Layers of Love: Love Is About Commitment

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Tina Turner asked the question, “What’s love got to do with this?” The Beatles said, “All we really need is love, love, love.” Yes, Paul McCartney would later write, “Why do we have to fill the world with all these silly love songs.” For those of the younger crowd that might be with us, we have Miley Cyrus who sings about the seven things she hates but also the seven things she loves about some boy. I wonder how Hannah Montana feels about that? If you didn’t get that joke, consider yourself lucky. You don’t have little girls in your house.

Love. It’s a popular topic of songwriters and of dime store novelists. Love, they say, is the universal language but what is it? We talk about the fact that we love our spouse and we love our children and we love our parents and, even at weak moments, one guy might say to another guy, “I love ya, man.” But what is love?

You read through the scriptures and we find out that God loves us and God tells us that we should love one another but what really is it that we’re talking about when we talk about love? It seems to me that if it is so important with our relationships with one another and our relationship with God, we really should understand what’s this thing called love?

We go to the one source that can tell us, God’s Word. After all, didn’t John just write for us through inspiration that God is love. So if we want to understand what love is, then we go to God’s Word and the more we understand about love, the more we understand about God Himself.

So I’ll ask the question again. “What is love?” If you ask a half a dozen people, “What does it mean to be in love?” well, they’ll probably talk about how they feel inside. They’ll talk about warm, fuzzy feelings and how it sort of wells up inside of them and there’s this kind of soothing sensation that comes over them when they feel in love. Well, I don’t know about you but I can get that same kind of feeling from a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter’s night. Now I really doubt that I’m going to replace my wife with a cup of hot chocolate. After all, who’d wash out the dirty cup when I was done? I’m kidding. No e-mails, please.

My point is: Is love just a feeling? Is it just a warm fuzzy inside? Do we say that we are loved by another person when this person makes us happy, when they make us smile, when they make us laugh, when we have that good feeling inside? If so, what happens when they don’t anymore? What happens when they don’t make us smile every day? What happens when we don’t find them funny or humorous? What happens when we don’t have that warm fuzzy feeling when we see them anymore? What then? Well, for a large portion of our society, what that means is we move on. We abandon that relationship and we look for another relationship because we say we must not be in love anymore. People express it all kinds of ways. They say, “Well, I guess we’ve just grown apart.” Or, “Well, she’s changed and she’s not the same person I married.” Or we say, “You know, that boy has just been disrespectful for the last time and he is bringing the whole family down so it’s time to move on.” So marriages end. Relationships dissolve and families disintegrate. If that’s all love is, is just a feeling, something we receive from somebody else, then that to me seems pretty shallow.

But God’s Word tells us love is so much more than that. Love goes much deeper than a feeling. One of the key things scripture reveals to us is that a requirement of love is commitment. It’s a commitment to the relationship, the commitment that God has to us, the commitment that we’re to show to one another. If we really want to experience love, I mean a deep lasting love, then we have to also understand that love is about commitment. If we want to have a better relationship with our spouse, a better relationship with our kids, with our parents, even with our friends, then we have to understand the whole concept of commitment and that part and parcel of love is commitment.

And commitment says several things. First of all, commitment in a relationship says that I expect challenges. Commitment says we know we live this side of heaven, so it’s a dose of reality. We live in a fallen world. We are fallen people. We are sinful people. That means that we will do and say things that hurt the people we love and the people we love will do and say things that hurt us. Our relationships are not going to be a constant mountaintop experience. It’s not going to be all warm fuzzies all the time. Commitment says that we should expect that there are going to be some valleys. There are going to be some low points. There are going to be some rocky parts of our relationship. We’re not going to like it. We don’t want to go through it but commitment says I expect that. I live this side of heaven. I live in a fallen world. It’s going to happen. When we expect it, then we can be prepared for it. Then we can be ready for it.

Now I’m not advocating that we sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop. In other words, when things are going really well with your spouse, you don’t look at them and say, “Yeah, things are good now but just you wait.” No. It’s a dose of reality so we can be prepared.
Isn’t this what Jesus did with His disciples? Consider that three out of the four gospels records for us a conversation that Jesus has with his disciples and He looks at them square in the eye and He says, “I need to tell you something, boys. All men will hate you because of me.” Now there’s a word of encouragement for the 12, isn’t it? “All men will hate you because of me.” Was Jesus trying to be a downer? Was He trying to discourage His disciples? No. He was infusing them with reality. He was getting them ready for the future, to let them know that it’s not all going to be a bed of roses, to let them know that after He goes up into heaven and they start doing His ministry in the world, it isn’t going to be all miracles and healings and 3,000 people coming to faith. They’re going to get rebuffed. People are going to throw them in jail. “All men will hate you because of me.” But when it happens, if we’re ready for it, at least somewhat, they’re prepared. “That’s right. Jesus warned us about this.”

The fact of the matter is that your spouse will not always make you feel wonderful. Your children will not always be obedient and, at least from a child’s point of view, parents are absolutely never fair. Commitment says, “I’m going to ride that out.” Commitment says, “I expect there are going to be challenges along the way. I’m not going to like it but I’m going to anticipate it.” Because the second thing commitment says is there is no Plan B.

Commitment says there is no Plan B. I like Plan B. In fact, usually I have a Plan B and a Plan C. Let’s say you’re going to have a party at your house and you decide that you’re going to have it outside. It’s going to be a beautiful day. You’re just positive of that so you plan so that you’re going to take up the entire back yard, the deck, the patio, everything. But you know what, you’re going to have a Plan B, aren’t you? In my household, there’s going to be a Plan B. Plan B says, “What if it rains?” If it rains, we’ll have to move inside so what does that mean? It means Ron has to clean the garage, that’s what it means. Because you have to have Plan B. Just in case it rains outside, you can move inside. We like to have Plan B.

We like to have Plan B in our relationships, too. Plan B in the relationship says, “If he doesn’t start being responsible, if he doesn’t straighten up, Plan B.” “If she doesn’t start being more affectionate, if she doesn’t start being more attentive, Plan B.” “If that girl doesn’t straighten out her act, if she doesn’t start making some good decisions, Plan B.” You see, we like to set out the criteria of when Plan B will kick in because if we set out the criteria, then we remove the responsibility from ourselves. We say, “We had to get a divorce.” Why? Well, because the criteria wasn’t met. So Plan B kicked in. “You see, the relationship had to dissolve. It wasn’t my choice.” The criteria wasn’t met so Plan B kicked in. “I had to move out of the house because the criteria wasn’t met by my parents. Plan B.” Commitment says there is no Plan B. God didn’t have a Plan B. God only had Plan A. Love His people. No Plan B. Nowhere in scripture do you find Plan B. Nowhere will you find God saying, “You know what? If those human beings don’t straighten out, I’m going to squash this one. I’m going to start over on Mars.” No Plan B, only Plan A. He creates two perfect people. He puts them in paradise. He asks them not to do just one thing. The one thing He asked them not to do, you know it as well as I do, that’s the thing they did. Guess what, though? No Plan B. Only Plan A. God’s going to love His people.

Look throughout the Old Testament as God’s people kept wandering away, kept worshiping false gods. No Plan B, only Plan A, love His people. Look through the centuries as God pours out His blessings on human kind and, as human kind repays Him by cursing Him and turning their back on Him, but there is no Plan B. There is only Plan A. God loves His people.

What did John say? John said, “This is how God showed His love among us. He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.” No Plan B, just Plan A. If restoring His relationship with you will cost Him the life of His Son, so be it. No Plan B, only Plan A. You see, commitment says that no matter what you’ve done in the past, God loves you. No matter what you might do in the future, God loves you. Only Plan A. God says, “Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you.” That’s Plan A. No Plan B.

If we are to love as God has loved us, there is no Plan B. Commitment says, “I’m in this relationship for good.” You see, commitment removes the temptation to abandon the relationship. If there is no Plan B, if you will, it forces you to gut it out. It forces you to go through the rough times in the relationship. It forces you to go through the rocky challenges that might be there. It says, “I’m going to put forth every effort I have into this relationship. I’m going to pour myself into this other person because there is no Plan B.” What it means is we’re going to love as God has loved us.

Commitment says no Plan B. But commitment says it’s worth it. Commitment says it’s worth it. Consider the writer of the Hebrews, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Who for the joy set before Him, scorned the shame of the cross. The joy set before Him was the salvation of your soul. The joy set before Him was the restoration of your relationship with God. The joy set before Him was the Creator being joined back again with His creation. The joy set before Him was that all who put their faith and trust in Him would spend an eternity in heaven with Him. That’s the joy that was set before Jesus and He was willing to go through the rough times. He was willing to go through hell itself if that’s what it took for the joy of restoring you to your Father in heaven. You see, commitment says it’s worth it. Commitment takes the long view and says it’s worth going through the rocky times.

Consider what God’s love means to you. Would you take just a moment and contemplate the fact that God doesn’t have a Plan B in His relationship with you. Would you take just a moment and consider the fact that God’s love is so unconditional, He’s willing to sacrifice His very Son so you can have a restored relationship with Him. When you consider the depth of God’s love, the commitment of God’s love, isn’t that a powerful thing in your life? It’s a powerful thing in my life. It changes lives. When we come to the realization of God’s love and God’s commitment for us, it turns people around. That same power can be evidenced in your relationships. That same power can be there for your spouse, your children, your friends because, as God has loved us, He says we can now love one another. That same kind of commitment God has for us, we can show that commitment with others.

Isn’t it time in our relationships that we start experiencing the power of this kind of love, the power of commitment? We start taking the long view. We expect there are going to be rocky times but we’re not going to abandon the relationship because of that because if we abandon the relationship the first time we hit a bump in the road, we lose out. We lose out in experiencing the depth of what love is really all about. It means that we’re not going to have a Plan B, that we’re going to be in this for good, whether it’s with our spouse, with our children, our friends but we’re going to be there. Do you know what happens when you put forth that kind of love? When you show that kind of unconditional love to another person? You get a snapshot of what God’s love must be like. You get a snapshot of how powerful God’s love must be as He shows that to us. If you’re on the receiving end, do you know what that means to you? To know that even when I mess up, even when I’m at my worst, I’m still loved. I’m talking about the husband who comes home for the umpteenth time and has to tell his wife that he quit yet another job. And he can see the disappointment in her eyes but yet he knows that she loves him. I’m talking about the daughter who makes one bad decision after another bad decision after another bad decision and now she really messes up and she knows Mom and Dad will not agree with what she’s done but she also knows that Mom and Dad love her. I’m talking about the friendship that is strained because of a bitter dispute and yet somehow those two friends know they’re going to be okay. They’re not going to agree on this one and it may take some time but they’re going to be okay. You see, that’s commitment. That’s love.

Love is a whole lot more than a warm fuzzy feeling inside. That’s great and that’s wonderful when that happens but love’s a lot deeper than that. It’s a lot more meaningful than that. We see it in our God who is love and we see it in His commitment to us and God says that we also can share that kind of love with others. Love, my friends, is about commitment. Amen.

Copyright 2008 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church