Category Archives: Love

October 17, 2016 · 4:09 pm

I Am Dark, But Lovely

I’m feeling quite blue today. I am very tired. My wife has had a very painful weekend, which doesn’t seem to let up. I am feeling very unlovely.

In the middle of my blues, I am also studying the Song of Songs for the class I am teaching tomorrow, and I was struck by this passage (as well as my studies in an excellent commentary by Iain Duguid):

5 I am very dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.
6 Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother’s sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept!
(Sol 1:5-6)

The girl is dark because she works in the vineyards all day. She is poor (therefore working) and socially inferior. A mark of wealth and status was fair skin. Only one who had servants to do the hard work in the sun had fair skin, so that was what was considered beautiful. Beautiful socialites in ancient Israel did not sun themselves on the beach.

This girl had neither status nor wealth. And she did not meet the standards of loveliness in her culture. She was used to being “gazed upon” with contempt by the social elite in Jerusalem.

But she was loved by her beloved. And her beloved thought her beautiful. And her beloved TOLD her she was beautiful. So she WAS beautiful.

And this thought brings to mind another thought. Our God also loves us and thinks us beautiful. When we are unlovely, broken, discouraged, and bitten by the sun of tribulation, our beloved calls us his bride, and he longs for the consummation as much as we do! (Eph. 1:23)

Isn’t that an astounding thought? Our God, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, considers himself incomplete until His bride is by His side. He calls to us. He sanctifies us. He loves us. He considers us beautiful!

Therefore we are beautiful and loved. We are chosen by name and loved by the one we love. He calls us beautiful, and adorns us as a bride for her husband!

17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. (Zep 3:17 ESV)

Amen! Come quickly, Lord Jesus. How our flesh and blood and souls cry out for the Living God!

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May 11, 2016 · 8:02 pm

To the Newly Married

There is a fascinating verse in Deuteronomy. It isn’t marriage advice; it is a marriage command.

When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.1 (Deu 24:5 KJV)

The command is for a newly married husband to refrain from anything that takes him away from his home for a year. And the purpose of this command is so that he can “cheer up” his wife.

That’s an unfortunate translation. It means something in English that it doesn’t mean in Hebrew. In Hebrew the basic meaning of the word is to rejoice, to exult. In the form that the word is in, it means to cause that state in someone. In other words, the husband is to “make his wife rejoice.”

This is where it gets endlessly wonderful. Women are fascinating creatures; each one created just a little different. They are almost like a puzzle to be solved. God created men and women in such a way that you can’t really learn about your spouse through a how-to book or even a class. Of course, everyone wants a shortcut, especially since we now live in a cursed world. But God didn’t change his creation because we became short-sighted, self-absorbed narcissists. The rule still applies. If you want a blessed and beneficial marriage, learn how to make your wife exult. What makes her tick? What does she fear? What does she dream of?

Do you know?

Peter wrote that we are to live with our wives with understanding (1 Peter 3:7), which is also what Moses is saying. Learn about your wife. Understand her. Think of it: God made marriage in such a way that you can only truly be blessed and happy if you learn to get to know someone other that yourself, and there are no shortcuts. You actually have to take the time to do it.

But, contrary to millions of self-appointed marriage gurus, it isn’t “hard work”, any more than sanctification is hard work. Rather, it is growth, joy, love, pressing toward the mark with uplifted head. We aren’t slaves drudging through mines, but children on our way to glory! What better way to picture this great truth than the marriage of two lovers, learning to exult in one another.

Oscar Wilde wrote, “Women aren’t meant to be understood; they are meant to be loved.” But this is the raving of a narcissist who thinks very highly of himself. Guys, do away with the jokes about not understanding women. You are commanded to do just that. But to do that you have to put off your own self-absorption, and figure out how to listen. Listen with your ears, with your eyes, even with your finger-tips. She’ll let you know what causes her to exult, but you have to tune in.

The Bible says that you have a year. I always counsel newly-weds to turn the TV off and hole up together as much as possible for the first year. Don’t try to learn about your wife from stereotypes, books (especially of the “women’s place is in the home” variety) or locker room gossip. This is your wife you are learning about and she is the only one who can show you what causes her to exult. You are on a wonderful journey of discovery together.

In this day, one of the most prevalent ways to destroy the mystery and delight of loving a woman is pornography. If you cannot tell the difference between the sexual assault that is pornography and a loving relationship that is marriage, then please do not get married. Instead, repent and deal with your own abuse issues before you inflict yourself upon an unsuspecting wife. Marriage won’t cure your pornography issues. Only repentance will. You cannot learn how to cause a woman to rejoice by watching pornography. God did not create either you or her that way. There is no shortcut. you must put off yourself and your own lusts and actually learn to care about another person, namely, your wife.

The fascinating thing about marriage is that the learning never ends. Love and friendship and even romance blooms and grows more intense each year – once you learn how to listen.

If you have been married for a while and find your love growing stagnant, it is probably because you didn’t heed God’s command. Repent and ask your wife’s forgiveness for failing to understand her. Then start your year now. Turn the TV off. Give up boys’ nights out, and learn how to cause your wife to rejoice. It may not be too late.

Isn’t Hebrew fascinating?

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August 18, 2015 · 10:30 am

Does the cross glorify passive acquiescence to violence?

From Donald MacLeod, Christ Crucified.

But if the cross does not quite glorify violence, does it not glorify passive acquiescence in violence? This is a serious issue, particularly if it can be shown that part of the message of Calvary is that victims of abuse should endure it silently, soak up the pain, offer no resistance and demand no justice.  The charge gains plausibility from the fact that too many Christian men have seen meekness as a distinctive feminine virtue and quiet submission as the crowning glory of womanhood, and too many Christian women have accepted this role definition. Even where they have not been abused and violated, they have taken it for granted that they exist to serve their husbands and children, and should sacrifice their own personal fulfillment to those objects.

The cross certainly commends non-violence and non-resistance to the extent that it portrays Christ as one who went like a lamb to the slaughter and who suffered without any threat of retaliation (Isa. 53:7; 1 Pet. 2:23). This fits in with the great kenotic perspective which Paul describes in Philippians 2:6-11. Far from insisting on divine rights, Christ made himself a no-person, devoid of rights, and there can be no doubt that the apostle lays this down as the paradigm for all believers. But that is precisely the point. It is the paradigm for ALL believers, above all for the powerful, who must renounce their own rights and strive for the rights of others. No man who takes the cross as his paradigm can make it an excuse for demanding that women acquiesce under his authority and submit to servility and abuse. Christ has exactly the same destiny in mind for the woman as for the man, and in the meantime, each of us, male and female, is called to do everything in our power to encourage the other in his or her journey towards that destiny. At the foot of the cross, the husband is bound to subordinate his own interests to those of the wife no less than she is bound to subordinate hers to those of her husband. It is patriarchy, not the doctrine of atonement, that needs to be redeemed. (Page 192-193)

When asked for the secret of a happy marriage, the answer is the same as the secret to a blessed and happy life. “Take up your cross, and follow Jesus.” I would add that the responsibility to put to death our old nature belongs to every Christian, as MacLeod so admirably teaches. But it is doubly laid upon the husband when Paul also writes, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.”

Perhaps it is because God knows our pride and our demands and our desire to be kings in our homes that He commands us twice: first as Christians, “Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus;” and second as husbands, “Love your wives, as Christ loved the church.”

It is time to put to death our lusts for power, and put on the love of Jesus in service to our families.

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February 25, 2015 · 9:56 pm

Because she mattered

Luke 8:43-48

And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched. And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. And when the woman saw that she was not hid, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared unto him before all the people for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately. And he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.

Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, had begged Jesus to come to his house to heal his only daughter, who was dying. Jesus agreed and they began to make their way through the crowd. The crowd pressed him from all sides. It was slow going. A jostle here, an elbow there. Besides the regular crowd hassle, Jesus was also quite famous at the time. Everyone wanted to touch him, to be near, to see him.

He makes his way. Suddenly, he stops. Everyone else stops. Jesus is looking around at the crowd.

“Who touched me?”

A silence descends. Maybe they didn’t hear the question right. It was a strange question. They were in the middle of the crowd, shoved and jostled from every side, and Jesus says, “Who touched me?”

When Jesus persists in looking around and asking, Peter finally wonders. “Jesus, we’re in the middle of a crowd. Everyone has touched you.”

Jesus continues. “No. You don’t understand. Someone touched me. I felt power go out from me. Who touched me?”

We know that Jesus is true God and knows all things. We know that the grace to heal is not accidental. Jesus healed this woman and did it on purpose, knowing what He did. So why did he say, “Who touched me?”

Jesus also told us to pray, and said “You Father knows what you need before you ask.”

So why pray? Hold that question a moment. Let’s go back to the crowd.

We have the advantage of the readers. We know who touched him.

A woman with an issue of blood for 12 years touched him.        Under Moses’ law, a woman in the time of her cycle was ceremonially unclean. She could not enter into the congregation of the Lord until her time was over and she was cleansed. Further, anyone who touched a woman in the time of her cycle was also ceremonially unclean and could not enter into the congregation of the Lord. She had been ceremonially unclean for 12 years.

12 years.

12 years of being able to touch no one. 12 years of spending every penny she had on doctors and being told that there was nothing to be done. 12 years of being excluded from her family, her friends, the worship of the Lord.

12 years of loneliness, isolation. She was an outcast, unclean. She was used to the look. You know the one. “Stay away from me. You’re unclean. You’re not worth my time. You’re not even worth God’s time.”

The rabbis had a prayer. “I thank God that I am male, Jewish and free.” No one else was worth the time.

Especially not this woman – an endless flow of blood. Outcast. Unclean. Stay away.

If you have ever experienced being an outsider, you know how this woman felt. She was excluded from every circle, every gathering, every fellowship. If you have always been in the circle, you have no idea.

You don’t know what it is like to never be welcomed, never be accepted. To always be the odd one out, the “outsider”. It’s our worst fear come true. That we are no good. Not fit for company, either with God or man. Weird. An outsider. “She’s just not ‘our kind of people’”

She had had this for 12 years. Not our kind of people. An outsider. Unclean. Outcast.

12 years.

By now she had given up. She was now used to being alone and outcast – at least, used to pretending and surviving. But she hears about Jesus. She truly believes that he has the power to heal her.

But she has been an outcast for 12 years, and those habits do not easily turn themselves off. She would not again risk the contempt and scorn of the included, the clean. She would not speak. She would not draw any attention to herself. She would just sneak through the crowd and touch his garment.

And she reaches out, touches his garment and the whole world stops.

The first thing that she notices is that she is completely cleansed. She feels the power. She feels the healing. Everything has changed. She is like a schoolgirl again!

The next thing that she notices almost immediately is that everything is silent. Everyone is looking around. And Jesus is asking, “Who touched me?”

It like the worst nightmare for one who has been a pariah for 12 years. She is used to the shadows and now the spotlight is on and pointing right at her.

She shakes her head and tries to slink away. But the Master persists.

Now he is looking right at her (see Matthew 9:22). Who touched me?

Why? Why didn’t He just let it go? He had already healed her and given her life back! Why is he persisting on saying “Who touched me?”

The answer is here: this woman had been an outcast – filthy and unclean for 12 years. Nothing will make you feel more filthy than actually being filthy. There wasn’t anything that she could do about it. But Jesus came to collect his sheep. He came to call out a people for his name. He came to deliver His people from their sins – so that they might KNOW the Lord.

Think of this: God doesn’t just save us from our sins. He doesn’t just heal our iniquities. He actually delights to call us his bride, his people, his children, his sons and daughters!

But this woman has been unclean for 12 years. What she has to say isn’t wanted. Isn’t needed. She isn’t’ worth the bother. People quit listening to her years ago. People quit caring years ago. All she had left was sneaking through the crowd and touching the hem of the garment. If she could just be healed, she would go away, no one would be bothered, and everyone could go about their lives.

But Jesus came to call His people home. He wouldn’t let this one get away. She needed to know that HE had the time to listen. That he cared, that he would stop just for her. That she mattered to HIM. That her life was redeemed from the grave and it was important to him.

To Jesus, she wasn’t a nobody, she wasn’t an outcast – for He had taken that away.

This is the beauty of the doctrine of election. God chose ME. He doesn’t love everyone in general, for that would mean that He loves no one. He loves ME. He chose ME to be His bride.

This is what the woman needed to know. Not only did Jesus heal her, but Jesus loves her, hears her – has betrothed Himself to her forever.

She needed to know that His blood would take ALL of her sickness and weakness and uncleanness and nail it to the cross forever so that she could live, so that she could know the Lord.

And how can you KNOW the Lord if you don’t talk to him?

So He looks this unclean, outcast woman in the eye and says “Who touched me?” And she falls on her knees and tells him everything.

That she has had this horrible uncleanness for 12 years.

That it hurts; that she is weary and desperate and helpless.

She tells him her pain and her hurt and her losses.

She tells him what it is like to be outcast and alone.

How it feels to spend every penny on doctors and they can’t help.

We were created to be in fellowship with God. We were created with ears because God hears. We were created with tongues and breath and mouths because God speaks. And we were created with the gift of speech so that we could talk with God Himself – a God who speaks. And a God who loves to listen! He delights to hear our prayers!

Jesus didn’t suffer the pains and torments of hell so that we could just touch his robe and slink away. He won’t let it happen. He will say, “Who touched me” until he is looking right at us. He redeemed us from our sin and misery; He calls us His own; He has betrothed us to Himself forever – and He desires that we talk to Him.

Think of it! The Creator and Sustainer of the whole universe offered Himself for ME because He loved me and wants me back in fellowship! He wants me to talk to Him. He wants us to always and forever acknowledge that we have absolutely nothing apart from Him; every good thing comes from His hand alone.

And further, He desires that we know that He is willing to save, being our heavenly Father, and able to save, being almighty God.

And He keeps saying, “Who touched me…” looking right at us until with fear and trembling we fall down on our knees before Him and finally tell Him everything.

Everything. Our pain, our longings, our frustration, how many years it has been, what it is like to be despised, outcast, unclean…

What it feels like to spend our last penny on doctors who can’t help. What it is like to struggle against sin and misery and how we long to overcome it. How much we long to be in His presence, clean and whole and healed. We tell him of those who persecute, of those we long to be reconciled to. We tell Him of our hurts and the hurts that we have caused others. And as we are telling Him we learn a little more about what it means to KNOW the Lord

Notice also she tells him how she was healed immediately. We pray because it is the chief part of thankfulness. Jesus did it. Not her. There wasn’t anything she could do. She didn’t deserve His kindness and mercy, but He was able and willing and actually healed her.

He redeems our life from destruction and crowns us with lovingkindness and tender mercies, so that we might know Him. So that we might talk to him.

As Calvin says, we enter into holy conversation with God Himself. And in this conversation we also hear the voice of God in the holy Scriptures: “Go in peace; your faith has made you whole.”

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May 14, 2014 · 8:59 pm

Please don’t love on me.

There’s a disturbing new trend in churches.  I see it frequently.

I know that many have no respect for the English language, and perhaps use this phrase without thinking about it.  But I would like for you to think about it.

While you are thinking about it, I beg you – please don’t “love on me”.  I know that your pastor has perhaps told you that “we just want to love on ya!”  But I beg you to stop.
Treat me with kindness.  Listen to me.  Don’t gossip or slander me.  But please don’t love on me.

Respect my family.  Say a kind word.  Listen to me; I will listen to you.

Don’t jump to conclusions about me; don’t be quick to speak or hear of evil about me.  But please don’t love on me.
Don’t join in condemning me; don’t hate me and speak all matter of evil against me falsely.  Don’t lie about me.  Tell me the truth.  But please don’t love on me.
Bear with me; tell me if I’ve offended you and give me an opportunity to reconcile.  Untangle me from sins that you may see me tangled in.  Point me to Christ.
Be kind to my children.  Pray for us. Smile at me; I am smiling back.
But please don’t love on me.

The problem is that pesky preposition “on”.  Someone thought it was folksy and clever, and it has spread like a virus.  But it spoils everything.  It makes love an act of aggression with me as the victim and you as the perpetrator.
It also takes away from a very beautiful concept.
Love is a powerful word filled with powerful content.

God loved us and gave us His only begotten son.
Love one another, even as Christ loved His church.  Jesus washes us with His blood; cleanses us with His Spirit, releases us from bondage; defeated death and sin and misery on the cross – because He loved us.  He has sent His spirit to work love in our hearts – love for God and for our neighbor.

Loving ON someone, however, is an entirely different concept.  If what you mean is what the Bible means by love – then please just say “love” and leave it at that.  Better yet, just show your love by your works.  Love is a bit like fame.  If you have to tell someone you are, then you aren’t.  Love, like fame, is easy to spot and doesn’t need to be announced.
I don’t even know what “loving on you” means.  But I tend to think that if I catch you loving on my wife, I might react strongly against it.  If I find you loving on my kids, I may just call the police.
Please don’t make me a victim of your love.  That somewhat defeats the purpose, does it not?

 

 

 

 

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