Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
The Word That Turned the World Upside Down
(Part 3 of 3)
This idea of agape has been dying out among many professed followers of Christ because a pagan notion has subtly infiltrated our thinking. I refer to the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. If there is no such thing as real death, then Christ did not truly die. If He went to Paradise the day He was on the cross (as many mistakenly believe from a misplaced comma in Luke 23:43), then there was no true emptying of Himself, no true death on the cross, no dying the equivalent of the second death, which is the real thing. If so, Christ did not, could not, pay the penalty for human sin—and that would mean, we have to.
The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul logically makes Christ’s sacrifice to be a sham, a pretended stage play of enduring the wrath of God for sinners, when in fact He was sustained throughout by confidence of great reward to come. But when the darkness overtook Him on Calvary, the light of His Father’s face was completely withdrawn. His cry “Why hast thou forsaken me?” was no actor’s wail. Isaiah was right: “He hath poured out his soul unto death” (Isaiah 53:12), even “the second death” (Revelation 2:11).
The infiltration of a false idea from ancient paganism began soon after the apostles’ time, for Jesus warned the first of the seven symbolic churches of Revelation: “Thou hast left thy first love [agape]” (verse 4). When God’s enemy saw the power packed in that idea, his first move was to lead the early church into apostasy on that essential point. We can document step by step the progressive abandonment of the idea of agape by the so-called Church Fathers. Augustine finally worked out a synthesis of agape and self-centered love that became the foundation of medieval Catholicism. Luther tried to restore agape, but sad to say, his followers returned to the doctrine of natural immortality, and again agape nearly died out. The world is now ripe for its rediscovery.
By now we can probably begin to sense the gulf that separates human love from agape. Unless enriched with it, human love is really disguised selfishness. Even parental love can be a mere “seeking our own,” a subtle form of selfishness.
Our present epidemic of marital infidelity is evidence enough of the self-centered aspect of sexual love. Love for each other when it’s eros is based on egocentric motivations. No wonder it dies! In contrast, agape “seeketh not her own“ and “never faileth” (1 Corinthians 13:5, 8). Remember: eros is itself not something bad; we’re all here because of it. But if your marriage is based only on eros, you are probably headed for the rocks.
Having said all this, one additional contrast between human love and God’s love remains: Natural human love wants the reward of immortality: agape dares to relinquish it. This was what overturned all the value systems of antiquity.
God has not written an encyclopedia article for us about agape. Instead, He sent His Son to die on a cross, so we could see it. The true dimension of that sacrifice is that it is infinite, complete, and eternal.
Christ went to the grave for us, not because He deserved it, but because we did. In those last few hours as He hung there in the darkness, He drained the cup of all human woe to its dregs. The bright sunshine in which He had walked while on earth was gone. All thought of reward to come fled His mind. He could not see through to the other side of the dark and awful grave that gaped before Him. God is agape, and Christ is God, and there He is—dying the death we deserve. (The fact that the Father called Him back to life the third day in no way lessens the reality of His total commitment on the cross in our behalf.)
Now we come to something disturbing. It’s not enough for us to say, “Fine, glad He went through that; but you mean I must learn to love with agape? Impossible!”
We sinful, self-centered mortals can learn to love with agape, for John said: “Love [agape] is of God, and he who loves [with agape] is born of God and knows God. He who does not love [with agape] does not know God; for God is love [agape]” (1 John 4:7, 8 RSV).
Moses is an example of one who learned.
The Lord gave him a special test one day. Israel had broken their covenant by worshipping a golden calf, and He proposed to Moses that He wipe them out with a divine “H-bomb,” and start from scratch with a new people—Moses’ descendants.
The temptation to take the place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was a very real one. God liked him, but had had enough of
Moses was torn to his depths. He had never cried so much in his life. Listen, as in broken sobs this mortal like ourselves tries to change God’s mind:
“Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—” Here Moses breaks down; he can’t finish the sentence. (This is the only dash in the entire King James Bible!) He glimpses the horror of an eternal hell stretching before him if he shares
Moses stood the test. I can imagine the Lord throwing His arms of love around His weeping servant—He had found a man with love like that in His own heart.
Paul had found that same agape in his heart, for he also wished himself “accursed from Christ” for the sake of his lost people (Romans 9:1-3). Everyone who sees the cross as it truly is and believes, finds the miracle of agape reproduced in his own heart. This is how the world will be turned upside down again, “for the love [agape] of Christ constraineth us” that we “should not henceforth live unto [ourselves], but unto Him which died for [us], and rose again” (2 Corinthians
We miss the point of the New Testament if we miss agape in it. We also stay in the dark about what faith is, for New Testament faith is a human heart-appreciation of the “breadth, and length and depth, and height” of the agape of Christ (Ephesians 3:18,19). There can be no real change of heart in righteousness by faith without a true appreciation of it.
Here we are in the last moments of time before the second coming of Christ. The “remnant” church of the last days is to be distinguished as those who “keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation
As the apostles fanned out telling their story, the cross became the world’s moment of truth. In that lightning flash of revelation, every man saw himself judged. The cross became the final definition of love; and that’s why that word agape turned the world upside down. Let it turn your life upside down!
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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