Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve just recently spoken with a friend of mine interested in helping us out with getting a good 501c3 and with fundraising and other aspects of ministry today that are not directly research oriented. Thus, hopefully we will have a website up soon. For our own topic of discussion tonight however, I am going to be continuing our look at 1 Corinthians 13 and seeing the topic of “Love Always Protects.”
My wife and I recently had dinner with some friends of ours that go to school with me and church with both of us. In that discussion we had that evening, the topic of our relationships came up to which I told them that my wife does have a genuine fear about my devotion for her. Those who see me know that I am not physically built in any way, seeing as I am incredibly thin, I have scoliosis, and I’m underweight. Despite all that, the Mrs. fears, and I can see myself doing this easily, that if anyone tried to hurt her that I would fight to the very end to protect her, even if my own life was forfeit.
None of us like to think about that of course. (Although granted men, we tend to think of us going kung fu or ninja on a bunch of bad guys and wiping the floor with them.) However, there is a strong protective quality to love. The love that Christ has for the church is so strong that he is willing to die for the church.
Kind of makes the whole thing about the Bible suppressing women look different when men are supposed to be willing to die for their wives doesn’t it?
Why does love protect? Love seeks the good of the beloved. It is not looking out for its own good but how the other can be blessed. For the Christian man then, life is a small thing to give up if he has to. The same is true for missionaries who end up dying in foreign lands for the cause of Christ. Death is a small thing to them compared to the love of what it is that they are dying for.
The protection says that the thing which is loved is that which ought not come under that kind of harm. Of course, some harm can sadly be necessary. The mother is not likely to knock out the doctor who is giving her child a shot, as much as that child might beg and plead for that to go away and for his mother to not allow this to happen, for the mother knows that the shot is for the good of the child.
But if you are seeking the good of the good, then you will protect that good. You will want to make sure that no harm comes to it. While some may think that no harm can come to God, to which they are correct, his message can be harmed. Not in the sense that it will lose its power or be untrue, but in the sense that it can be silenced in a land if it is not protected. This is something we have to be aware of when governments are often encroaching in on us with the open message of “tolerance.”
Our love for the gospel should be that we do not want the message to lose its impact. We want its good to be able to go on, and thus, we will readily defend it from all attackers. We will only do this if we have a love for the gospel. Maybe that’s what we should be asking next. Do we love the gospel?
This might seem like an obvious question, but maybe it isn’t. A lot of times we can get so caught up in the intellectual side of the gospel that we miss out the applicational side of it today in our lives. Let us remember that the gospel proclaimed on Pentecost is the same gospel that we are to be proclaiming today. We are to stand in continuity with our Christian predecessors. The reason we argue against the cults today is that they stand against the truth the church has always stood for.
Now granted, there are some objections we have today that they did not have, but there are still similarities. They might not have had the Watchtower to deal with, but they did have Arianism. They might not have had Mormonism, but they had Gnosticism which was also highly polytheistic. Atheism was around to a limited extent back then. We have to deal with beliefs like Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Islam came after Christ of course, but Hinduism and Buddhism were mainly far away so the church did not have much interaction with them, although there was some. Whenever something arises that is contrary however to the truth of the gospel, it is the duty of every Christian to stand up for the truth of Christ that has been taught.
Let us not miss over this in being intellectual at times. The two are not opposed. One should think about the gospel they love. One should love the gospel they think about. We should seek to know more the God we love and we should seek to love more the God that we know.
Love always protects. If we love our Lord and His message, let us defend both. Many of us who are men would willingly die for our wives. Many women would also willingly die for their children. What are we willing to give our Lord?
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