Whether your married or single, one of the most challenging sections in the Bible is found in Ephesians 5:25-27 – “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”

Now before we go on to thinking this call to sacrificial love is only for men, the preceding verses in Ephesians talk about the wife respecting her husband, and more importantly, there are no qualifiers given.  There is no respect your husband…if he’s having a good day or …if he’s being the man God has called him to be.  No, wives are called to love and respect their husbands, knowing they are flawed.

Husbands clearly are being called to love in the same way as Christ loved the church.  There are explicit instructions to serve, even unto death as Christ did.  So there you have it, men and women are on equal footing, we are both called to love sacrificially.  Here my point isn’t to address married life, as much as it is to give a picture of the heart of love God desires in us.

Let’s start off by extending grace to us all – NO ONE loves sacrificially as they ought to.  This is something that must be a work of God in and through us.  So we’re all hopeless to live this way under our own power.  Given this is only possible through God, prayer and time with God in His Word are the fuel for this love.  Some of you have been trying for a long time to love others without any fuel in your tank.  Like a person on the side of the road that ran out of gas, when someone comes with a gallon of gas, don’t be prideful to reject it, accept it as a gift.  God’s gift to us is His Son, and His Word through which we come to know God, His love for us, and His desire to manifest Himself in and through us by our trusting in Him.

In order to learn what it means to love sacrificially we need to define those two words – love and sacrifice.  First, Love – many of us have bought into the lie that love is an emotion, a feeling that can come and go.  How often have we heard in media that someone “fell out of love with someone” or they “grew apart”?  If that is a picture of what love is, that is the scariest idea in the world.  How awful is it that I could love someone for many years and then just one day they “grow apart”?  That is not a Biblical idea of love.  1 John 4:8 says this – “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”  So love is not an emotion, love in its purest essence is a person, Jesus Christ, and He does not change.  Numbers 23:19 tells us about God’s unchanging nature – “God is not man, that he should lie,or a son of man, that he should change his mind.Has he said, and will he not do it?Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”  So if God is love, and He is unchanging; our definition of love cannot be something that is “moved” by external forces, it must be something that wells up within us, and overflows unchangingly to those around us.  Where do we begin, some might ask?

How can you love someone else unless you know the One who is love?

Begin with Jesus.  Read about Him in the Gospel books – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  Look at how he treated people who were marginalized by society.  Look at how he painfully died, gave up his life, so that others by faith might have a new life in Him.  He is love.  What you will find is that the only way to love sacrificially is for God in you to be at work, and all you can do is seek more of God in your life.

How do we know what it means to love sacrificially?  Look right before Christ died at how the church treated Him?  There was no great uprising to save him, no, even his closest disciple Peter denied Him three times.  Yet Jesus did not walk away; rather He was beaten, and led to die on a cross for the church that mocked him.  What we see in Jesus, was Him doing whatever was necessary for the church’s greatest good.  As believers, we know that the greatest good accomplished on the cross, and chief end of the cross was our reconciliation to God (1 Pet 3:18) to know, love, and enjoy God.

Would you be willing to sacrifice your life so that others might be reconciled to God, encouraged gently to grow in their faith?  What if this sacrifice meant you had to take a different job for less money, what if it meant you had to turn down a job offer in another city, because your family was rooted in your current city?  Would you turn off the TV to go spend time with someone?  Would you sacrifice your personal desires for the well-being of others?  Will your heart be so rooted in a love for God, that your joy in obeying Him is greater than the sacrifice you make to do it?  Can your eyes be opened to see that difficult circumstances in your life are not necessarily a cause to walk away, but an opportunity to magnify the worth of God?  What a blessing it is when you can see that, and really feel that – a peace and joy washes over you that cannot be explained to others.

In Matthew 16:24 Jesus says – “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  This is a weighty charge.  Each of us has a mountain of sin compelling us to live for ourselves.  Know that Christ has overcome sin.  In Him alone, we are able to have victory, to love God and love others sacrificially.  I hope today you’ll seek to know the Person who is Love, Jesus.  I hope that His sacrificial love will compel your heart towards the same.  1 John 4:19 – “We love because He first loved us”.  Know you’re prayed for, and God is with you; as we all struggle for more of Him in our hearts and lives.  He is mighty to save.

Grace and Peace,
Adam