Overflowing Love
1 Thessalonians 3:11-12
29th October 2021
Paul speaks three blessings over the Thessalonians:
1 Thessalonians 3:11-13
Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to
come to you.
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for
everyone else, just as ours does for you.
May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the
presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.
The first of these blessings is:
1 Thessalonians 3:11
Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear the way for us to
come to you.
There's no false modesty here. Paul was confident that his presence would be a blessing to them, but he would only go if God wanted Him to.
What the NIV translates as "clear the way" would be better translated as "direct our way", as the ESV has it. Paul isn't asking God so much to remove the barriers in our way (although He does do that) as to direct – to lead, to control, to make the way straight. Even in simple, ordinary things like a journey from one Greek town to another, Paul looks for God's direction, God's enabling. Paul had learnt the lesson of submission to God in all things, great and small.
Paul really wanted to go to Thessalonica, but he wouldn't go without a sense that God wanted him to go, and a sense of how and when to travel. God wants to lead us in all things, if we would only listen for His voice. But to do that, we have to want to know what God wants us to do, to be not just willing to obey Him but desiring to do so.
The second blessing Paul speaks over the Thessalonians is:
1 Thessalonians 3:12
May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for
everyone else, just as ours does for you.
We can't do much to improve our own characters. We don't find it easy to love people more than we do. We can repent. We can try to feel, think and behave differently, but we don't make much progress. What we can do is cry out to God, asking Him to change us. And He does. The work we call "sanctification", of making us Christ-like people, is a work done in us by the Holy Spirit. We're called to repent and to co-operate with the Holy Spirit by making good choices, but the Holy Spirit does the work. He changes what we believe, how we feel, and how we behave.
Of course, the most Christ-like attribute we can have is love, so Paul blesses the Thessalonians with this blessing: "May the Lord make your love increase".
In the first blessing Paul asks that God direct his journey to Thessalonica. In the second, he asks that God change the hearts of the Thessalonians. Paul genuinely wants God to be in control of both our outward lives and our inward lives.
Is there a brother or sister in Christ, or a neighbour, or a family member, or a work colleague, whom you don't really like? That you don't really love? Is there a person whom you just want to be sarcastic with, or snide, or angry, or patronising, or resentful? Is there a person you'd rather not be bothered with? Is there someone you've never accepted? Or never forgiven? Or never respected? These attitudes are unacceptable in a Christian, because Jesus Christ isn't like that, and He's our role model as well as our Saviour.
Some people are easier to like than others. Some people can treat our love with contempt. Some are always complaining, whatever you do. Some will always find fault. Some seem to have a ministry of discouragement. Some are arrogant. Some are boring. Some never say a word, and talking to them is such hard work. Some people just don't know when you wish they'd stop talking, and the conversation begins to feel more like persecution. Some people think they're always right. Some people remember something you said a year ago that they didn't like and they're still grinding on it. But we're called to love them all.
And maybe we're not all that easy to love, either.
We can try to be nicer. I've heard it said that "Love is an act of the will" and to some extent it is. But even when we exert our will, our self-control, we may find some people annoy us, or frustrate us, or hurt us, or bore us, or confuse us, so much that we don't have the energy to be nice to them for very long. It's good to exert our self-control. It's good to try to be nice to everybody, interested in everybody, patient with everybody. And we will behave better if we do. But really, we need to ask God to make our love increase.
Many is the marriage that's been saved because one or both partners came before God and cried out, "Lord, help me to love my wife or my husband". Many is the person who found saving faith in Jesus because a Christian or a church prayed to God for enough love to reach out to that person, and include them, and honour them, when they were still rather unpleasant people. Many is the Christian who found true peace in God with the support and acceptance of a healthy church.
This is the heart of God:
Ephesians 2:4-5
…because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is
by grace you have been saved.
And if God can love us when we're dead in our sins, then we should love our neighbour when he's drunk, or violent, or dirty, or foul-mouthed, or caught in a sexual sin. We should love our neighbour when he's proud, or dismissive, or rude, or superior, or arrogant or unkind. God is our example as well as our Lord. We should love all our neighbours - Christians and non-Christian - all the time, but we don't find it easy. We need to ask God to make our love increase.
Jesus has infinite love. Jesus loves the blind, the deaf and the lame. Jesus loves lepers. He was willing to touch lepers, which was forbidden by the Law of Moses because you can catch leprosy that way. But there's a lot more to life and love than trying to avoid infection. There's more to Christian love than trying to keep ourselves safe.
Jesus didn't need to touch lepers in order to heal their bodies; He could do that anyway. Jesus touched lepers because lepers had an emotional need to be touched by another person. By touching them, the Son of God risked serious disease and made Himself ceremonially unclean, but he didn't worry about that, because He loves lepers. And we all need a hug sometimes.
Paul was a great example of a true Christian enduring stoning, imprisonment, beatings, hunger, and eventually execution, because He loved his neighbours enough to tell them about Jesus. The evangelist Hatun Tash recently demonstrated that love and life means accepting the risk of being stabbed in the face by a Muslim extremist at Speakers' Corner.
Charlie Boyle, a Church of England minister, faced disciplinary action and potential dismissal for allegedly not following strict Covid guidance at his church. He was accused of singing the last verse of "Thine Be The Glory" on Easter Sunday without a face mask, and was asked to resign. He was also accused of hugging a mourner at a funeral. What would Jesus do? Jesus said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). His servants are supposed to comfort those who mourn.
Jesus loves children. When the temple authorities were telling the children to be quiet, Jesus defended the children and their right to shout in the Temple area (Matthew 21:15-16). When His own disciples wanted the children to go away and leave them in peace, Jesus told them to bring the children to Him, and He laid His hands on them (Matthew 19:13-15).
Jesus loves working men, like fishermen. He loves tax collectors like Matthew. He loves prostitutes. He loves revolutionaries like Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot. He loves vain, ambitious people like James and John and their mother. He loves religious leaders like Nicodemus. He loves soldiers, like the one he healed after Peter had cut his ear off. And Jesus loves us. He willingly gave Himself up to be crucified for you and me. We still can't fully grasp how dreadful that was for Him. He could have prevented it, but he chose to die for us. As He said:
Matthew 26:53-54
"Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my
disposal more than twelve legions of angels?
But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled…?"
Jesus chose to die on the cross so that you and I might inherit eternal life. Jesus knows we've done bad things, said bad things, thought bad things. He knows we have no way to make amends for what we've done. So He gave Himself as payment to God for all our wrongdoing, once for all. He paid the price for your sin, so you don't have to.
As the writer to the Hebrews says:
Hebrews 12:1-3
…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily
entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the
joy that was set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and
sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you
will not grow weary and lose heart.
Jesus has infinite love. But we don't. God wants our love to increase and to overflow – to be more than we need, an abundance.
Have you ever had the experience, when you're talking to somebody and after a while you can feel your love for them draining away though the soles of your feet? When you just wish they'd stop talking? It's like you've run out of love. God wants us never to run out of love. God can fill us with His love.
I've known great unkindness in the church, and I've known great love and kindness in the church. It's not hard to tell the difference. Some of us have felt like giving up because of some of the cruel things said and done in church. Many of us have kept going because of the amazing love of Christ demonstrated in his people. Never underestimate the damage an unkind word can do. Never underestimate the good a kind word can do.
Let us endeavour to be kind, gentle and godly. We'll get it wrong sometimes. We'll make mistakes. But let's ask God to make our love overflow.
Paul's benediction over them is that this abundant love is for each other and for everyone else. Christian love isn't just love for the Christians we like. It isn't just for Christians. It's for everybody. Who knows which people will find redeeming faith in Jesus if the church loves them? Who knows which people will be turned off even the idea of Jesus if the church is unkind to them? We will answer to God for how we treat people.
Whoever you're talking to, please remember that they're made in the image of God. They're infinitely valuable. Please remember that you're probably more-or-less as sinful as they are, although your sins may be different from theirs. Please remember that God loves them. Please remember that you don't know what they've been through. Please remember that you will never completely understand the pain they've experienced. Please choose to believe that they want to be good people, just as you do. Please remember that God is patient and forgiving with you, and try to be patient and forgiving with them. Please try to give them the benefit of the doubt; interpret their actions and words in the most charitable way you can.
It's better to think well of people when they don't deserve it than to think badly of them when they don't deserve it. Remember that you need mercy, so give them mercy. Jesus said:
Matthew 5:7
Blessed are the merciful for they will obtain mercy.
He also taught us to pray,
Matthew 6:12
Forgive us are trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
We'll consider Paul's third blessing for the Thessalonians next time.