love is hard or that I don’t have a basic understanding of what love is. The answer is then not for me to try harder at loving, but lessening myself. Not thinking more highly about myself than I ought(Romans 12:3) and to esteem others higher than I do, even higher than myself (Phil 2:3-4). These verses imply that I don’t have to like someone to provide care. It would make it easier, but it’s not (and shouldn’t be) a requirement. I'd love to delve into a comparative study of like and love, but its totally out of the scope of this post.
So, then what? Is love easy? I’m sure that a full pendulum swing from one side to the other is not the appropriate response. It’s definitely not hard for the reasons I’d imagined or for the reasons that typically stand in my way from being obedient to Christ’s commands. And what about Christ? The Bible draws us all individually into a striving towards Christ and encourages us to be an imitation of Him in regards to love. And ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ seeing His body hanging there, it again looks like loving is hard.

Here’s The Word:

Romans 5:9 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

Looking at the verse in Romans, two things stand out; God loving and Christ dying. Though the relationship is clear, it’s saying that most of us will never love so hard, as to include (or require) physical death. This idea frames the truly wonderful realization that the love that God showed the world in giving His son to meet our most pertinent need is astronomically higher than anything our love could ever be called on for, but we still strive to embody perfect love. I hope that conversations like these can reshape and reorient our understandings of love to be more in line with truth.

Closing thoughts:

        At a basic level, love doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it out to be. You’re doing it to yourself right now without a whole lot of resistance or turmoil.

        At some higher level, outward love comes at a cost. It comes with the idea of self denying and taken further, dying. The model for husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church clearly says “And gave himself for it” – but it’s not loving that’s hard, it’s dying that’s hard. In dying, we think less highly of ourselves as the justifier of who is deserving. And even that should come a little easier when we realize that while we were at our very worse, Christ loved us to death. None of us deserved His love or His life. Paul says, I die daily (1 Cor 15:31), maybe he was preparing himself each day to love rightly.

      And at the highest level, perfect love is impossible without His Spirit, but if we have Christ, we have His Spirit and He will lead us. He will enable us to overcome the ‘justifying’ and all of the selfish things that hinder us from loving rightly.

In Him,
Cros