June 22, 2008
Chris Strevel

The kindnesses cascade through my mind like a mountain stream. I remember my sweet, first-grade teacher giving me a hug for reading a story well. Mrs. Cornelius, my old and stooped fifth grade teacher, stood up to me, kept me in from recess, and told me in her raspy voice that if I would not talk so much, I might learn more. There was an old blind woman in a nursing home we occasionally visited, Mrs. Daniels, who always welcomed us into her room with a smile, a song, and a story. I can hear the ball swoosh through the net on the basketball court my father built for me one summer. My high school Bible teacher often met me for breakfast before school and used the time to encourage me to rise above mediocrity and live for Jesus Christ. For many years, the mailman would stop his vehicle and talk with me about life. When I graduated from high school, my pastor gave me a life-altering book with an inspiring inscription.

Streams of kindness continue to flow. A student takes the time to write a brief note of appreciation for the year’s instruction. A church member sends me an encouraging note of appreciation for a sermon or visit. One of my children gives me a hug at just the right moment – not knowing that I desperately needed it. For years, an older Christian couple sent my family a monthly gift; it often arrived in the nick of time. A church member stops me on the way out the door to ask, “How are you doing?” My beloved wife serves with cheerfulness.

I am soaked with kindness. I realize that my life has been a continual outpouring of my heavenly Father’s goodness and love. He uses a variety of persons and events. When my heart is rightly humbled, these memories inflame my heart to love and serve him more. They wipe away depression as the sun shines through the clouds. The goodness of God flows down from the sacrifice and merits of the crucified one. This is my chief and life-defining kindness; the Son of God died for me, for my lovelessness, that in place of my selfishness he might erect a kingdom of selfless love.

I reflect upon those things that seem to matter the most to men today: comfortable surroundings, economic security, personal beauty, sexual satisfaction, fame. What have these things to do with love? Will they last? In old age, will their memory sustain and comfort? Today, will these things change me for the better, or will they cause me to descend deeper into the inescapable labyrinth of self-seeking pride, the harbinger of further discontent. I want something solid, enduring, memories to cheer the heart and give hope when the dark days come, something to demonstrate beyond any doubt that I truly know God and am an heir of his eternal kingdom. In the process, I would like to make the world a better place. Somehow. Some way. I am wearied with superficiality, to-do lists, the meaningless offerings of a burned-out culture looking for meaning in a world raped of purpose beyond the immediate, the next big thing, the next opportunity to forget its emptiness.

Where should I search? What can I do to make the world a better place? It is too big, too distracted. I see men focusing upon political change. If we could only get the right men elected to high office, better laws passed, less (or more) government interference, more (or less) market autonomy. Ah, that would be lasting change. So goes popular wisdom. Even the church has become just another political player, albeit with an ostensibly better platform and moral authority from God. Yet I see the lives of many Christian leaders. Integrity is often lacking. Those who shout “God’s law” the loudest are sometimes the first to practice pragmatism, to seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. Do we really have moral authority? Our divorces, immoralities, and everyday meanness belie our profession to be on God’s team, to be servants of the crucified One. We are self-seekers. Celebrity-ism is as rampant inside as outside the church. Again, artificiality, salesmanship, and marketing. Will these things produce lasting change? I sense that the tides of political change are fickle. Good and bad, conservative and liberal, isolationism and globalism – the fell voice of the sirens is heard through both – calling me away from what lasts, the real source of lasting change, in my own life, in the church, and in the world.

The hubris of professing cross-bearers is suffocating. We will change the world. We will transform culture. We will build the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Where? When? Life in the church has become like a new restaurant. It opens to rave reviews. It claims to offer haute cuisine, to have discovered the ultimate recipe for success, for things that will work, satisfy, change, last. Do our lives back up these claims, or, as I fear, is the name of God blasphemed among the Gentiles because of us, because we say one thing and live another, because even the ostensible good we undertake in the name of God is often done with meanness and arrogance? Have we changed anything, recently, for the better? Or are we simply another postmodern player seeking to grab power, whatever power we can, in order to impose our image upon the unwashed masses, whom we consider ignorant hoi polloi, unworthy of our time and energy unless they can somehow serve our interests or make us feel better about ourselves, that we are accomplishing something. Are we simply religious consumers, using up men, books, and experiences to promote ourselves, our own agendas, even though we convince ourselves that our agenda is written on the reverse side of the Ten Commandments? Good restaurants often fall into mediocrity, or they are franchised into sterility and sameness. Is this our faith? Have we let the truths that once excited us to action and ardor become another “been there, done that” phase, leading us to search for the next big thing in the hopes that it will really be the answer.

We sense that we must do something. The evening news and the evening blog give little reason for optimism. Whatever is left of the West, of liberty, sacrifice, and courage, whatever we once really had of faith and family, of kinship and worldview solidarity, is rapidly deteriorating. Yet, do not we have a great commission? Do we not have the promise of the Son of God’s presence and power? Yes, we say to ourselves. There is power in the cross. There is another King, one Jesus. I have heard of his transforming power in past ages, likely worse times than those in which I live. So, we think, let us duplicate the past, recover its magic, speak in its idioms, dress in its costumes. Again, frustration ensues. The glories of the past are not connecting with the realities of the present. No one is listening to me, except the few who share my concerns and have already adopted my outlook. Should we do as some have suggested, prepare for a new dark ages and form enclaves of intellectual and spiritual monasticism, hoping to survive the approaching storm, the surge of secularism.

Wherever one looks, this surge is sweeping the lands that once claimed to be bastions of truth, knowledge, and freedom. For several generations, our economy has been controlled and manipulated by an unholy trinity of statists, corporate interests, and speculators. Worthless, unbacked currency, escalating debt, and frantic consumerism are the results. Our government schools are indoctrination centers where youthful guinea pigs are fed the poison of behavior-controlling drugs, revisionist history, and sexual license. It is little wonder that boys are rebelling, sometimes taking up guns, and girls are running to the temple of sex to find warmth. There is no certainty to be found, for objective truth has been exiled; its claims are too uncomfortable, demanding, and embarrassing. The foundations of nobility, honor, and courage have been systematically eroded from the broader culture by the forces of agnosticism, materialism, and entertainment. Relationships, even the most intimate, are used and tossed away like an old shirt. The men who hold the reins of power would not have been allowed to serve as janitors in past ages. The fearful specter of professional politicians, government by unelected bureaucracy, and special interest, against which we were constantly warned by our Founders, has left us with few options; most withdraw from the process in recognition that the system is terminally diseased. Yet we think our way of life to be the best and go to war to make others participate in our mediocrity, support our appetites, and enjoy our definition of liberty: uncensored access to pornography, radical egalitarianism, and expensive consumerism. Comparisons to the ancient Roman Empire are made. Julius Caesar, however, when conquering Gaul, freely admitted that Rome was not bringing a better way of life to the barbarians, and that if he were in their place, he would fight for liberty with the same tenacity, refusing to yield to those bent on subjugation. At least he was honest.

I remember kindness. I have seen beauty, sacrifice, and nobility. The streams of kindness wash over me. Love has changed me for the better, I hope. God’s love certainly has, for he has redeemed the world through the sacrifice of his Son. Here is something upon which I can build my life, a power that needs no great organization or slick advertisement. Kindness. Love. Putting the other person first. Refusing to think only of my own needs, duties, and desires but recognizing that others are image-bearers. Ultimately, life is about the meaningful interaction we have with others, whether believers or unbelievers. Other men are not a supporting cast in the movie of life that is all about me. This is the way most of us live; we think of others only when the tangent of their lives intersects with ours. We then hasten back to our private script, glad to be free of the inconvenience of human contact. Back to the computer, television, or whatever electronic gadget gives us a sense of order and control. We slink into the cave of self. This has made us ugly, self-centered, and useless. Even in the church, what is the purpose of our theology, our piety, and our programs if not to glorify God and to serve one another? Neither of these is primarily directed to the self, though the self flowers only if in forgetfulness of self, God and my brothers are made the object of my desires, service, and sacrifice. Then, I remember what Jesus said. “By this, all men shall know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

The Power of Love

Jesus’ words echo through the universe. When he spoke them, the world was dog eat dog. The Roman philosophy was “might makes right.” Pilate’s agnosticism sums up the Roman outlook: “What is truth?” In such a climate, love was a hindrance to conquest, to control. The Jewish outlook is infamously exemplified by the Parable of the Good Samaritan. None but one’s own specific group is worthy of attention or affection; the entire Gentile world was unclean, sub-human. Jesus, however, touched lepers. Unthinkable. Among his circle of associates were many godly women; in the Talmud, to speak to a woman is to take a step toward hell. He counted the dregs of society as his field of labor, moving among them, encouraging them, healing them, preaching to them the good news of the kingdom of God. He was moved with compassion toward them, for they were as sheep having no shepherd. When the fickle, unbelieving masses eventually turned upon him, tens of thousands of healed and restored men stood as witnesses against themselves, against their own experience of the transforming power of the love of God in Jesus Christ. It is no wonder that the kingdom of God was taken away from them. They rejected love.

To his disciples, Jesus manifested the same love. The night of his betrayal stands out and is the context of his call to love. The disciples were shocked to find Jesus, their Lord, kneeling to wash their filthy feet. It is not, however, the filth that makes his love so dramatic. It is, rather, that the Son of God would so humble himself, so love his disciples that he would take the lowest place. His was no false humility, no artificiality, no pretense, but pure, personal, sacrificing love. Peter was so abashed that he initially repulsed Jesus’ display of love. It is my guess that the strength of his resistance was prompted by the depth of his pride. If he allowed Jesus to wash his feet, Peter felt that his understanding of leadership, of discipleship, of the kingdom of God must be radically altered. It was not a matter of who would sit at Jesus’ right hand but who would kneel and serve with him. Jesus pointedly demonstrated true greatness: to assume the position of the lowest. The power of love triumphed over human arrogance. It crushed it. Peter and the other apostles, the church, and eventually the world would never be the same again. Another event, however, occurred first that sealed the power of love and gave universal significance to his “go and do likewise.”

Having loved his own, he loved them to the end. This is not dramatic flourish on John’s part. It is a declaration that our Savior’s life of suffering and service, his final hours of agony, and his atoning death were all prompted by his love for his people – eternal, unfailing, sacrificing love. Yes, he was absolutely committed to doing the will of his Father, but even here we must fall back upon love. Jesus loved the Father perfectly; this is the reason he obeyed the Father perfectly. Jesus loved those given to him by the Father; this is the reason he was willing to endure the cross and despise its shame. At the cross we are confronted by divine justice satisfied; we are also confronted by absolute love manifested. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. It was love that prompted such an incomparable gift. It was love that motivated Jesus to offer himself for our sins. It was love that led to a new idea and power in the world: agape. Love is sacrifice. Love is active. Love is service. Love is selfless. Love lays down its life for its friends. Whether we think of Jesus’ interaction with the struggling men and women of his day, his example to the disciples, or supremely of his sacrifice on the cross, love defines and dominates the horizon of thought. It seizes the heart and will not let it go. It is no wonder that Paul prays that we might know the height, width, depth, and breadth of the love of Christ. It is no wonder that the knowledge of this love is said to fill us with all the fullness of God. God is love. His love redeemed the world, changed the world, and introduced a new paradigm of power. What neither politics, nor education, nor all the treasuries in the world can do, God did by love. He reached down to us from infinite glory to provide an indescribable gift that we might know, have, and practice love.

Love Transforms

And so God’s love changed the world. His love was not mere sentiment, a blank check of forgiveness, or any other of the love potions ordered by men today. His love is sacrifice, the active purpose, compassion, and power to do good, to benefit the undeserving, to save his people from their sins. His love is not lawless, for the first step in restoring the rule of love was to satisfy the demands of his justice. In his wisdom, mercy and truth, love and justice, met and kissed. Love provided the sacrifice; justice was satisfied through substitutionary love. Propitiation was provided through sacrifice. By this, by taking us into the depths of Trinitarian love, he demonstrated that the world is fundamentally changed not through politics, education, or philosophy, but through love – his love first, the love of his Son in history, then the love of the Spirit in our hearts responding to and pulsating with his love. The earliest believers were known for their agape feasts, the meals they shared together at the conclusion of their worship gatherings, during which they observed the Lord’s Supper. Even the pagans, who despised this new sect, first as nocturnal perversion then as an enemy of the state, were compelled to note the reality of their love for one another, even for the lost. Here was no private sect, enfolded into itself, viewing outsiders with suspicion, concerned with nothing but its own piety, making political change its primarily goal. According to the followers of Jesus, the old prejudices of race, economics, and class, the fodder of power politics, conspiracies, and imperialism, were abolished. All were sinners; all might enjoy the reality of God’s love. But the love of Jesus was the strongest love of all. Men, women, even children would die for the love of the crucified One. And they would die singing praises, practicing kindness to their tormentors, calling upon them to repent and know this love. The last surviving apostle, John, when he was no longer able to make it to service under his own power, was carried in a litter. His last known public words were: “Little children, let us love one another. If we do this, it is enough.” It was. The masses of Roman people began to notice. By the end of the second century, many of the pagan temples, according to Pliny, were hardly attended. Love began to triumph. Sacrifice was noticed. Pagans became non-pagans. Persecution only intensified the torch of love, for it caused the masses to feel pity for those being tormented for such a simple, wholesome, and kindly faith.

Dangerous Delusion

Then, a great tragedy occurred. Constantine the Great adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. This in itself might have been a good thing. Love and sacrifice might have continued to flourish. Being freed from the constant specter of persecution, love might have found broader and more efficient outlets and opportunities. Yet when Constantine attended the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., he saw elders and bishops entering without limbs, with gouged out eyes, wearing the garments of their poverty – the effects of the last great Roman persecution only two decades earlier. He thought to himself, “The leaders of the church should have the same dignity, prestige, and earthly pomp as their former persecutors.” He erected grand worship facilities, clothed the church’s leaders in the vestments of worldly dignity. Love was undermined. Ambition, greed, and splendor obscured the brilliance of love and the beauty of sacrifice. The cross lost its thorns. Constantine’s actions, whatever his intentions, laid the foundations for the medieval papacy, with its external religion, political intrigues, and non-crossing bearing ethic. Constantine sought to enrich the church; he actually impoverished it by removing the cross from its shoulders and clothing love with worldly robes.

Yet, love was too powerful to die. It was kept alive in the hearts of many of the church’s leaders, like Augustine, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, whom Luther once said was four hundred times better than all the monks of the Middle Ages, and the Waldenses. As long as the gospel of grace was kept more or less pure, even if many non-authorized traditions crept in under the cloak of expediency, external unity, and tradition, love survived. It flamed forth again when the word of God began to strum the chords of the human heart. Romanism was dying. It denied the crucified One, reduced him to a cooperating grace, denied the all-sufficiency of his once-for-all sacrifice, and sought true religion in the traditions and rituals of power-hungry bishops and popes. God’s word became available again in the common tongues of men, who, finding this long-forgotten treasure and selling everything for the pearl of great price, began dying again for truth, for the love of God in Christ, for one another as fellow-servants of the Lord of love. A great Reformation began. The cobwebs of a millennium of love-choking false doctrine and life-destroying ritual were swept away. The magnificence of God’s love began to peep through human ambition and pomp. Sacrifice surged. Simple religion, biblical religion freed from human wisdom and tradition gained ascendance. Nations were reformed. God’s law and love for Christ formed new nations. Truth begat love; love begat sacrifice; sacrifice begat liberty.

Then, religion turned inward. Great awakenings of religious feelings often gave way to emotionalism, pietism, and then transcendentalism. Prosperity brought forgetfulness of God. Men began resting in the trappings of liberty while ignoring its roots in the truth of God’s love. The city of man desired the fruits of love through the centralization of governments, planned economies, and commercialism. Theological liberalism joined the fracas by turning God’s love into mere sentiment, or a paradigm of the God-within, or social humanitarianism of general religious feelings without the ties of divine truth that bind the heart of man to the saving love of God in Christ and give legitimate direction to love. And now? We seem to have imbibed Constantine’s vision of an outwardly splendid church: grand buildings, political involvement, diminished cross-bearing. The church in the West has lost its edge because it no longer wields the two-edged sword of Christ upon itself, then upon the broader culture. We seek détente with the world through conservative alliances. We market religion, as if gospel love and doctrinal orthodoxy can be sold in a catalog. We worship gurus. We look for light, but behold darkness. Truth is trampled in the streets, the money-changers have returned to the temple, and love perishes in the wake of our hubris. We are too busy to wash the saints’ feet, too impatient to engage in man-to-man discipleship, too leveraged to live the sacrifice of our Savior. Our religion is another commodity, a personal hobby, something to make us feel good after dinner, intellectually superior, and morally satisfied. We have put our trust in governments, top-down political movements, and dominion slogans. And thus, our circumstances become more perilous, our liberties more precarious, and our lives more puerile. We have almost placed ourselves in the position of needing a miracle to survive.

Progressive Change

The miracle is in our midst. It is love. There is nothing like it in the entire world. Love changed the world. Through the sacrifice, resurrection, and enthronement of Jesus Christ, the lover of our souls, the world is now filled with men, women, and young people who profess to know his love in their hearts. They may be black or white, rich or poor, scientists or plumbers. Each has one testimony. “I was saved by the love of God through the Lamb of God.” “He first loved me.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and gave his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Where this confession is legitimate, it will manifest itself in “labor produced by love.” Such labors are very simple but indescribably profound: meals taken to the sick and elderly, compassion to the homeless, service to an unbelieving neighbor, teaching toddlers in Sunday school, thinking of others as being more important than oneself, praying for others without ceasing, refusing to pass on gossip, endeavoring to believe the absolute best about others, patiently bearing with one another’s faults, longsuffering, rejoicing in the success of others, even if I am not particularly successful, giving any anonymous gift of money to a poor brother in Christ, loving the outcast, showing hospitality to the stranger. Even giving a cup of cold water, Jesus says, if it is done in his name, will be rewarded. The works of love are endless, each carrying within itself the power of the Savior, the presence of the Spirit, and the imprimatur of the God of love. Each contributes to the building of Christ’s kingdom, the overthrow of Satan’s regime of sin-blinded selfishness and self-absorption. Each requires no great organization or advertisement. The love of the crucified One cannot be augmented by our pomp and circumstance. It thrives best where men see their citizenship as being in heaven, their glory the cross, their banner the love of God in Christ. And even with respect to enemies of the gospel, they are not the true enemy, for we battle not against flesh and blood. They can be released, as we have been, from the clutches of the evil one by the power of divine love. I must show it to them. I must declare how he loved me, the wretch in the famous song, the wretch whose only testimony is that amazing grace and love brought me out of the kingdom of self and stuff. There is no room for rancor or ridicule, for the servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle toward all men. I must forgive, even as Christ forgave me. If Christ forgave his enemies, can I do less?

Admittedly, love does not change the world overnight, and our impatience has made us easy prey for promises of quick change, whether that change is primarily thought of in terms of politics, economics, or educational. The real changes, the lasting changes, are usually hard fought, the result of patient continuance in well-doing. At the top of the list of well-doing is daily living the love of God in Christ. Jesus said this is the way all men will know we are his disciples. For the world to know the transforming power of love in the fullest sense intended by Jesus, the world at some level will have to be converted. It will come to believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. It will come to recognize that there are legitimate disciples of Jesus Christ out there – not religious users, political manipulators, arrogant strategists with whom one cannot spend more than five minutes without questioning whether they really know the God of love. The Bible never says that all men will know we are Christ’s disciples because we have resolved the great political questions of our times, or discovered the educational paradigm of the ages, or out-argued all faith’s detractors. It says this only of love, the love of Christ’s disciples. And for this love to effect transformation, it must embrace all. Calvin once said that believers ought to embrace the whole world in a universal feeling of love. We are the only ones who have a reason and are able to do this, for we are the only ones who see past the divisions produced by class, race, and greed. We are the only ones who have felt the intense lovelessness in our own hearts and have run to the Savior of love to change our hearts. And thus, we are the only ones who can truly love others, sacrifice for others, forgive even our enemies. We were once God’s enemies; he loved us when we were unlovable. Transformed by love, we desire and have the power of God’s Spirit to love as Christ loved. His love changed the world; the love of his disciples will do the same.

I loathe my lovelessness, my selfishness. I keep running back to the fountain of God’s love, Jesus Christ. I desire to be healed by his touch. I have seen other healed men, other loving men and women. Jesus has touched and healed me by his love through their love. I would not be here without their kindnesses. I shall remember their cups of cold water given to me in Jesus’ name for eternity. Until then, I know what I must do to contribute to the healing of the nations. Whatever my particular calling and gifts, there is only one tree whose leaves heal: the cross of Jesus Christ. It was a thorny and bitter tree upon which the Lord of glory hung for my salvation; for me it is the tree of life. I hear Jesus forgiving his enemies while hanging there. I hear his concern for his mother. I am inundated with the love displayed through the cursed tree. And I hear my Savior calling me to take up the cross daily, in self-denial, in sacrifice, in love. I have overcome the world, he tells me; be of good cheer. I have laid down my life in love; you do the same. If you would be used by me to change the world, love as I have loved. By this, all men will know.